Welcome to the next in an ongoing series of writing prompts in the Worldbuilding community !
I'm aiming to post one of these each Sunday. They aren't a replacement for the excellent daily prompts from 
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The prompt this week is - Royal Guards
Tell me a story about Royal Guards from your fantasy or scifi setting !
Royal Guards have existed for as long as there have been rulers. They started out as personal bodyguards, evolving from tribal hearthguard types. But soon they became much more than that, evolving from personal protection guys into elite military units like the Persian Immortals and Alexander's Companion Cavalry. Then they became political, exerting power like the Roman Praetorian Guard who frequently determined who was to be emperor. In more recent times, the names might have changed where the rulers are styled as presidents not kings or emperors, but they are still guards.
Today, people might think of Royal Guards as just pretty accessories in outdated uniforms, but they are often drawn from either the children of the ruling class, or the most experienced men in the armed forces. Their role also extends to more covert operations, as seen with the Vatican's Swiss Guards; beneath the 17th Century outfits are a body of men skilled in covert intelligence work and black ops.
So what about the guards in your setting ? How are they recruited ? What special training do they have ? Are they purely decorative, or do they carry out covert operations ? Are the politically influential, or sworn to neutrality ? Where do their loyalties truly lie - with the monarch, the state, or their own business interests ?
Just to add a bit of spice to things, the two entries I most like (and are linked in comments to this post, so I can find them !) that are posted by midnight (GMT) next Saturday will each get a prize of one Hive SBI.
This link will take you to the FAQ where you can read more about Hive SBI - it's a project I thoroughly support because it gives both the donor and winner a steady trickle of passive income paid out in the form of upvotes on posts.
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Some other neat communities for writing that you might want to check out are:
It can be a lot of fun to mix and match our prompts with some of these other community prompts.
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