Was there some kind of real-world instance or happening we can point to that caused purple to become the “royal colour”?
In: 51
The color was made with a specific sea snail, took a lot of them to make the color it so was very rare.
Yes! Back in the Classical era, purple was a very rare, expensive, and secret dye, referred to as [Tyrian Purple](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple). It was made from the mucous of sea snails from the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic coast of what is now Morocco.
Many ancient cultures passed [sumptuary laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law) which were meant to reinforce the class hierarchy and promote thrift, and in Ancient Rome, those laws included the use of Tyrian Purple, and by the 4th Century, only the Emperor was permitted to wear fabric dyed with the stuff. This tradition lasted as long as the Roman Empire did, and ‘donning the purple’ became a turn of phrase, meaning ‘Becoming the Emperor’.
Yes.
The purple in question Tyrian purple, also known as Phoenician red, which was made out of the mucus of two species of Hexaplex trunculus snails native to the waters around Lebanon. This dye was VERY expensive to produce. Since they dyes discovery at around 1300 BCE by the Phoenicians it was merely an expensive dye until the Romans came into the story. Being a natural dye the color varied wildly unlike modern synthetics but that’s beside the point.
The connection for purple and royalty comes to us from the period of transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. In an attempt to embarrass and alienate Julius Caesar from his populous support the Roman senate lauded him with all kinds of odd honors. One of these honors was that he was now the only person allowed to wear Tyrian purple in Rome.
This one action changed an ultra luxury good into a symbol of Empire as Augustus picked up on it. Later empires and kingdoms attempted to mimic the Romans and voila purple is a royal color in Europe. This doesn’t count the Byzantine empire which didn’t adopt this idea by imitating the tradition they continued it being the literal Eastern Roman Empire and all.
What everyone said about the certain snails that the dye came from. Plus, it spread to all royalty because of the size that Rome achieved, most of Europe was Rome at one point. After Rome fell, so.e Roman things remained. Royal purple was one of them.
By the fourth century CE, sumptuary laws in Rome had been tightened so much that only the Roman emperor was permitted to wear Tyrian purple. As a result, ‘purple’ is sometimes used as a metonym for the office (e.g. the phrase ‘donned the purple’ means ‘became emperor’).
Because it was hard as fucking balls to produce purple dye, and so the dye was only bought by the richest of people.
Basically it was the medieval equivalent of like Gucci or some other designer clothes to show off how much money you have that you can afford to throw it around on expensive as fuck clothes.
There was a great video about this on [youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJz2Z9JtNXk) that I watched a while ago. You will want to skip ahead to about 42:30 unless you want to learn about other crappy jobs that people had :). It explains the whole process really well
it was always hard and expensive to create purple dye, so it got associated with the rich and important.
the same reason they had everything in gold, expensive, rare, fancy.
Other than the ancient reason, nowadays I firmly believe we love purple due to the colour of Cadbury wrappers.
Purple die used to be the most expensive to make, to the extent that someone named Lydia is mentioned in the Bible for giving up her wealth to house the apostle Paul. It used to be very rare, and only royalty could afford it.
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