And also why do they still exist? Can’t a regular soldier do the same thing?
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They don’t actually have to stand still for hours. If you go to places like the UK and the Tomb of the Unknowns in the US, which is our closest American equivalent, you will notice that they march back and forth at regular intervals. This is for ceremonial reasons but also has the practical purpose of allowing the guards to stretch their legs. They also get rotated in shifts, most likely every hour or two hours depending on the country, as they would for a regular guard duty in any other part of the military.
Why do they still exist? Probably because tradition is very deeply ingrained in all militaries and in the past, the units that protected monarchs were expected to be of a higher standard than the rest of their army. In modern times, this isn’t necessarily true because their role is ceremonial and more for the benefit of the public and the government than the military. But this is where tradition sort of blends a bit with modern thinking. In modern times if you want to mark a unit as holding itself to a higher standard, you make it all volunteers.
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