During the era of absolute monarchy and the divine right, members of the nobility were untouchable. It was considered a punishable offense to lay a hand on nobles. At the same time, corporal punishment was still being implemented in educating children.
This then presents a problem. If tutors of the royal family could not discipline young princes, then what were the tutors to do when their students misbehaved? In comes the whipping boy, whose sole purpose was to be beaten for the misdeeds of their liege.
Whether or not these whipping boys actually existed has been debated by scholars, although several references about them in literature point to the practice having been employed by some royal courts, if not commonly throughout medieval Europe. Generally, people accepted the story of whipping boys to be true.
The concept seems straightforward enough. However, whether the presence of the whipping boys produced the desired effect depended upon the character of the monarchs in question. For example, Louis XV of France was said to have had a whipping boy. Louis' epithet of Louis the Beloved may hint at the effectiveness of the practice.
Another famous depiction of a whipping boy, shown above, was that of Edward VI, whose reign, though short-lived, greatly influenced the history of England as it sparked the flame for the English Reformation.
Despite their designation as the royal scapegoat or fall guy, whipping boys also received the same education as the young princes and kings. Some minor nobles thought of the vocation as a means of climbing the social ladder as it granted them access to future royals and aristocrats. So it wasn't all doom and gloom for whomever was to receive such an assignment.
Back to the question of its effectiveness. Though there are examples which may lend credence to such effect, we can argue that these could only apply to individuals who were predisposed toward empathy and compassion, as seeing their peer being maltreated for their sake would bring out those good traits from them. Meanwhile, those who lacked such traits might inevitably turn into cruel tyrants.
Thankfully, we have moved away from such practices and we can now only encounter them in the annals of history.
(Image credit: Walter S. Stacey/Wikimedia Commons)