This chapter explores the education of King Charles XI. The king struggled when learning to read and his teacher struggled to understand and alleviate his pupil’s difficulties. The teacher claimed that the king’s difficulties were a result of a heroic talent, characteristic of monarchs. Deterministic views of individual talent could serve to reinforce the hierarchical relations of seventeenth-century estate society, but it could also benefit a few talented men from the lower orders. Even in a king, the expectation of innate talent had a meritocratic side, incompatible with hereditary monarchy. The young king was expected to have an exceptional talent, but when this turned out to be unsuitable for academic study, political ideology and pedagogical theory conflicted, while also being unhelpful to the royal pupil.