They Don't Have An Army In The Mushroom Kingdom

Maybe if royalty would hire some security instead of plumbers, they wouldn’t have all these problems

 I'm sure the Royal Family has as many security guards and plumbers as they need.  

In real life, sure...but apparently not in video games.  Today's Sametime Status is based on the Super Mario Brothers series of games from Nintendo.  Each of the 16 games (Soon to be 17, and that doesn't even count the spin-off games like Mario Kart or Bash Brothers, nor the prequels like Donkey Kong and the original Mario Brothers) built across multiple platforms is predicated on the exact same thing:  Some bad guy usually named or related to "Bowser" kidnaps the Princess, and they call in a plumber named Mario to rescue her.  Sure, there are variations...like bringing in Mario's twin brother Luigi to help, or in Super Mario Brothers 3, the same bad guys kept using a magic wand to transform the King into various animals and the Royals made Mario fix THIS ALSO every time on his way to rescuing the Princess.  What a bunch of jerks.  

What exactly was preventing the King from hiring a couple extra security guards to keep the Princess safe?  Why didn't he learn this lesson after the first time he made Mario head-butt his way through 7 wrong castles full of fireballs and scary jumping turtles before he finally found the right one?  Also, couldn't he have helped poor Mario out with some kind of weaponry before he set out on this wild goose chase?  At least give the guy a bat or a stick or something rather than leaving magic mushrooms hidden in boxes all over the place.  

What's Mario's reward for all of this anyway?  Assumedly, he gets to keep the gold coins he finds along the way, and those probably add up to a tidy sum. Aside from that, his reward, apparently, is that he also gets to keep the Princess, who seems like an awful lot of baggage and someone who's not very bright.  I mean..when he finds her at the end of the first game, she's just standing there in the castle...did she make ANY attempt to get out herself?  Also, the secret to defeating Bowser was to pick up the axe on the side of the bridge that SHE WAS STANDING ON!  Take 5 steps over, pick up the axe and be done with this nonsense.  Not to mention the fact that given the total lack of security on the part of the Royals, she's probably going to get kidnapped again and poor Mario will be own his own to rescue her again.  You really have to think it's only a matter of time before Mario gives up on this girl and goes after Sonya Blade.