The mainland Southeast Asian state that, for roughly six centuries, organized labor, land, and belief around a sacred kingship — building from its capital at Angkor an order that reached across much of what is now Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos before fading in the fifteenth century.
A sacred king needs more than a throne. He needs roads, temples, rice fields, and a way to make tens of thousands of people accept that one man at the center holds the world together. The Khmer rulers built exactly that, and for six hundred years it held.