LION

They live in extended family groups. They have to fight brothers and sisters and cubs for food. They are banished when they get old. Yet we have linked them to the idea of kingship. Perhaps we didn't know enough about lions when that association evolved. We simply derived an idea from what we observed at the time and kept it in spite of what we later learned. Once image becomes shorthand for an idea...well it's kinda hard to redefine the image in the minds of the uncountable population.