Of particular interest are the ritual expressions of these relationships in the political and social arenas of various kingdoms. We can also attempt to delineate how relations between royalty and divinity changed over time in the Maya area, most notably after the fall of numerous kingdoms at the dawn of the Postclassic era. The implications of these issues reach far beyond the Maya region. The power and mystery of divinity provides the ultimate sanction of worldly authority. There is, however, an apparent difficulty with attributing godhood to human rulers, namely, the fact that rulers are observed by their subjects to undergo the same processes as commoners do.
Rulers are born, they live and die, demonstrating mutability and frailty as they do so.
And yet, despite what many researchers consider to be the paradox of the concept of divine humans, cultures ruled by such hybrid divinities do not seem to find any inherent contradiction in it. As this article will make clear, a large part of the 'paradox' is created by scholarly preconceptions of what a 'god' is. The Western concept of a god as one who is all-powerful, without faults, whose existence is not marked by either birth or death, is at times indiscriminately applied to other cultures. In a belief system where gods or supernaturals are born and can die, are changeable and even capricious, and have their own vulnerabilities, it is less necessary for a ruler to explain away these qualities in him- or herself. In 19th-century Fiji, the 'stranger king' and his family were established as beings that were ontologically and historically separate from their subjects.