Have a read of the first paragraph here: "Some of the first dwarfs to have their histories recorded were employed as court dwarfs. They were owned and traded amongst people of the court, and delivered as gifts to fellow kings and queens". So they were slaves.
Sometimes you look at the way people behaved in the past and put it down to a mis-match in culture. Things were different back then, values were different. Thing considered barbaric by our standards were normal. The underlying message is to not judge the past through a modern lens.
How about looking it a different way: People in the past were assholes. What if we went back in time and talked to a king or a queen, expecting some noble benevolent ruler - turns out they are just plain old assholes. They knew the people they were enslaving were intelligent human beings with feelings, but they put them down anyway because they were assholes.
Prince Andrew. I had this moment watching him talk on the TV when I realised he was a total asshole and he had no clue that he was broadcasting this fact to the entire world.
So these two things make me think: what if the British Royal Family are a bunch of assholes? It would explain why a) you hardly ever hear them speak and b) when you do it's very carefully scripted. Basically they have a team of people that they pay to engineer communication that doesn't make them look like complete assholes.
But don't be fooled. One of the amazing achivements of Western Civilization was throwing off the shackels of royal subjucation. Don't let that go to waste.