Oligarchy

Government by a few, especially by a small faction of persons or families.

When we think of kings we tend to think of their late medieval/early modern European incarnation, but that was a bit of a historical anomaly—the end stage of a thousand-year-long process of the monarchy being captured by the aristocracy. But the aristocracy was the older institution of the two, and the more malignant.

In ancient times kings were generally opposed to aristocrats, drawing on popular support to curb the natural tendency of the aristocracy to extract so much wealth from the lower classes that violent revolutions would result. (Think the Roman Republic, where wealthy senators were terrified of a popular leader becoming king and eliminating the Senate.)

So it’s not that CEOs are becoming kings—it’s that plutocrats are subverting yet another in a long line of institutions designed to contain them.

absolutely true. King is just a label though, for the top of that particular pyramid of power. There's also emperor, caesar/kaiser, pope, CEO, ..., all atop their own pyramids scrambling to make it bigger so they, the figureheads themselves, grow more important. Such silly nonsense.

The French revolution had an answer for this and it's easy to build but we'll need lots more baskets than they did.

Its worse now because by design, its tricky and secretive and they can kill us actively and we can't touch them.

I'll go back to king days when you just needed a group of buddies with some arrows and a plot.

The Business Plot coup worked, only with money instead of weapons.

They detached their power from land, with corporations and stock portfolios replacing their kingdoms

Great use of the royal "we."

It was covert before, but definitely still an oligarchy. At least since citizens united.

serfdom is unrelated to monarchies.

Capitalism is, quite literally, the rejuvenation of feudalism.