One reason celebrity gossip is common in today's media (and non-celeb gossip is absent) is that just being a celebrity makes you interesting: the glamor, the wealth, the adventure, the opportunities to escape boredom and routine!

Like being a seventeenth-century noble.

I think it was only natural that nobles would have been preferred as ballad protagonists for just that reason.

If one desires to look deeper, there is the "tsk, tsk" factor. All those advantages and they can still suffer and mess up their lives, just like us. And, more significant I think, is the familiar tragic motive mentioned by Hilary and Brian. It doesn't matter so much that they're nobles: what makes the story is what they do and what happens to them.

Its worth repeating that Greek tragedy was all about nobles as well. The audiences evidently wouldn't have it any other way. Ordinary people were just too limited.

Of course, you never can tell what individuals are thinking in the presence of art. *Somebody* may have thought Macbeth was a satire or that "Bonnie George Campbell" was a good one on the bigwigs.

Not many would enjoy spending much time with such a person, however.