History is big and it’s hard to generalize.

I’m not saying all kings were like this. I’m saying some kings, and some real armor, was like this. That’s the difference.

And since we have at least an entire century where codpieces were in fashion, it’s possible that that particular era was more about just wearing normal looking armor. Because obviously codpieces are normal in that weird time and likely weren’t seen as a sex symbol. So my statements don’t even generalize to all codpieces.