I was playing through my first Royalty game when my royal got enough rank to start demanding a throne room and a nice bed room, they went from a happy-ish productive member of the colony to surviving on catharsis just to be functional. There may have been appropriate warnings about this but they weren't obvious to me at least.
My Suggestion:
When a royalty member ranks up it shouldn't be an immediate requirement, but a grace period to meet their new demands.
It could operate like a decree, where they announce it is required and if not met by X number of days then the minus's to mood kick in.
You could even set it up so that each subsequent rank gives you less time to meet those demands.
This would prevent a Pawn suddenly getting 20+ mood debuff until from one second to the next.
My Suggestion:
When a royalty member ranks up it shouldn't be an immediate requirement, but a grace period to meet their new demands.
It could operate like a decree, where they announce it is required and if not met by X number of days then the minus's to mood kick in.
You could even set it up so that each subsequent rank gives you less time to meet those demands.
This would prevent a Pawn suddenly getting 20+ mood debuff until from one second to the next.