Feudal Overlord: Difference between revisions

* In [[Dark Age Europe]] a lot of feudalism(like a lot of the other "darkness" of the time)was caused by lack of easy access to capital. To stand up for himself and(on the rare but not impossible chance that he cares about such things)protect his subjects any king needed a lot of muscle and without money the only thing to pay said muscle in was land. This had the disadvantage that the warrior given the land would be either need to subleesesublease his land to peasants on often usurious rents to pay to keep himself armed and trained or neglect the King's interest in favor of those of his estate. Or both. The effect was both to destroy freehold farming and provide a class of warlords with private armies. But at least it was mildly better then paying for a kingdom by constant raids. Much of this system was diluted not only by an influx of Oriental trade as a by product of the Crusades, but by silver strikes in Europe which increase in revenue gave kings an option of having reliable mercs instead of headstrong knights. The system was not without it's redeeming features as any person or corporate group could with a little adjustment plug into the system by negotiating a treaty with a king assuming they had enough clout. As a result people who would otherwise have been marginalized got privileges like internal self government, a de facto and sometimes de jure collective ennoblement(as happened with the Cinque Ports in England which were made a corporate baron for supplying extra to the naval militia), peculiar and exotic privileges of one kind or another, or whatever. Another example are the Jews who got such security as they had by cutting deals with the kings, and in the event that his successor broke the deal to curry favor with other interests in the kingdom, cutting a deal with another king.