>>520395736maybe I just can't see things through a non-modernist lens but it seems to me that fiefdoms entitle their owners (nobility) to respect and purchase with other nobility because they essentially are small geographic mob bosses and can a) muster men (violence), and b) extract resources from their fief and so have economic power
if you don't control your fife then I don't see how you're worth anything even if you're a "lord" according to law (which at the time is being upended anyway due to there being essentially a civil war)
however now that I've written all that I can see that other nobility would want to uphold the legal fiction of nobility as a form of protection for themselves and their kin, similar to how they don't kill each other if captured but instead engage in ransoming: it's in their self-interest as a class to maintain the concept of nobility even if nothing substantive underlies it
I am quite baffled though why english leveller-type movements weren't more common given how the nobility behave however
