So the Dukes delegate in exactly the same fashion, granting fiefs to Counts – this is why in many places a geographic division encompassing a city or two and some towns is referred to as a county. The King is a lord, and the Dukes are his vassals.īut a Ducal fief is typically still too much for one man to personally rule.
The Dukes rule their Duchies (pronounced “dutch-ee”) in exactly the same way the King rules his Kingdom. And so, he delegates: Dukes are granted territory within the King’s dominion to rule as their own personal subdomains (referred to as fiefs). However, one man cannot govern an entire country. He owns, personally, the entirety of his realm, to lesser or greater extents depending on the time and place in history. The basic rundown is thus: There is a King. Castles were the locations from which nobles would typically rule their fiefs, as it was necessary to ensure that the court was located somewhere defensible enough to prevent any immediate danger. The term “feudalism” only started appearing in the 19th century or so, long after feudal society’s heyday in the 9th to 15th centuries as historians, economists, and lawyers were trying to describe the systems and structures of the past.įeudal hierarchy – Emperors, Kings, Dukes, Counts, and BaronsĪ castle built in an extremely strategic location in what is now South West Switzerland. So natural, in fact, was this evolution, that people of the time did not have a word for it – it was simply how life went.
In reality, feudalism was a simple but effective (at least at first) form of governance that evolved quite naturally from the chaotic tribalism of Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Feudalism is something that everyone has heard of but that few understand beyond the implication that there is a king, knights, and nobility.
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