Nah you couldn’t even blame just the king back then. Lords and ladies were still a thing. Just like dukes and duchess. Hell a corrupt sheriff could be all it took for your life to be made harder.
Right? That’s the main villain in the Robin Hood story.
A lot of popular entertainment shows the king as having absolute power, where the reality a lot of times was that he was constantly strategizing against his vassals to keep them from rising up against him. Those vassals wielded immense power themselves, since all of the levies at the King’s disposal came from his vassal’s dutchies, which they had direct control over.
Nah you couldn’t even blame just the king back then. Lords and ladies were still a thing. Just like dukes and duchess. Hell a corrupt sheriff could be all it took for your life to be made harder.
Right? That’s the main villain in the Robin Hood story.
A lot of popular entertainment shows the king as having absolute power, where the reality a lot of times was that he was constantly strategizing against his vassals to keep them from rising up against him. Those vassals wielded immense power themselves, since all of the levies at the King’s disposal came from his vassal’s dutchies, which they had direct control over.