They took it! At the tip of a sword!
“I’ll do it with a lance.”
The irony is that the Normans were far more likely to be using spears instead of swords, which are more like the lances that William was using to become a noble. Nobles would have carried swords, but they were status symbols and treated with religious reverence. They would only be used in battle if the spear was thrown or broken.
Swords were always a secondary weapon, like handguns are today. I think it’s novels that created the meme.
Novels, mythology, folk tales, swords have always been romanticized. Nobles that carried them would have holy relics (bits of dead saints) encased in the pommels. A well-made sword was a strong weapon, and its owner probably trained in its use.
Like imagine you’re a pikeman, probably a farmer by trade, hungry and cold, wearing padded leather and salvaged cowhorn scalemail, probably injured or sick, and you are in the fracas of a battle. You see a mounted knight wearing proper chainmail armor, healthy and strong, rested because he didn’t have to walk to the battle or dig a latrine to shit into, and he’s got this shiny, sharp, holy weapon engraved with magic words you can’t read. He’s already broken his spear off in your friend, and now he’s waving his blessed +2 Steel Longsword in your direction.
By being the most violent, sociopathic, greedy underhanded, incestuous back stabbers of all the people who lived anywhere near them.
“There’s nothing more respectable than an ancient evil” — Voltaire
By convincing the dumber sections of society they were worth it. Same deal as today
More like the monarch fought for it then gave it to their friends.
Depends on the ruler actually.
Japan’s nobility kinda just happened to be the most successful rice farmers and rolled that into becoming their community leaders.
England’s were mostly William the Conqueror’s friends.
Rome’s claimed descent from deities, and might have kinda been telling the truth if you follow the theory that polytheism starts as ancestor worship.
Germanic tribes had military leaders in tandem with religious/legal leaders.
Pre-bronze age societies were ruled by priest kings who mostly held power by controlling the distribution of grain from temples.
A lot of Eastern Europe’s leaders were Vikings that happened to find really good places to start settlements.
In societies like the Haudenosaunee “nobility” was more just that you were the head of your extended family or the long house you called home.
The Roman Empire was inaugurated by Augustus “just happening” to hold several very powerful titles of office simultaneously, and never giving any of them up and passing them all on to his chosen successor. It’s actually pretty funny just how bureaucratic his takeover was considering how many stoic statues of him in military attire there are. Guy became the king of the Mediterranean through paperworking his way into it.
Rome’s claimed descent from deities, and might have kinda been telling the truth if you follow the theory that polytheism starts as ancestor worship.
Claiming descent from deities was common in Rome. The justification for the inheritance of autocracy was, theoretically, the grant of power by the Senate in the name of the people of Rome (in practice, the support of the elite or the military), and the dual fact that actual hereditary inheritance was fairly rare and that ruling families changed as often as fashion means that descent was not the primary justification.
The Roman Empire was inaugurated by Augustus “just happening” to hold several very powerful titles of office simultaneously, and never giving any of them up and passing them all on to his chosen successor. It’s actually pretty funny just how bureaucratic his takeover was considering how many stoic statues of him in military attire there are. Guy became the king of the Mediterranean through paperworking his way into it.
Paperwork wins empires, it would seem. And propaganda. Lots of propaganda work from Augustus.
Peasant uprisings have happened throughout history. Some succeeded but then the whole country collapsed, others were put down violently. Then you have the french cycle of rebellion, democracy, external invasion, monarchy reinstated. They did that like four times before it stuck.
