Hi,

Never posted here before, but I'm starting a PHD program in Early Medieval History this fall, so I've literally been reading about exactly this subject the last couple weeks -- this'll be a good test to see if I can actually explain something from my chosen field!

To begin: from the early days of Roman civilization, the way people held great amounts of wealth was through the ownership of agricultural estates. Rome was an agrarian society, so land used for the growth of wheat, olives, or grapes was incredibly valuable. As Rome expanded and became more militarized, land was often used as pay for soldiers -- in fact, in the century leading up to the foundation of the Roman Empire, land reform and distribution was the source of a whole lot of political strife.

As Roman political focus shifted to external threats such as the Parthians and the "barbarians" on the Rhine and Danube borders (third to fifth centuries, roughly), a snowball effect occurred: those larger and more powerful landholders bought out or otherwise got control of their neighbors' land, forming a system of landholding elites. These guys also participated in a lot of tax evasion, draining resources from the Empire and further weakening the already vulnerable Roman state.

During the so-called "barbarian invasions," a whole lot of "barbarians" (in fact just a somewhat loaded term for foreign mercenaries) also get paid with land -- so now we've got martially inclined, Germanic-speaking people who own large swathes of land throughout the former western empire. These would the Franks in France/Germany, the Ostrogoths/later Lombards in Italy, the Visigoths in Spain, and the Vandals in Northern Africa.

These "barbarian" kingdoms that arise after the fall of Rome in the west are thus highly martial, land-focused kingdoms who used a similar structure of government (i'll use the Franks as an example, but this is pretty generalizable for all the western kingdoms). Under Frankish rule, local administrators were drawn forth from the local elite, so that they would better understand and be able to maneuver within their local political scene. The Frankish Empire was broken up into tiny areas administrated by comes, of which there were about 400 in the time of Charlemagne (the number is from Chris Wickham's The Inheritance of Rome if I remember correctly). Similarly, a dux (pl. duces), which is just Latin for leader, would sometimes be appointed for areas where the Emperor needed a military representative -- during the reign of Charles the Fat in the 880s, for example, the West Francian Odo is appointed dux Francorum, in charge of defending the region roughly surrounding Paris from Viking and Breton incursion. These positions also often came with land grants to help the dux fund his armies.

As you've probably already figured out, comes and dux are the terms that later evolve into the English "Count" and "Duke", but we're not quite there yet. First off, these titles are not hereditary early on -- at least, not strictly hereditary. Being the son or brother of a former dux is definitely considered an added bonus when being considered for an appointment -- for example, Odo's father Robert had made quite a name for himself as dux Francorum in the 860s, 20 years before his son would also be dux. But this alone wouldn't qualify Odo to be a dux -- he'd also have to be competent.

Think of this stage kind of like current American politics (don't know if you're American so this might not make any goddamn sense). Being a Kennedy/a Bush/a Clinton doesn't automatically make someone a Senator or a Governor or a President -- but the name gets you a damn big leg up if you wanna try and you're not a complete idiot.

But what happened in the Early Middle Ages was that this tendency to hereditary inheritance turned into tradition. Think about it -- if Robert had enough land and was well connected enough in the region around Paris to be considered for dux, wouldn't it make sense that his son Odo would as well? Additionally, these families were often pretty ambitious -- when the emperor Charles the Fat died heirless in 888, Odo was proclaimed rex Francorum, or King of the Franks. His grand-nephew Hugh Capet would found the Capetian dynasty, which would hold the throne of France without interruption from 987 until the French Revolution. A representative of the dynasty is also currently the King of Spain (yes there's still a king of spain).

But though Odo is a bit of an exception in that he becomes a king, similar processes to his repeat themselves all over the west -- sons are appointed to succeed fathers, and eventually it becomes tradition so incontrovertible that blood outweighs competence, sanity, or even being an adult. That's when you get the rise of true nobility -- the grandsons of armed marcher lords transform into princes.

Sources: Empires of Faith: The Fall of Rome to the Rise of Islam, 500-700 by Peter Sarris, Kingship and Politics in the Late Ninth Century: Charles the Fat and the end of the Carolingian Empire by Simon MacLean.

If anyone thinks I've gotten anything wrong or explained something unclearly, please correct me! I'm new at this! Also I chose to disregard the controversies around the term "feudal" because it would've made this post overly pedantic and because frankly it gives me a headache.