I bought this book ‘a world lit only by fire’ and after the first chapter I was a little suspicious of the books portrayal of the high Middle Ages, and it turns out that the book is wrong about basically everything it says, but it raised this question for me. The book mentions that there was a constant level of violence among the bottom rung of the nobility, the younger sons of nobles would kidnap and ransom others, banditry was common and knights would basically just ride around stealing things and raiding villages with few repercussions during peacetime.

It made me wonder, in a society where power was so decentralized, what actually prevented people from fighting their neighbors all the time? Are there any examples of nobles who were lower on the totem pole fighting over territory or anything like that? If you’re an average nobleman with a manor and a village under his control, why not just ride to the next village over, kill the other noble and set up a family member as the new guy in charge of that area? I guess the people higher up the noble ladder would disapprove, but what if you had some legal justification like the ones used to justify big dynastic conflicts? Or if your neighbor was a troublemaker and you got the ‘Ok’ from the authorities to make a legal attempt at taking over their land? What if two neighbors had a disagreement over a border or property line?

I’m assuming I’m just misunderstanding something super basic but I can’t really think of why this wouldn’t be something that happened.