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Maken10/02/20242 repliesview on HN

If you are in France or some other central European old Kingdom, the people living in those castles were the ones who either put the king in the throne or had the power to remove him if he started some funny business, so it was their kingdom in a sense. The problem with modern platforms is, as always, how much leverage the users have against the administrators.


Replies

inglor_cz10/02/2024

Removal of a bad king was a possibility, but actually attempting to do it was ... tricky. It could definitely backfire and end up with the rebels on a scaffold, or, worse, with a decade-long civil war that harmed everyone and opened the door of the kingdom to potential raiders from the outside.

In practice, unhappy nobles would often rather deny their necessary cooperation (at war or administering the land in peace) and thus force the king to make some amends and tradeoffs.

Passive aggressivity isn't a modern concept :)

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arethuza10/02/2024

Yes, in the case of Scotland there is a famous document (Declaration of Arbroath) that was written to the Pope asking him to, amongst other things, acknowledge that Scotland had been pretty much always been independent of England. This was "signed" by the Scottish nobles and has a section saying that if the current king (Robert the Bruce) wasn't good enough at fighting the English he'd be removed and they'd find someone more capable.