So how much power did rulers have back then? Could they just

>>589557
Honestly, no one could really stop them.

But they more or less needed the support of the church to maintain their legitimacy, so if they started being flagrant degenerates in front of the peasantry the Pope might excommunicate them or something.

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>>589557
>back then

Back when? And where?

>>589557

There's a lot of documented evidence of King Imran of Wessex, in Anglox Saxon Scotland doing this sort of thing in the 680s and 690s.

Back when?

>>589557
Oh man, it was crazy back then. Like, you don't even know. Inventing the steam engine, the sack of Rome, the Cambodian genocide. Back then was something else.

>>589557
Courtiers and foreign guests might not be morally outraged, but such unusual behavior suggests incompetence and madness. Rulers would have been schooled to sate their desires the traditional way in the palace rather than do anything that might turn people against them. If they needed to demonstrate their strength there was always an enemy they could attack which they had been putting off due to the expense, as opposed to defenseless peasants which would prove nothing.

>>589557
Nope. Unless you want a huge peasant + unhappy nobles uprising, that is. Peasants being peaceful keks is a fucking meme. They had documented rights and obligations, at least in Western Europe, and any infringement upon those would first lead to protest and then to uprising.

>>589557

>So how much power do rulers have now? Can they just walk into someones home and fuck their wife legally? Can they just start having sex with peasants out in public? What if they want you to drink their pee? What do? How degenerate are they with their power now?

>>589594
lel

>>589557
yes they could abuse their power, but if they went overboard they would generally just get dethroned by pissed off nobles

>>589576
like?

>>589557
pressing a someone of the lower classes into becoming a concubine for a high ranking noble was not uncommon in some societies, her relatives might even approve

having sex in public, torturing and humiliating peasants who are supposed to be under your protection was possible but unlikely or at least something they'd try to hide

they'd try to find better ways of doing these things that had fewer unseen repercussions

>In eighteenth-century France, a number of writers perpetuated other myths pertaining to the supposed power of the overlords during the Ancien Régime, such as the droit de ravage (right of ravage; providing to the lord the right to devastate fields of his own domain), and the droit de prélassement (right of lounging; it was said that a lord had the right to disembowel his serfs to warm his feet in).

>>589708

>and the droit de prélassement (right of lounging; it was said that a lord had the right to disembowel his serfs to warm his feet in).
Best right ever

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>>589576
>wessex
>in scotland
>anglo-saxon
>scotland

>>589557
I remember reading that during the medieval and early modern peasant revolts it was popular to accuse the nobility of sexually assaulting their wifes and daughters. Never really investigated that. Maybe someone knows more about it. It might have been just propaganda and justification for the revolts.

Was back then the worst period in history? More war and death than vortually any other period

>>590307
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Medieval countries were built upon a balance of power between rulers, commoners, nobles, church etc.

>mfw too young to have peasants drink your pee back then