How do you create a medieval fantasy setting with free peasants?

>>55209584
You create a medieval setting and decide the peasants are free? Kinda vague there mate. Does a medieval setting necessarily imply slavery or fiefdom or what have you? They could just simply be poor city folk

>>55209584
Revolution overthrowing monarchy
Curse slaying rulership
Pirate-style freeport/freecity
Freedom-worshiping clergy convert nobility
Freed-slave city, Spartacusville.
Just by saying so, DM.

>>55209584

Wouldn't be the Russia and Poland duchies? I think serfdom, the ironclad version at least, came late to Eastern Europe. So late, that people had discovered America already.

>>55209584
Just say that the peasants get paid

>>55209584
you make them loosely organized tribes instead of rigid kingdoms.
kinda like the early celts/germanics

>>55209584
You can't really, because feudal society works on "peasant lives on lord's land and gives taxes, lord lives on king's land and gives taxes"

In return, king protects lords and lords protect peasants (knights somewhere inbetween). ANCAP shittery incoming, but most of society is based on protection; a society that can't protect itself is quickly defeated and assimilated.

Towns/Cities with free citizens pay taxes to the King, and these towns become very productive and strong (that's why the King allows relative freedom), and eventually they overthrow the monarchy because they can protect themselves, and form a parlamentary republic that's a "kingdom of big towns/counties", and all protect each other and have good trade deals for being in the same country with the same language/laws.

A peasant, or peasants/hamlets can't be free until they have protection on their own accord; such as extensive firearms and manpower, which can happen even today (mexican landowners vs. cartels, though the landowners become the new cartels/corrupt milita soon enough).
Protection isn't free and it's incredibly taxing (pun), we in the modern world often forget how seriously peaceful the era we live in is, where we don't have to fear highwaymen or sherrifs (but fear the state/fbi, though this is outside of the scope of the thread).

So you'd need guns or magical weapons that allow a single man best others through skill/magic, therefore you can have peasants that are free and just sell their wares on the free market or to traders. A strong-ass peasant group that doesn't want no trouble can survive and thrive on their own.

Problem nr. 2 is how vast the farms have to be, though this is easily ignored in fantasy.

Some free peasants or all of them free? A decentralized system of rule could work. The peasants pay seasonal taxes, but otherwise the nobility ignores them for the most part. Well, besides the poor bastards that live 15 minutes away from them. Occasionally if there is a major war then the local lord might pull up a levy, but most of the time they prefer grabbing their men-at-arms instead. Especially since you don't have to pay for their equipment. Peasants can also form militia-like organizations. Nothing major, but enough to keep away individual criminals and small groups of bandits away.

>>55209584
Husshite heresy gone large-scale.

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49KB, 500x376px

you literally posted the anglo-saxons OP who didn't have norman serfdom

>>55209584
In Kievan Rus, free peasant worked the land in communes and donated tribute to an unlanded military elite centered around princely families. These familes derived their status from military power and trade wealth, rather than land.

So, decouple the power of the elites from the land and peasants can own as much land as they want.

>>55210407
>You can't really, because feudal society works on "peasant lives on lord's land and gives taxes, lord lives on king's land and gives taxes"

I mean it isn't like places like Switzerland or Dithmarschen ever existed.

>and eventually they overthrow the monarchy because they can protect themselves, and form a parlamentary republic

Usually that was the nobility's job. With them thus having secured their right to oppress the fuck out of the commoners, the commoners were usually heavily in favour of a strict monarchy rather than the republic of the noblemen. (This opens up one possibility for a fantasy kingdom of free peasants, the central power is simply so strong that we don't have a proper nobility, merely appointed supervisors, bailiffs, soldiers, etc.)

In the anglosaxon world this power struggle was effectively won by the nobility, and thus we get
>but fear the state/fbi
as the nobility's idea of freedom, to do whatever the fuck they wanted without anyone they couldn't just decapitate saying no, is what became cultural norm there.

>>55209584
a deadly plague kills most of the peasants, causing a chortage of labor, and competition to secure the remaining workers arises
the peasants now drift to whoever actually pays them or doesnt abuse them and causes an increase in living standards for most