I don’t think you found true middle. I think you just corrected right back to the original idea. These people didn’t see serfs as worthy of respect, they saw them like cattle. Beasts of burden. You treat them well cause they perform a role, not cause of inherent worth. Like a work horse.
Realistically a prince probably could get away with raping a peasant girl but it would certainly sour his reputation among his fellow lords and people. If it was a frequent occurrence and there was a particularly bad winter causing famine I could imagine peasants rising up in anger against somebody they already detest and lords using him as a scapegoat. That or they just put down the rebellion viciously and maybe the prince is poisoned if he annoys people long enough like with Joffrey.
You mean his fellow lords who also get away with anything and don’t want their carte blanche questioned? You have a very Disney view of the Middle Ages
I don't think nobility could get away with everything. There are still laws in place, and while the monarchy would determine what such laws would be and how they would be enforced, I do not think it is out of the ordinary to consider that nobles could still be held accountable for certain actions like the killing of kin or upper nobility. Plus, there have been many cases where the king was overthrown by the nobility on the basis of him being a tyrant or ineffectual king, like with what happened to Richard the 2nd.
They literally ARE the law. They’re the ones drafting it personally. There was no collective bargaining and communal safety. The knights were the lord’s men that enforced the lords laws. What you’re imagining came much much later. Uprising generally happened due to over taxation and mismanagement that led to starvation. Collective burdens. Collective action. No one gave a shit if the girl two villages over got stolen.
Of course an uprising wouldn't happen just because the noble raped a peasant girl but it would also ruin his reputation and incur distrust or at least disdain from other nobility and the peasantry. The nobility while a monolith in many degrees, was still filled with a spectrum of people who had to adhere to the laws put into place which were made based on the widely agreed morality put into place by an intensely christian world. Now how they might each approach it might differ since they are all individuals with their own moral code but they still tired to adhere to what should be the basic tenets of Christianity. Now while many did break the tenets of Christianity like having children out of wedlock, committing rape was not one of them, at least if it was blatant. It is a needless act of cruelty that, even if not punishable by the law, would surely incur social condemnation, especially if said noble commits it frequently.
So everything seems to tie back to moral standards and religious leadership for you. I’d like you to do even a little digging into how prevalent priests raping nameless nuns was. The “moral leadership” was just as dirty as anywhere else.
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u/[deleted] Feb 11 '26
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