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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3557629" data-attributes="member: 4937">You do realize that 'Droit de Seigneur' is a post-medieval myth, right?It seems rather incredible to suggest that in a culture that celebrated chastity as a virtue, the sort of behavior you suggest wouldn't have involved a major blow to station and a great deal of turmoil in the peasant class.  There are some sorts of behavior that would just strain a social structure too much to endure on a regular basis, and that's one of them.  Do you have some textual evidence contemporary to the time of the allegedly reutine event?I'm aware of this occuring legally under Roman law, but I'm not aware of this occurring under fuedal law.  The sort of things that a Lord could demand of his serfs were weighed to a nicety.  For many examples, read the Doomsday book.This would have been considered banditry in the middle ages, and while thier were some serfs in early modern Eastern Europe (and later post-feudal slavery institutions) who would have had no recource, it doesn't seem particularly Medieval to me.Ahh... now we are finally getting into something realistic.  Yes, there are countries in which lords are the only ones entitled to certain forms of dress.  For example, in Hulsheen only nobles may wear griffen feathers in thier hair or hats, and the penalty for impersonating a noble-born would be very harsh.Strictly speaking though, sumptuary laws of this sort are not a medieval institution, and they are most in thier hey day during Reinnasance Europe.  In the middle ages, the nobility was not wealthy enough to markedly live differently than the peasants.  Granted, they had meat, and better assurance of foodstuffs, greater freedom, and more than one change of clothes, but there is not actually any sign that they had a notably higher quality of life.  In fact, by the numbers the expected lifespan of a member of the noble class was actually a little lower than that of a peasant because of the greater risk of death in warfare.  However, what few tokens of wealth a Lord may have had were safely his, because there wasn't a notable middle class that had the wealth to impersonate a Lord either.  With the rise in general wealth and of the middle class in the Reinasance, there was a class wealthy enough to impersonate the aristocracy and there were more tokens of wealth to stratify society on - so naturally the upper class passed laws demanding that these upstart merchants not dress like Lords.Never really thought about it.From certain laws, particularly certain types of taxation, absolutely I do.Absolutely.</blockquote>

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