# Were the middle ages in Europe really miserable for the average person? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 4, 2014, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986 "2014-06-04T02:23:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![ralfy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ralfy/32/600_2.png) [@ralfy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralfy)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/41 "2014-06-05T02:28:55Z")
In certain respects, it was not good, together with many other historical periods, due to high infant mortality rates, lower life expectancy rates, etc. The twentieth century solved some of these problems through oil and other technologies which lead to manufacturing and mechanized agriculture on a global scale. At the same time, though, they also led to overpopulation, environmental damage, global warming, the threat of a resource crunch, and more destructive power of weapons. ---
**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/42 "2014-06-05T03:28:34Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Here are some books that I’ve read which you can use to learn more about the time: > > _Those Terrible Middle Ages!: Debunking the Myths_ by Régine Pernoud > _The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature_ by C. S. Lewis > _Inventing the Middle Ages_ by Norman F. Cantor (about Medieval scholarship rather than about the time itself) > > But I’m not a real expert on that period, so perhaps other posters can suggest other books. Here are a few: You’re right about Cantor’s book – it’s more a meta-history, a history of histories, than actually about the Middle Ages. I would highly recommend a book by one of the historians Cantor discusses in _Inventing the Middle Ages_ – that would be _The Making of the Middle Ages_, by the great (and very readable) R.W. Southern. G.G. Coulton’s _The Medieval Village_ goes into great detail about ordinary village life, which is pretty much what the OP was asking about. Coulton was a pretty extreme anti-Catholic, but as long as you stay away from his books about religion in the Middle Ages, he was pretty good. I also seem to remember a book by him about the Black Death, but can’t think of the title. One of the most fascinating sources of detailed information about day-to-day life in the (late) Middle Ages is Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s _Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error_. It concerns an inquisitor’s investigation of the rise and spread of the Cathar heresy in the Languedoc region of France. Jacques Fournier, the inquistor, was very much interested in the spread of the Cathar belief, and interrogated just about everyone in the village of Montaillou. He was interested in their relationships with others in the region, within their own class and outside of their class, so that he could learn how the heresy took hold. He brought a stenographer (a court reporter, essentially) to his interrogations, and asked endless questions about who knew who, and who interacted with the villagers, and who spent time with the sheepherders in the mountains, and who traveled to other villages, and (yes) who had sex with who, and who traded with others, or shared ovens, and so on and so on. The records of the interrogations survived, because Fournier later became Pope (Benedict XII), and so all his papers have been preserved in the Vatican Library. The Montaillou transcripts, especially, are a treasure trove for historians. I’m pretty sure that Ladurie’s book is still in print. I’m not sure about Southern’s book, or Coulton’s. Afterthought – I remember, when reading Ladurie’s book, that nobody seemed particularly miserable (other than about being interrogated by an inquisitor). But mostly, they thought life was OK, and enjoyed their lives. I got the same impression from Coulton’s book, which was about English village life rather than French village life, but still, I think the idea that serfs and peasants and people at or near the bottom of the social pyramid would have been miserable and unhappy is a distinct case of us moderns projecting on to these Middle Agers how _we_ would feel about living the way they lived. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/43 "2014-06-05T05:13:48Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Do you have evidence that Chinese lords took less of the harvest than the ones in Europe? (There were, in any case, free peasants in Europe as well). > > It’s quite possible that European peasants worked less hard than in China, but I’d guess that has more to do with 1) farming upland crops is more heavily influenced/limited by weather, whereas when farming irrigated rice in a subtropical climate the amount you produce can depend very directly on the amount of labour you put in, and 2) Europe used horses for labour, whereas I think China used cows. Horses can do a lot more work than cows. The whole point of Gladwell’s essay was that Chinese peasants were allowed to keep a lot more of the produce from their paddies and the profits. As a result, they were motivated to be much better managers of their assets, also allowing them to squeeze up to three harvests a year out of their fields. This required far more intense management and attention to detail, which Gladwell then hand-waves into better skills at learning and thinking resulting in Chinese being better at math. A bit of a stretch, but he does mention the difference on taxation resulting in much better crop management and richer peasants. Of course, the French couldn’t do anything about their climate, but they could minimize their superfluous consumption. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/44 "2014-06-05T13:22:23Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > The whole point of Gladwell’s essay was that Chinese peasants were allowed to keep a lot more of the produce from their paddies and the profits. As a result, they were motivated to be much better managers of their assets, also allowing them to squeeze up to three harvests a year out of their fields. This required far more intense management and attention to detail, which Gladwell then hand-waves into better skills at learning and thinking resulting in Chinese being better at math. A bit of a stretch, but he does mention the difference on taxation resulting in much better crop management and richer peasants. > > Of course, the French couldn’t do anything about their climate, but they could minimize their superfluous consumption. The reason you can get three harvests a year of irrigated rice, in warm areas, and only have one harvest per year of wheat, has everything to do with the physiology and ecology involved, and isn’t fundamentally limited by how much labour you put in. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/45 "2014-06-05T14:00:33Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > The reason you can get three harvests a year of irrigated rice, in warm areas, and only have one harvest per year of wheat, has everything to do with the physiology and ecology involved, and isn’t fundamentally limited by how much labour you put in. This. The number of harvests a given crop can have is fixed, depending on the environment. The theory I’ve heard is that rice is a plentiful crop, but requires a lot of work over a long period, which encourages communal farming. Wheat isn’t a as bountiful, but it requires less work overall, so it encourages independence. Corn is awesome, but has a nasty habit of failing periodically, which some blame for the violence found in the Americas. This all sounds too neat and clean for my tastes, however. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/46 "2014-06-05T14:04:49Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Corn is awesome, but has a nasty habit of failing periodically, which some blame for the violence found in the Americas. It may sound too clean because, while corn was important in several areas, it was not the staple crop in a lot of other areas, including the biggest empires in South America (potato). Also, in the Caribbean, the staple crop was cassava (yucca). ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/47 "2014-06-05T14:34:54Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > The reason you can get three harvests a year of irrigated rice, in warm areas, and only have one harvest per year of wheat, has everything to do with the physiology and ecology involved, and isn’t fundamentally limited by how much labour you put in. Gladwell’s essay from Outliers can be found in pieces online: > [@](#): > > Or consider the life of a peasant in eighteenth-century Europe. Men and women in those days probably worked from dawn to noon two hundred days a year, which works out to about twelve hundred hours of work annually. During harvest or spring planting, the day might be longer. In the winter, much less. In The Discovery of France, the historian Graham Robb argues that peasant life in a country like France, even well into the nineteenth century, was essentially brief episodes of work followed by long periods of idleness. > > “Ninety-nine percent of all human activity described in this and other accounts [of French country life],” he writes, “took place between late spring and early autumn.” In the Pyrenees and the Alps, entire villages would essentially hibernate from the time of the first snow in November until March or April. In more temperate regions of France, where temperatures in the winter rarely fell below freezing, the same pattern held. Robb continues: > > The fields of Flanders were deserted for much of the year. An official report on the Ničvre in 1844 described the strange mutation of the Burgundian day-laborer once the harvest was in and the vine stocks had been burned: “After making the necessary repairs to their tools, these vigorous men will now spend their days in bed, packing their bodies tightly together in order to stay warm and eat less food. They weaken themselves deliberately.” > > Human hibernation was a physical and economic necessity. Lowering the metabolic rate prevented hunger from exhausting supplies People trudged and dawdled, even in summer After the revolution, in Alsace and the Pas-de-Calais, officials complained that wine growers and independent farmers, instead of undertaking “some peaceful and sedentary industry” in the quieter season, “abandon themselves to dumb idleness.” > > … > > What redeemed the life of a rice farmer, however, was the nature of that work. It was a lot like the garment work done by the Jewish immigrants to New York. It was meaningful. First of all, there is a clear relationship in rice farming between effort and reward. The harder you work a rice field, the more it yields. Second, it’s complex work. The rice farmer isn’t simply planting in the spring and harvesting in the fall. He or she effectively runs a small business, juggling a family workforce, hedging uncertainty through seed selection, building and managing a sophisticated irrigation system, and coordinating the complicated process of harvesting the first crop while simultaneously preparing the second crop. > > And, most of all, it’s autonomous. The peasants of Europe worked essentially as low-paid slaves of an aristocratic landlord, with little control over their own destinies. But China and Japan never developed that kind of oppressive feudal system, because feudalism simply can’t work in a rice economy. Growing rice is too complicated and intricate for a system that requires farmers to be coerced and bullied into going out into the fields each morning. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, landlords in central and Southern China had an almost completely hands-off relationship with their tenants: they would collect a fixed rent and let farmers go about their business. I apologize for taking large chunks of his essay, but it makes the point. Mind you, Gladwell is often criticized for cherry-picking his arguments, but the basic premise is valid. (I.e. he does not mean “hibernate” for real, there was plenty of daily work in food preparation, animal care; plently of seasonal and holy day celebrations, etc.) The other thing we forget is how deadly dull and boring the previous centuries must have been. The local story teller probably had a repertoire of maybe a few dozen stories (Grimm, anyone?) that were seared into everyone’s brain through repetition, much like how your kids watch the same mind-numbing My Little Pony DVD over and over. there were maybe a few dozen folk songs and dances repeated at every celebration. We’ve forgotten how little information was easily available before the internet, how what was playing at the theatre was important before DVD or VHS, how most people were lucky if they owned more than a dozen vinyl records. This was “pure luxury” compared to medieval entertainment. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/48 "2014-06-05T15:14:52Z")
> [@KarlGrenze](#): > > …Also, in the Caribbean, the staple crop was cassava (yucca). A few of my ancestors tried sugarcane farming in the Bahamas in the 1800’s. Given the fact that I am not a Bahamanian citizen today, we can sort of imagine how this turned out. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/49 "2014-06-05T15:17:54Z")
> [@Saintly\_Loser](#): > > …in the Languedoc region of France… Languedoc means, literally, “language of yes”. So the Languedoc region was a place where people said, “Yes!”. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/50 "2014-06-05T15:33:59Z")
I doubt it was as grim as it is in Game of Thrones except in periods of civil war - and GoT is set in a period of civil war. Most of the Middle Ages was not like that; if it had been, we wouldn’t be here, because our ancestors wouldn’t have survived long enough to beget those who begat us. Pain and cold and hunger would have been much more common, and losing your children early was much more common, so those things would have made people more miserable; I guess you can claim that bereavement would have been thought of differently, but pain, cold and hunger are just what they are. And the peasants would have still had the comparisons that we have now - they would have seen the Lords riding by on their grand horses and they’d have known that life could have been easier for them. So it would have been harder than now. But constantly miserable? No. People find ways to be happy by focusing on the little things. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/51 "2014-06-05T15:45:41Z")
An interesting note about cassava is that it is blamed today for prolonging wars in Africa. Cassava is fairly easy to grow, and can be stored in underground caches for long periods of time. This allows men more time away from the fields to go fighting, and can be used to create strategic reserve which can keep distant battles going. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/52 "2014-06-05T15:55:17Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > I doubt it was as grim as it is in Game of Thrones except in periods of civil war - and GoT is set in a period of civil war. Most of the Middle Ages was not like that; if it had been, we wouldn’t be here, because our ancestors wouldn’t have survived long enough to beget those who begat us. > > Pain and cold and hunger would have been much more common, and losing your children early was much more common, so those things would have made people more miserable; I guess you can claim that bereavement would have been thought of differently, but pain, cold and hunger are just what they are. > > And the peasants would have still had the comparisons that we have now - they would have seen the Lords riding by on their grand horses and they’d have known that life could have been easier for them. So it would have been harder than now. But constantly miserable? No. People find ways to be happy by focusing on the little things. I suspect that in a thousand years, people will view people in our times as slaving away in tiny 2’x2’ cubicles under the harsh rule of our Kardashian overlords, only to die harsh, brutal deaths in gang drive-by shootings or from overdoses of Red Bull and heroine. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/53 "2014-06-05T16:01:00Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > I doubt it was as grim as it is in Game of Thrones except in periods of civil war - and GoT is set in a period of civil war. Most of the Middle Ages was not like that; if it had been, we wouldn’t be here, because our ancestors wouldn’t have survived long enough to beget those who begat us. > … IIRC, it was the bishop during the war against the Cathars that the bishop in charge famously was asked how they would know the heretics from the Catholics when they sacked the main town, and replied: “Kill them all, God will know his own.” When trouble and strife hit, things were bad all over. But not every decade was trouble and strife. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/54 "2014-06-05T16:20:24Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > Languedoc means, literally, “language of yes”. So the Languedoc region was a place where people said, “Yes!”. Not quite: the name comes in opposition to _Languedoui_. The terms Languedoc and Languedoui are, respectively, “the language in which yes is _oc_” and “the language in which yes is _oui_” (aka French). ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/55 "2014-06-05T16:32:11Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > I doubt it was as grim as it is in Game of Thrones except in periods of civil war - and GoT is set in a period of civil war. A reasonable point. A peasant living in certain areas of France during the peak of the Hundred Years War might well think that between the various voracious armies, bands of _routiers_ and the plague, that he was living on hell on Earth. Similarly the poor bastards in some areas of the HRE during the Thirty Years War. It was all well and fine to be a medieval peasant ( well, you know, excepting the miserable state of health care and constant economic uncertainty ), but one imagines the utter lack of security or redress for injustice could also grate just a tad at times ;). Hence the occasional peasant jacquerie, themselves often orgies of retaliatory violence. Medieval Europe was frequently violent and despoiling the lands of your enemies, including terrorizing peasants and burning their possessions ( and very occasionally slaughtering them wholesale ) as a matter of course, was generally preferred to the uncertainties of set-piece battles. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/56 "2014-06-05T16:33:53Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > … only to die … from overdoses of … heroine. Considering the heroine in most modern action adventure tales, that sounds like a hell of a way to go. Count me in. \*\*\*\*ed to death by an Angelina Jolie character sure beats dying of piles. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/57 "2014-06-05T16:50:10Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I suspect that in a thousand years, people will view people in our times as slaving away in tiny 2’x2’ cubicles under the harsh rule of our Kardashian overlords, only to die harsh, brutal deaths in gang drive-by shootings or from overdoses of Red Bull and heroine. I didn’t mention work. I mentioned pain, cold, hunger and bereavement, but not work. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/58 "2014-06-05T17:04:31Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > This. The number of harvests a given crop can have is fixed, depending on the environment. > > The theory I’ve heard is that rice is a plentiful crop, but requires a lot of work over a long period, which encourages communal farming. Wheat isn’t a as bountiful, but it requires less work overall, so it encourages independence. Corn is awesome, but has a nasty habit of failing periodically, which some blame for the violence found in the Americas. > > This all sounds too neat and clean for my tastes, however. Rice often requires irrigation canals, which make it well suited for communal ditch-digging, etc. (e.g. digging one canal can irrigate a lot of people’s fields). Of course, the rice growing Cantonese were also traditionally considered an entrepreneurial culture, and the wheat- and barley-growing Russians and Scandinavians were traditionally fairly collectivist, so I’m not sure how far that takes you. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/59 "2014-06-05T17:21:18Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > And the peasants would have still had the comparisons that we have now - they would have seen the Lords riding by on their grand horses and they’d have known that life could have been easier for them. So it would have been harder than now. But constantly miserable? No. People find ways to be happy by focusing on the little things. True, but they wouldn’t have had the hope of betterment dangled in front of them the way \*we \*do today. Which in some way is less cruel. A peasant sees the Lord of The High Castle ride by and thinks, “that’ll never be me”. Whereas a prole sees some trust fund tosspot scream by in a Porsche and thinks “one day, that’ll be me !”. Which might seem like it would provide more comfort, but since it’s also bullshit in 99.9% of cases that leads to more misery when disillusion and bitterness sets in IMO. Regardless, I do believe humans tend to hover around a contentment “default” that is their current existence, that of their parents and that of their peers. They’ll always want more because we’re just fucked up that way, but their daily life will always be OK as long as they have companions of misery (or happiness) to relate to. And from that baseline, the day you feast a bountiful harvest or get a hummer from the redhead in Accounting is Happy; and the day your child dies or the plague wipes out everyone in town is Unhappy. But that, too, will pass. As the poet sang, “we never forget, we just get used to it”. That works both ways, of course. The poet was Jacques Brel, in case you wondered. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986/60 "2014-06-05T17:56:46Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > True, but they wouldn’t have had the hope of betterment dangled in front of them the way \*we \*do today. Which in some way is less cruel. > A peasant sees the Lord of The High Castle ride by and thinks, “that’ll never be me”. Whereas a prole sees some trust fund tosspot scream by in a Porsche and thinks “one day, that’ll be me !”. Which might seem like it would provide more comfort, but since it’s also bullshit in 99.9% of cases that leads to more misery when disillusion and bitterness sets in IMO. A peasant sees the Lord of the High Castle ride by and thinks “I hope that guy doesn’t fuck my wife and then cut off my head if I complain”. And these days, there are a lot more paths to gaining wealth than inheriting it. LSLGuy - Sorry I’m not up on your “drug lingo”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-middle-ages-in-europe-really-miserable-for-the-average-person/689986.md?page=4)