this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2025
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Did kings hoard all the wealth? I thought kings had a monopoly on violence, not necessarily wealth
You need massive amounts of wealth to gain and maintain a monopoly on violence. So they did both.
Also if you possess a monopoly on violence wealth is not difficult to obtain
And once you have that wealth you NEED a monopoly on violence to maintain it, which requires more wealth, and so on.
IIRC everything you had was considered to be used by permission of the king. Like, he ostensibly owned everything and was just letting you use it.
There have been various degrees of absolutely and constitutional monarchies throughout history. One famous example is the limits imposed by the Magna Carta, which only benefited nobles.
There has often been a distinction between royal property and the personal property of the royal family or members of the royal family.
For instance, many of the palaces of the British royal family are national property and Parliament has a say in their use and must provide a budget for their upkeep. The total family privately owns a significant percentage of the rented agricultural land in England, and vast amounts of residential rentals in London.
Armies are expensive, and war is REALLY expensive.
Under feudalism the king owned everything. He would delegate some rights to lesser nobles so they would hold and manage lands in his stead, but the king owned everything and everyone
While that’s true, kings often went into massive debt to fund a war. Like Edward III borrowed significant sums from Italian banks to fund his wars.
I don't think Edward III was feudal.
The wealth was needed to pay soldiers. You needed soldiers to make sure people did what the king wanted, such as people paying taxes to get wealth. The whole thing with taxes and needing gold as money was basically invented for supporting militia, according to some.