Quote:
Originally Posted by cellurdur
This is Martin's greatest failing. He is a pseudo historian and has actually not delved very deeply into what people thought at the time. People have not changed in the last 1000 years. Don't you care about who rules your country? Don't you care about if the laws are just? It's true that primary concerns maybe about self interest, but greater issues matter too. For a medieval audience the two were linked.
Loyalty to the Lord was incredibly important. You only need to read accounts of how people gladly died for their liege Lord. You get those out to further their own interest, but to think this applied to the majority is like thinking that the millions that volunteered to fight in the First World War were not patriotic.
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I would suggest your historical viewpoint is a tad naive, particularly in regards to the medieval mind. Peasant uprisings against their "liege lords" were savage and pervasive across the European continent: the rebellions of Wat Tyler and Jack Cade in England, the Jacquerie in France, the Ciompi in Florence, and any number of workers' rebellions in Flanders and Burgundy. Violence and oppression was the the rule against the serfs in the Middle Ages, hence the rise of cities with thousands of workers fleeing manorial farms to escape their masters, who met this flight with repressive work laws and insuffereable taxation on everything from the hearth to salt to the heriot at death.
What any of this has to do with the thought processes of soldiers in WWI is anybody's guess.