Maybe a weird/stupid question. Today we have mass media, and any new law/political scandal that happens reaches almost everyone instantly. Previously, radio broadcasts. Before telecommunications, information could go around presumably by letters, word of mouth, etc. Before even any of that, how would entire populations in, for example, the 11th century find out about new laws that were passed in their country, or if their country was going to war, and was it ever possible to communicate this fairly quickly (that is, within a week or two?)
In: 1822
The various tiers of aristocracy below the monarch didn’t just happen to be there. They owed their land and titles to agreements with the current monarch – albeit some were powerful enough or had alliances between them that the monarch couldn’t simply “un-Lord” them without risking a civil war. But gist is – the monarch bestows these lands and titles on a combination of loyalists and people with enough clout the monarch needs to come to some sort of agreement with. Lots of power brokering. In exchange these various members of the aristocracy administer their lands under the loose direction of the monarch, have to put on a public stance in favor of the monarch (doing otherwise would be treason, which ends up with somebody losing their head) and collect taxes for the monarch accordingly, and if the monarch goes to war these guys best rustle up a fighting force and go support the monarch. Obviously the higher up members of the aristocracy had large territories also, so had sub-tiers of aristocracy to manage progressively smaller territories until you had manageable chunks.
At the same time you also had the Church as a counterbalance to the more powerful members of the Aristocracy. The monarch appointed the more senior members of the church (and often from families of loyalists) and then those folks recruit a clergy who’ll make sure that everyone in the land turns up to Church on Sunday to hear about how the monarch was bestowed upon their land by God and is akin to God’s hand on earth and that failure to support the monarch was a grave sin and an affront to the almighty. This largely is outside the power structure of the aristocracy, so the monarch has this non-stop propaganda machine to reach the populations who might otherwise be swayed to superior loyalty to their local lord.
Again there was a lot of powerbrokering with the Church also, and a rift between the Church and Monarchy was also something that could result in war.
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