dislaimer i know nothing about histort, so wghat follows may be total BS, do your own research if you really want to know.
A few things like April fools day and the elements of saturnalia that survive in Christmas (twelfth night) had sort of formalised versions of it. In terms of reversal of roles and servants being able to mock or impersonate their masters.
But also folk heroes like robin hood and similar stories, and folk songs and bardic poems , stuff like that would have been sometimes critical of kings or power structures.
The peasants revolt in england in c14 is a good example. That was fairly widespread dissent against a new tax, although unsuccessful they got palmed off with some bullshit and Wat Tyler was murdered during the peace negotiations, and the boy king Richard II turned out to be a total cunt anyway.
But Wat Tyler was definitely crticising the monarchy (well maybe the “regency” that was effectively in power at the time), not staying silent.
The kings would have had far less control of the general populace before police forces came along (after large scale urbanisation). Look at something like the ‘Highland Clearances’ in Scotland to see evidence of people refusing to be shoved off the land into cities. The process of urbanisation in england was similarly tyrannical, it was just easier to orchestrate because there are far more twats in england to do the kings dirty work - and easier terrain probably helped too.
Some rebellions and civils wars though were not as home grown though. stuff like wars of roses and jacobite rebellions were all linked to international politics and religion to some degree. Especially with england and france it was pretty much non stop aggro for a several hundred years after 1066. I guess i’m saying there was also foreign state sponsored dissent possibly more than genuine rebellion. I’m not really sure where someone like joan of arc sits as a rebellion the politics in france were quite complicated at that time - but i think she was fairly pissed off and not silent about it - but was pretty closely aligned to one king vs another, so maybe not ‘independent’ as wat tyler , say.
Ireland had many rebellions and attempts to depose or fight back against the english crown over the centuries - but they never really got the support from france or spain or the pope that they’d have needed to succeed ( a bit like the scots too) - funnily enough it turned out to be the protestant germany that effectively weakend england enough to help Ireland achieve some freedom.
So i think there was dissent and unrest from time to time, but not until the american and french revolutions was there any peoples movement that I can think of that was really successful.
dislaimer i know nothing about histort, so wghat follows may be total BS, do your own research if you really want to know.
A few things like April fools day and the elements of saturnalia that survive in Christmas (twelfth night) had sort of formalised versions of it. In terms of reversal of roles and servants being able to mock or impersonate their masters.
But also folk heroes like robin hood and similar stories, and folk songs and bardic poems , stuff like that would have been sometimes critical of kings or power structures.
The peasants revolt in england in c14 is a good example. That was fairly widespread dissent against a new tax, although unsuccessful they got palmed off with some bullshit and Wat Tyler was murdered during the peace negotiations, and the boy king Richard II turned out to be a total cunt anyway. But Wat Tyler was definitely crticising the monarchy (well maybe the “regency” that was effectively in power at the time), not staying silent.
The kings would have had far less control of the general populace before police forces came along (after large scale urbanisation). Look at something like the ‘Highland Clearances’ in Scotland to see evidence of people refusing to be shoved off the land into cities. The process of urbanisation in england was similarly tyrannical, it was just easier to orchestrate because there are far more twats in england to do the kings dirty work - and easier terrain probably helped too.
Some rebellions and civils wars though were not as home grown though. stuff like wars of roses and jacobite rebellions were all linked to international politics and religion to some degree. Especially with england and france it was pretty much non stop aggro for a several hundred years after 1066. I guess i’m saying there was also foreign state sponsored dissent possibly more than genuine rebellion. I’m not really sure where someone like joan of arc sits as a rebellion the politics in france were quite complicated at that time - but i think she was fairly pissed off and not silent about it - but was pretty closely aligned to one king vs another, so maybe not ‘independent’ as wat tyler , say.
Ireland had many rebellions and attempts to depose or fight back against the english crown over the centuries - but they never really got the support from france or spain or the pope that they’d have needed to succeed ( a bit like the scots too) - funnily enough it turned out to be the protestant germany that effectively weakend england enough to help Ireland achieve some freedom.
So i think there was dissent and unrest from time to time, but not until the american and french revolutions was there any peoples movement that I can think of that was really successful.