History

"Feudalism" is a weird and controversial topic for historians because at least recently there's been a move to declare that "feudalism was never an actual thing" that revolves specifically around debunking the general pop culture idea of it but then expands to argue that because of the extreme difference in styles of government and laws across Europe alone - let alone every country that is often described as "feudal" - and between the earliest period that could be considered medieval and the early modern/modern period when "feudalism" was replaced with a more bourgeois monarchism and nationalism, that you cannot group these disparate things under one umbrella like "feudalism" at all.

I disagree and think those historians are a bunch of pedantic liberals losing the forest for the trees. They're correct in that you cannot describe any specific set of standards, laws, or systems between feudal entities, but they're wrong in that specifically that sort of legalistic chaos where ultimately power was held based on hereditary titles, properties, and court politicking by warlords whose capacity for violence may or may not actually have been relevant at a given time should probably be considered a general thing that happens. You can't say "ah yes in a feudal system you have exactly [list of titles] and they definitely follow this [list of laws]" but you can say "so a bunch of inbred fucks owned everything and ruled based on owning everything, and no no it's quite different from our own system where a bunch of idle bastards own everything and rule based on owning everything because back then you needed a dozen generations of inbreeding to be allowed to own more than a house, and back then they had to launder their rule through a bunch of crony clergymen as compared to now when they launder their rule through crony politicians and propaganda rags!"