collapsedsquid:

It’s sort of amusing going back how much importance seems to have been placed on rights to petition the king or rights to form assemblies that had no legal power.  Even purely symbolic measures of public decision-making were judged to be a threat and had to be shut down.

it claimed a sort of agenda-setting power and that’s not nothing, it’s the same power “the media” leverages today, thus the American congress being besieged by anti-slavery petitions until it agreed to preemptively discard them

one of my favorite stories is from Japan in the - well, “medieval” has a lot of problems but it’s the easiest way to invoke what I mean - medieval period, when taxes were assessed village-by-village based on the expected rice yield

and in a year (or 5-year period) of bad harvest when they couldn’t meet the assessed rate without ruin, the village would send a delegation of its elders to present their case that they should be given forbearance, and their request would be judged on its merits and whatever the decision the delegation would be executed for insolent insubordination

which means that commoners can challenge the government and win, but there can be no commoner with the experience or reputation of challenging the government and winning