Not necessarily, e.g. the Normans had a well-deserved reputation of being extraordinarily violent on their own. Even Norman bishops were known to travel armed a

Not necessarily, e.g. the Normans had a well-deserved reputation of being extraordinarily violent on their own. Even Norman bishops were known to travel armed and get into fights. (And the state back then was far too weak to prevent such behavior even if it wanted to.) Also, gangs can be seen as proto-states, and a lot of today's criminal violence is gang-related. There isn't really that much difference between, say, drug cartels and the kind of violent packs of future nobility that raided and terrorized Early Middle Age villages in the post-Roman world.