I've read those books too, they are interesting. But we're not talking about abstract monarchies and their theoretical attributes. What it really all comes dow

I've read those books too, they are interesting. But we're not talking about abstract monarchies and their theoretical attributes. What it really all comes down to this assumption: "then that's a step forward for me if my life, previously, was getting my crops stolen and head kicked-in whenever someone stronger than me wanted to treat me that way." Early modern european monarchies simply did not prevent that outcome, and in fact guarantee it. They are a formalization of that relationship. Tax burdens on peasants were high enough that starvation was a constant danger and common outcome. If you or a member of your family was beaten, killed, raped, or stolen from your only likely recourse was mediation from the landowner, so staying in their favor is a matter of life and death. If the landowner does any of those things, you have no recourse. These abuses are routine in the historical record, the people committing them mostly didn't think of them as crimes and so wrote about them freely, though often euphemistically. Whether you were better off under than than in precursor systems is not clear at all. Historians mostly refrain from making judgements like that, but when they do there isn't consensus on this point. I also don't think there's anything inherently more noble or smarter about modern people or whatever. We like them are created by complex processes and subject to constraints and incentives. But the idea that premodern and early modern european aristocracies were an improvement on or evolution of anything is pure propaganda due to us living in the successors of those states. Again, this was the tribal warlordism.