Reminder

It's weird to think that for the vast majority of human history, 90%+ of people were just subsistence peasant farmers who effectively didn't know the world existed outside of their village. Would anyone outside of a city even know who Caesar was, for example? How could they before mass communication technology or even the printing press?

That is why everyone agrees that the dark ages in Italy started with the Gothic war.

>Two decades of constant fighting across Italy
>Rome is completely depopulated, suffering the worst calamity in recorded history. It is almost turned into a sheep pasture by Totila.

This.

Normal life in italy after the gothic wars was almost impossible, the whole region was completely ruined.

I’m pretty sure that the western roman people retained their cultural identity until the gothic wars. Sure the western empire fell way before that, but the roman people died with the Gothic wars.

>Would anyone outside of a city even know who Caesar was, for example?
Of course.
Illiterate peasants from eastern Moldova knew their monarch was the Czar X from Moscow when asked, if only as a random fact that didn't affect them one bit.
Succession and terf changes might reach them with a delay, but it was common knowledge.

That's the same for 90% of history.
Unless your're descendant from a dynasty that existed less that 100 years ago, your ancestors were probably shit-flinging peasants or a minor noble at best.
Most of the big names were executed in some stupid succession war.

>fucking the greasy plump farm slut.
T-t-tell me more

There's other means of communication but they vary depending of the time, the place, and most importantly, the real authority that the man in charge holds.
For exemple, in the era of absolutism, where european kings cared about making their authority felt troughout their realm, they built statues in all of their cities, so that any urban folk could see and imagine his King. In medieval times, in backward countries, people had to know that a King was in place, but they mostly had an image of him that went with rumors, folk tales and what the local priest might say. They were not completly in the blind, but they mostly saw him as a far-away, caring or not figure.
Sometimes, the King of France in the medieval era left Paris and spent months in the country, going to place to place, and he was always received with a great sympathy from common peasants who might have been the first since generations to see a King.

>ethnic Roman
>serving during the fourth century and not hiring mercenary

Pretty much. With the exception of Britain and some parts of France, the migrators were only a few thousand who overthrew the local nobility and became nobles themselves.

I'm not sure if all did, but rulers such as Theodorik and (I think) Klovis adapted to rule like the Romans did because that was the most effective way of doing it.

This. If you're giving 10% of your income away every year, you'd want to know who it goes to

There were villages in Mao's China who believed that the Qing were still in charge

A few Russian villages believed the Czar was still around

Italian peasants had no contact outside their villages. People never moved away, and invading armies and populations took care of passing only through unpopulated areas. Leaders new and old maintained the same judicial, political and economic system up until Mussolini.

Trivia comes from the Roman custom of writing random information on boards that were affixed on crossroads (tri-via).

I suppose sometimes the board was /b/, sometimes it was like /trv/, sometimes like /new/.

legit emperors ended at ricimer anyhow

Forget the "common Roman." The first that threw their lot with the barbarians were the Gentry and their estates, whom Germanics literally courted (marrying their daughters for example) to achieve some measure of local support in addition to acquiring the expert household troops of said people.

BLONDE'D

Sauce?

Only some indigenous tribals, and even then, not for long.

Hence why nobody gives a shit about pl*bs

This is the majority of history. Most people were literally accessories to the land they lived on, like fucking garden gnomes but capable of making food.

ROMANS ARE DREAMERS TO

Even in the most bumfuck villages you still had traders and craftsmen who regularly went to the city. The villages were not closed communities with no contact to the outside world. You also had (depending on the period) young men who went to war and returned.
Also during Christian times the village priest would say the name of the ruler during the liturgy, so obviously everyone knew his name.

If you are white then you are most certainly related to both peasants and the noblest of nobles. Sowwy.

Ironically, it was the recent Germanic warrior-aristocratic larper class that cared more for the glory of Rome
>more Roman than you, Odovacer

>Romanized christian Goths

What a weird fucking world we live in.

>Sometimes, the King of France in the medieval era left Paris and spent months in the country, going to place to place, and he was always received with a great sympathy from common peasants who might have been the first since generations to see a King.
Any particular examples?

No shit sherlock, just talk to the average modern normie about world politics. Plebs will be plebs, no matter the era.

Book recommendations about this please.

Obviously Edward Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Not necessarily because of its basis in truth but because it set a frame in which most academic research on the fall of the empire conforms to.
More in line with the modern rigor and detail, I would recommend Peter Heather's Fall of the Roman Empire and Empires and Barbarians

>REX THEVDERICVS FRANCORVM
>Francorum
>Roman

Bullshit chart.