[tshiggins]

You should also consider the nature of power and wealth, in your fantasy society.

How do people seek the security of prosperity? In most medieval-style settings, the vast majority of wealth requires control of agricultural land.

The "wealthy" in such settings are those best able to take the lions' share of the limited surplus produced, while at the same time leaving their people enough food and other supplies to keep them (reasonably) healthy and happy.

However, such economies have very little in the way of real wealth, and the gap between rich and poor is pretty narrow. Lean years are bad for everybody, including the family of the local lord.

Real wealth comes when the agricultural hinterlands consistently and reliably produce enough surpluses to trigger specialization and trade. That, in turn, triggers the growth of towns, which concentrate the available wealth.

That creates the sort of disruptive economic change that drives political drama. Those who control the wealth in a society mostly control the power in that society, unless sufficient limits (both formal and customary) exist to keep them in check.

Change happens even more rapidly and disruptively if the local royalty -- whose power has been limited because the lower nobility controlled the land -- has started to side with the towns. Now, he extracts enough taxes to form a full-time, professional army, that prevents the local lords from throwing their weight around in the towns. In return, all the king had to do was grant trade monopolies and other entitlements that helped the towns at the expense of the noble land-holders.

("Yes, you most certainly can raise goats, milord, but you must sell the wool, parchment and cheese at the market in Riverdale. You can't sell it directly to the dwarves of Jarlton, yourself, because his highness has granted that monopoly to the Riverdale Guildhall. Oh, them? That's a troop of the king's chevaliers. We've had a lot of trouble with banditry and smuggling, of late, and his highness has graciously sent them to help secure the roads, milord. Oh, no, milord. Only the roads. They would never enter your desmesne without your permission. Now, how much military service do you owe his majesty in exchange for the rights to hold your fief?")

If you add in the possibility of international trade, and the notion that while the lords control the surface of the land but the king owns the mineral wealth, then you have even greater possibilities for dramatic conflict.

("Oh, your lordship would rather pay scutage to the exchequer than render direct military service? Most excellent, your grace. How would you like to... oh my. Gold dust and unrefined nuggets! Well, that would be most satisfactory, of course. It must have been a particularly good year for goat-cheese....")

Basically, you need to set up the sort of conflict driven by change that threatens the status quo, and offers the opportunity to move wealth and power to different groups than those who possess it, currently.

That's the sort of political upheaval that allows assassins to make a living, mobs to make money from coercion and wealth redistribution, and "security experts" to provide useful services.