Fiefdoms

I have, at this very moment, at least twenty families tied to my lands. These families work the fields in exchange for a very comfortable living. I tax them liberally, they give me 90% of their crops, and I allow them to survive the winters and sundry assaults from the barbarians of the forests. It's called symbiosis. They cannot defend themselves from barbarians, they are stupid serfs. They even have a soccer team called the Stupid Serfs, and they are soundly beaten by the Stable Squires each and every fortnightly game of "footy after the feast" where they run out into the fields and kick around a decapitated pig's head for many an hour after drinking several litres each of mead or barley wine, depending on who won the game of Cobbles and Bits during the feastly merriment.
I am a good noble and my serfs, while quite terrible athletes, make me proud enough with their drunken debauchery and semi-sufficient work during the harvest. If I had it my way I would empty my coffers and try to purchase the stable squires, but they are rather happy tending the horses and preparing the armor for the knights, and anyway they wouldn't much like working in the fields for the risk of ruining their perfectly-formed squires' haircuts. Perhaps I can buy some on a temporary basis, if for no other reason than to perhaps get a win under my belt after the next feast. This is quite a predicament I find myself in every feast that I hold. If I were to enact my noble right being head of the fiefdom I could easily take the squires from the knights and field them myself. I could win every soccer match, but without the squires the knights couldn't prepare to defend against the barbarian raids, and so my fiefdom would collapse or at the very least several serfs' cottages would be razed, which they do not enjoy. If I cancelled the feasts so that I wouldn't have to suffer a loss every fortnight, the serfs would become sullen and unhappy, and the harvest would suffer.

These are the problems invovled with running a fiefdom.