Replace magic with "fancy and weird shit" and that's basically the error of most feudal lords, isn't it? They didn't invest their resources in their state, but instead in making tournaments, fancy furniture and cool armor.
The Hell On Earth podcast goes into this in some depth. They talk about the Ferdinands in the 30 years war tried to build some institutions in the holy roman empire, but whereever they pushed is where they got too much resistance to do anything.
Honestly as much as GoT is build on the war of the roses, it's interesting how there's a bunch of parallels to german history in the story of Aegon/the failure of the targaryens.

[–] CarmineCatboy2@hexbear.net 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's important to note that these sorts of changes towards institutional states took a century or more in most cases. Looking at just Europe, the french had centuries to create their administrative state. Spain tried to do that all at once and that lead to 2 civil wars and the loss of Portugal. The Ottomans had ebbs and flows when it comes to centralized administration and that's because they started 'early' and didn't have a feudal nobility to start with. Meanwhile you have Venice sitting to the side behaving institutionally on the level of the 1960s CIA. History's just not very linear and its very diverse. If you were a feudal landlord would you take some stabs at your autonomy and resources for a generation or two or would you live your best life right now and tell the monarch to deal with the rebelling peasants somehow (don't touch my privileges edition)?

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If I were a landlord I'd have a moat filled with gravy and I'd knight every donkey I came across.

[–] CarmineCatboy2@hexbear.net 2 points 1 day ago

i, too, would be the coolest and chillest of landlords