In his famous and much-quoted definition of a nation, the nineteenth-century historian Ernest Renan referred to the existence of a nation as ‘a daily plebiscite, just as the existence of the individual is a perpetual affirmation of life’ (un plébiscite de tous les jours, comme l’existence de l’individu est une affirmation perpétuelle de vie). The idea of the nation – often read in this context as the nation state – as a personal ‘daily plebiscite’ undertaken by all the members of the national society has long captured the imagination of political theorists but Renan's definition comes with an inherent paradox if transposed to early medieval political order. Devoid of many forms of nationhood and wracked by political opposition, the form that political order took in the early Middle Ages might render impossible Renan's notion of the ‘daily plebiscite’ for individuals within the polity. At the same time, such oppositional politics as could emerge in the early Middle Ages could be, as Karl Brunner’s study has it, a form of political order which determined the nature of that polity. This chapter investigates the nature of that political opposition in terms of how it could have meaning to contemporaries, and ultimately how the paradox of political order could function.

The chapter also investigates a shift in the nature of political action during this period, from acts of rebellion which emanated from the grievances of members of royal families to those which were directed by and focused on the aristocracy's interests themselves. The nature of popular unrest is also considered, as is the recurring theme of rebellions against overlords. Some observations on the nature of political power and its negotiation are also appropriate here. First, however, although the introductory discussion has established the political importance of the contestation of power and has shone some light on the occasions where authority could be usurped, it is appropriate to establish the ways in which contemporaries recognised this. Our understanding of internal conflict is not just determined by sources which define unsuccessful would-be usurpers as rebels in hindsight alone.