Under fudualism the King was the only true owner of land and as a function of the kingdom he would rent out parcels of land to loyal families and individuals. In turn these landholders would be obligated to the king to pay certain contracted fees and services.

These fudual contracts could include almost anything, so many bushels of grain per year, rights to savage anything that washes up on the beach, money for the up keep of an Abbey, but the most important and almost universal obligation was to provide miltary support for the King.

Large areas would be under the control of an Earl or Duke and they would often subdivide their land for Counts and Barons. In turn they would subdivide for Knights. During the Middle Ages most Kights were miserable poor rarely owning more than their armor and horse (and the horse did double duty behind the plow and on the battlefield).

In times of an unpopular war or weak King the more remote vassals ( a vassal was a fudual tentant ) would try and reneg on their past contracts. Some of these contracts were not in writing and based on custom, sometimes they could be centries old. In England some fudual contracts are still in effect back from the days of William the Conqueror in 1066.

If the King had the money and troops to come get you the allegiance wasn’t nominal. If you didn’t comply you would be quickly exicuted, your family thrown into the street and your land handed over to someone else of the King’s choosing.

Usually the King was remote for most citzens. And usually the King won’t bother his vassals unless he needed to raise an army or raise taxes. Sometimes the lower ranks of nobility would rebell against the King as when the English Barons rebelled against King John and force him to agree to the Magna Carta in 1215, restricting the rights and powers of a king.

Back then allegiance was based on raw power and enforced with a sharp sword.

I bet the answer is in your reading assignment. There is also the dictionary to look up words. The point of studying and going to school is to learn how to learn. Try not to get focused on the regurgitation of information and stay focused on learning how to learn. I will leave you to look up regurgitation.

wouldn’t it be less trouble to go to wiktionary from the wikipedia folds.

Oh by the way, the answer is A. But if I were you, I check it in the dictionary before I would believe it.