15thc perception on swallowtail merlons?

[Mark Knowles]

I wonder if they were almost like political parties such as Capitalists and Socialists or Liberals and Conservative. However I am not clear as it what extent one can differentiate between the political policies or positions of one party versus the other. I wonder to what extent people viewed them in terms of their own tribal identity i.e. my father was a Guelph so I am a Guelph, that is why I compare them to football clubs where ideology is not a consideration. Also I wonder to what extent they were more defined in opposition to one another, so for example, I hate the way that the Guelphs have been running my city therefore I support the Ghibilines. So that Guelphs are really anti-Ghibilines and Ghibilines are really anti-Guelphs.

OK, stop thinking like that and you'll start to understand.
We are talking about factions here. The average serf had no choice in the matter, he and his family followed their master. The master followed their patron. The patron (doge) changed allegiance based on the politics of the era. An entire town could switch allegiance based on the whim of the doge. And the fact that a town had switched could cause their rival doges, who now found themselves on the same side, to switch in turn just to spite their enemy.... ie, when Milan switched to Guelph, the city of Parvia at once came out for the Ghibilines.

I'm afraid I don't feel like I understand the situation any better after your explanation.

Of course there are different factions, but this is really like parties although there can be factions within parties. In modern British politics one could talk about the Corbyn faction or Blairite faction. In the 19th century in Britain you had the Torys and the Whigs, but most people couldn't vote, so it is not necessary for every citizen to have the vote in order for this parallel to apply. In ancient Greece most people such as slaves did not take part in the democracy.  So the presence of serfs in that society doesn't discount that the phenomena that there were political groupings of people. There were many different groups of people who were not serfs such as merchants, aristocrats, clergy and others.

In Milan the Ambrosian republic was established after a popular revolt.

At an earlier period Ghibilines rebels assassinated Giovanni Maria Visconti.

These were to an extent popular uprisings. So I think your explanation doesn't really captures it. These were not only top down identifications.

When you refer to Parvia, I guess you are referring to Pavia, which period are you pointing to?

I know about the historical origins of the grouping of Guelphs and Ghibilines, but as I said clearly these groupings came to be more than that. Did you read my earlier comments in this thread?

So I am still in the position of feeling that I don't have a good understanding of the dynamics and nature of these groupings.