Simon of Kéza was the first to assert that aristocrats controlled the government of a kingdom in the 1280s.

The
counties evolved into institutions of aristocratic autonomy, and representatives from the aristocracy attended the
Diets (parliaments). The richest lords constructed stone castles that gave them power over wide swaths of land,
but royal authority was reestablished in the early 14th century. King Louis I established an entail system and the
idea of "one and the same liberty" for the nobility in 1351, although there still were legal divisions between
genuine nobility and conditional nobility. The most powerful nobles retained lesser nobility as their familiares
(retainers), yet this personal relationship did not end the familiaris' direct servitude to the monarch.