I know some people who like to play dress up as generic lords and ladies from the European Renaissance. A few show off archery skills. A few engage in sword fights. The fact that most of their ancestors (and yours, and mine) were probably farmers, day laborers, or at best urban members in craft guilds doesn't invade that Disney-esque wishful thinking.
But that's what I'm asking you to do, here. To choose between your situation now, and accepting a position as moderate level nobility in western Europe sometime between 1200 and 1300 ACE. You get to keep your knowledge and sense of self if you choose the latter, but a Mysterious Force (trademark) will prevent you from taking advantage of any technological advancement that puts you ahead of the earlier period. In any way.
Pros: You would inhabit the body of a person around the level of an English or French count. You would occupy a reasonable swath of land. You would be the final secular law within those lands, as royalty hadn't taken that away, yet. You would set dozens of taxes, and send on a small portion of these to your king, but keep the rest. You'd live in a castle. You'd be gifted with training in horsemanship and swordsmanship, as well as falconry and a host of skills useful to your place. You would marry within your class, and spend your time presiding over a court in boring legal disputes, overseeing your lands' proper use, engaging in diplomatic activities, attending your monarch, and perhaps marching to the Crusades.
Cons: Castles are ugly, drafty, squat, simple 13th century affairs, not the elaborate, attractive things France would make of them 200 years later, and Sweden and Denmark, 200 years after that. No indoor plumbing, unless you count the hole (only in the newest castles) with a pipe that fed the moat. Fireplaces are incredibly inefficient. The moat stinks in the summer, for obvious reasons. Lice and fleas are a real problem when it's warm. Medicine? Doctors trained in mistaken theories. Herbalists who have some good ideas, along with a lot of garbage based on hearsay. No notion of germs. (One cup shared by all at your dinner table, for instance.) Food? Very basic and repetitive. The Roman Catholic Church has considerable influence, and woe betide you if you cross it. The horse is the quickest means of transportation, meaning at best you can do about 10 miles an hour in good weather. Battles are dangerous affairs, because any moderate wound is likely to be scarring, crippling, or mortal. Entertainment? Passing jugglers, singers who recite old songs, simple board games involving stones. Some manuscripts to read, though you're only moderately literate, have one or two books, and the nearest monastery probably has another ten or, at the most, twenty.
There's your tradeoff. Yeah, you're a lord. You're also right in the middle of a culture that is incredibly technologically primitive compared to our own. Or you can take your current situation, where you're hardly the master of your ship, the captain of your fate, a person like hundreds of millions of others armed with the same knowledge and goals: you're a minnow in the great ocean of life. But you've got fantastic medical services, great entertainment, food, drink, houses with electricity(!), real heating, indoor plumbing, etc.
Which do you choose? Where do you live out your life?
