Game of Thrones. I love the story, can't stand some of the characters. (spoilers for 1st 140 pages)

[Leopolds Ghost]

17. Feudal culture was more complicated than the black-on-black world displayed by Martin or Herbert.

We have a lot of social history on the Middle Ages and the first thing we learn is that there's no such thing as the middle ages. If you want to look at the true dark times of the period you have to look back at the so-called Dark Ages, when the average life expectancy was similar to that of sub-saharan Africa... and even then the reason they're known as Dark Ages is because of missing records. The High Middle Ages were a period of relative prosperity, and the Black Death actually caused the end of feudalism due to the resulting labor shortages producing peasant rebellions and class levelling (the word "levelling" became a thing then). If you look at the bloodshed of warfare well that hasn't improved much. If you look at starvation and privation of the underclass, well, we just started exporting it elsewhere. Look at London's East End, where one researcher estimates that England actually killed off or deported much of its lower class to the colonies. Most present day Englishmen are biological descendants of the upper class, apparently. The lower classes did not survive the Industrial Revolution.

Tolkien was indeed going for myth, the societies in his books are all directly influenced by divine creatures and magical forces. Tolkien actually wrote a lot of background dissertations on where he felt Middle Earth fit in with his politics which were basically culturally conservative, anti-corporate, libertarian. He felt the best government was none at all.