A baron holds land from the king and has granted parts of it to several knights. What does this show about the roles of lord and vassal?

Explanation

Lord and vassal describe a relationship rather than a rank, so the same man is a vassal when he looks upwards to whoever granted him his land and a lord when he looks down at those he has granted land to. The neat diagram of a single chain of ranks misleads here, because it is a teaching simplification, and real landholding produced criss-crossing obligations instead of one tidy line.