>>509730434
Sweden especially was like this, in fact the entire power dynamics inside the country were the King+peasantry vs. the nobility. Swedish (and Finnish!) peasantry were never serfs and the king kept cucking the nobility at every opportunity.
Can't really speak about other places but even the insanely autocratic russia had this faux-populism where the tsar would sometimes severely punish the nobility. But in russias case (and I suspect in other places) this was to shift the blame from the ruler on to the "middle-management" basically making the nobility a convenient scapegoat. But in Swedens case the Kings genuinely tried to combat the nobility's influence by having the peasantry as their power base instead.