Fealty, loyalty, allegiance and fidelity are each aspects of faithfulness which can in some way be mandated legally and enforced by the ruling authority.
Gratitude, in contrast, must be expressed spontaneously and cannot be enforced from on high. Gratitude thus becomes understood as an expression of individual autonomy.
The movement toward individual rights with its limitations on the prerogatives of authority could also have been understood as a movement toward civil society with its empowerment of legitimacy. Gratitude as well as loyalty and the other expressions of faith could equally as well have been seen as the underlying elements of civil social order not unlike the primitive devices of the marketplace have come to be seen as the means by which central authoritative power could be constrained.
The violation of fealty and loyalty and allegiance are treachery and betrayal and treason, the expressions of hypocricy and cunning and trickery, cheating (from the Latin, tricher).
Ingratitude, the violation of gratitude, is an assualt on the sentiments of affection and love and trust.
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