Under the Capetiens, personnel links were forged between feudal lords to the detriment of purely administrative offices. Minerve and the Minervois were held for the viscount of Narbonne and then of Beziers. The Viscount of Beziers held the land on behalf of the Count of Toulouse who was the one to pay hommage to the King of France. However, the distance from Paris meant that the Counts of Toulouse were not really effectively under the control of the kings of France. And at one time, the Viscount of Beziers and Carcassonne, Raimond Trencavel, changed 'sides' and paid hommage to the King of Aragon rather than to the Count of Toulouse. The feudal system was built on a hierarchical structure of masters and servants. Any given feudal lord was always subject to the control of a more powerful master.

The first known Viscount of Minerve was Rainald who in 1002 was a subject of Roger I of Carcassonne. The succession of feudal lords at Minerve is not easy to establish and is complicated by the existence at times of co-lords holding jointly a territory. Further complications came with marriage. Beneath the Viscount came the smaller 'seigneurs' and 'chatelains' who held smaller lots of land on which chateaux were built as a sign of power : Peyriac in 1070, La Liviniere in 1074, Laure in 1127, Rieux in 1175, Olonzac in 1176, Pepieux in 1176, Citou in 1183. In parallel to the feudally held lands, there were also the possessions of the church often granted much earlier, as for instance at Caunes.

The feudal system lead to instability as the different actors jockeyed for power. The uncertainty and permanent state of agitation lead to a state of quasi-anarchy frequently spilling over into armed struggle. The sole unifying force which existed at that time was not the king of France but the church which tried to intervene on several occasions by local conciliation to limit the extent of a war at the Council of Narbonne (1054), Beziers (1170), Montpellier 1195), Saint-Gilles (109). Against this background, the Minervois, a small and unremarkable element in the feudal system, came to represent a greater political influence : first in the XII century in the area of international relations and later in the XIII century in the context of French unification.

The main contenders in the south were the Count of Toulouse and the King of Aragon. Barcelona had become a French County after Charlemagne had repulsed the Arabs from Gothie. But Barcelona was even further removed from the effective control of the king of France than was the Minervois. The counts of Barcelona enjoyed the independence in their own territory south of the Pyrenees and coveted the territory north of the Pyrennees. By a carefully planned succession of marriages, they spread their influence from the X century into the Carcassès and Razès through the Limousin to the whole of Provence in the XII century. In the middle of the XII century, Raimond Trencavel of Beziers and Carcassonne, switched allegiance from Toulouse to Barcelona. An armed struggle broke out which lasted for around 50 years and attained international importance as all Europe's leaders took sides for one or other of the parties. Although each side had more in common including their language, than with the outsiders, they would only finally close ranks when threatened from the north by the Albigensian crusades.