The external vicissitudes of the strife between the nobles and the kings have already been traced, and it would appear from them that the former gained the upper hand. In fact, however, their cause was already internally dead. One symptom of their approaching dissolution was the change in the practices of the nobles whereby they became more and more a court nobility, plotting in the shadow of the king (like the chancellor López de Ayala) instead of being semi-independent potentates on their own estates as formerly. Despite their class consciousness, parties arose within their ranks with distinct ideals, apart from personal ambition, dividing them against one another. Thus in Seville the Guzmán faction represented conservatism, while the Ponces were radical. Most important of all were the blows resulting from the social and economic changes which deprived the nobles of their serfs and created a new form of wealth in the hands of the middle class, an element better fitted than the old nobility to acquire and develop the new resources. The eagerness with which the nobles took up the practice of primogeniture, leaving their estates nearly intact to their eldest sons so that their house and their name might not be lost, showed that they realized the force of the new order of things and were taking thought for the future. In earlier times, when wealth was territorial and serfs were numerous, the land-rich nobility had been secure, but that day had passed. [Sidenote: The absolutist ideal of Alfonso X.]