It would be a poor fiction if it only concerned itself with the rich and powerful. I really like the option to play characters at differing levels of the social heirarchy - and it could surely lead to some very interesting interactions between player-characters.

I'm not convinced that characters of a lower social rank need compensation for starting with less wealth and power, either - there are (as some have pointed out) a few advantages in the form of less responsibility and management, but I think it would also be an injustice to present poverty as fun, or at least as having mitigating factors. It's not as if it represents a lack of agency (and in this regard I'm glad that Dark Age isn't a medieval peasant simulator), but it definitely conveys the different qualities of life and choices available to people at different tiers of the class structure.