I've been looking in to the Welsh nobility recently and the sheer number of titles that are often translated as meaning "king/prince/sovereign/ruler/lord/noble/chief" is boggling. I was wondering if the medieval Welsh had a sense of some being more prestigious or higher than others. I don't expect it to be as clear cut as, for example, England's Baron<Earl<Duke<King hierarchy since Wales was a mish-mash of competing realms of different levels of power and influence, but at least some sense of order would be nice. Was there the understanding that some should naturally be subservient to others?

For example, the Mabinogion gives the the title "Pendeuic" (modern Welsh "pendefig") to Pwyll and states he is "arglwydd" of the seven cantrefs of Dyfed. "Arglwydd" I take to mean lord in a general sense, that's simple enough, but where does "Pendeuic" fit in? It's usually translated as prince but then so is "tywysog", was one considered more prestigious than the other? The same apples to titles translated as king, teyrn and brenin, why two titles, is one greater than the other?

Then, of course, there's whether rulers are called king or prince. King seems more popular earlier with prince more popular later. For example, Gruffydd ap Llywelyn is given the title "King of Wales" but the later Llywelyn ap Gruffydd is called "Prince of Wales". Why is the difference, did prince become preferred because it was considered more prestigous than king?

Looking at medieval welsh rulers it seems random whether they are called pendefig or tywysog or brenin or teyrn. Also, they all seem to be pretty independent, would a minor local lord under another lord have a different title? Please help me make head or tails of this mess.

My great-grandfather immigrated from the Austrian Empire (modern day Ukraine) to New York City in the late 1800s. Fast forward to today, my entire family is either atheist or nominally Jewish. Were immigrants from certain regions more likely to join the Hasidic communities? Or immigrants of a certain time period? Did immigrants who happened to move to certain neighborhoods just assimilate to the Hasidic culture that was already there?

I'm curious to know how the Qing state was doing before the disruptions of the Taiping period. Was it still exhibiting many of the strengths it had had in the 18th century, or were things already on the slide, politically and economically? Was the First Opium War a systemic shock to the state? And should we see the disasters of the 1840s as a fairly insignificant problem for the Qing as a whole, relative to what came later?

in ww1 trenches were used in both fronts,and maintain the soldiers with ammo,food,etc was expensive,and i wanted to know how new soldiers get to the trenches ?

From just a little reading it seems they are one of the worst perpetrators in the conflict, so why does it feel like I’ve never heard of Hungary’s involvement in the war other than personal reading?

I’ve always thought that the idea of Napoleon as a 19th century Hitler was just the legacy of british propaganda. But I’m starting to see it even in more authoritative sources, which brings me to beg the question, was he seriously that bad? I was always under the impression that he was just a warmongering dictator, more similar to an Alexander the Great (who with all his faults, is never compared to Hitler) than to the fuhrer. In northern Italy, where I live, he is still remembered more as a liberator than a conqueror, and in France he is still a hero. From what I’ve gathered he was the arguably greatest general of all time, who just so happened to seize power in a time of crisis and then, subdued by his ego, went on a conquering spree all over europe. France loved him before and after his fall, he didn’t bring misery to the country nor turned it into rubble, and it looks like he left it a lot better than we received it. But most importantly, even though he was certainly a dictator, he looked pretty “enlightened” to me, spreading the revolution’s ideals all over Europe and arguably setting the path for the german and italian unifications.

He certainly wasn’t good, but he just looks to me like the same warmongering king that Europe has had every 20 years. He just happened to be a lot better at it than everyone else.

Drugs, free sexuality, lavish parties, and other social freedoms were common in many other eras such as the 20s. Did the world really become progressive or was it just unusually conservative in the 50s?

Why did the Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Aztecs and Incas and the African civilizations such as the Aksumites and Zimbabweses never undertook marine travels like their European and Chinese counterparts?

Do you know any christian "scientists'" during the middel ages, who did research on behalf of the church? Most famous scientist from that era are people who went against the church, but I am looking for people who were with the church and it doesn't matter if the things they "figured out" turned out to be untrue.

After watching the Revenant, I’ve noticed not a single Native American had a beard. Then I realized they are almost never portrayed this way in movies, paintings, or books. Was it cultural to keep clean shaven... or is there something genetic that they normally can’t grow beards as commonly?

They sound very similar in function and how they raised soldiers, largely being in the power of the Timariot/Lord. However due to some differences (Timars being non-hereditary), I'm wondering if this played a significant difference in how soldiers were raised.

The movie Mulan was based off a chinese girl of Hua Mulan, did Hua Mulan Actually exist?

So, in the 1788 at the time of the founding of Sydney is it true that the colonial settlers had rum party? What would that have looked like? Thanks.

Why did the siege of Damascus by the crusaders end in failure so spectacularly? Four days seems to be awfully short time

In researching the Fertile Crescent I kept encountering descriptions of it as the Cradle of Civilization and the earliest civilization, yet the transition from hunter-gatherers to pastoralism is suspected to have occurred near to ~10,000 B.C., give or take a thousand years or two in either direction. However homo sapiens was wandering the globe for hundreds of thousands of years(~200k - 800k). This struck me as a massive period of time for no culture to have arisen so I looked at what defines a civilization and the definition is fairly nebulous. Depending on where you look it requires the presence of urban planning, written language, social strata, some form of government, and many other factors that may or may not be included. Is there simply insufficient surviving evidence of any established settlements prior to this inflection point or does the evidence not satisfy some basal level of qualifications for civilization? Apologies if my question trends too far in the direction of anthropology/archaeology but I felt it falls more into a category of how history is recorded more so than prehistory itself. Thanks in advance.

The Soviet claim was 83k killed 609k captured. However, I may be wrong in my assumption that the IJA fought to the last man in all other campaigns. Thanks

I’ve always wondered why we seem to have this special set of rules for the letter Q, but only in relation to Arabic translations. Why and when did we decide to do this? Why not Katar or Al Kaeda? Or am I wrong? Is this special set of rules more wide spread and I just didn’t know about it? What’s the history of the Arabic Q?

This seems incredibly unreasonable, and Ive always has a hard time believing it. However, it was a consistent "fact" through multiple different schools in my grade school years.

Any other aspects of why the colonies actually won the war would be really appreciated.

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Btw, also just watched the patriot and am curious about specifics regarding that movie.

I'm interested in how the American Revolution is viewed outside the US. Growing up conservative, it's viewed like it was the birthplace of freedom, but I'm now realizing that that was propaganda. So what are the thoughts of historians outside of the US?