I'm curious to know how fashion differed in comparison to the other parts of the world, such as England. Would an average person have carried a weapon? What was the day to day clothes of a commoner like?

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You'd think that the the Trojans would be better off sending a small force (along with Paris) to meet the Greeks outside the walls at a neutral location. If they anticipated a fight breaking out, they would have stayed inside the walls and prepared to defend using the high ground, rather than dying by the scores potentially trying to use their bodies as meat shields to guard the stone inanimate walls that are meant for their protection.

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However, there are some complicated factors here, when it comes to calling this scenario historically inaccurate. One, it's a parley. Maybe the Trojans felt having the army outside the walls was necessary in order to protect Paris as a deterrent against the Greeks simply killing him?

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I'm simply ignorant of how this would work out in a real-life scenario. Is the movie's depiction of the duel and the ensuing battle historically inauthentic because the Trojans would never fight outside their walls, as some have claimed? Or would an army have had a motive to plant their feet outside the walls, if only to ensure the duel went down smoothly? Thanks!

What am I looking for that would make a good site? What does the first night look like? What are our first shelters? How long will our shipped food last us before we have to be fully self-sufficient? I heard there may be belligerent natives, how worried should I be? Will the fact that we're at war with another European power affect us? Can we expect aid from our home country?

Assuming we make it through our first winter and our women and children join us, when do we worry about harvesting gold, furs, cash crops, and other goods to send back to Europe? When do people with a craft begin their trade instead of just farming? When do we shift from communalism to capitalism or have we always been capitalist?

I'm watching a show called Derry Girls, and there's shots of their town and some of them have soldiers just walking around. Why is that?

(Also, there was an episode where these policemen(?) in orange garments were marching around playing music, what is that as well?)

I've seen a couple of maps of the Kingdom of France across the middle ages and noticed that sometimes counties are shown on their own, and that lead me to question something I used to believe, that a duchy breaks up into counties ruled by counts who are in vassals to the duke who in turn is a vassal to the king.

I've investigated a bit and found that at least in England, dukedoms weren't established until the 14th century as more of an aristocratic rank for the sons of the king and that counts pledged their loyalty to the king directly.
So in a general sense, without taking into consideration the exceptions to the rule and focusing more on regions that weren't England, like France, the HRE or Spain, did the hierarchy usually went like king>duke>count? Was a count usually a vassal to a duke?

And now considering the exceptions seen in history, Did counties sometimes become sovereign territories pledging their loyalty to the king directly? Did they remain as counties or Did they turn into duchies eventually?

Playing some Tomb Raider recently I started thinking about whether anything even close to the crypts/tombs ever existed.

Obviously the most complex mechanisms either never existed or even if they did, would have decayed to be non-functional over the years.

Does that mean no one tried? There are cases of hidden rooms of course, but that is a simple example - I’m talking about anything where an unknown mechanism triggered a trap or was required to access something.

Ancient societies would often go to great lengths to protect their dead or religious sites, whether that included more than just relying on curses I don’t know?

I have another, related question I’ll ask later in a separate post - I like when games like TR and Assassin’s Creed try to at least base some elements of their mythos on real world societies.

We know of Homer's epics, for example, which are widely availible and popular even in our day and age, but what governing body (if any) at the time 'confirmed' tales such as his as valid mythological pieces. Moreover, are the mythological tales that have survived to this day more akin to novels or more so towards some sort of centralized religious body that laid out what was to be believed and documented for posterity?

I'm interested to know do we have any (un)reliable link to any today known piece of "True Cross" that can be traced back to the death of Jesus? How likely would it be for Romans to even give crosses to Christians - do we know did Romans "reuse" crosses for crucifixion?

We know that the Sassanids captured Cross in 614 when they captured Jerusalem (if by that point it was even real Cross in city) - after that Byzantine authors claim that Heraclius took it back in 628 - how likely is that to happen, I imagine that Sassanids could either really keep it as a trophy (and return once they were on less favorable terms with the Byzantines), but also destroy it as artifact of foreign religion - so do we know how did enemies treat such captured items in early medieval times, was it more common to destroy them or preserve them as trophies?

As far as I know this link from first record ends in the 12th century (if I'm correct Saladin is last known ruler to have it) and after that we have a bunch of small pieces emerging throughout Europe.

Generally, what do we know about the path of the True Cross from Holy Land to todays most famous places (Jerusalem, Rome etc.)?

A book I'm currently reading mentioned that the art and artifacts reflected the importance of the labrys in this society.

So, what was the importance? How did it rise to this importance? Was this importance transferred to/from neighboring civilization?

I'm rere-reading the Anne of Green Gables series, and one of the characters in Anne's House of Dreams is described as eschewing the fashion for hat pins and instead keeping her hat attached firmly to her head by a rubber band, like her mother and grandmother would have.

This made me wonder, how did hat pins work? I can use hair pins (or a pen) to put my hair in a bun or a French twist but that relies on inserting the pin in the opposite direction and then twisting it back to get the tension. I can't visualise how you'd do that with a hat in the way.

And how would a rubber band work? In my experience rubber bands are a jolly nuisance with long hair.

(Okay, it doesn't need to be Canadian women exactly, I'm pretty sure I read a Golden Age murder mystery or two where an English woman stabs someone with a hat pin.)

Wouldn't that be like a modern day president secretly smuggling heroin into a random country?

Some additional questions: Were there any battles or skirmishes during that time the cataphracts were deployed in? How did social status factor in to their treatment, like nobles and peasants, or legitimate sons vs illegitimate? What was their training like? What was the youngest a cataphract could be? What was the process for taking temporary leave or permanently retiring from the military like? What did they think of European knights, and vice versa?

I've been wanting to read something on the war of the roses and I'm only a beginner. I would generally like an overall coverage of the war, but something preferably military and political would be okay too.

Thanks!

My grandfather and some of his brothers emigrated from Romania to the US in the early 1900s. Some of his older brothers remained in Europe (supposedly one was a "stallmeister" for the kaiser - any of you know what that meant?).

Therefore, my grandfather and brothers had non-combat positions in WWI (he was a motorcycle messenger?) with a specific letter from WW.

Would this have been unusual exceptions? or was this common with so many german and other recent emigres? if it was common, why would we get a personal letter? would this have happened in other wars throughout history that people with ties to both sides might not be forced to fight their family? or were they expected to do the bidding of their leaders and fight anyways?

The camps drew people from every possible region of Europe, and in a wide variety of ethnicities, classes and religions. Was there a lingua-franca of camp victims?