What is myth and what is reality regarding female participation in actual warfare during medieval times?

Since there are known cases:

"Matilda of Tuscany (b. 1046CE, d. 1115CE) was ruler in her own right of Tuscany, and a successful military leader.

Sikekgaita (b. 1040DC, d. 1090CE) was a princess from the Lombard lineage and likewise commanded troops in her own right.

Isabel of Conches (b. 1070CE, d. 1100CE) was the wife of a noble in northern France who 'rode into battle as a knight'".

I would like to know how common these cases were.

Also, if they were so different in appearcance why would they be considered beautiful by other societies, for example Athenian society?

I'm wondering if any of the kingdoms and nations that filled the void left by the collapsing Western Roman Empire utilised the same tactics, armour or general style of the Roman Army.

In "Gun, Germs and Steel", the author notes that domesticated plants can be a lot larger than their wild varieties (I believe they showed a picture of wild wheat which only had ~5 grains of wheat on a stalk).

By the time of the Old Kingdom in Ancient Egypt, was the grain they were growing already quite similar to modern varieties (e.g. would they look reasonably "bushy")? Would most of their other fruit/vegetable crops essentially look "modern"? I'm just trying to understand whether plants had been completely domesticated by that point or whether that happened later.

hey historians, how do we gain strong/robust knowledge of history?

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Henry Kissinger is a widely respected and revered individual and has even won Nobel peace prize. Given that he was Nixon's right hand man, and demonstrably and intimately involved in a variety of unsavory Nixon administration affairs (Vietnam war, Watergate) how did he emerge from that role with a sterling and intact reputation?

Edit: Sorry for the lack of clarity. When I say lead, I mean like to be present on the battlefield like Washington was during the Whiskey rebellion. I'm open to other close encounters with the enemy though.

In school (I think high school) a teacher explained that the reason so many Spanish explorers wandered around the US looking for a city of gold is because the Native American tribes would essentially tell them to "just keep walking; it's just beyond those mountains" in order to get rid of them.

Is this accurate?

Considering how the current even with the internet is playing out I am wondering how the market for other things we now consider utilities went.

I realize there's a HUGE scope to this question, so I'll try and add some context.

It seem like there's an identifiable progression in the west (with some notable deviations and exceptions) from the ancient Greek/Roman view on slavery to Medieval Serfdom and then finally to abolitionism/the Colombian exchange. What changes in the west account for this? Can it all be explained by the rise of Christianity/the eventual birth of the western concept of race, or is there something else at play?

Hello!

I've been experiencing some issues related to finding quality sources about how the lives of the Athenians were, and I've been having this itch to scratch when it comes to Athens for such a long while I'm afraid I can't bear to put it off any longer. So, I'm wondering if there are any good, thoroughly researched sources to start with that you know of? What I'm thinking of when I say "the life of Athenians" is how did they live? What were issues they had to battle? Politics, state of government, and - in a nutshell - just about everything that would concern a citizen of Athens in the classical era. I hold this predilection towards books I could potentially buy off of Amazon or the like, but as long as I can get some information about Athens, I'm very much in favor of that instead of having none at all!

Cheers!