I understand Tolkien was a big part of why Lewis returned(?) to his faith... but was there any disappointment down the road in terms of Protestant vs Catholic?

(maybe all their literary differences were just thinly veiled theological arguments haha)

I'm looking at Game of Thrones, and I see the king sits on a council with various people he appointed. In other scenes I see peasants line up to be granted audiences with their ruler to speak on matters or ask for help. Is this really what it was like though? How does a ruler make laws and disseminate them? How does he know what's going on in his kingdom? How does he make sure the relevant people know that a declaration really is the king's authority? What kind of work is he actually doing each day?

I've seen "what is a ruler's daily-to-day life like" questions on this forum, but I couldn't find a clear answer.

To make it easier, let's also restrict the question to what it's like when the king is at home ruling, and not away on holiday, going to war, or away on a diplomatic thing.

You hear of leaders (either deposed rulers or leaders of opposition/revolutionary parties) being exiled to other countries throughout history. If someone is exiled from the country of their wealth/familial land, how did they afford their lifestyle?

If the Iranian government was couped and replaced by a bunch of greek centric oligarchs their would probably be a immediate revolution where the rulers would be completely outnumbered. Why didn’t this happen after the collapse of the Macedonian empire?

It's my impression that rebellions, civil wars, and coups really only work if there are people with power at the helm: nobles, military leaders, or other elites. As in the title, I only know of one exception.

In the eras that you study, are there other successful rebellions that were primarily moved by the lower class, without much elite assistance?

My grandfather’s family lived in a village of Germans in what is now Serbia. He has always told me that the emperor invited them to settle there after the Ottoman occupation ended. As I’ve grown up and learned more about the region and its conflicts, I’ve started to suspect that the reasons were less innocent than that. Was the empire trying to make the area more German? Was it a case of ethnic cleansing? The village was called Molledorf, by the way, but it doesn’t exist anymore.

Looking at cockpits of ww2 era planes pretty much everybody use metric for all measurements, from france through soviet union and even japan.

So how did US way of doing things started to rule the world?

I've heard this claim from a few places. Sometimes they follow it up by saying maybe slavery was less common than before/after/outside Cyrus' empire. Supposedly his Zoroastrian beliefs placed value on human life such that slavery was unacceptable. Is it possible that this mighty, military expansionist empire in the 6th century BCE did not rely on slave labour? Would it not have been at a big economjc disadvantage compared to its neighbours and rivals, all of whom engaged in slavery of some kind? If this claim is false, where does it come from?

I think Cyrus is one of history's most interesting figures and I have a great interest in Persia and Zoroastrianism but I always wonder whether this claim is nonsense or not! Cheers!

I just got quite interested in history recently, and I have been watching history documentaries. An observation I have had about ancient, classical and medieval warfare is that the archers don't really do much. Most of the hard work in a battle is mostly done by infantry and calvary, while the archers only play a minor role. I know there a some exceptions like the Battle of Agincourt, but it seems archers are mostly relegated to a side role.

If archers were not that useful, why would an army even utilise them?

I learned about the Countess Elizabeth Bathurst a lot when I was younger, purely because the idea of it all interested me but have lately been hearing a lot more of this theory that she never intentionally hurt anyone and it was all just a ploy for her land and other wealth. I'm just wondering if this is just an old conspiracy theory making it's new rounds on the internet or if there is any actual evidence or otherwise cause to think that the story is flipped.

I have been hearing the mention 2S alongside LGBQ. I did some quick google search and I discovered about how it was a cultural practice of some native north american cultures. But it's very unclear what the meaning really was. Was it an actual form of non-binarism, similar to how we might think of it today, or something more connected to a specific rituality?

Thank you for your answers!

I’m not trying to step on any toes here.

In our society, lots of people literally and earnestly believe that, for example, Jesus of Nazareth was a divine being who performed various miracles and returned from the dead. Everyone also knows the popular legend of King Arthur, who drew the sword from the stone and went on a quest for the holy grail, but virtually no one believes this literally happened. How would future historians tell the difference, and how do contemporary historians tell this about ancient societies?

I read that in places such as the Ottoman Empire, non Muslims were taxed to encourage people to convert. Did Ottoman agents do penis checks on new converts? Who circumcised the people once they agreed to convert?

I'm British and my knowledge of the Empire and colonialism is terrible. I understand Britain did terrible things, but I don't know the details.

I pretty much only learnt about Britain's role in the slave trade at school, despite being educated in Britain.

Can you recommend any starter books on this subject? I don't want to be uneducated about atrocities committed by the Empire.

Edit: I understand that there are shades of gray when it comes to the Empire (and almost any historical event). However, I feel that I wasn't taught about many of those consequences which are generally viewed as negative in modern times, and this is a major gap in my knowledge.

I'm reading /u/itsallfolklore 's book on trolls and it's really striking how many of these stories attempt to reconcile the spiritual destiny of faeries, trolls, etc. with the spiritual cosmology introduced by Christianity and the pre-Christian conflict of good and evil.

Do we know what these stories looked like before that kind of moral construction existed? What were faeries and trolls and so forth up to before they had to start worrying about their immortal souls? How did the people of Europe view these creatures' place in the universe?

While I've tagged the author of the book in this post, please don't feel excluded from answering if you have some insight!

As far as my knowledge goes (I’m a fourth-year History major in a US university) there is no repository for History preprints akin to arXiv, bioRxiv, psyArXiv etc. Nor do we have something like NBER Working Papers as economists do. Why is that so?

The political bias and spin of modern news and events has made me more aware of my own biases and left me wondering how historians cut through it discover the true nature and cause of past events. Bias in news, official documents, and person journals must have always existed to some extent. Was the sinking of the ship that started the war an attack, a false flag event, or an accident? Side A will feel justified in attacking Side B, and everything Side A writes would reflex that. Side B will feel Side A's Attack was unprovoked, and everything Side B writes would reflex that. So how do historians determine what really happened? I'm sorry, I can't think of any specific events that aren't current or recent, so an example of how this was solved with a real past event would be wonderful. I'd love to learn how this is done.

Im not sure if this is the right place to ask, since it's not a specific question about a historical period. I'm more interested in a recommendation. I've read plenty about communist states, but most of those works focus on the practical state policies and cultures in which these operate. I'm not looking for this. What I want to know, if somebody knows a good work on intellectual history regarding communist/socialist thinkers. I know the utopian socialist, marx and Engels, Bakunin, Lenin, Luxembourg, etc etc, exist. But I don't know a lot about the nuances in the intellectual discourse surrounding it. So if anybody is aware of a good monograph covering the intellectual debates within communist discourse I would greatly appreciate it if somebody could point me in the right direction.

Specifically the Catholic Church and Orthodox Churches. Without wine and wheat, you cannot practice the religion. Were there substitutes allowed in some cases?

After playing lots of Crusader Kings 3, I recently learned about the existence of the Laudabiliter papal writ, which in the game acts as a cause for the English monarch to invade and govern "the barbarous tribes of Ireland" in perpetuity.

As someone who grew up in Northern Ireland I'd never heard of this thing. Was it particularly important for the Anglo-Normans to have Papal backing when they invaded Ireland? Were they going to anyway? Was there any comment on how ... dehumanizing it depicts the Irish as?

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