Any ancient sources or others on the subject would be great.. I've started reading Xenophon's Anabasis and Hornblowers 'The Greek World 479-323BC'.

I have been searching for books or journal articles that discuss important families and their influence on power in the medieval period. I have found many interesting sources but they are all in foreign languages and have not found translation. Most of these have been genealogical studies. I am really interested in finding out the origins of these families, how they achieved their power, and their history. It does not have to be specifically to a royal house and would actually prefer if it wasn't solely about royals.

I have seen a few documentaries from the BBC about the Plantagenets, Windsor and the Tudors. I would prefer to read about other European regions such as the low countries, France, the Iberian peninsula (and the dynastic politics of marriage to form Spain), nobles within the Holy Roman Empire, Byzantium and the Italian states.

I have searched the internet for a while, yet I can't find a brief comprehensive article on the topic. The wikipedia article doesn't really spell out how the Scramble took place and how it was justified.

Q) How did they justify the conquest of Africa? Did they simply declare: "This area is mine" and started conquering? Or did they systematically come up with worthwhile casus belli in order to keep the support of their subjects at their home country?

Based on the book Animal Farm

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I recently visited Bebenhausen Abbey in Tuebingen, Germany. One of the various informative panels there depicted the spread of Reformed Benedictine Monasteries throughout Europe (Cluniac and Cistercian, at the very least). Unfortunately I am not a German speaker, and could only glean so much from the panel. However, I did notice that almost all of the 'Mother Houses' for these reformed abbeys began is the Djion area of France.

Is there a particular reason that many different order of reformed Benedictines arose from the same place within a few hundred years of each other? And that no similar reformed abbeys arose independently in other Catholic countries with existing Benedictine traditions?

*there

From what I understand, after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, Germanic kingdoms (Franks, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Burgundy etc) ruled countries that today speak Latin-based languages, even though back then they spoke Germanic languages. My Latin teacher told us that English has Latin-based words through French which was carried over by the Normans after their conquering of England and French assimilation into the upper class. But that was in the 11th century, over 600 years after the Roman empire collapsed and Germanic tribes migrated into their areas, pushed in by the Huns. How then is it that the German languages died out in these areas while Latin survived transformed into the Romance languages over such a long period of time?

I was watching 300 last weekend, and in the movie, Xerxes tells Leonidas "I will erase even the memory of Sparta from the histories. Every piece of Greek parchment shall be burned, and every Greek historian and every scribe shall have their eyes put out and their tongues cut from their mouths! Why, uttering the very name of Sparta or Leonidas will be punishable by death! The world will never know you existed at all!"

I was wondering if this has ever happened to a person or group of people? Are there any instances of someone attempting to do this?

I'm trying to wrap my head around why states and leaders relied on mercenaries. There is this trope that they are purely profit-motivated and consequently untrustworthy and unreliable. Is that accurate? If so, what determined the choice to make use of mercenaries? How were they efficiently used? Why did they fall out of favor (among European states/leaders)?

Why wasn't there international intervention and most of the international attention focused on denouncing the Vietnamese for invading Cambodia?

I have a few theories. They probably saw a lot more gruesome things (bashing, cutting, etc.), although maybe they were just more used to it, or it was more normal. Did they not perceive life as we do now? Perhaps they didn't live as long as to remember every detail from war?