A tough but ultimately enjoyable read. Marc Morris covers over 600 years of history in about 500 pages. It’s very dense and people’s names refuse to stick in my head, both of which meant I had to do a lot of back tracking when I lost the thread. It pairs nicely with David Mitchell’s book as a deeper dive into those early rulers.
Probably not the main thing I should have taken away from it but the amount of time people spent going on pilgrimages or popping off to the Vatican to get an argument sorted is mind blowing. Some of these folk spent not insignificant portions of their lives on the road to argue a point. They probably did have a laugh on the way though.