But then you realize that emperor Charles V has been riding roughshod over Italy and the Balkans and you’re needed to rein him in by occupying his Flemish possessions (or even landing in Spain) lest he claim European dominance. It’s easy to get distracted by what is in front of your own door – say, if you’re playing England, the quest for a male heir, the reformation in your own land, and rich conquests in France. Here I Stand puts its players into that same mindset. His four protagonists form a close-knit relationship web where pulling on one end will inevitably also affect the others. Not an academically trained historian, the author is free of the dryness that often comes with their accounts and presents a superbly entertaining book instead. The book shines at interweaving the strands of the four rulers as well as linking individual events with the larger narrative. And then, at some point, you realize that they all happened at the same time and that they were intimately related.īoth Four Princes and Here I Stand are excellent at bringing these disparate topics together. You store all of these in different compartments of your historical mind. The golden age of the Ottoman empire. The French-Hapsburg antagonism. The Reformation. The European exploration and conquest of the Americas. It’s tempting to look at history one topic at a time. Box cover of Here I Stand Connections & Conclusions
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