There is basically a point where the story becomes hard to follow because everybody's name starts with Os: Oswald, Oswiu, Oswine. A century or two later, everyone is Aethelsomething. And then after the Norman conquest we switch to the Williams.

I am deeply fascinated by the fact that through much of the Middle Ages Europe had two monarchs calling themselves Emperor of the Romans, and who called each other King of the Germans /King of the Greeks respectively when they wanted to be passive-aggressive.

I mean think about it - a jealous God is a pretty damn big ask.

I'm a bit fascinated by Kings like Rædwald of East Anglia who, upon being introduced to the Christianity just decided to worship the Christian God alongside their own Gods, much to priests' protestations that No, This Is NOT How It Works.

Who exactly was a genocidaire?

Yeah I quite like it as well, it's solid narratively too.

The problem with "Anglo-Saxon England" is that it extends past the period that I mentioned - for example the time of Aethelred the Unready is Anglo-Saxon England, but it's more unified /looks more like "England as we know it" than, say, when Penda of Mercia was fighting Oswald of Northumbria.

Definitely not.

Dunno, man, The British History Podcast managed to get eight years of content out of it, so I totally get why he hates the term "The dark ages".

I'm currently listening to the History of the Germans podcast. The podcaster started off reasonably chronologically, but had to sort of give up on it and do thematic seasons instead.