@Grandtheftautism @p @11112011 @FreedoingVlad @Senator_Armstrong @animeirl @dicey @icedquinn From my school days I remember only the “framework”, and later I would find a lot of disconnected joints within it. Not long ago reading on HRE on my own (before those posts indeed) I was quite surprised that at one point in time, most of continental Europe was divided between Spanish Habsburgs and Austrian Habsburgs. And the lands of the Spanish spanned to Netherlands. (Which is very close to England, and this explains why the British felt very uneasy – the closest shores, read supplies, might’ve been occupied by an enemy empire).

Cramming into my head ever changing names and borders was stupid until I realised, that I remember stuff better, when there’s something, a subject, an idea, often – a question like “where did it start from?” “what was so important there?”, which makes you read and find a lot, connect the dots, and then, nicely tangled, it falls into memory naturally. Because brain works on connections between figures, intentions, places, etc.