That sounds interesting, I think I need to put that on my reading list. It's hard for people now to think about history outside of the context of the relativel

That sounds interesting, I think I need to put that on my reading list. It's hard for people now to think about history outside of the context of the relatively ordered national boarders that exist today. Most of the modern countries of Europe didn't exist in the medievil period, and many are less than a couple of hundred years old. I think it would surprise a lot of people if you told them that "Italy" as a country, is younger than the USA, or that "Spain" was a pretty young country when Columbus sailed the Atlantic. And as you say, even ones like France, that had a "top king" so to speak, were really loose associations of dukedoms and minor kingdoms.