Would I rather live under Charlemagne or in any of his dominion in the 14th century: not a headscratcher!

The Hundred Years' War has entered the chat.

"Am I a Saxon or not?"

(Mild historical peeves - that modern Saxony is nowhere near early medieval Saxony)

The center of gravity of "Saxony" moved gradually up the Elbe from what is now Niedersachsen (under the Ottonian and Guelph Dukes of Saxony) to what is now Sachsen-Anhalt (under the Ascanian and Ernestine Dukes and Electors) to the modern state under the Albertine electors in the 16th century

And then of course Friedrich August I lost the Wittenberg area after the Congress of Vienna, which was the connection between late medieval and early modern Saxony.

PEDANT VOICE: "Technically, they should really call it Meissen and Lower Lusatia"

it's all very untidy, really. What are they, Poland?

Dunno, a fair few bits of Italy weren't that bad in the 14th century

Al-Andalus was still pretty decent at that point too, if you were down south.

But there was also that whole bubonic plague thing

Also on the OP, I have noticed that certain Americans strongly react against any idea that history is more complicated than the image portraited in Victorian lessonbooks for schoolchildren. I am not sure where this comes from, video games?

I think it’s the broad curriculum at undergrad level. People who do not study history often have a V elevated idea of what “if only people knew about X!” and/or regard all attempts to complexify history as a bit seditious.

The worst thing about the US education system is the 101 courses which enable too many people to think they know loads off the back of a single course which should just be an gateway to other courses rather than an idiots guide

Every single time I read in fiction or nonfiction that it was considered witchcraft to wash oneself in the Middle Ages, it turns out the author went to Cambridge. Very odd.

Which is weird because I'd say the most popular historical vidya franchises do go into that complexity!

The last Assassin's Creed game delved into the status of women and foreigners in Sengoku Japan! The one before that was set in Abbasid Baghdad!

well yes but that happens in the early middle ages once too

Or Late Antiquity if you will

14th century gets you the Black Death, but then the Carolingian period gets you Justinian's Plague (probably also the Balck Death) still kicking around

Good luck with the fourteenth century.

In common parlance and in the writings of Petrarch himself(!): "there was a more fortunate age and probably there will be one again; in the middle, in our time, you see the confluence of wretches and ignominy". (Petrarch, Epistolae metricae 3.33, ll.4-6.)