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The content on imperial reform is certainly interesting and I wished I read this earlier when I was curious about it but never read anything about it.

The fact that Austria only essentially held 30% of territory in the Empire shows how much the HRE relied on discussion than military coercion. It's not a perfect polity but perhaps it's a useful premodern model.

Despite his thematic structure in the early chapters he seems to have decided to pursue a chronological structure regarding governance from the Carolingians to the Habsburgs. Really interesting and perhaps he should have started here instead of with religion and empire.

His discussion of governance is interesting and I would like to explore this more in the context of local governance and wider imperial governance.

Book III was brilliant. Livy does a great job at building the tension on the Conflict of the Orders. The whole battle over patrician vs. plebeian is still accurate to this day. The Decemvirate is a great lesson in how quickly democracy and liberty can be dismantled, even through initial democratic means. Livy is also interesting how he heavily promotes moderation on both sides. He also hates greed. Quite a wise man.

Book II shows Livy's interest in the rivalry between senate & plebeian. The various battles with the Etruscans is commonplace but we rarely get information on the enemy, it's usually a tool for the plebeians to interact deviantly against the senate. I do like how laws and such are debated as we would see today. As such there we see the most similarities between Roman republicanism and modern republicanism.

The Plebeian Secession was great to see and shows how republicanism isn't solved as soon as a monarch is deposed but is a continuous process of liberty.

I love how there has to be a whole arc about a dream from Jupiter to make the Great Games as glorious as possible when in reality it was probably that they wanted it to be lavish and they tried to find a justification later.

46-70. I enjoyed this session a lot. Tullia is a particularly interesting character as I see a lot of Lady Macbeth in her ambition and cruelty; Tarquin the Proud can be seen as a Macbeth who is overthrown for his illegality of rule. Brutus is an interesting character as well and his feigning of stupidity reminds me of an Asimov storyline, I wonder if he was inspired by this Brutus.

Great chapter! It was really short so it was nice and concise. It basically showed the scenario when Charles V was at the height of his power after just beating the Schmalkaldic League. He tried to impose a religious settlement which failed because Catholics rejected it outright and it was difficult to pass anything at the Reichstag because the German Estates were worried of a strong emperor.