lmao what a clusterfrick

There's a really good book called The Prague Cemetary (same author as all time classic The Name of the Rose) that's about a point in relatively recent history where "italy" was a bunch of tiny, largely irrelevant city-states. Similar to what happens in this wikipedia entry, although set somewhat earlier, the warring wannabe "countries" of northern italy are manipulated by proto-feds from bigger countries into making a series of decisions which turn out to be great for the winners and very, very poor for the losers. I highly recommend the book to anyone who is interested in the weird recent history of europe.