The Crusades were nothing more than a series of massacres for a land grab and the Crusaders failed the minute they encountered armies who could actually fight back. Knight Wank is fascinating because it’s almost entirely based on fictional portrayals where the Europeans in tin cans won all the time against evil monsters and savages.
the only way in which they were successful was the rediscovery of tech and writings that the Arabs had preserved from antiquity which was lost in the european dark ages