I'm a bit viking

At 14, I identified as:
- It was Rise of Nations for me.
  
  I loved playing the pre industrial campaigns and spamming the machinegunners with a cheat code

For some reason I can't stop reading about Mesopotamia =/
Did you know that in 1770 B.C. Zimri-Lim, king of Madi, was so exasperated by his daughter being such a bitch to his political ally, the king of Ilansura, that he eventually traveled all the way from Madi to Ilansura to "liberate the palace of Ilansura from her presence" (his own words)?
- Lmfao. She toxic.
  I love history bits like this, thank you for sharing.
- I just wrapped up a deep dive into Mesopotamia myself and man it was fucking fascinating. Hadn't heard this one before, so thanks
  Another fun one from Mari was how Shamshi-adad berated his son via correspondence by saying he was too busy womanizing and partying to be a good leader and should be more like his older brother 😂.
  There are so many cool stories. I have moved on for now to study some Greek and Egyptian history because I want to have a nice background for when I get to Roman history but one day I wanna grab a book specifically on Assyrian history.
  Anyway I am around if you ever want to talk Mesopotamian history haha
  
  Wasn't Shamshi-Adad the first one to claim the title "king of the universe"? 🤣
  Assyrian boasting always cracks me up. Sennacherib describes this battle against Babylon:
  With the dust of their field covering the heavens, like a wide, mighty storm, they drew up in battle array before me on the bank of the Tigris. They blocked my passage and offered battle. I put on my coat of mail. My helmet, emblem of victory, I placed upon my head. My great battle chariot, which brings low the foe, I hurriedly mounted in the anger of my heart. The mighty bow which Assur had given me, I seized in my hands. The javelin, piercing to the life, I grasped. I stopped their advance, succeeding in surrounding them. I decimated the enemy host with arrow and spear. All of their bodies I bored through. I cut their throats, cut off their precious lives as one cuts a string. Like the many waters of a storm, I made the contents of their gullets and entrails rain down upon the wide earth. My prancing steeds, harnessed for my riding, plunged into the stream of their blood as into a river. The wheels of my war chariot, which brings low the evil and the wicked, were spattered with filth and blood. With the bodies of their warriors, I filled the plain like grass. Their testicles I cut out, and tore out their privates like the seeds of cucumbers of June.
  Meanwhile, the Babylonian records say:
  The Assyrians lost the battle.
  
  No love for Carthage? :(
- Fantastic XD

Both the Romans and the Vikings are a fascinating topic though.
- Totes agree. What's your favourite thing about them?
  
  With the Romans, the technology they had, and what they were able to do and build with the knowledge and techniques available to them. Also just the way Roman civilisation worked was astonishing.
  With the Vikings, the seamanship and navigation abilities they had.
- This is a fascinating rabbit hole to go down, but they are actually descendants of the same (hypothetical) prehistoric people.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_society
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_mythology

I liked the Ottomans at 13.
- So did JD Vance

this image is missing the substantial influence of the Dynasty Warriors game series
- What was it again? The Yellow Band Tribe?
  I tried to play one of the newer Dynasty Warriors, but it was way too over complicated
  
  It's an animefication of the Romance of Three Kingdoms novel, which is a fan-fiction/novelization with some artistic liberties of the Three Kingdoms period, the turmoils that led to the fall of the Han dynasty around 186AD and the ensuing war among several warlords, founding the titular three kingdoms: Wei, Wu and Shu.
  In the DW games it's just a one off stage because, "Pffft, peasants rebelling, amirite?"

Make that 5 if you're actually from the relevant country/region of one of the older ones.
Source: am viking by birth, hippie by sensibility 😁
- That kind of describes much of Scandinavia
  
  Am Danish (born and raised, umpteenth generation), can confirm 😁
- Vikings were very into drugs and ending Catholicism, so you might just be full Viking.

I actually prefer the late West Roman period, or East Roman in time of Belisarius and Narses, for the Roman pic. They have for me that association for the piece of that time which is almost possible to emotionally connect with ours.
And vikings didn't look like that, they looked like the better kind of LOTR illustrations.
The third pic - should have the alternative of Austria-Hungary, with all the nice marches and uniforms and their utter inability to actually function as a military.
The fourth pic - again, nice, but I'd prefer to see a bunch of half-naked ashigara with pikes there and a samurai with a bow, and maybe a couple of muskets.
EDIT: and, eh one of these? why not all?
EDIT2: no Egypt? no Nubia? no fscking Athens even?

By 14 I had watched Shogun a time or three and read the book not long after. Guess where I fell.
BTW, the new miniseries is the finest television I've seen in ages, maybe ever. All my love for the original, but the latest one blows it straight out the water.