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I cannot detail every medieval king of England - that would be too long. I can, however, outline very briefly the fates of 2 or 3 consecutive kings which might help explain that there was no hard and fast rule about counsel power vs. sovereign power:

Edward I is an excellent example of a king exercising sovereign power and effectively binding his nobility to himself and his causes. He was very active in creating policy, expanding the judicial systems, waging war in Wales, Scotland and the mainland. He worked extremely hard to be successful, and to make his kingdom successful. He was forceful enough that his nobles went along with his schemes, and Edward was always in charge. He was an excellent commander and strategist.

Now, contrast that with the fate of his son, Edward II. He was okay as a commander, but he clearly preferred not to fight. He was less interested in the exercise of power as a way of responsibly raising the success and prestige of the kingdom than he was in exercising power to benefit himself and, especially, his friends. His friends often had nearly as much power as he did, and they all - including the king - abused it to enrich themselves, thwart justice, and generally lord it over everyone else. So he had a council, but unlike his father's council which helped develop and implement policy, Edward II's council found itself struggling to get anything done because the favourites (Gaveston and later the Despencers) were running the show with Ed's blessing.

So what could the other nobles do? They tried a few things - they got parliament to back them in forcing Edward to get rid of his favourite, and to let them run the country in a more responsible manner. But then they fought amongst themselves and Ed was able to take the reigns back and recall his favourites. Eventually he alienated everyone, and his wife and son ended up rebelling against him (I'm being very general here) and eventually Ed was relieved of his crown, and either died/was murdered or hung out in Italy as a pilgrim for many years.

So, in short, it depended on the King himself. Henry VIII is another example - he was quite forceful after Wolsey's supremacy was over, but, as Robert Hutchinson has suggested in The Last Days of Henry VIII, some crucial decisions and documents may have been authored and signed by his intimates using a dry stamp because Henry was so ill. If the king was effective, he led the way. If he was egregious, it often caught up with him.

Also see King John I, Richard II, Henry III, Henry VI and James II of England. Other European countries are beyond my knowledgable purview.

This is a huge topic that I can't (nor can anyone) rightly do justice to in a reddit post. There's a huge amount that the Church (sometimes particular churches, sometimes the whole of Christianity) has done throughout the ages, both good and bad, though you're right in saying that the modern narrative is quite heavily weighted against it. To give a few examples of the good however:

• Here is a list of Catholic sceintists and their contributions to the body of scientific work. It's a modernist myth to say that the Church is anti science and largely stems from a misunderstanding of the Galileo Trial and Alfred Dickson White's, totally fraudulent, Conflict Thesis. See here for r/AskHistorians FAQ on Christianity and Science.
  
  
• The Crusades, like all of human history, are a great deal more complicated than Hollywood makes them out to be. Initially the Crusades were largely reactions to Muslim aggression in the Balkans, and while later crusades admittedly got off track (the sacking of Constantinople in the 4th Crusade for example) their digression was largely the result of political and economic issues, not theological. In fact, less than 7% of all wars and less than 2% of all wartime casulties are the result of religon. Again, it's a myth that most (or even many) conflicts are religiously driven affairs.
  
  
• The so-called Dark Ages, a term which, for good reason, is almost never used by historians anymore, is also largely a myth. Great advances were being made in philosophy (The Scholastic Traditions which built upon Aristotle and Plato, re-imported to the West from Muslim lands after the Crusades), legal theory, jurisprudence, social theory, and science (see link above). Seeing the Medieval period as a stagnation or regression is, again, the result of modernist interpretations of the past and a great deal of revisionary history.
  
  
• In more modern times the Catholic Church was one of the few opponents to eugenic movements across Europe and the United States. This stems from the fundamental importance placed on the human person in Christian theology. During WWII Pope Pius XII or "Hitler's Pope" was actually involved in a massive effort to undercut Nazi power and save Jewish people from Hitler's pogroms. I can't find it right now but I'll keep looking for a documentary on Pope Pius XII during the war.
  
  If you're really interested in Church history, here are a few recommendations I can offer:
  
  
• Atheist Delusions by David Bentley Hart. Perhaps the most apologetic work here but DBH does a fair job going through the various myths perpetrated by modern society against the Church throughout history.
  
  
• Christianity: The First 3000 Years by Diarmond McCulloch. A fantastic single volume history of the Christian religion.
  
  
• The Story of Christianity by Justo Gonzalaz. A slightly more Evangelical work to accompany McCulloch's work. In two volumes.

I'm currently reading David Talbot's The Devil's Chessboard and, interesting coincidence, the pages I just read the other night claimed the Hitler was vacant, uninterested in sex with women, that he ran almost entirely on instinct, but Mussolini was vivacious, passionate, and very interested in what was going on around him. In the example they gave, Mussolini was almost giddy waiting for a parade.

If you get a chance check out a book by Antony Beevor called Stalingrad. It came out years ago but it still one of the best history books that I've ever read.

Also it's quite a different area of history than what you've been reading lately. He also has another book about D-Day if you're interested in that as well.

An editor of our project wanted to also recommend the following book:
Francois Furstenburg, When the United States Spoke French: Five Refugees Who Shaped a Nation. This editor suggests that though it is a little off the mark in topic, it is a wonderful book and is highly regarded.

Have fun reading!

You absolutely need to read The Conquest of New Spain by Castillo. As mentioned in another post, it's a first hand account of one of the most epic adventures of all history.

The Penguin Classics book has a fantastic translation, is very readable and I cannot recommend it enough. I read it last year.

http://www.amazon.com/Conquest-New-Spain-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140441239/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452103250&sr=8-1&keywords=conquest+of+new+spain

There's actually a surprisingly fascinating book on the history of salt as an economy.

In addition to the response below, it was very common to have shallow pools near the ocean, such that high tide would fill the pools, then the water would evaporate during low tide and the salt would be harvested. (edit: whoops, I read the other comment quickly and missed that it touched on this as well. However, this was not only done at warm climates; the book outlines a harvesting operation on the coast of France)

It also discussed how important salt was to meat economies, for example the ability to salt cod when it was caught in the northern Atlantic Ocean, for transport all across Europe.

I believe they are the same book with different covers. The one I had was from a public library, I don't see the same cover on anything from amazon. The author of the official bibliography is, coincidentally, named William Stephenson as well, and I think anything that amazon says was authored by him is the official book.

This is what I came up with: http://www.amazon.ca/man-called-Intrepid-The-secret/dp/0151567956/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

Hammond Innes has a basic compendium called The Conquistadors. Not super in depth, but provides a good overview.

search for maritime history, merchant navy or merchant marine rather than "naval", "naval" implies military.

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https://www.amazon.com/s?k=maritime+history&i=stripbooks-intl-ship&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

https://www.amazon.com/History-British-Merchant-Navy-Omnibus-ebook/dp/B07D5G7YP7/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=merchant+navy&qid=1563643354&s=books&sr=1-2

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=merchant+marine&i=stripbooks-intl-ship&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

https://www.amazon.com/Maritime-Logistics-Complete-Effective-Management/dp/0749463694/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_2?keywords=commercial+maritime+logistics&qid=1563643641&s=books&sr=1-2-fkmr1

COD by Mark Kurlansky:

http://www.amazon.com/Cod-Biography-Fish-Changed-World/dp/0140275010

I've never really understood the argument that Dark Ages is a misleading term. It's not "dark" because we lack knowledge of it--there is a surprisingly large number of detailed sources and they give a typically grim picture. For example, see Bede or Gildas in England or here for Italy, which saw Rome's buildings dismantled for scrap metal and the countryside ravaged by Justinian's wars. Conceding that every major Roman city in Europe collapsed, international trade collapsed, and that access to most classical knowledge was lost until the 12th c., but still arguing that this period is somehow not "dark"...well, it just seems reactionary and contrarian to me.

This is coming from someone who is fascinated by the history of this period, as well as its art and literature. I'm not saying this period hasn't given us anything of value (quite the contrary), just that I would not want to live through it.

Battle Cry of Freedom, your civil war bible.

http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Cry-Freedom-Oxford-History/dp/019516895X

Our own modern, global society. Seriously, endemic violence has been on the decline for centuries and - in spite of one or two hiccups - that trend continues.

I suggest The Better Angels of Our Nature for a broader perspective on that.

The exact opposite. It's the monotheists who go to war over Gods, because to them there can only be one. Polytheists didn't care, they just embraced them into their pantheon (of course they went to war for other reasons).

http://www.amazon.com/I-Was-Kamikaze-Ryuji-Nagatsuka/dp/0025882805

I'm currently reading it as recommend on another sub-reddit about Kamikaze attacks.So far its been about pilots initial training, and they seemed to have it drilled into them it is better to think of themselves as allready dead. If they think about themselves/others during combat they will be killed. Their only goal is to take down the enemy

historian Jim Downs of Connecticut College, writes in his book Sick From Freedom, that as many as 1/4 of freed slaves died from disease and starvation. This health crisis was ignored because the North didn't want to admit to the failures of Reconstruction and because the South was impoverished both in resources and empathy for the blacks.