[Zarathust]

Something that strikes me is that Da Vinci got the job mostly as a combat engineer, hired to destroy enemy forces by any means possible, but ended up creating art of various sorts and increasing human knowledge in many domains. The military appeal he provided seemed only interesting during the hiring process and is not what lasted across the ages.

[kevinpet]

Only historians care which family controlled some town in any given year. The rest of us can't even recall who won the hundred years' war, which certainly sounds like it would have been a big deal at the time.