The Historical Writer's Dilemma

Historical writing calls for a lot of research and it poses a very peculiar twist on the 'write what you know' mantra because chances are that initially we know very little - when nothing at all - of the era we want to write about. How do we go about it then? How do we research an entire world? Should we care more about the story or the history? And when is it that we own the subject enough to be really comfortable writing about it?

This short series "The Historical Writer's Dilemma" is my personal take at it.