Why dabble in genealogy? The stories are interesting, or can be. No other reason. The sole caution in the exercise —which, much to its credit, needn't be undertaken on a regular basis— is against caring about or needing to know the purported social, military, political, or other status of anyone. Asserting anything should be restricted to those cases where the evidence is direct and duplicated. Conjecture, like outright lying, leads nowhere.

As far as these people and families are concerned, you might want to read systematically. I caution against it. It's short on joie de vivre, even joie de mort. Furthermore, the imbalance might lead one to draw all sorts of conclusions, all of which would be —without any doubt— dead wrong. The sole honest statement is that these people lived and that they died.