Experimenting I’d say. As it is usual for young men sharing a college dorm #nohomo

(Yes, they totally were lovers. Or at least bros with benefits.)

Wind and rain are enough to make the North Sea one of the toughest seas to sail though and cause heavy floods regularly.

Edit: found a nice video about North Sea: Why the North Sea Is One of the World’s Deadliest Waters

Pictures 2 and 3: are we sure that’s to depict waves? To me it looks like the (stylised, artistic depiction of) backsplash when rain hits a water surface.

Pictures 1 and 4: yeah, that’s kinda how waves look like pictured in a medievalist art style. You gotta remember that naturalism (i.e. the realistic approach to picture things) is not beginning before the renaissance. But besides the regularities in shape and orientation, this looks pretty well like windswept waves.

I mean, that’s about as much Rome as the Holy Roman Empire…

Isn’t that shield egyptian like the khopesh?

Or you could argue that Rome never fell for good because it is still/again a capital city and was only not a capital city from (around) 476 to 756 when Pippin the Short gave jurisdiction over Rome to the pope and created the papal states.

The Roman Empire fell in 395, the Western Roman Empire fell in 476, the Eastern Roman Empire in 1453 and Rome as the capital/seat of government of the/a Roman Empire “fell” at the turn of the fifth century when the seat of government was moved to Milan (or, Rome as a city fell multiple times to invaders).

This is more a mythology meme instead of a history meme though.