Ideally (although certainly not always in fact), in fandom there's room to approach texts from different perspectives. So yeah, bring on the request for explanations. And dude, there should totally be squee about the plot of the story as well as OMG BIBLIOGRAPHY LOVE. Of course, I say this as someone with a BA from a school where I was definitely exposed to this sort of historical discourse, I'm currently in a masters program, and I've spent most of my life surrounded by academics... So I've got the cultural capital (1) to understand the discussion. At the same time, I sort of get where you're coming from, since I made a decision NOT to seek that kind of academic career, because I didn't want to spend my life making the kinds of arguments the historians in "Written By The Victors" are making. There comes a point where I just don't CARE anymore about academic wankery (2) and footnotes and deconstruction. Though that's a part of what made this story fun for me, I think... Ultimately the story's about our characters, and what they actually did, and why they actually did it. And then we watch the historians fumble around trying to interpret it, and you can see them all going "I wish I could've seen it all" and "I wish we could know what happened for sure," and they CAN'T. But we, the readers can.

I don't know if that was at all constructive or helpful. But it's some of what I've been thinking about with this story.

(1) OMG social science jargon. Think financial capital, except it's knowledge, skills, education, and so forth that I've got due to my family background and such.
(2) oh yeah, do academics have wank. there should be an academic version of fandom_wank. If there isn't already. Is there?