and while I keep getting stuck and didn't even get halfway over several months, it does provide an absolutely fascinating view on (so far) the early part of the French Revolution. And one of the key insights for me is how gradually the whole thing happened, it begins with an Estates-General being called for the first time in over a century, and then bit by bit things start to shift towards democracy - the Bastille or even the Jeu de Paume are completely arbitrary dividing lines. I'll definitely have to read about the period in more detail, and how things went south so fast after such a promising start (Cannoli's innocent prison guards notwithstanding).

Not really sure what you mean by this - with a minimum of creativity you could link both every bad thing and every good thing that has happened since to the French Revolution, just like you could do with the Crusades or the fall of the Roman Empire, regardless of whether you view those events as (mostly) positive or (mostly) negative at the time they happened. I see no valid reason to look only at the bad and ignore the good, though - you're not even British so it can't be their misguided obsession with Wellington and Waterloo.