I understand completely what you mean. I would say that they are both difficult, but that the balance is different. Depending on how you write, and what challenges you, different people would lean in one direction or the other. There's also always the people who just write the historical stories without research, but that just hurts me so unbelievably much that I can't even count them as real writers (that said, there are of course people who deliberately mess with history, but in order to do that they still need to have done the relevant research).

My thought on Branwen (I've been at work and mulling it over when I should have been concentrating...) are currently that I would write it as a story about telling stories. Parts of it are so fantastical - the scale of her brother Bran, for example - that I wouldn't be happy telling it without some further explanation, which of course currently doesn't exist. So what I'd like to do is explore how a story is formed out of events, how it is related and which bits are remembered. Who are painted as the villains and who are the heroes?

That said, I also had some new ideas for the invader story, so I might do still do that one and retire Branwen until December. We shall see.

I'm going to see my sister tomorrow so probably won't have internet for a couple of days. Will probably kill me :P