The Crusades were nothing more than a series of massacres for a land grab and the Crusaders failed the minute they encountered armies who could actually fight back. Knight Wank is fascinating because it’s almost entirely based on fictional portrayals where the Europeans in tin cans won all the time against evil monsters and savages.
Which Crusades though? The Eastern European and Spanish Crusaders were wildly successful with the crusaders achieving essentially every objective they had. The balkan crusades also had mixed success but were ostensibly a Crusader strategic victory. The genocides and mass conversion were successful.
The Holy Land crusades? Absolute disaster. Failed essentially every objective and lost massive swathes of men for literally nothing in return. A greed motivated land and capital grab.
the only way in which they were successful was the rediscovery of tech and writings that the Arabs had preserved from antiquity which was lost in the european dark ages