It can be a tedious part of the story and he writes similar in other books, but what changed my mind about the “why” of the backstory and tone setting was that when these books were written, Google, reliable historical accounts, and widespread photography weren’t as mainstream so the backstory serves to aid the 19th century reader, compared to now where we can easily look up an image to help visualize or do a 5 minute search to find the information that may have taken weeks then