It really is fundamental to understanding why people like Columbus and de Gama were the way they were from knowing the state of Europe at the time. They were violent and desparate mercenaries from a violent and desparate place, when they arrived anywhere their first thoughts were "ok, what can I immediately loot and sell here, if I don't come back with something good my debtors are gonna cut my balls off"
https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackWolfFeed/comments/oj7mzt/540_its_coming_rome_feat_patrick_wyman_71221/
I honestly don't know how you can even teach without a narrative. Like usually you need to come up with a broader narrative for even pure math classes, otherwise good luck keeping your students interested for several months when it seems like you're just talking about a bunch of disjointed ideas.
If my high school education is anything to go by, you build your curriculum around hitting factoids for standardized testing questions, and make the work of identifying figures, dates, and events into busywork of rote copy onto worksheets done in silence, skimming pages of a McGraw-Hill textbook for the right bolded words for an hour at a time.