Archie had always liked history, even as a kid he would opt to spend his Saturday mornings watching the History Channel with his parents rather than cartoons like most children. It wasn't until age ten or eleven that he started to really absorb it all, that was the point when he started to recite quotes and spout facts at the drop of a hat. It isn't until age fourteen or so that he realized why he likes history so much.
He likes the escapism of it all.
That's the thing about history, it's so different from his life. There isn't a way to relate jousting to his day to day life, not really. Archie's never tried to conquer Russia so reading about it is a great way to lose himself, and sometimes that just feels necessary.
Everyone has some form or another of escaping, Rae and Finn have their music, Chop gets lost when working in the garage, and Chloe and Izzy gossip and giggle to avoid their problems. And those are all fine, they just don't work for Archie, it's too easy for him to drift back to his own problems with those.
He realizes it may not be a good idea to just run away from his problems, that he probably should just face them head on or at least face them period but instead he reads essays on The Mandate of Heaven and watch documentaries on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. It's easier than worrying about his A-levels and waffling over whether or not to come out to his friends.
Because sometimes he just wanted it to be easy, and was that such a bad thing? Was it that bad to want to be able to let it all go and not care for a little while? That never really happened though, Archie was never the type of person who could just stop caring completely, but reading old newspaper clippings definitely helped him care a little less even just for a short while. He really envied people who could let it all go at a moment's notice, who could just drop everything.
As someone who liked to plan and process everything it probably wasn't a good idea to run away from his problems but it was easy, and sometimes Archie liked easy. At times Archie even needed easy.
That's why he liked history. History was easy. And escaping, well, escaping was definitely easy.
