"Troia, Veneția, Roma" (1998) deals with the imagined homelands of the Vlachs as they result from old written fragments conserved in later contexts, laying out some of the main characteristics of Romanian identity at the time of its first making. The cultural origins of the Romanians' negative self-image, both inherited and developed, is the topic of Pecican's "Lumea lui Simion Dascălul" (1998), where he attempts to define the cultural elites of Early Modern Moldavia (17th century) and to determine the reasons why Simion Dascălul, one of the leading Romanian chroniclers of the time, is misunderstood. Pecican's "Arpadieni, Angevini, români" (2001) focuses on the Romanian-origin lesser nobility in the Kingdom of Hungary under the Árpáds and the Angevins until the end of the 14th century; the volume contradicts both Romanian and Hungarian historiographic tradition, which have traditionally claimed that Romanians were only serfs under Hungarian rule or that Romanians were brought from the Balkans and into Transylvania only to guard the Hungarian border. The volume raised debates between the author and historian Ioan-Aurel Pop, who claimed that Pecican's views favored the Hungarians. "Realități imaginate și ficțiuni adevărate în evul mediu românesc" (2002) and "Trecutul istoric si omul evului mediu" (2002) center on newly discovered medieval historical writings from Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavia. They include annals from the times of Wallachian Prince Vlad III the Impaler, as well as from previous and subsequent periods, which, Pecican indicates, show the vitality of a culture in its development and the dialog with the neighboring cultures.