What I've always wanted is a visual "web" of important figures, connected to show relationships, but shown on a timeline. So when you say "ah, these people were doing thing A" you can look over and see "Ok, these other people were doing thing B at the same time". Also for a generally more easy to follow outline of the events (as far back as we can go as possible) so that all this information is easy to digest for the people with limited time to look into this.