Frankly, this is spoken like somebody without a history education.

Not only would "narratives matter" be an uncontroversial statement among historians, they'd tell you that all historical writing is narrative construction. And they'd hand you a book on historiography and teach you about the methods that historians use to understand an honestly present narratives in their writing.

Note that this does not mean that historical writing is bullshit. A lot of engineers seem to come up against these observations in the humanities and then just assume that nothing can be done and that entire fields must be discarded while the people working in those fields have been living with this stuff for their entire careers.

I prefer the existentialist "history is written by those who write history." Often, the victors give themselves a better justification for their conquest than admitting that someone bigger and badder may eventually dethrone them. However, some losers write histories praising their new overlords and their incredible military might, not out to gain favor with the new king but to preserve the dignity of the old king. The defeat was inevitable because of the invader's futuristic military powers aided by the Gods (instead of admitting the old king had no strategy).

In the words of Norm McDonald, "It says here in this history book that luckily, the good guys have won every time. What are the odds?"

Funny enough, the very premise of "good guys" existing is proof of the concept we're discussing.

Except it's not funny because then it leads to people both-sidesing genocide and actual nazis because the allies also committed war crimes.

History is a mess because humanity is a mess. But we like to think that we aren't. Probably as a defense mechanism.

You're not wrong but what's the difference between history and narratives?

"History" is the study of different narratives to TRY to come to a semblance of truth, but even for recent events this is almost impossible.

Pick an example like "Did the US dropping the nuclear bomb on Japan ultimately save lives, or was it unnecessary" and it's impossible to find the truth between 2 conflicting narratives, each fairly justifiable.

Another one is, most Soviet Anti-American Propaganda was true.

The real history is often a horrible mess, narratives are built by carefully cherrypicking facts to support a worldview. This is similar to what happens to mass media - they don't need to lie, just present only those facts that support their position

I think you are mistaking historical memory for history here.