Eric, the monk quest giver, can go on long tangents about history if you talk to him beyond what the quest asks you to do. He'll go into various conflicts in great detail, which is actually quite nice if you're a newer player because it adds a ton of context that the MSQ glosses over due to not being important. I'd really recommend talking to him after he tells you to do something and see what new thing he lectures about as you go through it. It feels so weird to have this much lore in the Monke questline of all places, but I'll take it.
On that note ARR Monk's questline is underrated imo, I actually thought it was pretty good for an 2013 ARR job questline and I swear no one talks about it. It had world history if you wanted it (even if some of it isn't fully correct), it had a nice build up to its conclusion that I felt went at an okay pace, and its moral felt very on theme to the game. While the outcome is predictable but I don't think that makes it bad, it has a lot of retroactive parallels to certain events related to Ala Mhigo throughout the MSQ that I feel are a good bit more interesting today then back in 2013 when no one knew what was going to happen with Ala Mhigo beyond the obvious.
I think it has a bit of a contrived resolution that feels rushed, but I feel the resolution is on theme enough that I can look past it considering this was made in a rush like the entirety of 2.0 ARR. Most ARR job quests aren't that great beyond the lore they bring up imo, so having one with lore and a fairly good plot that feels like it follows the MSQ instead of happening entirely around it (like the Drk questline, but not as good) is refreshing.