Unfortunately I didn't see the Marco Polo series (Baljinnyamyn Amarsaikhan aka Ariq Böke is rather famous), but I had Classical Mongolian during my sinology studies. Even though that was mostly Buddhist texts, in the course of the classes you also learn a bit about the history and culture of the country.
And I have been to Peking many times
As far as the glory is concerned, I am afraid that there isn't much of that left. A problem closely associated with the scarcity of adena is that many items come onto the servers from the outside, namely the L2Store. When you look at the recruitment threads in the server section of this forum, you will see that the minimum requirements for equipment always include items that it is not possible to obtain by in-game means. Brooch Jewels, Abundance Talismans etc. come only from the L2Store, and no matter how many Zakens and Freyas you raid, there is no way whatsoever to get the adena for that kind of equipment by selling drops to Grocer Helvetia in Giran (the adena she gives you is pretty much the only one that's guaranteed to not have been botted). There is always real-money trading in one form or another involved, and where is the glory in being able to enter a credit card number?