Hungarian historiographic tradition, which have traditionally claimed that Romanians were only serfs under Hungarian rule or that Romanians were brought from the Balkans and into Transylvania only to guard the Hungarian border. The volume raised debates between the author and historian Ioan-Aurel Pop, who claimed that Pecican's views favored the Hungarians. Realități imaginate și ficțiuni adevărate în evul mediu românesc (2002) and Trecutul istoric si omul evului mediu (2002) center on newly discovered medieval historical writings from Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavia. They include annals from the times of Wallachian Prince Vlad III the Impaler, as well as from previous and subsequent periods, which, Pecican indicates, show the vitality of a culture in its development and the dialog with the neighboring cultures. The debate on regionalism prompted Ovidiu Pecican to write a new book on the regional political forms before and after the founding of the Danubian Principalities, under the title of Originile istorice ale regionalismului românesc (2003). The historian argues against the essentialist image of the nation-state, and points to a rich originality of political forms, autonomy experiments on the lower Danube and in the Carpathians, foreign influences and original answers. Some of the other volumes written by Pecican also reflect his questioning of official versions provided for the past. Sânge și trandafiri. Cultura ero(t)ică in Moldova lui Ștefan cel Mare (2005) attempts to provide the reader with a different image of the national hero Stephen the Great, Prince of Moldavia (1457–1504), who was sanctified by the Romanian Orthodox Church. The volume focuses on erotic and heroic mixture of instinct and behavior at Stephen's court, as it appears to have been reflected in literature and arts of his time. In Între cruciați și tătari (2006), the attempt is to understand the challenges confronting post-1989 Romania and its longing for integration into NATO and the European Union, by comparing them with the years between the Fourth Crusade (1204) and the Mongol Invasion (1241–1243), when the Western world extended itself down to the Carpathians. Pecican is also interested in how Eastern European culture developed in contact with the Western culture during the 19th and 20th centuries. Hașdeenii. O odisee a receptării (2003) and B. P. Hasdeu istoric (2004), books developed from his PhD thesis, attempt to explain how, through the efforts of several leading intellectuals during the second part of the 19th century, modern nationalism, together with liberalism, formed a nationalist identity.