I'm having trouble translating 'instead' into French. Suppose I write:
Unfortunately, my questions in no way shed any light on the numerous questions that historians have wanted answered. Instead I asked him if he etc etc.
Admittedly, some native speakers of English might even object that I'm not using the word 'instead' correctly, but I think it's correct for the following reasons. You can say "instead of x, I did y" where x is the thing you should have done, but you did y instead. So in this sentence above, I should have asked a good question but instead I asked a stupid one.
I'm aware of 'au lieu de', but it doesn't feel right to me in this context.