The Rise of The Spanish Empire, Part 3

Part 1  Part 2

Last time we were up to 1165, with Duke Karles of Berry under Queen Maria of France. But apparently Queen Maria dies early in 1166, and her son takes over as King Karel. On the bright side, this apparently means that Karles’s sister Oriel is now Queen. But it doesn’t take long before we’re embroiled in another civil war, this one a “War to Lower Crown Authority”…and for some reason Duke Karles is on not on the King’s side in this one.  Karles has also joined with a holy war in Spain, trying to recover the kingdom of Castile from the Muslim Duchy of Barcelona. (I feel like it should be an Emirate rather than a Duchy, but apparently not if the ruler is Catalan instead of Berber or Arabic or something.)

Karles himself has another son, named Queriche. This is not a traditional Occitan name, but apparently they didn’t have any Qs, so instead I picked one from my old alt.pub.dragons-inn days (really it was Andrew Solberg’s character, I just appropriated him).

And England now has a new queen, Queen Raisenda Bosonid. (Apparently King Eastmund of Hwicce had a matrilineal marriage; how careless of him.) She’s actually Occitan too, for some reason, which I suppose makes sense considering “Boson”.

By 1168, though, for some reason Karel has abdicated and now Reginar Gerulfing–six years old, and daughter of Karel and Oriel (i.e. Karles’s nephew!) is on the French throne.  Queen Raisenda is fighting against vassals who want someone else on the throne, and King William of Jerusalem’s attempt to wrest more territory in the Levantine is not going well, through the crusade against Barcelona is going fairly well. (Karles is busy with the French civil war and so hasn’t contributed much there.) And King Morgan of Scotland died in an accident just after turning 16, leaving his 68-year-old sister Julia on the throne. (Looks like Scotland has Elective Succession, so the next ruler could be anyone…)

By 1173, Queen Raisenda has indeed been deposed and replaced by King Oscytel of Godwin (though the Duke of Essex has seceded and declared Essex a separate kingdom); Queen Julia of Scotland has died and succeeded by her daughter Queen Kentigerna a Muirebe (who was apparently raised Norwegian, so it’s now called “Skottland”); the crusade for Barcelona seems to have failed; King William seems to have lost half the Kingdom of Jerusalem’s territory; and King Reginar of France is definitely losing the civil war.

Nothing much is happening in Berry, though Karles’s eldest children are almost grown up. Eufèmia is engaged to Eckhard von Sansepolcro, whose mother is the Countess of Bordeaux, that little chunk of France that’s somehow part of the Holy Roman Empire. Ancelmes is engaged to Agathe Udonen, granddaughter of a Holy Roman Emperor, niece of the current Emperor, and sister of the King of Bohemia (who is still just an HRE vassal).

Things are mostly quiet in 1176. King Reginar lost the civil war, so presumably he’s lost some Crown Authority, but France is unified again. He’s also almost of age to take the throne back from his regent. Queen Kentigerna of Scotland has married her young uncle Adam (ew). And over in Jerusalem, Duke Herluin (son of Karles’s niece Estefania) is on the verge of losing his duchy (not that I give the whole Kingdom of Jerusalem much longer anyway). Eufèmia and Ancelmes are grown up and have gotten married (not to each other).  All seems reasonably quiet.

And then…King Reginar comes of age. And in 1177 decides, “Say, that’s a nice Duchy you have there…”  I can’t remember if I tried to fight it or not, but by 1179, at least, Karles is Count of Bourges and the Duchy of Berry is property of the crown.  How humiliating.  Well, the HRE is sending in humongous armies to pry the County of Artois off of France, so ha!

Not much has changed by 1183. Karles’s other children have grown up: Berenguela is married to Bård Yngling of Norway, and Queriche is betrothed to Countess Mathilde of Mâcon (who’s only 11 at this point).  King Oscytel of England is fending off no less than three claims to his throne (one from the King of Essex).

And then, suddenly, 1187, King Reginar decides to give Karles a Duchy again. Not Berry this time, but Aquitaine…complete with two more Counties (Angoulême and Périgord), and the Countess of Agen as a vassal. So…okay, not bad. I take all those nasty things I said about you, Your Majesty.  (With Gavelkind, Queriche is first in line to inherit two of those counties, but whatever…Ancelmes would get the duchy.)  Ancelmes is already on his second wife, Agathe Udonen having given him two children, Ancelmes and Gisla, and now Adèle de Blois has given him a son, Nicholaus.

The HRE has apparently taken another bite out of France there, but León has nibbled off a piece of Barcelona…  King Oscytel’s son Ralph succeeded to the throne of England on his father’s death (yes, King Ralph…), but with all the other claimants it seems likely we’ll be seeing someone else taking over the throne soon, probably King Beorhtric of Essex.  Oh, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem? Yeah, it’s gone.

By 1194, Karles has taken the County of Agen for himself, and given the other two counties to his sons–Angoulême to Ancelmes and Périgord to Queriche. They’re also beating back a Shia Jihad for Aragon.  King Beorhtric has indeed taken over England, though he’s fighting off his own claimants now.

1197: Suddenly Karles, and his kinsman Duke Gwijde of Gascogne, are…independent?  Like they got to secede from France somehow?  King Reginar is probably losing it. He doesn’t have the Arbitrary personality trait, as I half expect, so I’m not sure what’s up. He does seem to have been excommunicated at some point, though, and so the Holy Roman Empire is attacking him again.

King Serril I’s grandson Geoffrey de Normandie is now King of England. Ancelmes’s son, also named Ancelmes, is married to Karles’s niece Esclarmonda (sister of the Count of Béarn), his first cousin once removed; the elder Ancelmes also has a son named Simon now, and a daughter named Adèla.

By 1199, King Reginar has indeed lost it–his throne, that is, abdicated in favour of his son Karel…and of course there’s a civil war to put someone else on the throne instead.  Queen Kentigerna of Skottland dies and leaves the throne to her son Gilchrist.  And, in my first real power-move of this game, I fabricate myself a claim on the Duchy of Brittany.

And by 1202, I have managed to conquer Brittany for myself and make it part of Aquitaine, on what I presume are the flimsiest of pretexts. I don’t remember exactly how I pulled that off; I don’t seem to have blown my entire treasury on mercenaries or anything. But I have managed to double my realm in just a few years.

The problem, of course, is that I still have Gavelkind inheritance, so if I die right now, Ancelmes will get Aquitaine and Queriche will get Brittany. Is there any way I can avoid that, either by becoming an actual King, or by getting Primogeniture or something? I seem to recall that to get Primogeniture you have to jack up your Crown Authority a bunch, and your vassals tend to hate that.  Apparently my solution to this is to switch the Duchy of Brittany to my primary title, and now Ancelmes is in line to inherit both duchies? Not sure how that works, but whatever. I seem to recall that perhaps this version of Crusader Kings II had some special rules for some titles, like you couldn’t actually create the Kingdom of Brittany unless you were actually Breton by culture, so I may have tried to create a Breton heir by having them tutored by a Breton or something.

And speaking of Crown Authority, King Karel V of France has lost a bunch; Burgundy and Poitou have also seceded, and Bourbon is rebelling. France is indeed a mess right now. Somebody should try to fix that.  Up in Scotland, King Gilchrist is being beset by civil war, and having been excommunicated, is also being beset by virtuous Englishmen.

Meanwhile, on the home front, Ancelmes has had another daughter, named Adèla. Yes, that’s right, he now has two daughters with the same name. I guess one is named after his wife and one after her mother? Oh, and he’s also acquired a lover: Esclarmonda de Marsan. His son’s wife, and his own cousin. Apparently I know about this somehow, but maybe Ancelmes Jr. doesn’t, because he doesn’t seem to have a big hate on for his father…  Queriche himself has four kids by this point: Karles, Dolça, Joana, and Queriche. So this weird name will carry on for another generation: awesome!

In 1205, Gilchrist has lost the throne of Scotland in favour of his distant relative Malmure, and Duke Beorhtric of Essex is now King of England again. King Karel V is fighting for his throne again, this time against the Duke of Berry (not me). Oh, and King Bosón II of León has taken over Asturias, and is on the verge of taking away Navarra from Barcelona and having the whole north coast of Spain under his sway. He is truly an unstoppable force to be reckoned with.

So here I am, with Duke Karles of Brittany and Aquitaine, two strong sons, and a weak France, while Christians are beginning to turn the tide against the Muslims in Spain. What will happen next?