Emir Guy II of Poitou, 999-1008 AD

But I don't want to be an emir!

December 21, 2021

So now, suddenly and without explanation, I’m an emir in the Umayyad Sultanate rather than a duke in the kingdom of Aquitaine.

Near as I can reconstruct, the previous sultan was using an invasion casus belli against King Louis of Aquitaine to take Louis’ lands in the kingdom of Navarra to the south. That sultan died, his son al-Mundir inherited and somehow expanded the war’s scope to Aquitaine, and won. So now I’m Emir Guy II of the Umayyad Sultanate, and my new liege Sultan al-Mundir Il ibn Abdul-Hazm is young, healthy, and has an even larger army than King Louis did. Grrrrreeeatt.

Comically, my former liege Louis the giant sadist is now an independent count with just two counties to his name, and he’s still at war for the tattered kingdom title of West Francia, which he’ll probably win. For all the good it does him.

It’s time for my second son Guy to get married, as his Visigoth bride has come of age! Unfortunately, she’s in prison, and is also now a lunatic. Best to quietly break that betrothal and find Guy a nice young non-incarcerated non-crazy gal. I settle on another lowborn lass named Cecilie who’s got a high diplomacy skill and is not obviously insane.

Meanwhile, my faction to (re)take the throne of Aquitaine has gotten about as strong as it likely will. Collectively we have 107% of the troops our liege does, so the fight will be about even. Now the winter of our 100% discontent.

Sultan al-Mundir has managed to strong-arm a few of the French former dukes into converting to Islam, which means they’ll probably fight for him in a civil war. My existing allies are either already in my faction, or are other dukes who won’t join a war against their liege, so the best I can hope is that they stay neutral. The Sultan has a few smaller allies he’ll no doubt call up, so I shop my remaining daughter to an interesting foreigner across the sea.

Petty King Hlothere is quite the jaunty character. At 57, he’s a little old to get betrothed, plus he’s already married? Whatever man, just send your army when I ring.

And so, my faction to install my wonderful self on the throne of Aquitaine issues our demand to Sultan al-Mundir, with predictable results.

This is a nerve-wracking kind of war where one bad call of army positioning can essentially doom you to running away for the rest of the conflict. Big armies also deplete the territories they travel through, so you often have to split your forces and run them around in parallel counties. Of course, the best thing you can do (or worst thing that can be done to you) is miscalculate and have one of your detached armies get caught by larger, scarier pursuers.

My big war kicks of a host of littler wars among the nobles of Aquitaine and the Umayyad Sultanate, leading to a scrambled map of rebellions and liberations.

Man that’s messed up! Anyways I gather my armies, hire some mercs, and hope my allies follow me as I embark on a lovely holiday in the south of France. We sack a few castles until the Umayyad forces arrive, bulked up with a Muslim holy order and numerous emirs riding shotgun. The whole battlespace is a mess because of the overlapping and contradictory alliances and wars going on. I’m even technically allied with my liege-adversary in one of those wars, where a former French duke ally of mine is putting down a rebellion, and getting help from the Sultan. War is confusing, and also, hell.

Anyways, we take some castles, the Sultan takes some castles, until finally I manage to get the enemy worn down and undersupplied enough that I date attack directly after six months of feints. Victory!

But it’s a very near thing, and now I really want to chase the Sultan’s armies down and beat them up a bit more, without overextending and getting whomped myself. Instead, I detach troops to lay sieges here and there, withdrawing others to my own lines for resupply.

Inevitably, Sultan al-Mundir’s hosts reform and return. Again I’m forced to dodge them—but then in a fatal error, he splits his army. I’m able to soundly defeat two of the three detachments at Limousin and Châlus in central Aquitaine.

They runnin’. My combined forces now significantly outnumber those of Sultan al-Mundir. Time to grab more territory and run up the warscore while he regroups. I settle in for a pair of sieges, with my allies taking on two more. The Sultan’s army straggles back and tries to do the same from a safe distance, but our head start means we take several castles at once. And that’s a wrap.

Oh yes, that’s right. It’s King Guy now. KING GUY, the first. The mighty king guy! Long live me, and such.

A long and bloody rise over 121 years and five generations years from count to king, with several wars and murders along the way. A fine romp! Great-great-grandfather Geoffroy would be so proud. Time to settle into my throne and do, as we say in France, le king shit.