Emperor Raynaud of Francia, 1179-1189 AD

(Previously on Royal Dispatch.)

Next on the war shopping list is a couple of West Francian counties still controlled by the British petty kingdom of Gwynedd. They have a substantial though inferior army and a few allies, but I decide to try this one without calling my own allies.

Something that doesn’t come up as much until mid-late stages of the game is managing a resource called Prestige, which roughly equates to your personal reputation. Declaring war and calling allies both cost prestige—the bigger the wars and allies, the more it costs. Having done a couple major grabs and called in reinforcements has driven down my Prestige a bit, so I’m trying to conserve. This is typically only an issue for a relatively new ruler, as you accumulate prestige the longer you reign.

I quickly take one of the two disputed counties before the Gwyneddian forces arrive, and then they suffer two quick defeats at my hand. They run off to siege some irrelevant county of mine to the east while I siege the other county I require of this conflict. Empress Lodovica is pregnant.

I take the other county and smack the remaining enemy forces once again. They retreat far eastward, so I just return to my own borders to wait for them, or for the warscore to tick up to victory. Lodvica gives birth to our third son, Aymar.

One more annihilating battle, and the war is over. Now I need to chill out for a couple years to calm down vassals perturbed by my adventurism, not to mention regenerate my treasury.

Observing the local political situation though, I’m annoyed—one of the last remaining chunks of outstanding Francian territory is held by the Welsh Insular prince of Flanders, who would be next on my hitlist. But King Manfred II of Lotharingia is handily winning a war for one of those counties, though he’s spent almost all of his gold. Now might be be the best time to attack him, to both spoil his little war in Flanders as well as take back some of the other Francian territory that Lotharingia itself is sitting on.

I wait till the war in Flanders is close to clinched by Lotharingia, then declare my own war in the same vicinity, over my properly de jure duchy of Bar. I decide this is worth spending a little prestige, so call in Bavaria as my ally.

My big army clashes with the combined Lotharingian force almost immediately, to a victorious result. Still he has a lot of guys remaining, so I decide to chase and wear him down some more before I go siege the disputed lands. I want him to lose that war in Flanders as well, after all. King Manfred spent a lot of gold on mercenaries and is about to go heavily into the red, which will degrade his armies all the more. Lodovica is pregnant again, by the by.

I notice my Bavarian allies are happily sieging away down in the disputed duchy, so I leave them to their work and chase the enemy armies. Then I notice with extreme annoyance that Lotharingia ran up their warscare in Flanders and captured that disputed county. Just another chunk of land I’ll have to take back from them later. Lodovica gives birth to our fourth son, Arnoul.

King Manfred II of Lotharingia finally kicks the bucket and is replaced by his son Stefan, who charmingly enough is married to my aunt Almodis. But the bizarre consequence of this, long noted by me but recently forgotten, is that the Lotharingian holdings are split by inheritance, such that the territory I’m warring for is now held by the newly separate kingdom of Frisia, even as my war continues versus Lotharingia. Meaning that if I win, rather than the duchy I was after, I’ll get exactly one (1) county. Crap.

Have to finish it out I guess. I take the capital of Lotharingia, incidentally capturing Aunt Almodis. Don’t worry auntie, we’ll get you out of there once the excitement runs down. Lodovica is once again pregnant, and shortly gives birth to our fifth (!!!) son, Eudes.

The Lotharingian war continues to grind toward a positive if extremely expensive conclusion, all for one county. My staunch Bavarian allies call me to help defend them against a pretender claim on their throne, and who am I to refuse.

My son, heir, and ward Raynaud gets one of those lovely bullying events. In this case, my 11-year-old son is being bullied by a 5-year-old. Seems like a reach.

He’s not some kind of superhuman or physically scary five-year-old either (my son has higher battle prowess). Either he’s the antichrist, or my son is a major pushover, to put it politely.

FINALLY the stupid war in Lotharingia ends, and due to yet another quirk of inheritance, I manage to get two counties out of it at least. I release my aunt Almodis on the condition that she renounce all her Francian claims, and begin marching my armies over to this thing in Bavaria. The Pope calls a crusade for Syria, which I of course pay my way out of.

The Bavarian thing is actually going not great for my ally over there, and then another claimant declares war on him as well after his troops get smashed by the first group of enemies. Feels like a mess I may cosmetically contribute to, then bow out of, so I take one rebel capital and bounce.

I have a sizable though ultimately unthreatening peasant rebellion I need to clean up back in the Francian heartland, so I pull troops back to deal with that. Lodovica is, of course, pregnant again.

I’ve barely crossed swords with the peasants when the increasingly hapless King Ekkehard II of Bavaria calls me into a third rebellion. That guy is not gonna make it. And for some reason all of this triggers an incest event between me and my sister? Pass.

As an aside, a redditor replied to a post of mine asking what’s up with all the incest in this game, and provided some helpful insight into game mechanics that might explain why it seems frequent in a rather unseemly way. Basically the game calculates that people in the same dynasty like each other more, and if they happen to also be good looking … well, that’s just biology and such.

While I’m cleaning up my own peasants, the Bavarian peons get the same idea and rise up against Ekkehard. He just cannot catch a break.

My son Sigismond catches pneumonia and dies, despite my court physician’s admittedly modest efforts. Guess there won’t be another Sigismond high up in this generation after all. But meanwhile, Lodovica gives birth to our second daughter, Étiennette.

I lay in some sieges around Bavaria, but not sure how much I can really do for this guy. Lodovica is, of course, pregnant again. My son and heir Raynaud gains the Ambitious trait, which is an excellent boon since it applies bonuses to all stats. Lodovica gives birth to a sixth son, Érrard.

Surprisingly, once my armies actually make it over to Bavaria, it’s a rout on all fronts as I manage to help end all of King Ekkehard’s wars in his favor. He is married to my sister Constance, after all.

While all this was going on, my archbishop had fabricated claims in Cornwall adjacent to my new lands in Wessex, so that will likely be my next target. My vassal good ol’ King Raoul in West Francia even reclaimed some of his (i.e. my) de jure land from the newly minted kingdom of Frisia, further taking some housekeeping off my future plate. I need to let everyone calm down from war weariness for awhile, so I spend time spending money on territorial improvements and running herd over my ever-expanding brood of children.

While I’m chilling out, my son and heir Raynaud Jr. comes of age. He’s quite a catch (remember, he’s Handsome!).

Definitely takes after his old man. Time to marry him off! One of his potential brides has the Giant trait, which I’ve always wanted to introduce into the bloodline. But another has the Genius trait, which is really far more valuable. Hence I marry him to the genius Greek girl Euphrasia Kourkouas.

With my vassals settled down in peace, my thoughts turn once again to war. At first I was going to take advantage of my claims in Cornwall, but I notice they have an ally in East Anglia with an outsize army—not enough to stop me, but enough to make it expensive. I decide to wait a bit, as both rulers are older and could conk off soon, invalidating their alliance.

I also notice though that my good cousin King Armengol down in Navarra—the guy who broke away in independence when I was fighting other rebels as a feckless youth—took with him my de jure duchy of Barcelona. And now he’s fighting a holy war for his kingdom versus invading Andalusian Muwalladis. Time for a little payback, I think.

In a bizarre move, Armengol pulls his army back to fight with me, even invading my lands, rather than focusing on the more existential threat of the holy war. I oblige him by trapping his army on my side of the border and cutting his numbers by a third. Oh and uh Lodovica gives birth to our third daughter, Marie.

My daughter Blanche comes of age, so I marry her matrilineally to a fine Mogyër lad named Konrád Pohanský who’s pretty good at war stuff.

The war in Navarra is … annoying. Somehow Armengol is fielding about twice the number of troops he’s supposed to have, and he’s quite adept at chasing and expelling my siege detachments from Barcelona. I win a major battle, then he manages to catch a couple small armies and destroy them—all while the Muwalladis take his capital and other territory to the west. Bro needs to get his priorities in order.

I end up playing cat and mouse with Armengol’s armies all over Barcelona and into the south of France, even as he’s saved from losing the jihad by a civil war among the Muwalladi alliance. I finally grind him down and take back the duchy, but it was much harder than it should have been. I think my armies need beefing up with more professional soldier types.

In a nice bit of synchronicity, I can finally restore my crown authority to the High level—which had been knocked down back when Armengol originally broke away with Navarra. Enjoy your no doubt temporary independence, cousin.

That long war has really run up negative opinion among my vassals on expansionist conflicts, so I have to sit tight for awhile and let peace reign. Plenty of targets await my eventual attention, so I do the usual building up resources in the territories with my ample tax revenue streams.

My serene contemplation is somewhat disturbed by discovering that I have a rival I didn’t even know existed, and that he’s plotting to kill me.

He’s a big dude serving menial war functions over in Bavaria. No idea why he’s got a hate on for me, but he’s got very little chance of acting on his schemes. Unfortunately he’s under the protection of reasonably competent spymasters, so I don’t have much chance of murdering him back. Stay outta my way bro.

Next: Mongols, Flanders, and that giant bitch.