Empress Agnès of Francia, 1286-1304 AD

(Previously on Royal Dispatch.)

The end of an unbroken streak of Emperors Raynaud is here at last. And who better to lead than Agnès, an actual Amazonian Genius??!? with a son who has both those traits and is also a serious looker? But first let’s check out the lineage.

Lot of dudes. Good to see some changes here. And there’s a reason for these changes, or rather several reasons. Mainly it’s because Agnès’ son Guiges has positive traits from three major categories (mental, physical, social) that will allow him, as emperor, to take the “Strengthen Bloodline” decision. This will provide a huge bonus on the likelihood of positive traits for all subsequent de Thoaurs.

But Agnès is no slouch either. For the most part I have my player rulers specialize in either Diplomacy or Stewardship as their lifestyle, which have many of the most applicable bonuses and perks. But it’s useful also to specialize in Learning occasionally—which is Agnès’ lifestyle—to both advance the culture faster and take the “Consecrate Bloodline” decision, which gives the family opinion bonuses among those of the same faith.

Of course Agnès will have an almost universal opinion penalty among vassals and others due to Catholicism’s “Male Dominated” cultural trait. But I’m confident a ladyboss with her strengths is best suited to battling the patriarchy.

At a high level, Francia is bigger and more powerful than ever.

Territorially, Agnès is 21 counties away from creating the empire of Germania, and 32 away from creating the empire of Hispania. Much work to do!

A first order of business is declaring Guiges my rightful heir, skipping over his twin brother Ebbon. This requires spending most of my current prestige, but I don’t plan on starting any wars right away.

Another lingering task is to go ahead and assign the kingdom title of East Francia to a grateful vassal, clearing out some balky dukes from my ledgers and letting them fight amongst themselves. And so I crown my relative Géraud de Thours as the new king over there. Good luck Gerry.

To begin, we go through the usual succession routine of bribing a few vassals and/or assigning them council positions to sweeten their tempers. No guarantee they’ll stay obedient, but such is the beginning of every new reign. I throw a feast as per usual, which thankfully brings no disastrous events and mollifies the attendees with my celebratory largesse.

Since my goal is to become extremely pious and holy enough to consecrate my entire bloodline, I also embark on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem—something I never bothered with under my more worldly rulers. Agnès arrives without incident and gains the Pilgrim trait, which will help ingratiate her with other Catholics suspicious of a female sovereign. Plus a big chunk o’ piety.

I need time to regenerate all the prestige I spent on anointing my chosen heir before I start declaring wars. The short-lived Bavarian-Bohemian superstate has collapsed back into two independent kingdoms and a number of smaller realms, many of which I need to conquer in order to create the Germanian empire. So I begin with the independent duchy of Thüringia, since I only need one county in order to usurp that title. My archbishop begins the fabrication process with the usual holy zeal.

Since it costs piety rather than prestige to declare holy wars, I could start a smaller-scale war for parts of Spain, but that would likely mushroom into a bigger war with other local Muwalladi rulers that I don’t feel like tangling with just yet. Plus I want to conserve that piety to increase my personal holiness as part of the overall bloodline plans.

While I enjoy the empress’ peace, my archbishop rapidly comes through with a claim on the whole duchy of Thüringia. Why not, may as well speed up the absorption process. I realize belatedly I could have declared war on behalf of my recently elevated vassal king of East Franconia, but whatevs, this way I get to pick who’s in charge of the duchy. I declare war and send my duplicitous archbishop to begin fabricating claims in the neighboring independent duchy of Augsburg.

I quickly bat aside the Thüringian army and siege the duchy. As often seems the case, the martial action stimulates the royal constitution, and I am joyfully impregnated.

Good indeed! Thüringia’s capital falls, I hand out the duchy to a vassal, and all is well on that front.

My husband Nicolas unexpectedly inherits a couple of county titles over in Burgundy, meaning our son Ebbon will himself inherit some titles after all despite being knocked out of the succession for emperor. For some reason this means Nicolas now dresses down to his new title. Perhaps the new responsibility clouds Nicolas’ otherwise sharp intellect, as he suggests naming our newborn second daughter Blanche.

Nothing wrong on the face of it, but we already have a daughter named Blanche, so? We go with Eve instead. Meanwhile my ace archbishop manages to fabricate a claim to all of the duchy of Augsburg at one stroke, which will significantly advance the Germanian project. In fact I have to take a beat to regenerate gold from all my infrastructure spending before I embark on that war.

After some time and navigating a few harmless minor events, I’m flush with cash and ready to rumble. Let’s tango, Duke Philipp Karling of Augsburg.

Our tango is brief indeed though, as Duke Philipp gets himself personally captured by my forces after only our second battle. As we say in France, la lol. I hand out the duchy title to a wee count who will almost certainly be overthrown but should keep those folks occupied for a bit.

Taking Augsburg also granted me control of a number of other Bavarian counties, meaning I’m only seven counties away from being able to create the empire of Germania. I have fabrication schemes on two Bavarian duchies that should help me clinch it soon enough, so I’ll just sit back and let the forgeries cook in peace.

And cook they do! My archbishop once again manages to put forth a claim on the entire duchy of Bavaria. Prosecuting this claim proves even simpler than expected, as the current holder of the Bavarian kingdom is already weakened by multiple wars. I win my own war in short order, which gives me enough territory to not only take the duchies of Bavaria and Nordgau together, but also usurp the entire kingdom of Bavaria.

And now I can form the empire of Germania! Right?

Augh! I’ve run into this on other playthroughs and forgot about it entirely. Crusader Kings won’t allow a Catholic ruler to create the empire of Germania, insisting instead that you have to fulfill other requirements (which I currently don’t have in force) to instead create the Holy Roman Empire, in some weird insistence on this one bit of historical accuracy in a game where France has already ahistorically taken over half the world. It might be fun to do if, by the same insistence, the game didn’t also make the HRE an elective monarchy. No thank you! No Germania for me, sad to say. Which means I don’t get an easy casus belli to take over all the rest of Germania, and I’ll just have to live with German subjects who never quite accept my imperial rule. What a drag.

Since I don’t want to spend piety to start holy wars, this leaves me with fighting little baby wars for small territorial gains while I make myself more holy over the years. But I also don’t want to keep my archbishop fabricating all the time, because he can otherwise increase my monthly piety gain.

My twin sons Ebbon and Guiges come of age. The priority for Guiges as my heir is to maintain his Genius trait, which unfortunately means the best chance is to betroth him to the eight-year-old Princess Lucinetta Castra Arquato of my vassal kingdom of Burgundy. My focus on Guiges upbringing has turned him into a fine young man, with the learned positive traits of Brave, Just, and Temperate to go along with his genetic jackpot of Herculean, Genius, and Handsome.

Ebbon—who is merely a Herculean genius of average looks—fared less well under my husband Nicloas’ tutelage. He’s turned out to be a Chaste Honest Sadist, which is a rather chilling combo. I marry him to a robust young Franconia lass named Margarete von Leer.

The first little war will be to claim the duchy of Tyrol, which falls under my recently acquired kingdom of Bavaria. Tyrol’s Duke Heribert Venezia is allied to Prince Gebhard Karling-Chur, duke of Salzburg and former king of Bavaria who I’m encumbered from warring on directly under the terms of our truce. Doesn’t stop him from joining with his ally against me, more the pity for him.

Unsurprisingly, the Tyrol-Salzburg defense promptly crumbles, and the former joins the ranks of the empire along with their Bavarian fellows. My third son Payen comes of age, and I marry him to a Greek girl named Kyra Skleros-Chalkis. And I’m pregnant again!

Another year rolls by, and that inconvenient truce with Prince Gebhard of Salzburg finally expires. Let’s bring him and his lands back into the fold, shall we? While my troops are rolling through those counties, I give birth to my third daughter, the eponymous Agnès. My daughter Blanche comes of age, and I marry her off to a giant chaste paranoid stubborn Greek genius named Porphyrios Mechos. Salzburg falls into line and into Francia, and I am somehow pregnant yet again.

I’m growing concerned that I’m not gaining piety fast enough to get to the highest level of holiness—Religious Icon—which will in turn allow me to consecrate our bloodline. I’ve been reluctant to declare a holy war because that costs piety, though you get some back for winning. But I realize that once I’ve captured some non-Catholic territory I can build churches there, which gives you a big piety bonus. I’ll most likely end up fighting all the Muwalladis in Spain, so I take some time to build a nice cushy war chest.

I give birth to my fourth daughter, Bourguigne. As my seventh child, I earn the “Mothered Many Children” opinion bonus.

Feminism rocks! And now, time to put those rocks to good use in catapults down in Spain. I set my sights on a holy war for the duchy-level Sadid Emirate.

I hire my usual crew of holy knights and throw in my burgeoning armies to get the fire started. Incidentally, I’ve been attending and throwing feasts quite a bit during my reign as stress management, and while I’ve gained the positive Famous Reveler trait, I’ve also gained Obese. Too much mutton. I start the Lose Weight regimen, preparing for the usual yo-yo of gaining and losing obesity for the rest of my life.

A number of other emirates and sultanates from Spain join in to defend the Sadids. None of them amount to much compared to the imperial hordes, especially with my holy knights thrown in. I’m also reminded after several slaughter-level victories that such battles also provide piety, more than offsetting what it cost to declare the war. I see more holy wars in my holy future!

Due to capturing tons of Sadid nobles it only takes three successful sieges to conclude the holy war. Now I find myself holding a big chunk of Spain—the newly constituted Catholic duchy of Aragon—that I’ll need to personally oversee for awhile. So I hand off the ancestral duchy of Poitou to my son and heir Guiges. I start building churches in Aragon where I can. The accrued piety from that war was enough to elevate me to the “Paragon of Virtue” devotion rank, which is enough to allow to me declare one lifetime holy war for a kingdom-level title. Doing so should be enough to increase my level of devotion to Religious Icon, which in turn will finally allow me to consecrate the Thouars bloodline.

The biggest remaining Muwalladi realm in Spain is the Marawanid-León Sultunate. They would be obvious target for a kingdom-level holy war. I want to wait a bit though to give those churches in Aragon to progress, not to mention build up a ton of gold to overwhelm my eventual adversaries. I take the opportunity to embark on another incident-free pilgrimage to Jerusalem for some bonus piety.

I pass a few years in quiet contemplation. My son and heir Guiges finally weds his betrothed as she comes of age, so hopefully those two start making genius babies right away. By now my new churches will be complete in less than three years, my treasury is more turgid than it’s ever been, and it’s time to do God’s work once again.

Sultan Rekkaredeo ibn Yusuf Marwanid-León has a pretty big army, though of course it’s not a fifth as large as Francia’s. The main trouble will be seeing which other Muwalladi rulers join up in his defense. There are a few locals of little account, but some heavyweights further away. They likely won’t come this far, but one never knows.

I march my troops into enemy territory and lay a single siege, then coordinate the remaining troops and my reliably devout Knights Templar to meet the Sultan’s army in the south of France. It’s about 18,000 Muwalladis versus close to 100,000 French, meaning the outcome of the first battle is not in doubt. However, just the sheer number of enemies means even a clear victory will leave him with enough troops to split up and harry my sieges over such a large area, so we’re in for a long war of chase, fight, rinse, repeat.

Unless of course the Sultan gets himself captured in the first battle? Wow. Really not his day. The war is won!! Uh, okay.

I was settling in for a few years of conflict and that barely took four months. And I got barely any piety out of it! Where’s the years of grinding destruction with a massive body count on both sides? Victory has never been so bitterly disappointing. But just look at how blue Spain is all of a sudden.

After handing out a ton of Spanish titles, I’ve arranged to hold back just enough counties to guarantee enough church-building land that will put me over the top on the piety meter, within five years. No sudden deaths please! I also get the opportunity to found a university in Salamanca, which earns me the “Scholar” royal nickname.

Just like pops. Education is important, kids.

Next: A Crusade, too little too late.