King Guy of Aquitaine, 1008-1016 AD

Alas, the king is too sexy!

December 22, 2021

Well now just look at that would ya. I’m so regal and pretty.

Now the fun part of taking over a kingdom is all the housekeeping. First I release, ransom, convert, and/or recruit the prisoners who have accumulated in my dungeon over the course of the war.

Taking over a kingdom from a ruler of a hostile faith also typically means you get all lands held by rulers of the other faith. So now I have 18 counties under my personal control, which is way too many. There are also three duchies I need to usurp still held by vassals of Sultan al-Mundir, but at 250 gold a throw, it will take a minute to handle that.

I hand out counties to a few suitable Thouars dynasty members, and when there’s no more of those, some fine French Catholics. I still have the problem of two sons splitting half my titles as inheritance though, where the confederate partition law is going to give my younger son, Guy, the kingdom of Brittany. I manage to contain that issue as much as I can by just granting all of Brittany’s titles to other folks and making another Thouars family member the duke. My son Guy will get the kingdom, and those other people as vassals, but he won’t have any other titles of his own. And more importantly, this will keep him from diluting the inheritance of my primary heir Jacques.

There’s really nothing I can do about losing control of Brittany, but I don’t really care. A problem for future generations of Thouars.

I decide to move my capital from the old family homeplace of Thouars County to the the county of Angouleme in the duchy of Aquitaine, which is more central and better developed. My plan as king is to keep the old duchy of Poitou from whence we came, and the new kingdom home of the freshly-usurped duchy of Aquitaine, center of the eponymous kingdom and where Angouleme is situated.

And so: the realm of Aquitaine as it stands.

Where do you go once you’re a king, you may ask? Why, you shoot for emperor of course. The Empire of Francia is the ultimate goal now. This is what the de jure borders of that empire would look like.

To do this, I’ll need to take over most of West Francia, Burgundy, and Savoy. This will be challenging without triggering automatic creation of new kingdoms on succession due to the damned confederate partition law.

To change that law, the French culture needs to develop the concept of Hereditary Rule. At the current rate, that will take 178 years!

I could prioritize this if I were the cultural head. But King Baudouin over in West Francia (my old liege King Louis took over there only briefly a few kings ago and is now dead, good riddance) rules the most French counties, therefore he’s the French cultural head. Yes, as previously considered I could convert to the Occitan culture and take over the technological priorities of that culture. But non! I shall remain true to La France and just struggle to take it all over through conquest and painstakingly slow manual converion.

Speaking of King Baudouin, he happens to hold a few of my de jure counties in the duchy of Bourbon. Plus, he’s comparatively weak. Time for a lil’ baby war.

Oh, and as the kids say, lol: I clicked through a betrothal fulfillment notification without reading it (very intelligent) and now find myself in an alliance with my pal Sultan al-Mundir. Cool cool cool.

King Baudouin meanwhile is dealing with another war to his east while I fully invest the duchy of Bourbon to his south. This is what I like to see—my armies spread out, unthreatened, and peacefully besieging multiple counties at once with no enemies in sight. A nice relaxing war.

While that’s going on, I realize I have overlooked the education and upbringing of my grandson Aymar, son of my heir Jacques. As Aymar is in line to be king eventually, it would have been better to take an earlier interest. Under Jacques’ indifferent tutelage, Aymar’s become something of a lout. But at least I manage to gin up his diplomacy abilities somewhat, while making sure he’s not marrying his aunt or something.

I find Aymar a pretty Vlach girl named Adriana Ieremiaşti who’s amenable to Catholic conversion after I bribe her. God is good, and it’s good that God made me rich.

The war with West Francia concludes without a single battle, while I sack a dozen castles, take a dozen prisoners, and loot a fair amount of gold in the process of regaining my de jure county of Bellac. Easy peasy.

Despite a couple crusades having come and gone (none of which I’ve participated in beyond tossing in some gold), the Catholic faith hasn’t established any holy orders of knights. I correct that with a little gold and faith of my own, funding the establishment of the Knights Templar and—I assume—earning myself a mention in The Da Vinci Code.

Despite the relative stability of my realm, all is not well inside my mind palace! A series of unfortunate random events pushes me over the stress cliff and into a mental break. A very sexy mental break.

Damn it, why am I such a hot king! I go the “bite my lip” route (unf) which gets me more stress.

As an aging ruler with an eye on the next generation, I don’t want to get involved in anything too ambitious and complicated that my heir has to clean up. Little wars are fine though. In that spirit, I go ahead and easily conquer the county of Léon, the last part of the duchy and petty kingdom of Brittany not under my control. It will all go with my second son Guy when he inherits, but may as well make it a little easier for him.

And death, when she comes, comes easily enough to King Guy. Long live King Jacques!