King Sigismond II of Aquitaine, 1122-1136 AD

(Previously on Royal Dispatch.)

I notice with some dismay that West Francia has allied with Lotharingia, which has an army not too much smaller than mine. I’m thinking how this will complicate a war with West Francia, when Lotharingia jumps the gun and declares war on me.

Turns out I had accrued control of some King Manfred Chatenois-Luxembourg’s de jure land through a weird accident of inheritance that I hadn’t even noticed. So his beef is legit really, but I won’t give up land without a fight! No doubt West Francia will come to Manfred’s aid. Add in a few more enemy allies and a considerable amount of enemy gold, and suddenly I’m in a real scrap.

On the good news side, Iouliana gives birth to a son! A male heir, so soon! I usually just roll with whatever name the game picks for kids to keep it interesting, but this time the default choice is Amédée, which is the name of both the Thouars king and his son the crown prince over in Brittany. Too confusing! So I name the new grub after myself to set up Sigismond III.

War-wise, my first objective is to try and prevent my various enemies from unifying their armies into one more threatening glob. To that end I manage to smash about half of West Francia’s army before they can link up with Lotharingia, then siege their capital.

My sister Mafalda comes of age, and rethinking my aversion to alliance marriages, I betroth her to the one-year-old Prince Andrei of Moldavia. They’re involved in a losing war versus Byzantium at the moment though, so not sure how much help they can offer. Plus Mafalda and Andrei are distantly related, giving a chance of inbreeding bad traits into their kids. I feel icky about it, but these are desperate times!

While I’m messing around in West Francia, King Manfred of Lotharingia is happily sieging away over in the duchy of West Franconia, i.e. the lands he desires to steal from me. I’ll get to you soon enough, King-o. Unrelated: Iouliana is pregnant once again! On the quick she produces a new daughter, Helvis.

Manfred and his goons are running me around pretty good, though I manage to slip behind them and break their occupations of the disputed territory. Still, he has me largely outnumbered on the troop side, so when my sister Charlotte comes up for marriage, I betroth her to the two-year-old Godyn ab Alfred Emlyn of Gwynedd to grab some more warm bodies in my defensive alliance. And speaking about warm bodies, Iouliana is pregnant. Something about a scary war seems to be really doing it for us, couple-wise.

I have to run away from Lotharingia’s armies once again. Clearly I can’t fight them directly, so I’ll try to lure them deeper into Aquitaine and hope their supply loss wears them down. Iouliana gives birth to a new daughter, Aurengarde.

Turns out it was my brother Jacques scheming to murder my daughter! What a greedy git. The war continues to go badly, as one of my detachments is caught and massacred, coincidentally including Jacques. I mean, he did try to kill my daughter so … bittersweet? I seem to be losing a lot of other dukes and knights as well. But Iouliana gives birth to a second son, Yves!

Attempting to flit around the edges of the conflict finally catches up with me, as I try to pull off a trap and fail miserably.

Not only did we lose a third of our remaining force, but yet another of my allies is captured, removing his armies from my alliance. Only a matter of time before the warscore winds over against me. Oh, and Iouliana is pregnant of course.

My sister Margot’s husband was killed in one of my battles, so I remarry her to a Hale-traited soldier boy name of Nikodim od Ragusa.

I have another problem caused by this war—my troops are so depleted, I’m within the range for discontented vassals to form factions against me. Given that risk, I decide to just surrender to stop the bleeding (figurative and literal), and to get ready for a mini civil war if necessary.

I’m the first Thouars to suffer defeat in war! Darn. Well I didn’t want stupid West Franconia anyway! (sulks)

I manage to hold off the factionalism while reconstituting my troops. And while my big war was going on, I got drawn into two other ally wars that I couldn’t contribute to at all. This alienates one ally, so I hasten north to Britain to fight a little bit in the other war, at least performatively. Iouliana gives birth to a new daughter, Bourgogne.

My armies are much reduced, so I need to put my overweening ambitions on hold for awhile and rebuild. Plus, I clearly need to find better and bigger allies. The days of romping among weak little borderland realms are clearly done, requiring a more strategic view of friendship. Unfortunately I have too many alliances already to make cementing a new one an easy matter. I decide to target the nice and chunky army of Bavaria by launching a “befriend” scheme on that nation’s King Leutold II.

Annoyingly, my ally in Mercia—Petty King Beorhthelm Byrhtnothson, the guy I married off my mom to—calls me to fight against yet another rebellious vassal. But before my troops can even land in England, Beorhthelm is captured and tortured to death. Very sad, but it does open up one of those alliance slots …

My befrending of Leutold goes along as planned, and I get the nod for a betrothal: my second son Yves with Leutold’s youngest daughter Beatrix, who is a little smart and incidentally an albino.

What a pair of cuties! And now we’re pals with Bavaria, and more importantly, their army. I allow myself to feel a bit more secure as I continue regenerating my own forces from the recent Lotharingian humiliation.

But once again I am hoisted on the petard of my own alliance, as my Bavarian pal immediately calls me to holy war against Hungary. But then it occurs to me: Since this is a holy war (the Hungarians subscribe to the Táltosist faith), I can just summon one of the Catholic holy orders, and not even bother raising my own troops. Deus vult and all that rot, amirite.

I feel kind of sorry I’m making my holy knights march all the way from Aquitaine across Bavaria to Hungary. It’s not a short walk.

But you know, that was what they signed up for. Hardship being good for the soul and all.

While the knights elevate their spirits, I become ill. My court physician tickles me until I feel somewhat better. Sure hope I don’t die unexpectedly!

My holy knights have a grand time running around Hungary and fighting the infidels. They suck at sieges, so I leave the Bavarians to the catapults and whatnot. The holy order guys run out of steam eventually, so they have to dip back into friendly territory for supplies, but otherwise I’m sure they are very annoying to the enemy. Best of all, they’re free!

Perhaps too free. I casually toss the holy order into a battle where they suffer something like 95% casualties. Whoops, sorry about that Jesus … but anyway, I think I’ve contributed enough (nothing) to this war and will ignore it henceforth. It’s Tuesday, so time for Iouliana to give birth! This time to our lovely daughter name of Denise.

I’m pleased to notice that King Manfred over in Lotharingia has died, and his heir King Nikolas Manfredsson is handily losing two wars. Good luck with all that.

While I wait for my devastated holy order to regenerate in distant Hungary, my heir and ward Sigismond gets stuck with the all-too-familiar trio of bad choices in a random encounter with a bully. I grudgingly go with him becoming Lazy as I did myself. I do enjoy a good nap.

I’ve advanced enough in the Diplomacy lifestyle track that I get bonuses for having more friends, so I launch a befriend scheme versus my neighbor and kinsman King Rorgues of Brittany.

The war in Hungary continues to seesaw back and forth, but I have a hard time caring since I don’t actually have any stake in the game—just a bunch of rowdy Christian knights who seem happy to die in great numbers. More power to ‘em I say. But I can’t engage in any of my private wars till this misadventure wraps up. Clearly I’m allowing myself to pursue other avenues of distraction while all this is going on, since Iouliana is pregnant once again.

Meanwhile I become pals with King Rorgues in Brittany, which gives me the bonuses I was after. We hang out at the dance together. We’re dance bros.

Oh and yes Iouliana gives birth to another daughter, Almodis. My oldest daughter Valence comes of age, and I don’t like her alliance prospects, so marry her matrilineally to a Greek Orthodox badass knight named Gregorios Sikoundenos. I brine him to convert to Catholicism, because I can. He’s such a military badass that I make him my marshal when the council spot opens up.

This interminable war in Hungary is really bringing me down, to the point I actually consider using my own real troops to end it. But on the legal front, my dominance of French culture finally bears fruit in that I can change my succession laws.

The “High Partition” law helps keep succession less painful for sure, but it’s only a step along the way to the ultimate goal of primogeniture—the law that allows one heir to get everything. That’s a long ways off, technologically speaking.

My friend King Leutold of Bavaria dies, and yet I’m still stuck in this loser war versus Hungary for some reason. With the alliance dissolved, I disband my hapless holy knights and leave Bavaria to their Hungarian misadventure.

I’m almost ready to go back to war against West Francia, but an internal opportunity catches my eye. Observe my duchy of Aquitaine, of the kingdom of Aquitaine.

This duchy contains five counties. Three of them are under my direct control, while the other two belong to vassals. This is an okay situation, but ideally, as king, you want to directly control all the counties in your principal duchy if you can. You get more taxes and soldiers that way, and there’s less resentment among vassals.

Of course, I could revoke those titles, but that comes with rather dire tyranny penalties that would make all my other vassals dislike me (understandably). Of the two outstanding counties in Aquitaine, one is Perigord, controlled by the disagreeable Count Diego Nájera (son of a previously disagreeable count of the same name). Count Diego controls three other counties in other duchies as well. Breaking up that inappropriately large block would be ideal, but will take some doing.

The other county I want is Limousin, sole title of Count Amédée Nájera. He’d be easier to take on, and for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, he was just excommunicated by the Pope. This makes it open season on revoking his titles or doing almost anything else to his damnable self, and it’s unlikely anyone would help him.

If I had to guess, it’s his “Evil Blackguard” sister and heir who soured his name in the Pope’s ear. I can relate to the evil sister thing for sure. He seems very holy and pious but is also into torture, so make of that what you will. He’s in the process of losing another war nearby, so I have to wait till that concludes before I can revoke his title. Oh, where can I go for a decent war around here.

Next: Mom’s too sexy and my son’s a sadist.