King Sigismond of Aquitaine, 1047-1054 AD

(Previously on Royal Dispatch.)

Wow that was an eventful reign with ol’ King Jacques. Let’s check out the dynasty tree, zoomed out to near inscrutability.

There’s little four-year-old King Sigismond down there near bottom middle left. Look at that nice family tree, filled with all kinds of people who want to kill me.

Chief among these are my gay uncle King Guy II of Brittany, who’s currently my heir. Then there’s my aunt Duchess Sarrazine, who may or may not have conspired to murder my cousin to get her present title. There are 18 other claimants on the kingdom of Aquitaine, about half of which are directly related to me. All of them would like to see me toddle off a battlement.

But how could they! Look at me! I’m precious!

So far I only have the inherited trait Handsome, and the child trait Bossy. I’m the boss pretty baby.

As a child monarch, you are in constant danger of plots and schemes, and you have only limited control over your government. I can’t even start any schemes of my own until I reach age 12. Already one of my counts has founded a liberty faction to reduce my tiny authority. No doubt somebody will put forth a pretender claimant as proxy for overthrowing me, sooner or later.

What I can do right away is seat discontented vassals on the council, making them somewhat less likely to rebel. I have a fat treasury, but I don’t want to throw gold bribes around too indiscriminately. One of the worst outcomes is to pay someone off, only to have them rebel anyway and use your bribe against you.

And there you have it: Sister Sarrazine makes her move.

She has enough support to issue an ultimatum in a few months. I have no particular recourse other than attempting to somehow survive the coming war. I attempt to hedge by trying to convince one of her faction members, Duke André de Saint-Valéry of Auvergne—who happens to still be a Mulwaddi—to convert to Catholicism (he should, net-net, like me better after that). Of course he wants a favor. And who am I to refuse! Maybe it will help someday, and it’s not like he can use the favor if he rebels.

He doesn’t like me enough to leave my sister’s rebellious faction, but at least I made some progress on good work for the Lord. Otherwise there’s not much I can do besides wait for the hammer to fall. I make a largely ceremonial alliance with a child count over in East Franconia. I could marry off Queen Mother Jarmila, but the only alliance on offer there is an even more distant county way over in Poblania. Besides, I want to keep my moms around!!

The rebellious faction of my sister Duchess Sarrazine, the converted Duke André, and Duchess Ana of Gascogne collectively has a bit more than me in the troop department. And they all have gold for hiring mercenaries as well. I glumly plan for a campaign of dodging around and hoping for an opportunity to cut them off and take them on separately, which is harder as a defending liege.

Shockingly, Duke André abruptly leaves the rebellious coalition, instead joining the Liberty faction to reduce my overall power. Not sure what motivated that move, but it means Sarrazine’s faction loses the support it needs to issue an ultimatum, at least for the moment.

As an adult ruler, you can throw a feast to generally increase your vassals’ opinion of you, as well as go through a few random events for good or ill. The kid version of this is “meet peers,” where other children of the realm come over for a little medieval playdate. Since I have gold and a temporary breather from faction intrigue, I invite the kiddies over. We play house, throw snowballs, and learn about capitalism.

This is a good result, as one of the events allows me to increase my stewardship. I currently control six counties, which is more than my child’s grasp of economic policy really allows. Hence I have a penalty on taxes, troops, and (most importantly right now) vassal opinion.

I’m tempted to grant away the family home duchy of Poitou, which would eliminate my domain problems and create a loyal new vassal. But the county of Thouars, our namesake dynastic seat, lies within Poitou. Hate to give that up just yet. The factions threaten less urgently as I tweak opinion ever so slightly in my direction. It would seem unlikely I could age up without fighting at least on rebellion, but one never knows.

My uncle and heir King Guy over in Brittany dies. Had I died instead and Aquitaine succeeded to Guy, he would have run both kingdoms until they were divided again by his own heirs. My new heir is the new king of Brittany, Guy’s grandson Amédée. He’s only 14 himself and, crucially, has no claim on my titles. So with luck, we’ll get along.

Meanwhile I continue chipping away at those who are less than pleased with having a boss baby. I bribe my archbishop to endorse me, which helps lubricate my access to church resources.

The liberty faction is just a few months away from sending me an ultimatum. Two vassals are in this faction, one being the spiritually flexible Duke André of Auvergne. The other is Count Diego Diegez Nájera, who holds two counties in the duchy of Aquitaine, which I control. He wants that duchy for himself, but he also can’t resist the offer of a direct alliance with his king.

I’m more than happy to ally with Diego because, as my ally, he has to drop out of the liberty faction. That in turn makes the faction lose the power required to issue an ultimatum. Another bullet dodged, or at least delayed. I’m six years old!

Of course, with one door safely shut, another springs back open. My dear sister Sarrazine recruits two more stooges to her faction to dethrone me, and it looks like they’ll be barreling into ultimatum territory real soon now.

Looking outside my realm for potential assistance, I manage to negotiate a new alliance with my father’s old pals in East Franconia (since Duke Emmerich there is my brother in law). Then I betroth my sister Mélisande to Prince Iordanes over in the original big dog, the Byzantine Empire. They’re already fighting multiple wars, but with luck they can spare me a few hard bastards when the rebels rise up.

Of course, the problem with alliances is that they work both ways.

Now the last thing I need to do is send my armies all the way over to Greece for this nonsense, but I do need to keep the emperor on my good side. So, I’ll send a token force of 1500 men.

Sarrazine manages to convince a total of three other ducal rulers to join her rebellion, bringing them well over the threshold needed. And so, to war.

I’m eight years old! I call up all my allies and hire mercenaries, but this will still be dicey to say the least.

One annoying aspect of vassal discontent is that it’s contagious. The more factions you have set against you, the easier it is for other factions to start causing trouble. Duke André is the sole member of the Liberty faction, but the other rebellion now means his one-member faction is also a threat. A threat I most certainly don’t need. I secure his loyalty by betrothing myself to André’s daughter. She’s zero years old, so I have 16 years to weasel my way out of that betrothal if needed. And assuming I live that long.

I pull my troops back from Greece, leaving Byzantium to handle their own business. I just can’t spare the men with all this trouble at home. He’s a big boy emperor, he can deal with it, and maybe he’ll eventually help me out at a least a little bit.

The rebel scum are certainly wasting no time sieging my tender and vulnerable lands.

I can’t face them directly, so I lay my own sieges far away, then creep around to undo their occupations where I can. We’re all bleeding gold at a pretty good clip, so we’ll see whose funds can last the war. Since my dear sister and adversarial title claimant Sarrazine is drunk, obese, and frozen in grief, her health is not great. Sure would be nice if she could just die propitiously and end this.

As I have don’t have enough to deal with, one of the delights of playing as a child character is that you can acquire a bully. In my case, it’s my cousin Mathieu.

This is particularly galling because all of my response options impose permanent negative traits on poor Sigismond. I end up choosing to become Lazy, which has penalties across the board, but at least they’re relatively small penalties individually. Darn you Mathieu!

Of course, where a bully is merely annoying, one can always narrowly escape a murder attempt from your beloved older sister.

Surprised it took this long to happen actually. Oh how I hate you, sister! Well, I’m sieging Sarrazine’s capital now, while my allies have all assembled in support. It would be swell if I could capture her, but if not I still have enough troops to go attack the rebel armies.

Things come to a head with Mathieu, and we engage in a verbal dispute that does not go well for me.

Look I know we’re kids and all … but I am literally the king! Why can I not chop this guy’s head off!!

Away from the home front, the war may finally be tilting in my favor as my army and those of my allies decisively defeat the rebels’ main force. Even managed to kill a random cousin of mine in the battle, a rare but inevitable consequence of civil war.

We’ll have to pursue the rest of the rebels to decisively crush them, and probably have to take back some occupied counties, but this is looking hopeful at last. I chase the smaller rebel army remainder, and am gratified to capture one of the rebel dukes—the one with the largest army in fact, which significantly reduces their overall military power.

I return south to face the last rebel army, and with the help of my allies the enemy is crushed. And in a sweet move, we capture my nephew, who happens to be Sarrazine’s heir. Having him in my power ends the war.

Dungeon! Dungeon for everyone! Ten thousand years dungeon! I’m 11 years old!

Next: Time to put away childhood things.