So I continued my game where I started with a barony and ended up king of Denmark. I was kind of strapped for cash which made no sense whatsoever considering I had Fyn, Sjælland, Jylland, Slesvig Bornholm, Skåne, Halland, blekinge and 2 duchies as my demesme. (Duke of slesvig was my second son who also happened to be count of Holstein). All in all I had a neat little 11/11 demesme, 2 duchies, everything pretty well developed. Problem turned out to be that pretty much all my bishops loved the fuck out of the pope.
So I set up an antipope. Which initially worked quite well. But the lowered moral authority of the church and some dumbfucks getting their asses whooped by the mudslimes meant heresy began springing up everywhere. I couldn't install my antipope as the real one however, since I could only raise ~3k men without mercenaries. So when the pope called a crusade on Scotland (lol, I know. Lots of heresy was afoot there) I decided I had better pitch in to get the MA back up before my lovely little stable country had heresy issues.
It turns out I was the only ruler who answered the call. HRE was fragmented, Hungary and Poland were fighting over potato, England - who you'd think could be counted upon to rob scotsmen of their FREEDOM was getting bitchslapped all over the place by the french and the King of France had turned orthodox (lolwat?), so he didn't give a fuck.
Fortunately scotland itself was in a sorry state. I raised my army of 4k, bought 2 mercenary armies (5k and 2k respectively), confirmed my war chest would keep be in the black for at least a year before I'd have to let the mercs go, raised my fuckhueg fleet and set course for scotland. By the time I got there, a vatican Doomstack™ of around 10k BROs was raping and pillaging the countryside. So I split my forces into 4 groups and set about sieging the counties the pope had already rampaged through while the vatican killed off scottish armies.
Eventually the scotsmen crumbled, Praise
Odin Jesus. The pope looked the armies of the Righteous and realized the only army there was came from the guy with the antipope. Throwing up his arms in exasperation, pope benedict did proclaim: "Fucketh this shit. Scotland doth be an ungodly mess. It belongs to thee now. Enjoy!" Which made my demesme explode from 11/11 to 58/11, gave me a shitload of duchies with no heirs to pass them off to. By now, my badass 24 martial king was in his sixties and all his sons were married off (patrilinearily
) to other rulers in Europe. So I went through my court and started giving off counties to barons, making sure noone had more than 1. Then I gave off my excess duchies to counts, making sure that the counts didn't actually have any of the counties in the duchy to forestall consolidation of titles. finally I made a nephew king of Scotland. (Although the only vassal he had was the Isle of Man. The rest belonged to ME!)
I also got a shitton of jewgold. So after sending my levies home and rebuilding for a while I realized I had a claim on England I could press. Since the king of england was throughoughly raped by the french, my personal levies and some mercenaries could merrily stomp across his countryside until the king bent over and begged for mercy. I went through the same circus as I did in Scotland, setting up vassals to be as individually weak as possible, then gave the crown to a distant cousin since my heir would only inherit one kingdom and I wanted Denmark since it was a fuckload more stable and profitable.
Disaster averted, all my vassals loved me again (as well they should. I just gave out a shitliad of baronies, cities, bishoperics, counties, duchies and kingdoms). My dynasty was rulers in Denmark, England, Scotland, Hungary, Poland and a few duchies in HRE thanks to patrilineal marriages (and a few assassinations). And they looked set to become rulers in their own right since everyone were rebelling against Der Kaiser. Things were looking good. Then my king croaked at 68. Long live King Clusterfuck I! Reigned for 48 years and accrued 6k prestige and 1.8k piety.
My heir with bugger all diplomacy took over. Everyone suddenly hated everyone. Pretty much every county in England/Scotland is fighting or rebelling. I was foresighted enough to sink their fleets (raised them, sailed them to jerusalem, disbanded them) to preent them from reaching me so I'm mostly just ignoring them at this point.
My main problem is that I'd really like to get to work on conquoring sweden. Taking over the british isles sidetracked me. I also desperately need to produce a fuckton of male heirs I can give titles to when I do since I'm kicking myself over having to give so many titles away outside of my dynasty.
This game is amazing. How did I ever live without?
of my superior breeding programme!
