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Eastern Ambition: An Antioch AAR

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RGB: well, it seemed appropriate. :)

Vincent Julien: Thank you. I believe the style is beginning to settle. :)

JimboIX: Didn't stay long! :eek:o I lost track of him pretty quickly, but the de Châtillons have stuck around.

LordAumerle: I had thought about Jerusalem, but I'm not sure I would have felt as comfortable having them as robber barons. With the descendants of Bohemond on the other hand... ;)

J. Passepartout: had to change the law - Hugues would have been a Weak King I'm afraid. :(

ComradeOm: Well, I was very lucky the Abbuyids collapsed - though with a revived Byzantium and the Turks in Azerbaijan I won't be short of enemies. :)
 
All looks well for the de Poitou currently, though that is an unfortunate sea of Muslims around them- I assume Georgia has been mostly destroyed?
 
Looks like you've finished your Aragon AAR while I've been away... I'll have to catch up on that eventually, but I certainly look forward to seeing how this one turns out--particularly since it involves one of my favorite crusaders (Bohemund of Taranto). Best of luck, as always! :)
 
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Roger I ("~ the Tall"), King of Aleppo and Syria, and so on (1231-1252)​

Part 5

Roger I had been born in Antioch, but prior to becoming Duke of Palmyra he had spent his childhood and youth at court in Aleppo. Raymond, for all his very great achievements was still at heart a Prince of Antioch. Roger on the other hand had never known anything other than the glittering splendour of Aleppo, and his own princely seat at Palmyra. His mother, the Imperial princess Hedwiga had been only too happy to fill his head with full knowledge of his splendid lineage. Roger, second King of Aleppo might not have been born to the purple exactly, but he had certainly been reared to it.

Which is not to say he was a sybarite content to live in the luxury of Aleppo. Immensely tall and powerfully built Roger inspired favourable comparisons with his famed ancestor Bohemund. Previous monarchs had favoured falconry; Roger prefered the thrill and danger of lion hunting. No one in the kingdom rode a horse better, or sott an arrow further, or last longer in a tourney. Indeed Roger was exhaustingly energetic. For most of his early reign the court was only nominally in Aleppo; in truth it was wherever the King had pitched his army, or visited some unlucky noble who found himself obliged to entertain the royal staff on its progress around the kingdom.

Roger was not a humble man, but that is not to imply he was needlessly arrogant. Rather he had the assurance of a king who had gained a crown by the blood in his veins rather than the blood on his sword. His wife was not a great princess, much to Hedwiga's dissapointment, but Mahaut de Newburgh an Englishwoman, the daughter of the Earl of Warwick.

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Mahaut de Newburgh, Queen of Aleppo and Syria and so on.​

The Queen Dowager (Hedwiga) was granted the title Duchess of Palmyra, which she held until her death nine years later. She wrote extensive memoirs that were by all accounts quite brilliant but have since been lost. Gilles of Aleppo claims that they were burnt by an aggrieved Greek servant but recent evidence suggests that Gilles himself may have done the deed, possibly to hide his own plagiarism. Gilles supporters strenuously deny this accusation; and a similar suggestion by historians that Gilles was behind a 1246 letter to Roger, puportedly from Prester John.

Border Wars & Foreign Policy

Despite his clear abilities as a soldier Roger was less adventurous abroad than his father: Raymond the Great had built a great kingdom, his son had the neccessary, if less glamorous task of keeping the kingdom together and unifying it into something more than an unruly collection of provinces held at swordpoint. He chose his wars carefully with a clear eye towards securing his borders. An early conflict with a distracted Azerbaijan (1232) gained a toehold on the Caspian Sea and the province of Euphrates. The Beydom of Gilan - itself an Azerbaijanian vassal in revolt was Roger's next target (1233-34). That war gained Kirkuk and Gilan for Aleppo.

The titular 'Emir of Damascus' ruled much of Southern Syria. Roger yielded to temptation and attacked in 1242. It was to be a fateful campaign; on the march Roger came down with a serious illness that permantly affected his robust health and likely dramatically shortened his life. The war did gain some land, but was cut short in 1243 when the Mongol Il-Khanat made its dramatic intervention. Having sacked Baghdad itself the terrifying Mongol horde ravaged Muslim Southern Syria before abruptly withdrawing. The Kingdom of Aleppo had not been touched but it had been a nasty scare, and, some felt, a chilling vision of things to come. It certainly shook Roger and may have led to his alliance a few years later with the Emir of Azerbaijan.

More successful was the last war of Roger's reign against Tripoli in 1248. The great city was a fine gain, finally giving Aleppo a major port on the Syrian coast and restoring one of the Crusader capitals to Christendom. The city was something of a poisoned chalice however; under Muslim rule it had become a stronghold of Catharism. But more of that later...

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The Kingdom of Aleppo and Syria, circa 1252​
 
Byzantium looks to be in good shape!
 
JimboIX: Entirely destroyed... :( the Azerbaijanian Turks are very formidable.

ComradeOm: It might even be too big. Perhaps it is time to consider dividing the estates. :)

Specialist290: Thank you. :) I'm afraid Bohemund has been dead for quite some time, but his descendants are very much around, and in AARland... who knows?

J. Passepartout: Well... Roger inherited two kingdoms, that's pretty cool. ;) Still keep watching: things are not over yet.


Next: Royal marriages, scandals, mass conversions and black magic.
 
Who is that in Baghdad? That would be a juicy aqcquisition, but only if you can get it in time for its regiment to be available for the Il-Khanate, otherwise the war might leave you weak, and prey to Azerbaijanis. Raymond has a less glamorous task, true, but it might end up being more important.
 
*subscribes*
 

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Louis I (" ~ the Unfortunate"), King of Aleppo and Syria, and so on (1252-1253)​

Part 6

Aleppo had of course suffered from simmering religious tensions from the beginning; in the first four decades of the kingdom's existence every major town and city suffered at least one riot, and often many more.

In his defence, Roger was not actively intolerant, and his court included several Muslims. There were many conversions, and by general consent, the authorities chose not to examine the particulars of these conversions too closely. Western clergy and kings might disapprove, but then Western clergy and kings did not have hundreds of thousands of heathen subjects. It worked. Ok, it might be misleading to say;

"By the end of [Roger's] gentle reign, fully ten elevenths of his people embraced the true Catholic faith..."
- Gilles of Aleppo
Click to expand...

In fact it was misleading, but no less true for being that.

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Faith in the Kingdom of Aleppo, 1252​

Heresy

By definition Muslims, Jews and so on were damned heathens, but then what could one expect? Far more serious were the Christian heretics...

Tripoli, one of the greatest cities of the coast and a former Crusader state in its own right had lost its way. Upon its recapture in 1248 the Franks had been horrified to discover the local Christians had adopted Catherism, a heresy that had spread unchecked under Arab control. The appointment of a Latin clergy (and a strong garrison) had served for the moment, but the city continued to smoulder.

More serious still was the strange affair of Henri de Poitou, Marshal of Aleppo. Henri was the cousin of King Roger, and himself the grandson of Raymond II, a member in good standing of the royal family. Then in 1249 he was accused, by no less a figure than the Patriarch of Antioch, of practising black magic.

Henri was known to be sceptical, but this was something different, something that shook the House of de Poitou (and by extension the whole of Oriental Christendom) to its foundations. If a member of the royal family was guilty of witchcraft, then what did it say about the state of the kingdom?

Roger, using all of his influence in Rome managed to get the charges ignored, going so far as to claim black magic – at least of the sort Henri supposedly practiced - did not even exist. The trial was abandoned before it could take place.

The question arises: was Henri guilty, at least of heresy? There is some evidence that he was at leas sceptic, and rumours abounded that his mistress was a Cather (his son was later Duke of Tripoli, so he certainly had interests in the region.) The whole affair had been hugely damaging, and would affect the kingdom for years to come.

Worn out by scandal Roger passed away 15 April 1252, to be succeeded by his son Louis, Duke of Damascus.

Louis the Unfortunate

No reign began more promisingly, yet ended more unhappily than that of Louis I of Aleppo - and largely for reasons that were none of his fault.

That Hugues, Duke of Edessa who had been eldest son of King Raymond II had never forgiven Roger for usurping what he regarded as his rightful throne. He had since died but his son, Simon of Edessa was more than capable of inheriting a grudge. And Simon had strong contacts in the Holy See…

Mere days after ascending the throne King Louis was excommunicated by the Pope. While he had (as Duke of Damascus) quarrelled with his clergy and was known to be in favour of regal supremacy there was no doubt that his excommunication was the work of the Duke of Edessa.

Louis resisted private calls to punish Simon. The Duchies of Syria, Armenia Minor and Homs were his cousins and uncles: taking action against one member of the family risked pushing the entire kingdom into civil war. While his restraint may have saved the kingdom it lost him his throne. For twenty agonising months he clung to power before, finally his courtiers persuaded him to step aside in favour of his son, also named Louis. For the good of Aleppo Louis agreed and “chose the Greek way” - retirement to a monastery in the manner of deposed Byzantine emperors.

A rather sad end to a dashing and blameless young prince... and a very worrying sign that all was not well in Oriental Christendom.

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The fall of Louis I​
 
Vincent Julien: Indeed. :)

JimboIX: France. I'm not quite ready for that war yet... :eek:o

Fulcrumvale: Welcome aboard. :)

J. Passepartout: Heh, he does his job. ;)

Specialist290: Alas for poor Louis. :(

Maximilliano: Thank you. :)
 
"Unfortunate" indeed--I'm wondering if he actually would have made a good king had his realm not been beset by so much trouble. Now, of course, we'll probably never know (and I'm betting the history books of future generations are going to be filled with all sorts of "what-if" scenarios centering on him).

It's always sad to see a good man (or at least someone who shows promise of being one; you never really know quite how they'll turn out until it happens) brought low by contrary circumstances beyond his control...
 
There were many conversions, and by general consent, the authorities chose not to examine the particulars of these conversions too closely.
Click to expand...
Uh, eek? :eek:
 
Just sat down and read it all of the way through...

Excellent, I say myself.

Too bad about Louis, though. He could've been a great king.

Also, excellent sardonicism with Giles. Realistically, it's almost safe to ignore any attempt at statistical information from medieval chroniclers...
 
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