Saithis - She's alive!
And she updated! If you've never read
Piety of the North Star, I would recommend you run over and start after you've finished reading this update. It's addicting, and my humble opinion (maybe author-self-hatred, but its my opinion darn it!) her writing is better than mine... its absolutely amazing.
And yes, I'm planning on making sure that the Spanish/Mauretania successors, the French statelets, the British Isles mess, Burgundy, and Scandavian countries have Quest for the New World as their second or third idea. Should spur the colonial movements quite a bit.
Tommy4ever - Not sure how that'll work exactly, I know those are some of the countries I want colonizing. I also wanna give Mali the QftNW idea as well... I think Malian colonies in South America could make for an extremely interesting late game setup. Muslim Brazil anyone?
Basilieus444 - The Cape route could be a definite possibility if they come to some understanding with the Malian Caliphate. Barring that, it'll add even more impetus to trying to sail West to get East...
AlexanderPrimus - Aha! I remember...
“The mighty sun is now setting on the world. In it’s place there will rise a beautiful
moon, haunting and majestic, chasing away the shadows! And while the moon is high,
the eagle shall fly! Far and wide it shall roam, its talons slaying lion and bear alike,
filled with pride in its power and grace! But once the moon has set, and the sunlight
bathes the earth once more, the eagle shall grow tired, and weary. It shall tumble from
the sky as quickly as it rose, for God shall smite it down in its wickedness and pride, and
lay it low so that his people, all peoples, can breathe free of its nightmarish claws!” –
The Eternal Tablet, wherein the
Aionios prophecizes to King Georgios II “Jabbar” of Arabia.
June 8th, 1258
Andronikos Komnenos,
Kaisar of the Roman Empire, looked around him as he rounded a turn in the Great Palace. No one in front of him or behind him, save his personal contingent of guardsmen who keep a discreet distance and knew better than mention anything he did or said. Satisfied no random servant might hear him, the ten your old clenched his fists, and hissed the new word his friend Ioannis Angelos had introduced to him today.
“Bloody cockups!”
It
felt good slidding off his tongue, and it sounded as vicious as Andronikos’ anger at the morning’s practice session. Things had started off well—
Megos Domestikos Romanos had taken a few hours from his day to personally tutor the future
Megas Komnenos briefly in military tactics, and Andronikos found
applying the
Strategikon of the
Megas infinitely more interesting than merely reading the book. The
Megos Domestikos have even commented that for his first lesson, Andronikos seemed a natural. The boy understood a real battle would be far different from that between gold-plated figurines on a
pediomachis board. Nonetheless, it made Andronikos feel ten feet taller than his skinny little frame, and it looked like the rest of the day’s lessons would be as excellent.
Until Diogenes, and swordplay.
Andronikos shifted the weight of the bow on his back and huffed his annoyance. For any other boy, the ornately carved bow might’ve been too large—most ten year olds wouldn’t have been able to manage the force needed for the pull of a bow that size, but Andronikos wasn’t like most ten year olds. Yes, he might have been short, yes, he was thin as a rail, but every day, no matter what, he started with practicing his bow-shot. Yes, stupid Konstantinos Angelos had bested him six times straight with a sword, but could that prat (to use another one favorite of word of Ioannis Angelos, Andronikos’ best friend) hit a deer cleanly at 100 paces at age eight?
No.
That thought made the young
Kaisar smile, a grin as broad as the Marmara. That day two years before had been one of his proudest moments. Yes, Konstantinos Angelos had stolen his hares, and yes, the Angelid had given him a bloody lip before his own brother beat him down, but it had been
Andronikos, not the adults, not the other children, who had placed an arrow cleanly through a deer’s neck at frightening distance. It was enough to get his uncle to even stop worrying about state business and slap him on the back! And, in his eyes, more than made up for the errors others so often noted in his swordplay.
Unfortunately, the others did not see it that way.
Master Diogenes muttered Andronikos was “passable,” but felt the boy needed to focus more. Andronikos was quick to retort that running about swinging wooden swords was stupid—he would be using a steel one, not a wooden one, if he fought someone, and he’d be wearing chains, not leathers!
The boy angrily pulled a shoulder strap from position at the thought. All the happy thoughts of the hunt and the congratulations that piled on afterwards swept away by that mornings argument anew. Diogenes said he had to improve his footwork if he was to ever survive in the frontline of a battle. Andronikos retorted he would be Emperor, it’d be foolish for him to be on the front line of a battle. Diogenes had shot back that the
Megas,
Megaloprepis, and every other emperor had lead armies from the front. Andronikos then called
them fools too!
What was winning a battle worth to the disaster that would be an emperor’s death in the field? It was pride, foolishness, and stupidity that made those men do that! There was a merit to the Emperor going on campaign—Andronikos didn’t argue with that one bit—but leading from the front? Charging at the head of his army headlong into the enemy? No… better to stay back, and direct the battle than lunge in and lose complete control, and maybe lose one’s life! Andronikos fingered the bow still strapped to his side—its why he loved the bow, rather than the sword. The bow required skill and precision—one could win a battle of blades with nothing more than brute force, but to hit a target at range—that required deftness, and skill.
Unfortunately, Master Diogenes thought differently. Andronikos scowled even more.
Albrecht had yelled at him for arguing with Master Diogenes, but Andronikos didn’t care what his stepfather said. He knew he was right! Long ago, the boy had decided Albrecht von Franken was an old codger bent on his ways and his ways alone. He lorded over Andronikos like he was his real father—he wasn’t! Andronikos
knew of his real father, the great Alexios, hero of Persia, treacherously slain by the deadly Altani after his moment of triumph at Amol.
He fingered his bow again. They said his father had been found with an arrow with golden fletching deep in his chest. Andronikos had sworn a blood oath—Ioannis Angelos had been there, he’d been the prince’s witness—that he was going to have his revenge on that Mongol Amazon. Every time he put an arrow into a deer, or a target, he imagined it was that monstrous Mongol woman’s face!
For a moment, the prince felt his blood boil yet again at the thought, and he forced himself to sigh and breathe out. It wouldn’t do any good to get angry in the palace. Altani was in far off Samarkand, beyond Andronikos’ feeble reach. One day, though, the young boy knew he’d be
Megas Komnenos. And then…
..Albrecht would stop him.
Andronikos muttered a curse word to himself, and didn’t even turn red like he was normally apt to do when one slipped out. Angelos had taught him the seven he knew, and the older boy liberally used them whenever they were hunting. Yet again, with his stepfather!
He didn’t
mind the daily lessons from his step-father—Andronikos was keenly aware of how busy the man was—and some of them were genuinely interesting. However, it wasn’t the memorizing of names, or titles of various international people that interested him. It was how they connected—who married who, who knew who, who had done what.
But von Franken was, to use Angelos’ new favorite term for cads and cowards, a ‘pussy.’ Whenever he put forth scenarios for the young prince to think about, he always yelled at Andronikos whenever he chose to invade. Yes, armies cost money, yes, war wasn’t the best way to solve things, but there were some matters only the
tagmata could solve! And war was where his ancestors had made their names, and won the loyalty of people and nobility alike—the
Megas, the
Megaloprepis, even Thomas II, all were warriors.
Foolish for leading from the front, but glory laid in the victory, not in swinging the sword first!
Like when Albrecht asked earlier that day what he’d do as emperor if the Germans allied with the French to seize Roman Italy. Andronikos
still didn’t understand what the problem was with sending assassins to kill several extraneous members of the German royal family, while making the Italian army invade France itself? Didn’t Albrecht say the French army was weak, because its nobles were loathe to fight after the first defeat? Didn’t he also say the German ‘Emperors’ were only one or two lives away from civil war?
Peace and stability?
Diplomatic solutions and bribes?
Andronikos snorted. If the French and Germans were stupid enough to antagonize the Romans, why not make an example of them to make the world quake? A carrot, in the prince’s mind, only worked with a big, ugly stick! If there was no stick, everyone will start demanding more and more carrots…
“Make way! Make way!”
Andronikos’ line of thought ran into a brick wall as the sounds from outside caught his attention. He paused at the noise, then walked towards the window. Below, on the central plaza from which all distances in the Empire were measured, was a huge mob of people—ill clad, thin, rangy, clearly the poorest of the poor. However, they did not shout, chant, or roil about as a mob—as he watched, the slowly shuffled into lines under the watchful gaze of the few
Rigal-al-Khalifa in the plaza, eyes craning towards the entrance to the Great Palace.
Andronikos craned out the window as well, despite knowing what it probably was. Sure enough, slowly working down the long line, purple robes flowing in the slight breeze and velvet gloves placing a
solidus in the hands of each and every person, was Emperor Thomas III. Barely on the wind, young Andronikos picked up his cousin the
Autokrator murmuring a quiet blessing for each person he handed a coin to, and just as distantly he could hear the crowd saying thanks.
Andronikos smiled. His cousin did this out of his piety—the man might be mad, but he was also deeply devout. He’d heard Thomas constantly lambast Andronikos’ uncle for not giving out alms as well—he said it was the role of the Emperor to show Christian charity (as well as complete celibacy, dutiful obedience, and praying once an hour, things Andronikos knew his uncle did not do). Even Andronikos’ stepfather had murmured it was the only good thing Thomas ever did.
But piety was a stupid reason according to Andronikos, especially when there was a far better one.
The performance, as his mother always said.
Acting like an Christian Emperor should made others think of you more as an Emperor. Andronikos was only ten, but he understood that, and understood it well. An Emperor needed to be intelligent, a patron of the arts, so Andronikos learned the
lyra and tried his best to write couplets. An Emperor needed to be a warrior, so he learned tactics from the
Megos Domestikos, and swordplay from the hated Master Diogenes. And a Christian Emperor had to be generous, as Christ was generous—an Emperor had to give more than he took. Thomas clearly had no idea what he was doing was as much spectacle as charity, but the weekly occurrence certainly made Andronikos and his uncle more popular. An Emperor personally handing out alms? The proles loved it, they loved Thomas, and that glow extended to his co-Emperor and his co-Emperor’s heir—a winning situation, even for those not involved.
As the boy watched the madmen move down the line, he snorted to himself. Piety was for fools. What use was there in piety, when God struck down good men just as he did evil? Wouldn’t a truly loving God have spared Andronikos’ father, if Alexios was as kind, pious, and gentlemanly as they said? The Prince swore one day he would ask Patriarch Theodoros to his face about it, but his damned step-father wouldn’t let him broach the topic with…
His reverie was suddenly broken, as someone insistently tapped his shoulder. Andronikos was already in a foul mood, thinking of Albrecht and his father, so Andronikos was almost glad to have a chance to snarl at someone as he spun around.
“Who are you to touch me on…” Andronikos’ shout dropped to a whisper, then nothing at all.
Before him stood a young girl, older and much taller, with blue eyes and blonde hair that hung in cascades to her shoulders. Her eyes were hard lapis lazuli orbs, looking him up and down as her hands flashed to her hips.
“Doesn’t a gentleman greet a lady?” she asked, her eyebrow arching up.
“I… I’m sorry, miss,” Andronikos stuttered, remembering his manners suddenly. He felt his face heat up. How could he have yelled? Why did he have to yell? Why was he suddenly stuttering? He was good at talking to people, even grown-ups! Why was he losing track of his…
“Amazing,” she shook her head slowly. “And I thought when my father said I’d get to meet the next Emperor of the Romans that the boy would be a gentleman!” The last words were delivered with a sigh, a noise of both disappointment and contempt.
“I’m sorry, miss…” Andronikos said, hoping for a name.
“Instead, I get yelled at by someone only half dressed in leather armor,” she snorted, before suddenly, mysteriously, a smile broke through. “Come off it, I’m teasing you. Your looked so absorbed in something troubling, Your Majesty.” The smile grew wider. “I thought I would break the monotony of the day, Majesty.”
Andronikos blinked. The girl’s smile hung momentarily, before starting to fade. Suddenly, Andronikos realized he should say something, but his mind offered over a dozen possible responses, then proceeded to debate and argue over which one was the best. As he cursed at himself again for suddenly becoming tongue-tied, her quieting smile suddenly changed into a look of interest.
“A composite bow? Eastern archery hmm? Your Majesty likes hunting then?” the girl asked. Andronikos looked down—the others were shy, or too flirtatious. But this girl… she was direct. She was…
“Yes…” Andronikos looked down, cursing at himself the entire time. Why was he so shy in front of her? He talked to the others just fine! He was fine on the hunt! He was fine in lessons! He… felt his face heating. He tried to stop it, but the embarrassment just made his face turn another shade of scarlet.
“I trust next hunt you’ll let me take a shot before you down the deer?” she pressed, eyebrow raised slightly.
“Y…you shoot?” Andronikos looked up, eyes wide. A girl that hunted?
In Konstantinopolis, land of the overly effete, overly perfumed, and overly gossipy? By the way her face suddenly darkened, he immediately regretted uttering those words.
“I do!” she said, a tone of hurt seeping into her voice.
“I…um… I didn’t mean any offense!” Andronikos stammered, desperately backtracking. Why did he say that? Why? Stupid Andronikos! Stupid, stupid… Quick! His mind raced, trying to find a way to make up for the previous faux pas. “It’s just not that common for a girl to be good at shooting! Pulling a bow takes strength and…”
“Are you saying I’m too weak?” the girl crossed her arms, face in a genuine frown.
“I…” Dammit!
“Well, I’ll say this then. My father is going on a hunt next week! You should come, and see how well a
Spanish lady can shoot her bow!” She turned, flipping her hair at him in disgust.
“But…yes… but…” Andronikos stammered, trying to force coherent words out of his mouth as successfully as shoving a round peg through a square hole. “I…I don’t even know your name!” he managed to blurt out as she stalked away from him.
“Cecilia!” she shouted over her shoulder.
“Cecilia of what house!” he desperately called again.
“My father,” she spun, hands on hips anger on full display, “is the Latin Duke of Asturias! Guillaume de Normandie!” She gave another huff, and as she stormed around the corner, the crestfallen
Kaisar could hear her voice, huffing and puffing, “He thinks I can’t shoot!
I’ll show him who can shoot!”
Albrecht von Franken also glowered a few hours later, but for different reasons.
His daily hour spent tutoring his step-son on politics and diplomacy had gone measurably well—the boy was stubborn in how he thought, but Albrecht knew (but would never admit to him) that could be a good trait, when it showed up at the proper time. He’d also taken to reading works left by Emperors Nikolaios and Manuel, and Albrecht had been secretly pleased the servants noted that the Prince scribbled in the margins.
Then there was the news from Master Diogenes.
The fact that Andronikos was not a devastating swordsman at age ten didn’t worry Albrecht—the boy was small, and there was plenty of time for him to grow—but it was the stubbornness, at the wrong time! He’d gone so far as to call his greatest predecessors fools, and claimed he knew
better. At ten! The pride! The hubris!
The
Megoskyriomachos sat down at his desk and sighed. His head was bothering him, and he quickly reached for the steaming hot drink sitting next to the afternoon’s pile of papers. The Arabs called it
qahwa, a bitter brown liquid made from ground up beans. Yet for all its harsh taste, it seemed to make one more awake—something even Albrecht occasionally needed with his colossal amount of government business to attend to every day. As he sipped the hot liquid and winced at its taste, he shook his head.
That was what worried him most about Andronikos.
Pride.
The boy was ten, and
knew he was going to be
Megas Komnenos after his uncle. While he fortunately didn’t lord that fact over anyone (Albrecht honestly thought the boy was rather tactful and skillful at talking to others for his age), he could still be arrogant, especially when someone questioned him or his ideas. It was a habit Albrecht wanted to break from him—not just because it would give Albrecht or his son more influence once Andronikos took the throne.
Pride goeth before the fall—and the state that Albrecht had built over the last two decades needed steady, deft hands at the tiller to keep her from falling. Romanion was simply too big, too unwieldy, to survive without a sure navigator. And come hell or high water, the
Megoskyriomachos pinned his hopes on this boy he could personally teach, whose education and growth he could supervise, to keep his own legacy intact, despite the best efforts of all others.
Even other Romans.
That thought made Albrecht wince more as he took another sip of the
qahwa, and slowly, the
Megoskyriomachos poured his attentions on the first major business of the afternoon—the continued reports on Segeo Komnenos and the King of Sortmark.
Albrecht had seen Segeo ride off into the forest with Olaf two years ago, and the two had stayed away an abnormally long time—the Danish King complained his snares had taken forever to undo, but Albrecht knew better. The Danes were keen on hunting, and no man who would be their King would have suffered the embarrassment of not being able to undo a snare. Something was going on between the
Exarchos and the King, and von Franken had no doubt it was not something pleasant for the Throne of Caesars. So, the
Megoskyriomachos had detailed no less than Eleutherios Skleros to watch the two during the rest of their stay in Konstantinopolis, and just as he suspected, messages flew back and forth between Segeo’s villa and Olaf’s temporary apartments in the Boukoleon, and continued after the two bid their adieus to the Queen of Cities and returned to their respective lands.
But what worried von Franken more than anything else was the official visits by on Asbjorn Knytling, nephew of King Olaf, to Baghdad. The official reasons were smoothly laid out and perfectly reasonable—Asbjorn
was the
Kansler of Sortmark, and he
was charged with securing new avenues for funding the King’s coffers. Which made a trip to Baghdad to ‘secure new trade arrangements’ seem perfectly legitimate…
…and all the more reason, Albrecht thought, to be careful.
Von Franken had spent much time, blood, and sweat into building this unified empire, but despite eight years of peace, it was still a fragile, shaky thing. Nikephoros’ heir was still a child, and Thomas III’s own son was still alive in Baghdad with his whore of a mother. And all this left out Gabriel Komnenos, still alive and powerless in his ceremonial role as an Emperor. Any of those situations could turn drastically wrong. If Gabriel cowed his sons into returning power to him, or if Thomas the Youngest decided he wanted to become Thomas IV, things could collapse into a civil war with ease. Albrecht was hoping that his personal tutelage of Andronikos would keep the boy from being a warmonger like almost every other Komnenos who’d sat on the throne, but he had his doubts. The Sortmarkers sticking their noses into that hornet’s nest, especially after Olaf left Konstantinopolis angry and empty handed two years ago, spelled nothing but trouble, even if they hadn’t been stoking fires with Segeo.
Albrecht rolled the dice in his hands, staring at the mounds of paper as he went into thought. Olaf was the lynchpin of the entire affair, and his motives were easy to guess—cause chaos so the Danes could take Azov. The Danes could never
hold Azov, not if the Romans were determined to get it back, so he likely planned on grabbing more and the negotiating to keep “just” that
theme. Which meant he hoped for either an ally in power, or someone so distracted they didn’t care…
“Hi Uncle Albie!”
Albrecht mentally cursed, and focused his stare at the pile of papers, grabbing a random sheet from the top for emphasis. Damn it, he didn’t even hear him open the door to his chambers!
“Are you busy?” Thomas III,
Autokrator ton Romanion asked in his sing-song voice. Albrecht spent the next twenty seconds reading the top of the parchment that announced the appointment of a new assistant deputy to the Grain Monitor of Adrianopolis. He hissed to himself as he heard the Emperor shuffle from the doorway into the room itself. Silently, a prayer went up to
Hagios Demetrios to intercede with God and make this visit shorter than the last two this day.
“I was handing out alms this morning,” Thomas unwittingly shattered his uncle’s prayers, and I realized… hey! I’m tired of having to get into a boat to get to Chrysopolis.”
“Hmmm?” Albrecht didn’t look up. He hoped not acknowledging the words would mean Thomas’ mind would leap onto some other, less maniacal idea.
“I said I’m tired of needing a boat to get to Chryopolis,” Albrecht heard the Emperor’s velvet shoes shifting, as well as the rustle of robes. The
Megoskyriomachos didn’t have to look up to know Thomas was adopting his standard pose when he wanted Albrecht to see the wisdom in whatever… inanity… he was about to propose.
“And how would Your Majesty propose to get to Chrysopolis?!” von Franken replied, ice and vinegar slipping into his voice. He gave in and looked up at his charge, and instantly kicked himself for doing so. The Emperor’s face lit up… von Franken had given him the nonverbal go-ahead.
“By walking!” Thomas jumped slightly, grinning what that completely
inane smile that seemed to always grace his face. “We just merely need to… drain the Marmara! Yes!” Thomas looked up, eyes glazing over momentarily.
“Drain… what?!” Albrecht sputtered.
“The Marmara!” Thomas said, his distant gaze settling on the window, and the object of his current mania sitting serenely blue in the distance. “We need to drain it! We could build dams!” Thomas suddenly leapt forward, and suddenly a postscript for the attention of the Chief of the Golden Horn dockyards was in his grasp. With the elegance of a lame goose, Thomas messily tossed the paper over, spilled ink on a pile of papers, and began drawing. “They’d need to be… him… depth of Marmara? Plus twenty feet, and at least that wide at the bottom…”
“What… what are you doing?!” Albrecht finally managed to explode at the mess now covering his table.
“Sketching it!” Thomas said distantly, his mind focused, his quill racing across the back of official parchment. “Let’s see here, so we’d need to start north of Galata with one dam, and the other south of the Princes…”
“You… you’re mad!” Albrecht sputtered out the obvious, so great was his shock.
“No! We can do this!” Thomas replied hurriedly, his quill still racing. “We’d need something to stifften the earthen portions of the damns, probably rock. Aha! Gravel, probably several hundred thousand tons. That’d take… most of the grain fleet could do it! Or we could build a few hundred ships and have them… hey!” he half-whimpered, half shouted as Albrecht snatched the sketch from his hand.
“Out! We’re finished!” von Franken snapped, pointing at the door. His hand was trembling, his face hot and flushed with anger. The… idiocy! The stupidity! The… madness!
“But my drawing isn’t done!” Thomas slouched, whining. “How am I supposed to finish it and give you a cost estimate if I can’t…”
“You
won’t be giving me a cost estimate, because you’ll
never get the
Megas Komnenos to sign off on tearing down the
Hagia Sophia, let alone…”
Albrecht sputtered, “
THIS!”
For a second, Thomas stood in his uncle’s office, mouth slightly agape. Albrecht could see the shock in his eyes at being told absolutely no once more, the confusion, the hurt! Von Franken knew what was coming next, and as if on cue, the Emperor turned on his heels and stalked towards the door.
“Fine! I’m going to ask Nikky! He’ll overrule you!” Thomas announced petulantly yet again, despite Nikephoros
never overruling Albrecht. The Emperor of the Romans hefted up his tunic, spun around, and showed his bare behind and stuck out his tongue, before slamming the door to the chambers shut. The reverberating boom echoed the noise in Albrecht’s own head.
The
Megoskyriomachos rubbed his temple, and looked down at the mess left behind. For a second he thought about pull the bell-rope next to his desk to summon servants. No, he sighed—it’d be best to do this himself. As he started to look for something to wipe up the ink, he looked out the window, towards the nearly completed Kosmodion palace, vain, hulking in the distance, its shadow dominating the landward skyline.
Something had to be done about Thomas. Soon.
So now we know where Thomas’ true deep end is… literally the sea! Andronikos has a clever mind, but is stubborn and for some reason can’t talk around a mysterious Latin, daughter of the Duke of Asturias. We also meet (sorta) Asbjorn Knytling and Thomas Komnenos the Even Younger, both of whom will be causing headaches in the future. What plot stew does Olaf have planned for Romanion? More to come when Rome AARisen continues!
EDIT - I know I promised the Aionios as well, but one, the update grew too long, and two, I got stuck writing the scene. So instead of writing out the scene, what happened will get revealed through quotes, references, etc... it'll work alot better than what I original had!
