The Knautschlings - part 1
The Beginning
This tale begins where Harald Knautschling is twenty-seven years old.
Harald is already a widower at this point since his beloved first wife Ingegerd died three years ago.
Their four children are not raised by Harald alone as would be the case in our time, though.
They are raised by nannies, monks or Haralds vassals, whereever Harald sent them.
He doesn´t think much about these kind of things, Harald is not much of a family-guy.
But wait a second - we were talking about Harald´s vassals.
This is because Harald is not an ordinary man living in the eleventh century.
No, Harald is a nobleman. To be more precise he is the Duke of Slesvig and rules over quite some land.
Sure there are already big kingdoms at this point of history, Harald´s lands obviously can´t compare to that.
But he himself has no king to answer, no liege who can command him what to do.
And Harald is quite happy about that.
His second wife Pereyaslava Bryachislavich is only sixteen when the two of them marry in 1077 which
seems quite young by today´s standards, but in the eleventh century most noblemen rather saw breeding
machines than human beings when they looked on women. Harald is no exception here.
He is not the shining beacon in this story, he is merely the first protagonist.
But let´s look at what we call Duchy of Slesvig.
The dark green lands are under Harald´s direct control while the light green lands belong to his vassals.
Harald also owns some estates at the Black Sea which he aquired through a cunning plan that included allying
with the King of Hungary and sacrificing many of his best soldiers to help the Hungarians at battles in which
Harald did not even have the slightest interest in.
What Harald is not quite content with is the fact that his vassals have much richer lands than him.
However there is nothing he can do about that right now since his demesne is very poor and if he asked his
vassals to give up their lands they would simply refuse. But Harald knows that. He is not the most intelligent person you can imagine,
but he is not dumb either.
In 1079 Harald finally feels confident that he is prestigious enough to snatch the rich german trade port of Lübeck and get away with it.
Lübeck is just outside the Holy Roman Empire and nobody comes to their rescue as Harald personally leads the victorious Slesvigian armies towards the city.
Confident with his newly aquired city Harald feels there is no need for his Black Sea holdings in Belgorod any longer, so he creates a bishopric out of them.
They still pay taxes however because they do not know that not a single Slesvigian soldier would set a foot even somewhere near the Black Sea would they stop to do so.
They do not know this because they are dumb.
In 1081 Lübeck already begins to cause trouble, as their trading ships get taxed by the Scandinavians in Gotland.
Harald´s plan to solve this problem is simple. It is to incorporate the island of Gotland into his own demesne.
This plan is put into action immediately.
Of course Gotland is under direct protection by the King of Scandinavia who decides to retaliate and seizes Slesvig itself.
Harald´s emergency response seems pretty clueless at first, as he does not have a master Marshal.
In fact the tactical genius of his Marshal Olaf extends to attacking the entire army of Scandinavian besiegers all by himself with just one companion.
By foot.
But meanwhile Harald and the bulk of the Slesvigian army attack and seize the Scandinavian capital.
When the King of Scandinavia hears the stories about all the arsony and raping conducted by the Slesvigians in his
capital he backs down.
Yes, Harald is not a tactical genius, but he is very determined and does not care for suffering of citizens that are not his own.
At all.
P.S.: This AAR is about the second session, during the first session I was on vacation and Harald was AI-controlled.