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unmerged(10971)

Alien Space Bat
Sep 9, 2002
3.493
11
While Thou Shalt Flourish Great and Free
The Empire of Britain, 1836-1936


OVERTURE: Richard Wagner, "Rule Britannia Overture"

british-empire-333.jpg


The nations, not so blest as thee,
Must in their turns to tyrants fall;
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.

Rule, Britannia! Rule the waves:
Britons never shall be slaves.

--Thomas Arne, "Rule, Britannia", 1740​



Since I have a good chunk of the scenario finished, and I feel I can knock out the rest quite a bit before I actually reach 1836 here, I'd say it's time to get this started.

This is part 3 of my England - Britain megacampaign, that started in Crusader Kings and continued through Europa Universalis II. Reading those previous parts isn't strictly necessary, as I will be giving a summary of what happened in the pre-1836 posts of this AAR. Still, it comes as recommended, at least in my very biased opinion. ;)


Mods used, wholly or in part (mostly in part):

- SexiiColours Imperiosus Cultum
- Mod Afrique Tribal
- Western European minorities and revolters
- New Nations Mod

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

- History of Britain, 1066-1836: Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4
 
Last edited:
First to sign, first to say hurrah and huzzah!
 
In!
 
I look forward to seeing this AAR commence! :)
 
I'm goign to try to read through the whole mega-campaign so far. I hope you'll have some updates more me when I arrive at this one. :D

ps I've read the first CK update and this is looking good. :)
 
I loved your last two parts, especially the EU2 part. I'm really looking forward to this!
 
[Kurt_Steiner: I was hoping you'd show. :D

Tanzhang: Well, it's commencing, so no trouble there.

Tommy4ever: That should occupy you for a little while. :p

Eber: I hope to top that section in depth and the like, so hopefully you'll like this one even more.

Lazzeer: Welcome to the story, and I hope it lives up to your expectations.

asd21593: I know there's been at least one or two that got all the way along... I intend to get this one to 1936, too. :) ]



History of England and Britain: 1066 - 1836



1066 found England caught in the midst of a chaotic succession crisis. King Edward III had died without a son, and his most direct heir by blood, Edgar, was too young to take the throne while outside forces threatened to invade. The most direct and logical candidate in his place was Harold Godwineson, Earl of Wessex and brother-in-law to Edward, and he was duly chosen to rule. However, two others contested the throne: Harald of Norway and William of Normandy. Both paid for their attempt with their life, Harald at Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire, and William at Hastings in Sussex. The latter battle, however, also resulted in the death of Harold himself. Edgar was reluctantly chosen to be King, fated to be the last of the Cerdicing line that had ruled England since Alfred the Great's first unification with only short interruption.

Edgar's nephew Osric, of the new House of Siward, became the new king and rapidly made a name for himself. After getting an English bishop in place in Rome as Pope, Osric made himself the main power in the British Isles, then set his eyes far afield. The famed "Second Crusade" of 1103 - 1123, despite taking him away from his kingdom for a full two decades, first brought fame and attention to an otherwise ignored land. An English king and English armies, spurred on by the hope for salvation and the advancement of Christendom, smashed the Muslim states of southern Spain and parts of North Africa, placing Christian kingdoms behind them. Although the Crusade was only of moderate long-term impact, as North Africa fell back to the Muslims soon after, Osric himself eventually joined the ranks of the saints, the English brought back with them (unfortunately little-exploited) Muslim translations of classical texts long lost to Europeans, and the Siwardings had their first foothold in the minds of the other European monarchs.

LionHeartFarewell.jpg

Saint Osric leaving on Crusade, by Alphonse Marie de Neuville (1883)

Osric's successor Aethelwulf II added Wales to the kingdom in the 1130s, and the next king, Eanbert, added much of Ireland to England's holdings as well. These conquests went along unperturbed; the Pope regularly gave his tacit (or rarely, even explicit) approval to English domination of the British Isles, a vitally important advantage that allowed England to go from being a nowhere to a fledgeling empire, although one that still lay on the edge of the known world. Said empire did not rest on its laurels, soon adding Holland (1162) and entering into a short-lived personal union with Poland (1174). The later resulted in massive changes to England; the new king, Osric II, finally integrated England with the Continental culture of the High Middle Ages. French and German styles and literature, such as there were at the time, appeared in England, while Osric spent considerable time in Poland, earning him that land's adoration as he expanded the Polish kingdom. Despite this, his decision to return to Britain and complete the absorption of Ireland resulted in him abdicating his Polish and Lithuanian thrones, which he could not rule along with England simultaneously, and ending the personal union after only eight years.

Back in his homeland, Osric turned his eyes north, to the final land of the British Isles not under his control: Scotland. The conquest of that land would be a long and arduous one, beginning in 1183 and reaching its completion in 1197, claiming an English king (Sigeric) in the process. Fighting in France after the completion of that conflict did not go nearly as well, resulting in a humiliating defeat near Paris, but a significant one: King Eanbert chose from among his vassals a new and ultimately era-defining military commander: Edsel Borcalan. Member of a family of Hungarian extraction that had come to England along with Osric II, Edsel (whose Hungarian name, Atilla, fit his abilities perfectly, if not his temperment) was perhaps the greatest military mind of the 13th century, with the possible exception of King Premyslav of Hungary. Edsel turned back the victorious French army and alloweed Eanbert to leave France 5,000 marks richer and with his honour intact. Edsel soon helped add the Scottish Isles, to then part of the exiled Kingdom of Norway, to the English kings' domain.

The Siwarding empire, however, had reached its height with this final unification of the British Isles. Attempts by the later kings, particularly Eadbert,* to extend and centralise royal authority were met with immediate and vehement opposition from the nobility. Eadbert's son, Harold II, met the brunt of this opposition, as his nobles rose up in general revolt. Despite agreeing to sign a document securing the rights of the nobility, Harold quickly turned his back on his agreement and paid the price, killed in battle against one of his thanes barely a year into his reign - a short but momentous one. The Magna Carta, the aforementioned document, passed into English law as the original legal basis for all British rights throughout the ages. Edsel, having failed to protect the king, unfairly took the burden of that failure onto himself and committed suicide a few years later, depriving England of its greatest leader.

Last of all, and fatally for the Siwardings, the new king, Osric III, was only a child and grew up to be no better a king than he had been in his youth. Spurred on by a sense of religious righteousness that allowed him no compromise (and caused him to remain celibate, resulting in no heir), Osric attempted to again make the English king an absolute monarch. The result was the complete implosion of the realm and a decade and a half of bloody anarchy, eventually leaving royal authority only followed in a few scattered regions of England and Wales. The remnants of the English ruling council finally declared Osric insane and deposed him in 1266. No more Siwardings remained to take the throne; the new heir was the son of Eadbert's daughter: Eldric, heir to the Duchy of Bretagne, and first of the long line of de Cornouaille Kings of England.
__________
*Not, of course, to be confused with his predecessor Eanbert.
 
Great summary, but how exactly do you explain William falling at Hastings?
Also how did you convert the game from EUII to Vicky II? or did you just edit Vicky II to match your EUII savegame without converting the save itself?
 
Great summary, but how exactly do you explain William falling at Hastings?

Basically, he got fatally wounded in one of the charges when his horse throw him (IIRC).
 
Extremely pleased to see this continuing in a shiny new Vicky II environment. Maybe now that it's out of the forsaken wastelands of EU2 AARdom it will get the attention it rightly deserves. This has been, without exaggeration, one of the best AARs, if not the best AAR on the boards, and I look forward to seeing how the intrepid Saxons will manage in the 19th century. :)
 
I love the summary, reminds me of why I began reading your AARs in the first place. :)
 
asd21593: Well, that's what the summaries are for. :)

Van5: Indeed. Albion II: THIS TIME IT'S PERFIDOUS.

譚張: There was a point in the real battle where William's horse was killed under him, and there was a scare that he had been killed. He hadn't, actually, but I decided to use that, pasting in what had actually killed him. It's in the first post of the CK AAR if you want the details.

I edited in the starting scenario myself. It makes everything all that much more correct, to say nothing of the fact that there are several things that wouldn't properly translate into Vicky II because the countries / cultures / etc. aren't even in that game. It's well worth the effort.

Kurty: More or less.

Eber: Hopefully that'll keep up. :D

Jape: Welcome along!


The next part of the history (the de Cornouailles, 1266 - 1484) will come... probably not tomorrow, as I'll be very busy that day, but Saturday instead.
 
With the ascension of Aldéric de Cornouaille, England now had its first foreign ruler since the death of Harthacnut in 1042. The new King Eldric, however, only had practical rule over a small portion of England, along with the city of Edinburgh in Scotland, controlled by the only one of the thanes to remain loyal, himself a member of an originally foreign family: Hrothgar (or Roger) Borcalan. The loyalty of the Borcalans would prove to be well-rewarded, as they rose in their own turn along with the rising star of the de Cornouailles, eventually increasing their presence in Scotland considerably.

To restore the authority that his predecessors had claimed, he and his family would need to engage in a long series of wars that came to be known as the "Breton Conquest". A smashing victory at Duxford on 1 December 1266 allowed Eldric to remove the strongest of the opposing earls and cement his position in southern England. He went on to reassert control over most of England, only failing to do so by his death in battle in 1278. That in itself would set a terrible precedent, as the next two English monarchs also died violent deaths. Despite this, Eldric's successor and son Henry placed the entirety of England and Wales back under the king's control by 1299. It was only his successor that truly saw a reverse in the fortunes of the dynasty.

Renaud began his reign well, taking all of southern Scotland and reestablishing a foothold in Ireland by taking Dublin. Unfortunately, it became clearer and clearer as time went on that his mental state was poor at the best of times, particularly apparent while he was in battle. It was away from the field that he showed his true colours, however, first secretly ordering the death of two different heirs when said heirs were severely crippled. Eventually, he became so mad that he collected his immediate family, slaughtered them, and ordered the death of his brothers. The latter attempt failed, however, and it was one of those brothers, Amaury, who led the army that deposed Renaud and oversaw his execution.

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Record Tower, the only surviving remnant of the origingal Dublin Castle, at which Renaud was executed in 1309

In the British Isles themselves, Amaury preferred to use diplomacy to advance his power, doing so most strikingly in Scotland where he gained the fealty of the strongest of the region's earls. He, and his son John, instead focused their militaries mostly on France. Normandy was easily conquered and set up as a base of operations by Amaury, and, after John took a short pause to reconquer Scotland, he began to turn his armies southward. The only thing that prevented a proper war from beginning then and there was the sudden appearance of the Black Death in the region in 1339.

Pure luck kept John and his court free from the plague, specifically the fact that, believing the disease to be caused by sins as many others of his time did, John ordered regular ritual cleansing to keep away sins - but, in fact, actually likely washing away the fleas that spread the disease. He may have also stayed away from the plague by going on crusade in the Greek Isles; whether or not this was the cause, it did succeed in adding that region to his lands. John's son, William, returned the focus of the monarchy to Britain, and, despite a few reoccurnces of the plague, William became famous for his military exploits in Iceland and Ireland, finally reuniting the old Siwarding lands.

William's young son, Alfred, however, barely lasted long enough to sire a son and attempt to order the kingdom before dying of the plague in 1378, at only 17 years of age. The extreme youth of his son David led to a power struggle between two would-be regents: Adam, Duke of Cornwall and the king's uncle, and Geoffrey Chaucer, Duke of Kent. The former defeated the latter at the Battle of Maidstone in December 1386, placing Adam firmly in control of the kingdom. Once David was old enough, he and Adam agreed on the need to resume the long-ignored campaigns in France, and English armies went south during the 1390s. These armies were the largest seen in Europe to that point, reaching 50,000 men in the case of the one he led into Maine in 1396.

Said army met a setback at Savigny the next year, resulting in David's wars in France becoming a practical stalemate. His son, however, proved to have far more success; leading his massive armies south, he was able to crush the French resistance, take Blois and Paris, and make himself heir to the French throne. Unfortunately, he died an untimely death in 1422, and things quickly fell apart. John II was also very young upon becoming king, and he (upon his growing older) and his regents bungled things so badly that not only was John unable to press his claim to France, he had lost all of England's continental holdings except for Calais and Bretagne by 1429, the latter eventually being taken by France as well. England barely held together after that, and then only until 1455.

Battle_of_Castillon.jpg

The Battle of Pontremy, by Charles-Philippe Larivière (mid-19th century)

In that year, John's main lieutenant, the Duke of Warwick, was off in the Palatinate of the Rhine leading an army there, when the king fell into a bout of madness. Taking the opportunity, Somerset, along with Queen Margaret, established a regency and worked to take control of England. Things rapidly fell apart all around, but Warwick, along with Robert of Cornwall, quickly returned and reestablished their control of the king. It was Robert's son Edward who, by 1471, forced out the "Welshist" supporters of John and Margaret and made himself King of England, being member of another branch of the de Cornouaille dynasty. The civil war was not over yet, however; soon after he was succeeded by his perhaps unfarily villified brother George of Clarence, said brother was forced off the throne by Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham in 1484. The bloody conflict had, in the end, destroyed all branches of the de Cornouaille family entirely, and the new Stafford dynasty took their place.
 
Less than three centuries to start with the real fun!
 
I've read through the two previous AARs (ok I might have done a little skimming :p).

I have to say that I much prefered the CK portion to the EU section. This is almost entirely due to the fact that the former was more fantastical and was filled with more suprising. The EU one followed RL British history impressively closely considering where you where in 1400. Nethertheless it was a good read and I'm looking forward to your progress into the Victorian era.