This is my first AAR, so be gentle guys. I'm going to try to write a historical AAR, which will set up the motivations for each of the lords of Brandenburg-Prussia, and create a realistic scenario based on those motivations. While I dabble in German history and I'm a big fan of enlightenment history, my concentration is in political science and international relations, so any history buffs should feel free to call me out when I'm not being accurate.
I'm going to start off at the beginning of a scenario, so I'll need to backtrack a little bit. Also I have no clue how to find a screenshot, so i'm sorry that this won't have pictures even though I exhaustively screencap'd everything.
an introduction to Christian Albert I, and getting lessons from incompetence.
Margrave Christian Albert I was born in the summer of 1437. He was the youngest of 3 brothers, and so instead of being taught in the royal palace he went into the Brandenburgian officer corps. His untraditional education became of particular interest when his two older brothers died in the Battle of Torun against the Teutonic Order. There were many things which made Christian unique as a king: being the youngest son, he'd never gained the presumption of rule that his elders had. He'd been taught in Ruppin, far from the monarchist stronghold in Neumark, and he'd seen the effects of his father's incompetence personally. Once he discovered that his brothers were dead, he, along with his cousin Helmut, set up what he called the "Great Power policy": That is, that the greatest priority of the Brandenburg state through Albert's reign was to gain power, within and without.
Before I go deeper into the way that Christian Albert governed his realm, I feel that I should mention what preceded his coronation. While his father was (to his son) astonishingly incompetent, caring more for rebuilding a series of Cathedrals across the land which nearly bankrupted the court, he did succeed on several counts:
1. First and foremost, Frederich II created a lasting alliance with Poland, for mostly personal reasons: Frederich considered Lithuania to be the new great front of Catholic Christianity, and because of the rivalry he had with the Teutonic Order
2.Which leads us to the second 'success' of Frederich II. Following the utter failure of the Knights Templar to influence the Turk's expansion into Hungary, Frederich realized that it was, to quote him "Up to the kingdoms, rather than the obsolete orders, to defend Christiandom". His dislike for the orders was further exacerbated by the occupation of Neumark by the Teutonic Order during his childhood. He took his rivalry into the courts, and during the mid-15th century several wars were fought against the Teutons to the benefit of Poland.
3.Lastly, he employed a pair of notable individuals: the Italian architect, Piero Della Fransesca, who did much to establish what would later be known as the "German school" of architecture, and whose enthusiasm for the Brandenburgian state could be seen in nearly all of the private works he did throughout the realm, and the French banker Louis De Fournay, who greased the wheels between the government and the Berlin banks, and during Christian's reign, established the beginnings of the German financial system.
I'll post the next entry when I figure out how to do screenshots.
I'm going to start off at the beginning of a scenario, so I'll need to backtrack a little bit. Also I have no clue how to find a screenshot, so i'm sorry that this won't have pictures even though I exhaustively screencap'd everything.
an introduction to Christian Albert I, and getting lessons from incompetence.
Margrave Christian Albert I was born in the summer of 1437. He was the youngest of 3 brothers, and so instead of being taught in the royal palace he went into the Brandenburgian officer corps. His untraditional education became of particular interest when his two older brothers died in the Battle of Torun against the Teutonic Order. There were many things which made Christian unique as a king: being the youngest son, he'd never gained the presumption of rule that his elders had. He'd been taught in Ruppin, far from the monarchist stronghold in Neumark, and he'd seen the effects of his father's incompetence personally. Once he discovered that his brothers were dead, he, along with his cousin Helmut, set up what he called the "Great Power policy": That is, that the greatest priority of the Brandenburg state through Albert's reign was to gain power, within and without.
Before I go deeper into the way that Christian Albert governed his realm, I feel that I should mention what preceded his coronation. While his father was (to his son) astonishingly incompetent, caring more for rebuilding a series of Cathedrals across the land which nearly bankrupted the court, he did succeed on several counts:
1. First and foremost, Frederich II created a lasting alliance with Poland, for mostly personal reasons: Frederich considered Lithuania to be the new great front of Catholic Christianity, and because of the rivalry he had with the Teutonic Order
2.Which leads us to the second 'success' of Frederich II. Following the utter failure of the Knights Templar to influence the Turk's expansion into Hungary, Frederich realized that it was, to quote him "Up to the kingdoms, rather than the obsolete orders, to defend Christiandom". His dislike for the orders was further exacerbated by the occupation of Neumark by the Teutonic Order during his childhood. He took his rivalry into the courts, and during the mid-15th century several wars were fought against the Teutons to the benefit of Poland.
3.Lastly, he employed a pair of notable individuals: the Italian architect, Piero Della Fransesca, who did much to establish what would later be known as the "German school" of architecture, and whose enthusiasm for the Brandenburgian state could be seen in nearly all of the private works he did throughout the realm, and the French banker Louis De Fournay, who greased the wheels between the government and the Berlin banks, and during Christian's reign, established the beginnings of the German financial system.
I'll post the next entry when I figure out how to do screenshots.