The Three Certainties of Life - Death, Taxes & Byzantium

Apologies for the length of time between updates, but at least we start with fresh peace in Europe!

Castille swallows Navarre and we make another royal marriage amongst the Orthodox powers. Our legitimacy is great, but our prestige is only boosted by war, a somewhat hazardous situation in which to find ourselves.

We seize the island of Naxos, even as France seizes lands from Brittany in a peace accord. The war with Venice is going well.

OUr navy is proven to be superior to all Christian navies harboured along the Mediterranean coast. Unfortunately, there are two or three Muslim navies that are still significantly more powerful than us.

On 18th July 1358, Ioannes's only son, named Thomas, is born. He will grow up to be a sly, deceptive young man, though of somewhat sickly health.

A bundle of Catholic royal marriages are arranged, though only two of them actually go ahead. Clearly the Aragonese are wary of Byzantine influence in the rest of the peninsula!

Emperor Ioannes leads an ultimately successful invasion of Crete, one of his few major successes in his reign.

Byzantium strengthens its relations with its Orthodox neighbours. Ordinarily, they would be candidates for involuntary inclusion into the Empire, but with the Muslim menace so strong, we cannot afford to divert our attention from the eastern border.

Finally, in July 1359, there is peace with the European powers, with the despots of Corfu and Naxos being forced to surrender to us and Venice relinquishing the key cities of Athens and Heraklion. After we simultaneously acknowledge Austria's military superiority in the war, we can at least rest assured that the horrors of the Fourth Crusade are now behind us.

Naturally, we then decree that the island of Crete will now be spelt with a K. Clearly Ioannes is consumed with Greek patriotism and an obsession with orthography!

Come summer 1360 and Ioannes launches another triple war. The Ottomans are attacking the Knights Hospitaller and France and her vassals are wailing on Provence.

Our admirals express concern over Ioannes's ever-risky war strategy and press for increased naval funding. The Emperor duly ignores them.

We begin with some initial victories, perhaps confirming Ioannes's foolish pride, but this does not stop people starting to whisper behind his back that he is the reincarnation of Menoitios (literally "doomed might"), the Titan in Greek mythology associated with violent anger, rash action, and human mortality.

Emissaries are sent to Cyprus and Trebizond, again with mixed results. If there is one thing that Ioannes is more obsessed with than reclaiming lost territory, it's marrying half of Europe!

The results of the latest wars of John the Rash (as the western world terms him) will follow in the next chapter!

After a successful siege of Mugla, the Byzantine southern army (a mere 5,000 men) are recalled to defend our newly-acquired island of Naxos from invading infidels.

After success in Karaman, we manage to end hostilities with Oman and Karaman. Ioannes may be rash and quick to anger, but he's not completely insane!

The Muslim powers of the 1360s. Almost all our knowledge of Asia comes solely from our tangles in Asia Minor.

Mentese is forced to surrender the province of Mugla and temporarily cease all diplomacy with the other Muslim powers. Because of Milanese assistance in Turkey however, we are unable to annex them entirely.

Our war with the minor Eretnid dynasty is proceeding admirably and two-thirds of their land now lies in our control.

Come the new year of 1362 and it seems that we now have very many Turks living in the Empire and Ioannes declares the Turkish populace to be full members of the Byzantine Empire. In a time of near-constant war, this helps to sustain morale and promote further dreams of Imperial restoration.

Another white peace is signed with powers we have never met and have no wish to do so, this time Najd.

May 1362 is a good month for diplomacy, with two successful marriages and two accepted requests for military access.

The Eretnids are finally brought to heel and forced to pay homage to Emperor Ioannes as the first Byzantine vassal of the new age.

The Byzantine lords clamour for fresh power and new lands after the Eretnids' inclusion in the Empire and Ioannes, almost entirely dependent on their good will at this point, accepts without demur.

Bosnia offers us a royal marriage and we accept, along with peace with even more powers that we couldn't care less about.

The Knights Hospitaller call for our help against both the Ottomans and the Mamluks. Naturally, we tell them that we are completely unable to help them at this time. We then renew hostilities against Candar, now they are no longer being beaten up by their co-religionists.

Kastamonu is seized and Mugla converts to the true faith - Easter 1363 is a joyous time for the Romans!

More military access in Asia Minor is arranged for our benefit. We need every diplomatic edge we can get!

Without our help, the Knights are swiftly defeated by the Ottomans, but shortly thereafter Candar is defeated and forcibly added to the Roman Empire.

We accept another royal marriage from Eastern Europe. This will delay our expansion plans in the West, but the eastern infidels are managing to do that by themselves!

In excellent news, Sinopi is returned to the true faith in late 1363. Ioannes continues his systematic purge of Turko-Semitic names, replacing them with traditional Greek names. All's well that ends well, so they say.

We start in summer 1364 with bad news - the Ziyyanids of northern Africa have conquered Rhodes and thrown out the Knights Hospitaller. Another Christian stronghold has fallen to the Muslim dogs.

We finally manage to fob off the last of the "couldn't care less" brigade and are instantly called into Siena and Modena's war against our ally Milan. Fortunately, just eleven days later, the war is called off on both fronts.

After severe economic reforms, a talented merchant arrives in the capital and is quickly recruited to be our most skilled adviser yet. He will allow us to mint less and develop microscopic amounts of research more than we would otherwise.

The Jalayrids finish kicking the ever-loving crap out of their co-religionists, this time Haasa and Mentese, and leave the field open for us. Unfortunately, the Ottomans spring to their defence, so to speak, by including both of them in their sphere of influence.

Armenia calls for our help against the Mamluks and their African allies. This is another war we cannot afford and it is not helping our prestige at all!

Cretan revolutionaries arise, presumably preferring Venetian rule to ours, but they are swiftly put down two weeks later with extreme prejudice.

The Ottomans circulate a gripping new set of scrolls - The Spy Who Came In From The Turks - and as a result, Candari nationalists rise up in revolt in our newly Greek-themed province of Sinopi.

The Turkish spy thrillers are doing so well that the Ottomans try again and Molokan heretics rise up in Macedonia, though quite what Russian milk-drinkers are doing in Byzantium is anyone's business!

In September 1365, our land technology increases to the amazing level of five and, later that month, England annexes Connacht. I think that my home country is doing better than we are!

At the end of the year, Armenia is forced to cede their middle province to the Mamluks and they are left alone once again. If we were capable of kicking Muslim arse, we would most certainly be doing so!

Four months later, we run into the always popular destabilising influences when Ioannes attempts to centralise greater power under his control. This just about sums up his rule - grabbing for greater power leads to unforeseen circumstances and we are weaker for it, at least in the short term.

Fortunately, three months later, our trade knowledge increases and we restabilise after the hasty centralisation of the spring.

I don't remember declaring war on the Moroccans or they on me, but here we are anyway. Quite why I went into the AAR business with my memory for irrelevant details, I'll never know! Ah, yes! For some bizarre reason, Morocco ends up at war with Moldavia. Ioannes promptly marches his troops through Bulgaria to raise the Arab sieges and keep them out of Eastern Europe. He doesn't want Muslims on both sides of the Black Sea!

We're not too proud to grab the money and run, even if we do like to pretend to patron the arts as any true emperor should. It's a good sum of money, but disappointingly small somehow.

After sporadic fighting on both sides of the Black Sea nonetheless, we come out pretty successfully for a change. This is why carpet-sieging a country with only a couple of thousand men per province is a bad idea, folks!

We accept white peace from Morocco in May 1367 and the Ottomans, never letting an opportunity go to waste, declare war on us just five weeks later. They have more troops, better technology and better leaders. This is going to be painful...

We ally once more with Armenia and Trebizond. We are unlikely to be able to help them militarily, but we say yes anyway in the vain hope that they will be able to help us instead.

After two years of bloody fighting and the Ottomans besieging our capital no less, they agree to a white peace. Ioannes, never able to do anything in moderation, promptly dies off eight months later at the tender age of 38, having been on the throne for three-quarters of his life. His son, Thomas, is just eleven years and a half years old and thus a regency council is formed to take care of his interests whilst he finishes growing up.

I'm afraid there won't be an update tonight, so the State of the Realm will be tomorrow night instead.

Well, Byzan's game is doing far better, comparatively speaking, and this isn't MMU by any stretch of imagination, but yes, it was very hairy at many points!

* As dated in the Byzantine Creation Era (Annus Mundi), which began in BC 5508 with the formation of the world.