Born to Breed: The Estridsen Lectures

Guess guesses.

Now, the good news is that the 1.04 save game survived the transition to 1.05 apparently unscathed, which means that the AAR won't be stopping in 1137, which was the date of the last savegame when Steam auto-updated my install. (I thought i had turned off auto-updating, but apparently not.).

The bad news is that this is not a new update.

Storey said:

This kid is truly awesome. Now with such splendid characteristics just what is he good for? A boat anchor? Is there any chance he will grow a brain as he ages?

Click to expand...

No brain. But a boat anchor? Now, why didn't I think of that.

Anyhow, that would have been way too easy. There are some brief notes on his further life in the next update, for Bjørn managed to surprise me, rising from an inauspicious beginning to.. Now, well, that would be telling. Let's just say that Mr. Boat Anchor rose to the occasion.

..I've got to steal that boat anchor line for use in the next update, though exactly how it'll fit in with his personal development I'm unsure. Stay tuned.

Welcome back, class.

As you undoubtedly recall, last lecture ended with the interventionist politics of Harald III Estridsen's leading to his untimely demise in an undignified squabble in the provinces, leaving the throne to his younger brother, who took the throne as Erik I.

Now, Erik was the sort of person many of you aspire to be: He was a hedonist through and through. He had the best of your virtues, being strong, just, and kind and his fair share of your vices, being craven and a bastard.

He was also rather stupid and relied heavily upon the advice of his significantly smarter wife, Jutta of Ceklis. They were both 28 years old when he took the throne in 1084 and they had four young children. Despite this Erik had a reputation for chastity, which rather does make one wonder exactly what was required for a reputation of chastity in those days. The prevailing theory is that he was measured against his father and found wanting, so to speak.



Now, succeeding to the throne in the immediate aftermath of the conquest of England was to prove a significant challenge. The English lords, who had only barely been broken by Harald III, saw the death of their conqueror as the sign for a general rising.

The first to rebel was duke Eadwin I of Lancaster, who launched his rebellion scant days after the death of Harald reached England. With only the few Danish counts in England contributing significant levies, reinforcements had to be dispacthed from Denmark and the Baltic provinces.



Noticing how slow Erik was at crushing Lancaster's rebellion, the duke of Kent rose in rebellion during 1084. Lancaster's rebellion was finally crushed in november 1084, but the repercussions from that rebellion were to trigger the rebellion of the duchess of York in 1085.

So it goes. With fire and sword Erik I showed the remaining Saxon nobility of England that while he might be personally craven, when it came to ordering the law enforced, he was strict indeed, and his celebrated kindness didn't extend to his enemies.

Sensing weakness, the Pope seized the opportunity of the rebellions to raise the question of free investiture with the new king. He'd been bothering king Harald about it for years, insisting that the right to appoint bishops belonged solely in Rome, but Harald had rudely refused him. Erik approached the situation with considerably more diplomatic tact, choosing to bribe the Pope to leave things alone for now.


The next few years saw no great deeds done, no great injustices righted, no rebellions, and no new taxes. In other words, life was good. With peace reigning across the land, king Erik spent most of his time on hunting and overseeing the major development of his crown lands.

Meanwhile, a new generation of Estridsens were reaching maturity. In Italy Erik's half-brother Peter, the son of Svend by Mathilda of Tuscany, celebrated his 16 years birthday in 1085 with great style despite his mother languishing in the emperor's prison... and died of unusually severe stomach cramps shortly afterwards, leaving his younger brother, Ulf, the named successor. When Mathilda died of natural causes in prison in 1086, the then 15 year old Ulf inherited his mother's lands and took his rightful place as duke – and the hope of the Estridsen dynasty for maintaining nice summer estates in Italy.



A conscientious family man, king Erik saw to it that his nephews and nieces were treated with the respect deserved by the princes and princesses of Denmark and they were given tasks commensurate with their abilities.

As an example, consider Harald's son Bjørn, who had been put to foster with the bishop of Bath and Wells. Destined for the church at an early age since the lord loves the afflicted even if nobody else does, the boy whose intelligence had once been compared unfavourably to that of a boat anchor, which at least knew which way was down, finished his education as a mastermind theologian. A simple man, he was content, as honest as the day is long, a craven, and a moron of the highest order in all matters but the faith.

When he came of age he went to Erik and petitioned to be married as a means of clarifying certain issues with regards to the proper use of womankind that had arisen from his studies of scripture, but Erik informed him that marriage was out of the question, as he was destined to be a great scholar of the church, to follow the straight and narrow, the long, hard road of piety that leads to the gates of heaven themselves and possible sainthood beyond, and, ideally, to spend his life safe from all danger as a bishop, as soon as one of the better bishoprics lost its current holder.

With the same tact, he solved the marital problems of his niece Gudrun, daughter of Harald and sister to Bjørn, whose beauty was proverbial.

Her major marital problem was the lack of a marriage. Despite a steady stream of young noble suitors, she had rejected every single one of them. Some were too short, some too tall. Some too powerful, some too weak. And none of them could match her sparring in riddles or word-play. With every suitor she diplomatically found fault and, she confided to her uncle the king, for somebody who had seen Svend's sons in their full glory and dread power, who else could really compare? She most certainly wanted to be married, in fact, she could hardly wait to wed and bed a worthy man, but she'd rather take vows and enter a nunnery with her favourite ladies in waiting than wed an unworthy man.

Now, this sorely vexed king Erik, and as the years went by and the line of suitors diminished, he took counsel with queen Jutta, who saw clearly, and Halvor of Slupsk, the wisest man in Denmark, and together they laid a plan to get Gudrun married, this being her 24th year of age.

Thus the invasion of Samogita, which came as a complete surprise to the Danish and English nobility, that had been lulled into complacency by the peaceful years following the English rebellions. Now they were faced with a king that required the immediate conquest of Samogitia, promising new land to the most courageous, regardless of nationality or rank, and idle hands were quick to grasp swords in the quest for glory and booty.

The war was swift and exceptionally bloody and those that distinguished themselves were brought to court in Ringsted to be rewarded by the king. Amongst those so honoured were Mads of Ventava, an old man of the lower nobility who had shown conspicious prowess during the war. He was just, zealous, an acknowledged genius, and a friend of Halvor of Slupsk.

He dazzled the court, yet refused the honours offered him, on the grounds that he was an old man, his wife of many years dead, his otherwise robust health in decline, and with half his foot in the grave already it was surely no time to start taking on new responsibilities at his age. He might have been an ambitious man in his youth, but with age and wisdom he had realized that serving his lord was enough. He attached himself as an elder retainer to the circle attending princess Gudrun, serving her witty commentary on the young bucks trying to impress her, making clever discourse and giving good advice.

When at the end of the celebrations Gudrun announced to her uncle, the king, that she desired to marry Mads, be he a lowly courtier or not, he took some convincing. To every objection he could raise, Gudrun had an answer ready, and Jutta took her side. And at year's end princess Gudrun and Mads of Ventava were married in a matrilineal marriage, Mads was made count in Memel in Samogitia, and Gudrun brought several of her favourite ladies in waiting and their families with her, to establish a proper Danish aristocracy in the new lands.

Thus did Gudrun by her own will and clever tongue win the husband of her choice with the grudging admission of her uncle, the king, and a more complementary match of opposites was seldom seen.



Spiteful tongues wagged that she had married an ancient to enjoy early widowhood far from court, but, if so, she was to be severely disappointed, for Mads' health improved in Samogitia, possibly from sleeping in a warm bed and enjoying lively discourse with his young wife, and from that fortunate union was born the line of counts of Memel and later dukes of Samogitia. Gudrun went on to bear him three sons and a daughter before dying in February 1108 at the age of 40. Stricken with grief, Mads survived her by half a year before dying in November 1108, being then 73 years old.

It was in the wake of the marriage, come spring 1093, that Bjørn, being then 17 years of age, came to his uncle, the king, and informed him that he had secretly married a 16 year older Lettigalian peasant girl. The king was not amused. Let me quote from the famous play, “The Prince and the Peasant”, which is part of Danish traditional culture and, as such, probably unknown to those who have attended the modern school, which prides itself on ignorance of the past:


Erik: What ho, I spot young boat anchor! How are you, my boy?

Bjørn: I am fine, Uncle. I have been travelling to broaden my mind. The weather was nice, the food awful, and by divine intervention I married a Lettigalian peasant girl.

Erik: Good for you, broadening your mind is... Are you out of your mind, boat anchor? Didn't I explicitly tell you that marriage was out of the question?

Bjørn: Uncle, I was but merely following your orders!

Erik: This had better be good...

Bjørn: You told me that I was to follow the golden road to heaven.

Erik: Yes.

Bjørn: And I have found it.

Erik: Explain. Details, please.

Bjørn: While passing through the Lettigalian countryside on a cold and stormy night, I came upon a female peasant of the opposite sex, who had been herding geese.

Erik: A goose girl.. It gets better and better.

Bjørn: She was a tiny thing and clothed in her poverty, being one of the poor, who shall inherit the earth.

Erik: Clothed in poverty? What does that mean?

Bjørn: In fact, she had lost most of her clothes, which had been eaten by a bear. Or perhaps it was a duck from Tver? Her accent is rather hard to understand. No, I'm pretty sure she said a bear from Rus. Some foreign animal had made away with her clothes, at any rate. And her geese. But despite being underclothed, she was modesty itself.

Erik: How so?

Bjørn: She covered herself with several leaves, just as Eve did in my illustrated bible. Well, two leaves at least, the rest had gone with the wind, but she clutched the two remaining leaves, holding them over her head and covered her hair very artfully. Come to think of it, I guess it would be more accurate to say she was a naked ex-goose girl, being as she was unencumbered by geese and clothes, but spiritually being clothed is a state of mind, and surely you must agree that her modesty was exemplary, as she covered her hair to avoid temptation.

Erik: It was RAINING, Bjørn. You just said so. Think about it.

Bjørn: I did! It was raining and cold, so naturally I offered her the use of my clothes, as a good christian should, and she accepted. So I quickly took off my clothes and she put them on, but there was just one problem...

Erik: I SHOULD VERY WELL THINK SO!

Bjørn: Yes, I see you are as aghast as I was, and I wish I had seen it earlier. Now I was the one, who was nearly naked, and it was her christian duty to share her clothes with me, but if we stayed there swapping clothes, we'd be stuck forever. Fortunately, I am a trained logician of the highest order and immediately saw the solution!

Erik: I can hardly wait, dunder-headed nephew of mine.

Bjørn: We'd wear half each. No sooner thought, than done. Since my shirt was rather narrow for her chest on account of the females of the opposite sex having larger breasts, while my breeches were too large for her, I ripped my shirt off her, leaving her wearing only my breeches. She became strangely agitated for some reason, presumably because she lost her leaves due to the rapidity of my motion and an attempt to hold up my breeches, which were threatening to drop to her ankles, but settled down as I put on my shirt.

Erik: Presumably you are getting to the point? You know, the part about following my orders and not marrying?

Bjørn: Yes, dear uncle. To share the heat most effectively, I made a fire and we sat down down together close by, leaning on my horse. She was half asleep, the dear, and so was I, so to ensure that she not fall prey to the cold while sleeping, I lifted her up and set her in my lap, that we might share the heat of our bodies while sleeping.

Erik: The point, Bjørn!

Bjørn: Yes, we are nearly there. If you were better versed in ecclesiastical matters, I'm sure you'd have seen it already, but be that as it may. She was resting in my lap when we both felt something move, something long and hard, threatening to throw her aside.

Erik: I don't believe it. Did you invent this farcical tale just to entertain me with a dick-joke, Nephew? If so, I am not amused. Err, you do know what the dick is for, right? Explain yourself. NOW!

Bjørn: It is no joke, uncle. I know very well what the dick is for and I am but telling the truth. Why, the good bishop of Bath and Wells made sure I knew the essentials: pissing and blowing. Of course, being a confirmed lunatic and an Englishman to boot he had rather strange ideas and insisted it was the Horn of Gabriel, despite no amount of blowing making it sound, but my dear Viba, for such is the name of my beloved bride, put me straight.

Erik: I am not hearing this. Guards. GUARDS!

Bjørn: I asked her whether she wanted to blow the Horn now it was rising in glory, and she refused. She slowly turned around, took the Horn in hand, and explained to me that it was no Horn, but the Key to the Gates of Heaven themselves. This came as some surprise to me, as I am sure you can well understand, but as I thought on your words, uncle, I saw that they made sense: I had the Key all along and it would guide me. I thanked her, explained my great destiny to her, and asked her to let go of my Key, that I might follow it to the Gates. It was pointing east-north-east at the time. Can you imagine that she laughed at me at that point?

Erik: YES! Now, where are those lousy guards!

Bjørn: Of course, she laughed at my ignorance, being as wise as she is good. The Gates of Heaven, she asked? Why, she knew well their very location, being intimately acquainted with them, and to prove it and reward my search, she'd lead the Key to them that it might unlock them. And so she did. None of us froze that night, revelling in the blazing glory of divine grace and performing sacred rituals till sunrise, and the next day we went to her village where I explained what had happened to the village priest, and he, choking with tears of joy at my good fortune, pronounced us man and wife.

Erik: GUARDS! GUARDS! Oh, what the hell. They have probably been eavesdropping and are too busy dying of laughter to attend me. Why do I even try...

Bjørn: So as you can see, dear uncle, meeting Viba was my destiny, and I have complied with your instructions in every single way.

Erik: Save not getting married. In case that slipped your mind. Forget it. Now, I'd be the last to blame you for tumbling a peasant girl, after all, who hasn't? Good sport if you can catch them. What am I talking about? Girl? She's twice your age! Either way, marriage and that absurd tale, you are taking it to extremes and turning the world upside down! My poor head hurts...

Bjørn: I will pray for you, uncle.

Erik: It has come to this: Who am I to fight destiny? I see now, dear boat anchor, that while your big fat head may be as empty as the cathedral during happy hour at the castle, you are indeed an Estridsen: You were born to breed. Congratulations and now GET OUT OF MY SIGHT. And that goes for both you and peasant girl you rode in on.

Bjørn: It wasn't so much riding as pogo-stick-jumping.

[Exeunt omnes]



Stop making crude gestures at Beate and Sigrid, morningSIDEr and Nikolai. They aren't amusing.




While these family dramas were going on, the greater world saw momentous events taking place. In the heretic orthodox east, one man rose to a greatness previously unseen in that part of the world, as Iziaslav I, after defeating most of the competing factions, named himself Tsar of ALL the Russians and prepared himself for the invasion of Rostov and the creation of a new empire. For a moment the world held its breath, only to release it with gratitude when the Rostovian invasion failed, Izaslav died, and his sons and vassals fell to fighting over the remains of his realm. The threat from the east was finished – for now. But in 1094, it was very real indeed.



In Poland the war between Boleslaw the Bold and the Lithuanians went on and Erik sent a few troops along to aid his kinsmen.

Meanwhile in Rome, pope Hyginus II was brooding on his struggle against the emperor, the rising might of the saracens in Iberia and elsewhere, and the increasing number of kings allowing free investiture. And he brooded till his head was sore, but from this brooding arose a plan. A most cunning plan. A plan for...



The domestic joys of spending unlimited time with his family having paled, Erik I was one of the first to answer the Holy Father's call.


Class dismissed.

J. Passepartout - Your imagination is deficient and fails to grasp the true horror that would be an invasion of Danes loudly singing the current national anthem as they go into battle. Wagner just doesn't cut it.

Andrzej I - Good to hear you appreciate the AAR; You'll need a bit of patience on the updates as I am a slow updater.

Qorten - And a classic dick joke, at that! Somewhat modified to fit the CK universe, admittedly, but even so.

Stuyvesant - Ah, yes, "My Inevitable Greatness". The AAR I ended up putting on indefinite hold because keeping up that level of puerile writing was just too much for me in the end. If you really think this latest update outdoes the adventures of Khünbish Jalair in that respect, I had better write a couple of more conventional updates over the next two weeks to avoid writing myself into that particular corner again.

Saithis - They looked lost because they were high on controlled (and uncontrolled) substances, binge drinking, sleep deprivation, and overindulgence in orgies - you know, the things that makes up most of the "student" experience these days. The only wonder is that you didn't. Perchance you have been ill? That would certainly explain your missing the early lectures, which I would definitely have noted and marked in my big black book, did merit still influence grading. Which it doesn't, so I haven't, and nobody can prove otherwise. Anybody receiving less that top marks in this course, perish the thought that there be any such unfortunate souls, can rest assured that it'll be for reasons that can't be traced to merit.