The family tree gets some crazy branches

I have the option to go Norse Culture, but I'm not sure what benefit that would be.

Another forgotten branch of the family, this one overlooked because he was already landed.



King of Apulia.

...

Well...was King of Apulia. I was his sole ally and in a regency, but there was never any doubt how this would turn out.

His grandfather turned out to be the Duke of Longobardia, whom I snatched up in an alliance four generations ago.



Looking back, I'm shocked I managed to get a Duke to matrallinially marry, but I wonder if he was already possessed at that time?

My first dynastic Pope.

But what's striking about this fellow is his history.


You'll note his father and siblings. He was the middle child, not destined for any real greatness, but for some reason (*cough*landedheir*cough*) took up the calling of a Spymaster. While his grandfather was the mighty Lion of Ireland, his father died just shy of Simplicius' 15th Birthday of Pneumonia he contracted on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem (He made it home, but was destined to die shortly afterward).

This lead his eldest Brother to assume the Thrones of Ireland and Wales (Which were united in their father's body with the passing of both parents). The eldest - Ardgar, whom later histories would proclaim "the Great" and birth the nation of England - was ill fit as ruler. Given over to a lifestyle of decadence and folly, when Simplicius came of age he found his brother's trap waiting for him.

Ardgar, who at this point in his life knew only his own weaknesses and none of his strengths, feared his middle brother. Simplicius' youth was filled with anger and ambition, and his chosen profession meant Ardgar immediately cast Simplicius away, married matrillineally to the ruling house of the nation of Burgundy, the Karlings (Who once were the premiere family in Europe but had subsequently been relegated to their tiny realm, pressed by the de Norwich clans of France and Aquitaine and the Chatenois of the Holy Roman Empire). As Simplicius would later recount, his eldest brother at least never tried to deceive him. The marriage to the Karlings was more a boon for them then his own family.

While later histories chronicle Ardgar's remorse over this action later in life (mostly by those chroniclers who interviewed Ardgar the Great in his enfeebled later years. It is to note however that Ardgar the Great's tragic mental decline only happened in the last year of his life. Up to that point, only his body - his ill suited body that his spirit demanded much of during the Crusade to rid the Isles of the Norse barbarians - had failed him), the ruler of the newfound England never bothered to communicate with his cast away brother in any fashion. Indeed, if there is tragedy to this tale, it is that Ardgar's family relations all deteriorated. His youngest brother (And their father's favorite) died during the Crusade, and Ardgar and his other brother Saxson had such a falling out after the completion of the Crusade (Saxson felt the new nation of England folly, and urged his brother to return to their historical seat of power in Ireland) that Saxson's final years were spent in Ardgar's dungeon after a failed coup.

In this way, Simplicius' exile was in itself a blessing. He gave the Karlings a son as was dutiful, but used his skills to persue perhaps a different path to power. He became a Prince-Bishop and somewhere along the way, found a true calling at last as his ambitious ways left him entirely. His piety is what eventually lead him to ascend to the Throne of Peter, and his devotion inspired his son to seek his fortunes in the Knights of Calavatra, where he became Grandmaster himself.

Some have speculated this was Simplicius' masterstroke to the family that aided in his own exile. Denied the opportunity to pass on his own lineage, he helped shape matters in that his unwilling branch of the Karling tree would bear them nothing else in return. Two flare bright candles of Father and Son, and when called home once more, leaving nary but the smoke of memory in their wake.