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Danish queens and persons of importance named Marhrethe has a tendency to be great. This particular specimen seems a worthy candidate for the throne indeed.
Great to have this back ;)
 
Excellent! I'm glad to see that this wonderful AAR is back.
 
I enjoyed this a lot, the account appears very lifelike. Margrethe is an interesting character, I wonder what she will do when/if she comes to power (or her son).
 
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'!!
Don't know where I'll be tomorrow...
sorry dude, just couldn't resist
Nice to see you updating, hope it was cathartic and you do it again...soon;)

More should be coming now. It was nice to get something done.

Glad to see you back in business, Salik! I missed this. It was an excellent update. I'm set for a last century of the Gyldenstierne chronicles.

Gyldenstierne? Who said those guys will be in charge? With a nobleman like Gjedde married into the dynasty, who knows what could happen?

Danish queens and persons of importance named Marhrethe has a tendency to be great. This particular specimen seems a worthy candidate for the throne indeed.
Great to have this back ;)

Great to be back. I actually tend to vote for people named Margrethe in elections (two out of four so far), so maybe there is something to that statement

Excellent! I'm glad to see that this wonderful AAR is back.

I'm glad to have it back. Again...

I enjoyed this a lot, the account appears very lifelike. Margrethe is an interesting character, I wonder what she will do when/if she comes to power (or her son).

Well, the son at least is a few years from power, since he hasn't even been born. Thank you for giving me the final push towards writing that chapter
 
I have decided not to continue this AAR, as I simply can't remember the game well enough to do it properly anymore. But I might continue it in AHD, when the converter comes out and works, so I have also written three chapters rounding up the story and covering the last century of the game. Find the first one bellow.
 
Chapter XLIX: A Century of Unrest I
- Margrethe Gyldenstierne and the formation of Scandinavia

Gyldenstjerne.png


Coat of arms of the House of Gyldenstierne

On April 25th, 1721, Harald Danneskiold and Franz Scholten were arrested for usurping royal power and plotting to overthrow the Church of Denmark. The arrest was carried out during a ball at Sorgenfri Castle, and left most of the nobles present thoroughly confused. After all, these two men had been de facto rulers of the country for decades, since the ascension to the throne of Frederik V. Through the queen mother, Margrethe of Great Britain, they had been able to manipulate the tragically deranged king. It was a commonly known fact, that anything being decreed by the king was in fact the will of the former regency council.

Present at the ball was also the statholder of Norway Jørgen Gjedde, on a visit to the capital with his wife, Margrethe Gyldenstierne, the older sister of the king, who wished to be near her mother when she gave birth to their first child. Due to her advanced pregnancy, nobody had taken notice of her absence from the ball. In the next days, the court would learn that during their stay at Sorgenfri, Jørgen Gjedde and Margrethe had orchestrated a coup. While Jørgen Gjedde would go hunting with key courtiers, away from the eyes and ears of the spymaster Scholten, Margrethe had private consultations with the king. During these consultations, Margrethe managed to turn the king against the two men who had dominated his entire existence, and on the fateful night, had him sign the order for their arrest, which was promptly carried out by her husband’s close friend, the captain of the royal guard.

The trial against Scholten and Danneskiold brought shocking testimonies from courtiers who swore to have heard them discussing ways to reinstate the bishop of Rome. A manservant to Danneskiold remembered seing his master with something that could well have been a rosary, and a chambermaid swore that she during a nightly visit, the purpose of which was not disclosed to the court, had seen Scholten wearing a crucifix under his clothes. When a personal letter from Danneskiold to Scholten was displayed, indicating that the king was not within his faculties, and that Danneskiold himself was the only descendant of Harald IV fit to rule, the case was settled. The most chocking implication of the trial, however, was that the queen mother, who had retained her Catholic faith even after the marriage to Frederik IV, was the hidden hand behind this plot. Due to appearances, she was not put on trial, but after the beheading, quartering and drawing of Danneskiold and Scholten, she was exiled to the small island of Tåsinge, where her chalet can still be seen to this day.

Margrethe Gyldenstierne and Jørgen Gjedde took over the reins of government at the same time as Margrethe’s cousing, Henry IX took power in Great Britain. The two cousins would form a strong alliance in the many Central European wars that marred the first half of the 18th century.
In 1726 the North German War between Denmark and Great Britain on one side and the small North German states and Austria on the other resulted in Danish hegemony over Northern Germany and a firm control of every elector in the Northern Empire. Two years later, when the Ottoman Empire tried to reconquer Achea, Denmark was dragged in to a state of war that would last two decades. The twenty years war was a three front war between South German princedoms supported by Austria, France and Spain on one side, Denmark and Great Britain on another and finally the formidable power of the Ottoman Empire on the third. During the war, which in fact consisted of several lesser conflicts, each with their own reasons and temporary conclusions, Central Europe was fragmented into several new states, most notably the five independent duchies that arose from the splitting of the Palatinate, formerly the most powerful entity within the Empire. In the later years of the war, Jørgen Gjedde the younger, son of Margrethe Gyldenstierne and Jørgen Gjedde, marked himself as an extraordinary general, most notably at the second battle of Lublin when he all but annihilated the great Ottoman army of Ahmed IV.

At the end of the 20 years war, the Danish crown had consolidated itself as the undisputed lord of Northern Germany and had acquired several holdings in the Mediterranean, but both France, Austria and the Ottoman Empire had strengthened their positions in the regions bordering the Northern Empire. Furthermore, widespread civil unrest had broken out in the last years of the war. People were tired of being drafted to fight in endless wars, that never seemed to lead to anything, and resentment against the secluded court at Sorgenfri and the implied alliance between the nobility and Jørgen Gjedde grew steadily.

Still, everyone expected Jørgen Gjedde the younger to ascend to the throne upon the death of Frederik V, who had no children. That is, until Valdemar Gyldenstierne, a destitute nobleman of questionable character, arrived in Copenhagen carrying documents proving him to be the son of Vilhelm Gyldenstierne, the younger brother of Frederik IV who had left the country in anger and joined the Austrian armies in fighting the Ottoman Empire during the late 17th century. Having been captured deep in Bulgaria, Vilhelm had been a prisoner of the Sultan until his release in 1705. He had stayed in Constantinople, marrying the daughter of a local Orthodox merchant. Being a direct male descendant of Harald IV made Valdemar’s claim to the throne stronger than that of Jørgen Gjedde, who was descended only through his mother.

Valdemar Gyldenstierne died in 1752, his six year old son Harald was named heir apparent. Frederik V died later that year, and Margrethe and Jørgen Gjedde were soon manoeuvred out of court by nobles disgruntled with the perceived loss of influence in Germany during their regency. They retired to the Gyldenstierne estates in Lund, while Jørgen Gjedde the younger was named statholder in Sweden. A clique of German minded nobles ruled for the young Harald V, while the Scandinavian fraction, based in the lower nobility and commoners plotted the overthrow of what they essentially saw as an usurper regime.

Based in Sweden, the Scandinavian fraction rose in rebellion with Jørgen Gjedde as pretender to the throne. Initially, they were successful, conquering most of Sweden and Scania, but in 1758, the war had come to a stalemate and the rebellious lords negotiated a deal with the crown, in which the government would focus on improving the economy at home rather than playing power games in Germany. The nobility were tired of financing wars with no other goals other than keeping the imperial title within the House of Gyldenstierne, especially since that title was mainly a question of vanity, the real power of which had been eroded. The nobles would step down only if Harald V would renounce the title of Emperor of the North and instead take the title “King of Scandinavians”.

This peace treaty, which symbolically was signed at the old Kalmar Castle is seen as the foundation of the modern Scandinavian nation.
 
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Interesting development, a belated Kalmar. I could see why this is a fitting end for the AAR, what with this - technically - being the end of "Denmark", but I don't want it to end! And is it me or is Denmark, er, Scandinavia, moving closer to noble republic than kingdom?
 
Interesting development, a belated Kalmar. I could see why this is a fitting end for the AAR, what with this - technically - being the end of "Denmark", but I don't want it to end! And is it me or is Denmark, er, Scandinavia, moving closer to noble republic than kingdom?

There will be two more chapters coming up, so the AAR can be updated to 1820. Still some interesting stuff happening. And yes, the nobles are getting more powerful once again, since the court moved out of Copenhagen to Sorgenfri, which is turning into a Versailles of the North
 
Chapter L: A Century of Unrest II
- The Road to Ruin

Gyldenstjerne.png


Coat of arms of the House of Gyldenstierne

With the death of Frederik V, the Imperial Age came to an end. With the internal strife in Denmark, the electors chose George V of Great Britain, the second cousin of Jørgen Gjedde as new emperor of the Northern Empire. It appears that there was an underhand agreement between Gjedde and the British king that the Imperial crown would pass to Denmark again once Gjedde had taken his rightful place as king of the Triple Kingdom. But as we saw in Chapter XLIX, Jørgen Gjedde’s supporters struck a deal with the regency council at Kalmar, and Gjedde went into exile in Great Britain. This also meant the end of the Danish British alliance. During the 1760’s and 70’s, three unsuccessful British supported invasions of the Scandinavian Peninsula were staged to put Gjedde on the throne.


charles.jpg


Jørgen Gjedde, ca. 1765

Meanwhile, Harald V and the court at Sorgenfri was growing tired of the British influence in the Northern Empire, which included most of the Danish duchies on the Baltic Coast and in Northern Germany. So in 1776, in response to the continuing British incursions and in clear disagreement with the isolationist promises made to the nobles at Kalmar, Danish armies crossed into the independent duchy of Cleves. In order to defend the Imperial Crown, Great Britain declared war on Denmark, but, without support from Austria and France, who were busy fighting each other in Northern Italy, was overpowered. In the spring of 1777 Scandinavian forces moved south from the Orkney Islands while 30000 men landed in Kent. By October London had fallen, and the British were forced to cede all their possessions in Vinland and renounce the Imperial crown. With this treaty, the last successor state to the Roman Empire ceased to exist.

Harald V died in 1785, and was replaced by his son Valdemar V. Valdemar did not see himself bound by the Kalmar agreement, and so continued the interventionist policies of his father. In 1787 he conquered Kutch in India and founded the East Indian Trade Company, in 1789 he supported the coup that put Alexander Talbot on the British throne, in the early 1790’s he supported the Louisiana independence movement from Spain in the former Danish colonies around the Mississippi, and fought several wars for control of Swahili against the Ottoman Empire. These activities all demanded a much larger standing army than had been customary, and much like in the 1750’s, the nobility was getting tired of financing it. The drafting of young men to the army bled the countryside dry of people to work the farms, and the supplies needed for the constant warfare was bankrupting the state. In 1795 the Scandinavian Civil War broke out between the crown, primarily supported by North German and Danish nobility, and the Republican Party supported primarily by Swedish and Norwegian nobles, who tried to instate a Noble Republic, like their 16th century namesakes.

The civil war was spurred not only by the traditional conflict between the king and the nobles, but also by the enlightenment. During the 18th century, Scandinavia had been at the centre of a scientific revolution. Steen Bille had published his work on gravity, Niels Steensen had founded Geology after studying sea shells found within rocks in the Norwegian mountains and realizing that the rocks must at one time have been sea floor. The ever growing understanding of the laws of nature led others to question the foundations of society. In The Social Contract of 1788, Johann Herman Wessel argued, that governments are erected not by heavenly inspiration, but by man. Governments were meant to address common problems, and had no authority other than that given to them by the constituents of the body politic. In other words, the King had no authority from God, only from his subjects.

Though the civil war ended with the defeat of the Republican Party, it sowed a seed among the general population. Since the court relocated to Sorgenfri Castle, noblemen had once again taken complete control of the court. Whereas earlier kings of the Gyldenstierne dynasty had chosen to surround themselves with commoners, the court at Sorgenfri was filled with noblemen who idled around, trying to get close to the king. The costs of war, while hurting the nobility economically, meant that living conditions for the poor and the middle class were unacceptable. The nobility could act with impunity, while execution for petty theft was an everyday occurrence for the poor. The agricultural reforms had created a wealthy farmer class, but also left the majority of people living on the brink of starvation. While the nobility lost labour force, the farmers lost sons. It has been estimated that one in five men born in the 1770’s was dead by the end of the civil war in 1799, either in the Ottoman wars or after being drafted to fight their fellow citizens.

In 1805, a widespread famine hit Southern Sweden. As often before, grain was distributed from the more fertile soil of Sjælland and the Baltic Coast, but due to widespread corruption in the administration, scarcity of flour became widespread. It was rumoured that shiploads of wheat had been sold underhand to Dutch merchants, and bread riots broke out in Copenhagen. On the 5th of June, the mob stormed Frederiksborg Castle, which mainly served as offices for lower echelons of the administration, and emerged in jubilation with gilded chandeliers, silverware and other movable property. It was only through the vigilance of unknown bureaucrats that the famous Rosenborg Tapestries, depicting kings going back to the 14th century were saved. They were packed away in a fireplace and taken to the cathedral were they were rediscovered in 1832. On the 7th, two days later, a delegation led by the Lord Major of Copenhagen went by foot to Sorgenfri to petition the king to handle the situation.

Faced with widespread revolt, Valdemar agreed to call in the Joint Rigsdag for the first time in almost 250 years (see Factbox: Rosekrantz and Gyldenstierne), and to relocate the court to Frederiksborg Castle within the walls of the capital. Although this would be far more significant than the chaotic and senseless looting that took place at the storming of the castle, to this day the 5th of June, the Storming of Frederiksborg, is commemorated as the the beginning of the Scandinavian Revolution.
 
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Chapter LI: A Century of Unrest III
- The Scandinavian Revolution

sca.png


Coat of arms of the Republic of Scandinavia

The Joint Rigsdag convened at the Copenhagen City Hall in October 1805. Present were representatives of the three estates, nobility, clergy and burghers. The fourth estate, the farmers, were not represented. The representatives of the nobility, though representing only a small fraction of the population, made up 200 of the 500 representatives.

The goal of the Joint Rigsdag was to frame a constitution that would limit the power of the king and establish a parliamentary system, but already from the first day it became clear that the estates had very diverging ideas about what such a system would entail. While the commoners, mostly represented by rich merchants, wanted voting rights distributed equally among those who “create the wealth of the nation”, that is to say, the wealthy, the nobility were more inclined towards a system that would divide power among the estates. The clergy, being represented by the 30 bishops of the European bishoprics, were leaning towards the view of the nobility. Traditionally, the king’s council had consisted of nobility and clergy, and the commoners should count themselves lucky to be granted access to the council. In reality, of course, the administration had been run by commoners for centuries, while the nobility had wasted away their time at Sorgenfri Castle, and the clergy had been dispersed throughout the kingdom and duchies, but this detail was lost on the leader of the clergy, the archbishop of Copenhagen and most of the nobility.

With a little more than half of the delegates, the third estate could theoretically enforce its demands by voting by a strict party line. This was not lost on the nobility, and the first week of the Joint Rigsdag was spent in futile discussion about whether the delegates had an individual vote or the estates voted en bloc. Since the royal decree had not been explicit about voting procedures, it was impossible for the delegates to even agree on a way to decide the ground rules of the convention. When the delegates convened for the second week, forty members of the third estate, among them Frans Bille, a professor of history from the University of Copenhagen, a renowned enlightenment philosopher and relative of the physicist Steen Bille, found the doors of the meeting hall locked from the inside. To this day, no one knows the real reason for the locked doors, but the members retreated to the steps of the city hall, which led into one of the main market squares of the city and proclaimed to the market goers that the nobility had made a coup against the Joint Rigsdag, and that a new, legitimate convention would meet in the nearby ceremonial hall of the University. This announcement caused a great deal of commotion, which was heard inside the city hall. Several delegates of the first estate got nervous and tried to escape the city hall, but were apprehended by the crowd and beaten. The captain of the royal guard at the nearby Frederiksborg Castle, where the king had been forced to take up residence, sent a platoon to the city hall square to disperse the crowd. In the ensuing battle, five delegates of the Joint Rigsdag, two noblemen and three commoners, were killed, along with an unknown number of ordinary citizens. Soon the word spread throughout the city, that the king and the nobility had tried to break up the convention. Faced with a furious population, the delegates of the higher estates had no choice but to accept the newly convened University Convention as the legitimate framework for making a constitution.

The resulting document established Scandinavia as a republic with Frans Bille elected as its first Consul. The duchies, free cities and colonies were dissolved, and a unified state ruled from Copenhagen was instituted. The convention also issued a set of universal human rights, including the right to life, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of religion. All of these would soon be disbanded, however, as the new republican government found it increasingly hard to govern under the heavy debate that soon raged in all kinds of pamphlets and newspapers. A large part of the population, while opposed to the nobility and clergy, were sympathetic to the king. After being raised with an image of Valdemar V and his father before him as benevolent fathers of the country, many found it difficult to accept that he was disposed by a mere professor. Within three months of his election, Frans Bille was struggling to maintain his authority, and in January of 1806, he was replaced by Valdemar Schlentz, a destitute lawyer, who had risen through the ranks of the revolutionaries by a significant amount of ruthlessness and revolutionary fervor. His first act as Consul was to charge the king, who was being kept under house arrest, with treason. On the 8th of February, Valdemar V, once one of the most powerful men of the Western World, was beheaded as the first in a long stream of noblemen, priests and other supporters of the old regime.

The beheading of the king ignited a wave of outrage throughout Europe, and in June France, Scotland and Austria all declared war to restore the legitimate government of Scandinavia with Valdemar V’s son Christopher as king. The disorganized government found it hard to fight a war while being criticized and satirized by the opposition press, and soon general censorship was instated, as was the assembly of more than five people after sunset. As the administration grew more and more paranoid, even those who had originally been leaders of the revolution, including Frans Bille, found themselves sentenced to death for treason.

Though the war went badly, and more and more of the North German core lands were occupied by French troops, the Scandinavian main land held steady. The navy blockaded French ports and prevented hostile armies from crossing the Belts and taking Copenhagen. In the colonies, patriots invigorated by promises of increased self government, occupied large swaths of French holdings.
Still, the war seemed lost, when Godtfred Due, a corporal born on Gotland and educated at the military academy of Næstved on Sjælland, led an assault on the fort at Rendsborg in Slesvig. This battle, which broke the occupation of Jylland, made him a popular hero. In the following months, he liberated much of Northern Germany, and instigated the mass levy, where common peasants and labourers left their work to fight for the Republic.

By 1819, peace treaties had been signed with France and Austria, and Godtfred Due was elected as Consul for life. In 1820, Poland, who had joined the war against the Republic, was conquered and a republican government was installed. On January 1st 1821, or the 1st of Midvinter, year 1 of the Imperial Calendar, Godtfred Due was crowned as emperor of Scandinavia.



th-01Christian8.png


Godtfred Due and the Empress Consort on the Imperial Thrones after their coronation

The challenging and chaotic “long 18th century” had come to an end, and the prosperous, orderly 1st century could take its beginning.

But that, as the great author Hans Christian Andersen writes, is another story.
 
Finally, you managed to finish it! Congratulations! I'll look out for the V2:AHD part in the coming months.
 
Nooo, the Monarchy!
A fantastic AAR, and good to see its conclusion which is not entirely negative for Denmark. I'm delighted to have been a follower of this. Mister Salik, sir, you have my respect.
 
Finally, you managed to finish it! Congratulations! I'll look out for the V2:AHD part in the coming months.

Yes, and in only three years too. More on the V2-thing below

Nooo, the Monarchy!
A fantastic AAR, and good to see its conclusion which is not entirely negative for Denmark. I'm delighted to have been a follower of this. Mister Salik, sir, you have my respect.

It has been great to have you follow, even to the bitter, delayed end. The monarchy was doomed from the beginning, I planned for the revolution since around 1700.


I would like to thank everyone who followed this- I know that there's probably fewer of you now than there were when this was at his peak. Although the last century became a bit crammed, it's great to have this finished.

When I started writing this AAR three years ago, I was at a very different place in my life.
Since then I've gained one (soon to be two) academic degrees, lived in another country, started a job that I hope to keep for the next several years, had three short stories published in a book which sold incredibly few copies and also wrote fifteen chapters for an online textbook on climate change, which is being used in high schools all over Denmark starting this Fall. Although I tried to keep the history book style, all these changes in my life have affected the way I write and the way I think.

Since 2009, I have expected to continue this AAR into Victoria, later Victoria II, and for quite a while that idea, and looking forward to the revolution, was what kept me going on this AAR. There is a lot of back story, like the scientific revolution, which I was planning to write, but in the end only touched very briefly upon. This might be brought up in the event of a sequel.

Regarding this sequel, I have been playing a few test games in Victoria II with the converted save. I think it might be interesting to write, but I also find the magnitude of the Scandinavian empire a bit overwhelming in Victoria. Usually I like to start small, but maybe this will be a good opportunity to try out a larger nation?

Well, long story short. I am currently considering three projects for my next AAR, which will probably not start before September.

One is a continuation of Gesta Danorum in more or less the same style. I always imagined Gesta to have been written sometime within the late Victoria time frame, so maybe a sequel would be writen in the 50's or 60's?
Another is a continuation of Gesta Danorum, but in a different style. I was thinking of following the lives of four or five people born into different strata of society and in different parts of the empire in 1836.
A third option is doing the narrative style AAR described above, but start from the normal campaign start, again playing as Denmark. This has the advantage of a smaller starting nation and of not having to deal with the overpopulation problem of the converter.

Anyhow, thanks again for following. It has been a pleasure writing this (mostly) and reading your feedback (always). Any suggestions for, or comments on, my upcoming project are more than welcome.
 
An ending which promises more adventure in V2 is awesome. No matter which project you end up doing next, it was fun to follow this one. Congrats on finishing!
 
I very much like your second option, Salik. It sounds like it could be a very good read. Also has the advantage that you can bury the gameplay better then in a history book.
 
An ending which promises more adventure in V2 is awesome. No matter which project you end up doing next, it was fun to follow this one. Congrats on finishing!

Thank you. I am glad you enjoyed it, it has been a fun project.

I very much like your second option, Salik. It sounds like it could be a very good read. Also has the advantage that you can bury the gameplay better then in a history book.

I am tending towards that one as well, I think it would be fun to write and I'm not quite done with this alternate timeline yet. When I get some more time on my hands, I'll try modding Victoria a bit to fit with this timeline.
 
A final update:

A V2 generated map of the world in 1821. Scandinavia is light blue, and apart from Northern Europe and Canada has possessions in East Africa, Northwest India and the Mediterranean. France is by far the leading world power

V2_MAP_SCA_1835121_2.jpg
 
Spain (or Castille, I guess) isn't doing too bad either. The Ottomans are quite a menace too, although they're no doubt quite a bit behind in tech.
 
Spain (or Castille, I guess) isn't doing too bad either. The Ottomans are quite a menace too, although they're no doubt quite a bit behind in tech.

The Ottomans are leading in army tech and not far behind in the others. They are a worthy enemy. Castille are lagging in tech and are a giant on clay feet