Kernius is interesting, but he's converted. How did Gimbutas and the nobles feel about that? Might they rebel again?
Will Byzantium prove itself to be an ally of Lithuania?
Will Byzantium prove itself to be an ally of Lithuania?
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Empire on Wings (Orthodox AAR)
- Thread starter FondMemberofSociety
- Start date
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Let me see if I could fix the images. The map change may be more direct a representation than me saying anything.
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Thank you for fixing. Need not be concubines, even wives will dance with demons. May your family survive the spawn.
Oooh, a demon child! What will she do, I wonder?
Also, how did you have a demon child as a Zoroastrian? Why does your character think that praying to Jesus (who doesn't believe in) is a good thing? Is this just a localization failure?
Also, how did you have a demon child as a Zoroastrian? Why does your character think that praying to Jesus (who doesn't believe in) is a good thing? Is this just a localization failure?
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This is Empire on Wings, mate. You know, the AAR about an Orthodox Lithuania trying to keep the Roman Empire functional.
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I got my AARs mixed up. Whoops!
(In my defense, the one I was thinking of had just been updated and it's set in Poland, which is near Lithuania)
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You know, speaking of demon children and Mazdans, my (extremely lucky) 769 Tabaristan run, the results of which are posted in the strange screenshots thread, my second character, the historical Shervin Bavandid, was rendered comatose and soon died at the hands of an ahistorical demon child produced by his father, the historical Sorkhab Bavandid.
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Redux 5 The King in the North
EOWR5
The King in the North
The King in the North
The date 942 April 12th marks a further notable change in the old history of the Lithuanian land and the new history of the Lithuanian kingdom. To further his links to the Roman Empire, King Romanos of Lithuania managed to arrange for a marriage with Theophano Phokas. While she was quite some age already, Theophano was still likely to bear Romanos an heir, and her prestigious family would work to increase Romanos' standing within the empire.
Or not. Roman aristocracy was group that always despised outsiders, and if not for the fact Romanos was a King, the Phokas family might have just chosen to avoid his messenger instead of considering his proposal. Still, after some bickering back and forth, a Greek woman had become the first Queen of Lithuania. Romanos kindly waived his fellow chiefs of their Royal Aid Duty.
Soon after the ceremony, Romanos, aware his brother Montvilas was about to come of age, declared war on Sakala to secure an appanage for him. While Romanos had no adult children yet, he very much wanted to establish the principle, if not the law, of primogeniture. To secure his brothers' cooperation, he needed something attractive enough as compensation. A fief of their own would, in his opinion, work very well.
(Yes, I still hold Gotland. I will give it out soon enough though.)
Naturally, Lithuania, already quite infamous for its aggressive expansion, immediately triggered a coalition response to its further conquest. However, with the zeal of new converts, the Lithuanian armies prevailed against their more numerous opponents after a brief but bitter war which saw the Land attacked on every side. Romanos, ever the prudent king, generously granted gifts of gold to his tribesmen and fellow chiefs to compensate their losses.
As Lithuania continued to expand aggressively into Polish and Estonian lands, spreading the Gospel by the sword, Constantine the Seventh of the Roman Empire gave a timely boost to Lithuania's finances by funding the construction of a new church, providing regulation - and taxation - to previously wild lands in Bielsk. It was an act the Lithuanian treasury could not afford, but the King of the Greeks was rich. Very rich. So rich Romanos continued to call him the Roman Emperor.
(Constantine, my friend, you are so f-king rich. Please feel free to sponsor me more! Shower me with churches!)
Unlike the scholarly, pious and monogamous Constantine VII however, Romanos still had many concubines, one of the many reasons the Phokas don't like him that much.
One of the many other reasons was that he was Lithuanian.
That was very much beyond the current point. His daughter Laima, borne by his concubine Elzbieta, was ... odd. She was very much disliked at court, and this evoked concern in her elderly father's sickly body. He would very much hope for a calm and stable family, than one constantly disrupted and threatened by a rumored "demon spawn". He prayed to Jesus to deliver an answer, any answer at all.
The zeal Romanos channeled into his prayers soon manifested in a different manner. His desire to further the reach of his faith soon replaced his concern for Laima - for he was sure God will handle demons. Jesus could command demons to leave people and go into pigs - surely the demon in his daughter would be no different?
947 April 3rd was a day that saw Romanos' desktop in a stonewall fort in Vilnius pilled with an overflowing amount of paperwork. After much work from his household retainers and the Greek clergy that participated in government management back in their Roman Empire days, Lithuania finally had a bureaucracy (of sorts) and could now properly call itself a feudal realm! Which meant more settled people, more settlements, more income, and more paperwork to go around for everybody, including the cancer-ridden Romanos who would prefer to hand all the work to his court and council.
The Office of the Skalvian Charter was Montvilas' answer to the northern threat, and like its counterpart the ... screw that, Romanos chucked the island of Gotland into the hands of Grand Mayor Mantvydas and told him to basically to trade as he pleases, with one exception: in return for (quite a lot of) gold, the kingdom will protect him when the Vikings come viking. Naturally, even sans this promise, Grand Mayor Mantvydas was still very pleased with the dramatically changed circumstances of his life. Romanos hopes this means he would support his child-king when the time comes. The old king could now feel Death's cold breath down his creaking neck...
Just as Lithuania was getting a lot more powerful, curious news arrived from the west. The Germanic kingdom of Lotharingia converted Lithuania's not-so-distant neighbor Denmark to the Papist faith. It may mean nothing, or it would mean the Danes' close cousins, the Vikings, would soon follow their lead. Still, entangled in the internal matters of his realm and trying to stay alive in general, Romanos could not give the matter more thought.
Construction is expensive. And like any good administrator, Patriarch Maurikios set about covering the realm's tight budget. After deliberation over the proposals he brought up, the Lithuanian court decided to focus on attracting traders to the new Orthodox realm, with the hopes that they will bring wealth and boost prosperity of the young kingdom's capital.
The Papists, under significant attack from infidels, made a worldwide proclamation that intruded upon mostly inward-looking Lithuania's many channels of outside knowledge. Apparently, the kingdom of West Frankia lost a duchy to the Umayyads of Andalusia and have asked for the Pope's assistance in avenging their loss. Only time would tell what would be made of the Pope's ambitious speech. Most worrisome, though not for Lithuania - with almost every ruler within the realm an Orthodox Christian, surely the land would not be a target for fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
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Not much. Though she would soon cease to be of any great concern ... when other concerns loom into the foreground ...
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The Crusades begin!
Romanos is taking steps to set up a mighty Lithuanian realm...
Romanos is taking steps to set up a mighty Lithuanian realm...
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Redux 6 The Death of King Romanos
EOWR6
The Death of King Romanos
The Death of King Romanos
As sickness and old age set in, Romanos started taking his newfound faith more seriously in the midst of his wars. While campaigning for the lands surrounding Kiev to connect his homelands and Black Sea holdings, Romanos was also piously studying how to be an Orthodox believer under the guidance of Roman priests. As the Savior Himself had said, "Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword."
Words of wisdom, in Romanos' opinion, as his realm stretched ever closer to Odessa.
Of course, to present the image of his family as "civilized", there was more work to be done than the king alone studying Scripture. Always keeping an ear out for news in The City of the World's Desire, Romanos soon learned his godfather the Emperor Constantine, a man give or take fifteen years his junior, had become a widower. Quickly seizing the opportunity, Romanos offered his eldest daughter Pajauta's hand to the Basileus.
Due to the very good relationship between the two men, Constantine agreed. And thus for the first time in history, a Lithuanian appeared in the bedchambers of the Great Palace of Constantinople. Romanos hoped this would increase Lithuania's standing among the commonwealth of Orthodox nations.
While Lithuania's standing as a whole was important, Romanos did not forget the extremely serious issue of securing his own family's succession. The mighty force driving Lithuania's Christianization and feudalization was none other than the mighty Roman Empire, and Romanos would have all other families within the realm remember that very clearly by reaching a formal alliance with the Emperor of the Romans. With his son still a child, it would be invaluable to have such a mighty brother-in-law at his back.
To reduce the threat his younger sons posed to his eldest, Romanos had them fostered separately and given fiefs of their own. Given that lands available for such use were mostly newly conquered territories beyond traditional Lithuanian lands, it gave rise to a curious phenomenon - the preeminent Lithuanian noble house's holdings were mostly outside of Lithuania, scattered from Estonia all the way to Kiev.
As the King's religious education continued, the men of the cloth grew more outspoken, pointing out traits the King displayed that were in their opinion unseemly and inappropriate for a monarch sworn to Christ. Fortunately, Romanos was willing to accept their message and change from his old habits. His graying beard did not fray his temper, instead tempering the haughty attitude he used to have due to becoming the first king of Lithuania.
(I know newly converted rulers are in a tight spot, but all this showering of piety is making me giddy. Conversion to organized faith may be the easiest way to get so much piety within such a short time span.)
Alas, whatever further plans he might have had went to naught. At age 54, after arranging for every possible precaution to shore up the stability of his son's succession, King Romanos the First of Lithuania, who would be remembered as "the Unifier", finally lost his battle against cancer, worrying about his 5-year-old son Kestutis even on his deathbed. A despicable man for most of his life, Romanos made something out of himself in the last decade, and his reign as king, though brief, would prove pivotal in changing the course of Lithuanian history.
Forever.
Hail, King Kestutis the First, King of the Lithuanians, Lettigalians, Prussians, Estonians, and many Poles, Rus, Pechenegs, Overlord of the Baltic Sea, Estonia, Lithuania, Kiev and the mouth of the Dnieper, Blessed by God and of the faith given to the saints! May he live long and prosper!
(I play with my self-made blue Iranosphere mod to better distinguish the Arabic and Iranic regions.)
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Let's hope that Lithuania can stay united.
It seems as if the king was getting some crusading ideas before he died...
It seems as if the king was getting some crusading ideas before he died...
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Nah. Orthodox can only be on receiving side of crusade (sob).
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Ah, the Crusades. Fortunately they won't be a problem, as Christians would never crusade against other Christians. We'll just politely ignore the something like half of all historical Crusades that were exactly that (depending on what you count as a crusade).
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If they became targets of Crusades, they certainly aren't True Christians™!
Jokes aside though, Lithuania currently does not control any lands that pull the AI's Crusade Trigger.
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Redux 7 And so Kestutis' Era Begins
EOWR7
And so Kestutis' Era Begins
And so Kestutis' Era Begins
It may come as a surprise for some, but the very first epoch-making event to happen in King Kestutis' reign had nothing to do with Lithuania. It was not a rebellion of newly-conquered lands, it was not a claimant invasion, but a worldwide proclamation that the Papists were geared towards reclaiming the lost lands in Aquitaine. The loss of the duchy triggered their collective aggression for some reason, with dozens of lords answering the Pope's call. It was all quite a mystery for Lithuania, who may as well be on the other side of the world from the Crusade, so garbled were the messages it received.
As the King was 5 years old, his regents did not care to ask for his consent before chucking a lot of treasury gold on a royal hospital. Their official statements claim they had nothing but the king's interests at heart; that they were mindful of the way old king Romanos passed, and how his pain reduced and life lengthened had there been a royal hospital. But it was rather strange for a king's first expenditures to be on a hospital, and not an army to ward off those eying his throne.
Another wasteful expenditure was the official change of the house name from "Lithua" to "Palemonos", melding Greek-sounding segments into the name of the royal family as part of a greater effort to make the Lithuanians more Roman and thus more prestigious. The change caused significant extra expenditure in cloth and vellum for the royal court, which again raises the question of "why was not the gold used for an army"?
It was not as if King Kestutis would blame his good regent, his uncle Gimbutas. He was such a sweet, sweet five-year-old.
Which also means the king was entirely unaware there were bad elements among his vassals, who would support his eldest sister Pajauta over him in succession. And the fact their forces count even more than the king's men. Such bad news was glossed over in the council reports. Everything was just fine.
Off in Lithuania's vassal realm of Pruthenia, High Chief Piotr seethed quietly. His father was forced to submit to King Romanos under threat of the sword, then he was forced to abandon the faith of his forefathers and learn to live in a realm with different, foreign laws. Enough was enough. His father had not raised him to be a skilled warrior to bow to a five-year-old! The pride and honor and history of House Wilks and Lithuania was at stake, and he shall not fail!
Of course, if Queen Pajauta would give him some lands he desired, it would make his victory extra sweet....
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Well, that sounds like a recipe for a civil war.
Does Piotr want independence or Pajama on the throne?
Does Piotr want independence or Pajama on the throne?
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He wants the Empress of the Roman Empire on the Lithuanian throne and more lands for himself. Naturally, an adult monarch would not tolerate such treason, but Kestutis, as we now know, is five years old.
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