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Now the scene is set, I'm well up for venturing into the EUIV timeframe. Looking good Tommy! :)
 
Loooking good indeed!;) I'm very exited for the first EU4 update!
 
I'm glad to see this continue!
 
I look forward to seeing how this plays out.
 
Best of luck.
 
The World in 1444


By 1444 the Western world was beginning to recover from the horrors of the Black Death, and was moving slowly towards a new era.

British Isles

The British Isles are divided amongst three Kingdoms – Scotland, the most powerful, in the North, Ireland, the most connected with the rest of Europe since the ascension of a Karling to the throne in 1430, in the West and England, traditionally the weakest and most divided, in the South. All three have immense potential to advance beyond their present status as European ‘middleweights’.

Spain and Gaul

The ancient regions of Spain and Gaul are divided amongst numerous realms of varying size. The Gallic Kingdoms of France, in the North, and Aquitaine, in the South, are amongst the most powerful in Christendom and even the Alpine realm of Burgundy is a genuine regional force whilst in Spain the situation is far more chaotic. In the extreme South and in the Northwest the foreign powers of Ireland and Aquitaine maintain control over substantial amounts of Spanish territory with the rest of the region controlled by a myriad of warlords. Ruling from Valencia and controlling territory deep into the Spanish interior, the Knights of Caltarava are the descendants of a 10th century Holy Order that played a highly important role in forcing the Moors from Spain and has been a regional player ever since. Further South, Navarre controls a strip of land stretching from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, as well as parts of Galicia. Towards the Pyrenees, Castile and Aragon cling to the mountains. Meanwhile, just across the straits of Gibraltar, Mauretania, a Kingdom with an unquestionably Spanish heritage having been formed by Spanish invaders during the High Middle Ages, presents itself as arguably the most unified, coherent and powerful of the Spanish Kingdoms.

Germany and the Low Countries


The collapse of the MacDrostan Empire at the beginning of the century severely destabilised the former Holy Roman Empire. By 1444 the Empire was largely based upon the Rhenish based ‘Kingdom of Germany’ with, perplexingly, a series of petty princlets and city states holding an iron grip over the Imperial succession through the elective system that was instituted during the collapse of the MacDrostans. Elsewhere, the Kingdom of Bavaria and Bohemia, never a part of the MacDrostan Empire, took full advantage of the turmoil in the Empire to seize control over most of Southern Germany and advance its presence in the North. At the same time, both Lotharingia and Frisia broke free to form fully independent Kingdoms.

Italy

Italy is controlled by a mixture of territories administered by foreign rulers, like Jerusalem controlled Lombardy, French Tuscany and Byzantine Sicily, Calabria and Campania, and a series of small, native, principalities. No power is even close to truly dominating the historic peninsula.

Central and Eastern Europe and Scandinavia

North of the Byzantine Empire, East of Germany and West of the Pagan realms, there exist a large number of relatively unified and reasonably powerful Kingdoms. In the North, Scandinavia is split between the Danes and Swedes, who between them conquered and Christianised the Norse Pagan strong hold of Norway earlier in the Middle Ages before turning on one another in an endless contest for regional dominance. In the Baltic the three successor Kingdoms to the MacDrostan Empire in the region – Pomerania, Lithuania and especially Poland – all maintain an intriguing melting pot culture with major inheritances from the ethnically Scottish elites that still rule in the region. Since the MacDrostan era, Baltic trade has flourished – with a Scots speaking, but mostly Baltic born, mercantile elite holding an iron grip over Northern European trade. Further South, Hungary and Bulgaria sit precariously on the borders of the Byzantine Empire – both having broken free from the Empire within the past century.

Byantium and Jerusalem

The Byzantine Empire went through a period of extreme turmoil during the 14th century, but by 1444 appears to be on the up again. Just a couple of decades before the MacDrostans rose to power in Germany, the Byzantine and Holy Roman Empires were ruled together from the Western capital of Breda. Although this union was short lived, it left a lasting imprint upon the region as the religious union between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches held far more successfully than the political union between the two Empires. After a long period of chaos and Civil War, the Byzantine Empire is now a the greatest power in the Christian world, with a solidly uniform religion that can best be described as ‘Catholicism with Greek characteristics’.

To the South East, the Kingdom of Jerusalem endures as one of the Middle East’s most powerful realms. Centuries of conversion efforts and settlement mean that the Levant has a vast Christian population amongst both the dominant European descended settler cast and a large part of the native Arab population. Interestingly, the Kingdom’s elite speaks a strange mixture of Latin and Scots, making it another part of the ‘Scottosphere’ which includes much of the Baltic, British Isles and Low Countries.

The Muslim World


The Middle Ages saw a series of catastrophic reverses for the Islamic faith. Handicapped by divisions between Sunni and Shia and a growing inward looking backwardness during the latter part of the period, the Islamic world saw Spain, Morocco and the Levant fall from its grasp, even as advances were made in East Africa, India and the Steppe. During the Late Middle Ages the Muslim world found it increasingly difficult to produce unified realms capable of resisting and even defeating the Christian powers, whilst the destruction wrought by successive Mongol and Timurid invasions of the Middle East set the region back by centuries.

The Pagan World

Despite the best efforts of the Pope and their MacDrostan Imperial allies, Paganism remains alive and well into the mid-15th century in the region between the Timurid Empire and Christendom. Despite briefly being ruled by a Christian King, Finland soon relapsed into Paganism following a Civil War at the end of the 14th century, making it, along with the Rus Kingdom and the Kiev based Ilkhanate, one of three powerful Pagan realms. Having resisted efforts to impose both Islam and Christianity for centuries, the Pagan lands of Eastern Europe appear almost impenetrable.


The single, unified, Christian Church totally dominates the Western World. However, dissatisfaction with its corruption and theological conservatism is a growing force across Europe and especially in Scotland, with its long heritage of religious dissent.


The cultural makeup of the British Isles goes some way in explaining the region’s balance of power. The Isle of Ireland enjoys a great deal of cultural uniformity, enhancing the Kingdom’s stability. The Scots Kingdom is relatively uniform as well, although there are important minorities in the Nordic Islands of Shetland and Iceland, in Northumbria, where a form of English colloquially known as Geordie predominates over Scots, and in the border lands with England where both Anglo-Castillian and ‘Old English’ minorities persist. England, on the other hand, hold a cluster of different languages, cultures and peoples. In East Anglia, just as in the Scottish ruled areas of the Midlands, the Anglo-Castillians are fiercely independent and speak a mixed English-Spanish language. In the South-West the ‘Cornish’, in reality an Irish dialect with little connection with the pre-Irish population of the region, is widely spoken – a legacy of centuries of Irish influence in the region. Across the rest of the Kingdom dialects differ to such a degree that the people of Kent would find it impossible to understand those in London, with Englishmen from England equally unable to comprehend those in Oxford. The linguistic division here is often simplified as one between ‘Old English’ and ‘New English’, but in truth the situation is far more complex and difficult to understand. With an elite that tends to communicate in either Latin or Scots and a population lacking in any homogeneity, the Kingdom of England has found it extremely difficult simply to maintain a degree of unity within its own borders, never mind project power beyond them.
 
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Interesting that the knights of caltrava managed to get landed in Spain.
 
Those borders aren't too bad, I suppose... :D

Ready and excited for the first proper update!
 
Those Timurids!
 
The borders look decent, aside from that green snake in Eastern Europe and the HRE.

I'll eagerly await to see what Scotland will encounter in the EU4 period! Probably some sort of French Revolution thing, but that would be too obvious of a twist for you:D.
 
The Reformation should be interesting, with Morocco, Byzantium, and the Levant added to the Catholic territory!
Definitely interested to see how that goes. I expect Scotland to go Protestant or Reformed.
 
I agree, religion and the Reformation is one of the things I'm mostly looking forward to seeing Tommy tackle. Wasn't a lot of it in the Egypto-Norse AAR as there isn't an Orthodox Reformation.
 
Oh God those cultural borders... I hope Scotland will have a very large wellspring of diplomatic points to tap into over the coming years. (BTW what culture is Iceland?)