So as you probably picked up from my post a few months back about the baronies of the Middle East, I've been working on a mod that heavily revamps the Levant and tries to make the borders a bit more historically accurate...and I just implemented something that I thought I should share here as it might be useful in Vanilla, too.
Short version? I think it might be worth redrawing the overall Syria region and turning k_syria into the 'Kingdom of Damascus', and k_antioch into the 'Kingdom of Syria', which can be formed by anybody. Why? Because it'd allow the de jure borders to correspond with BOTH the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem AND the Abbasid territorial divisions that existed in the preceding centuries (which ARE in the game in the 769 and 936 start dates, but they won't keep to these shapes for long because of how different they are).
For context, here's a map of what those divisions looked like;
As you can see, some of these areas sort of line up with existing duchies; 'Filastin' is just Ascalon and Jerusalem, 'Al-Urdunn' is Galilee, 'Qinnasrin' is a slightly different shaped Aleppo, 'al-Thughur' is Cilicia and Antioch, and 'Hims' could easily be created with Palmyra...but the Kingdoms don't all neatly group these areas together; for instance, 'Dimashq' is divided between Syria and Arabia, while 'al-Thughur' is split between Anatolia and Syria. To make things worse, the states we're seeing here weren't hereditary ones, and should be depicted in-game as Viceroyalties, so the second one of them dies, these borders will vanish and get replaced by rigid Crusader-era borders.
...however, I think I have the solution. A 'Kingdom of Damascus' going from Tripoli to Arabia (the duchy, perhaps given a new name to prevent confusion...and perhaps the borders could be adjusted to include a bit of the Negev, since the Crusaders didn't secure this area until a decade after) would allow the territory seen above to be replicated without clashing with the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, and then a separate 'Kingdom of Syria' covering the territories to the north (including Cilicia, which would fit with the large number of times the place has been grouped with Syria) would allow the Abbasid to appoint a Viceroy in Damascus without them suddenly becoming the Lord of the entire Levant...and to top it off, with this setup, ALL of the Kingdoms in this area would end up with roughly the same number of provinces, making it nice and balanced.
To top it off, if you wanted, you could also group all of these with the Kingdom of Mesopotamia and Egypt to create a 'Empire of the Mashriq/Levant' (allowing rulers in the area to form a blob that's not just e_arabia...either it's a triumphant grouping of all attempted crusader states, or a reforged 'Diocese of the Orient' for Byzantines, or it's a new title for a resurgent Egypt blobbing into the Middle East...point is, it'd suit a number of different states), but I suppose that part's not crucial.
Short version? I think it might be worth redrawing the overall Syria region and turning k_syria into the 'Kingdom of Damascus', and k_antioch into the 'Kingdom of Syria', which can be formed by anybody. Why? Because it'd allow the de jure borders to correspond with BOTH the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem AND the Abbasid territorial divisions that existed in the preceding centuries (which ARE in the game in the 769 and 936 start dates, but they won't keep to these shapes for long because of how different they are).
For context, here's a map of what those divisions looked like;
As you can see, some of these areas sort of line up with existing duchies; 'Filastin' is just Ascalon and Jerusalem, 'Al-Urdunn' is Galilee, 'Qinnasrin' is a slightly different shaped Aleppo, 'al-Thughur' is Cilicia and Antioch, and 'Hims' could easily be created with Palmyra...but the Kingdoms don't all neatly group these areas together; for instance, 'Dimashq' is divided between Syria and Arabia, while 'al-Thughur' is split between Anatolia and Syria. To make things worse, the states we're seeing here weren't hereditary ones, and should be depicted in-game as Viceroyalties, so the second one of them dies, these borders will vanish and get replaced by rigid Crusader-era borders.
...however, I think I have the solution. A 'Kingdom of Damascus' going from Tripoli to Arabia (the duchy, perhaps given a new name to prevent confusion...and perhaps the borders could be adjusted to include a bit of the Negev, since the Crusaders didn't secure this area until a decade after) would allow the territory seen above to be replicated without clashing with the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, and then a separate 'Kingdom of Syria' covering the territories to the north (including Cilicia, which would fit with the large number of times the place has been grouped with Syria) would allow the Abbasid to appoint a Viceroy in Damascus without them suddenly becoming the Lord of the entire Levant...and to top it off, with this setup, ALL of the Kingdoms in this area would end up with roughly the same number of provinces, making it nice and balanced.
To top it off, if you wanted, you could also group all of these with the Kingdom of Mesopotamia and Egypt to create a 'Empire of the Mashriq/Levant' (allowing rulers in the area to form a blob that's not just e_arabia...either it's a triumphant grouping of all attempted crusader states, or a reforged 'Diocese of the Orient' for Byzantines, or it's a new title for a resurgent Egypt blobbing into the Middle East...point is, it'd suit a number of different states), but I suppose that part's not crucial.
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