Lords of the Ocean Sea: A Castillian AAR, 1399-1820

[RedRooster81]

Prologue: The Royal Notary, Old Paper, and New Lies

Please do come in, milady. No, it is not a bad time. I could use a break from writing. Our Lord and Emperor (God Preserve Him Many Years) has commissioned a general history of the House of Trastamara from the year 1399 to the present year, and of course the task has fallen on me. Have you forgotten my name already. I am Enrique de Lara, court notary to His Most Catholic Majesty, Carlos IV de Trastamara, Emperor of All Spain, King of Castille Old and New, of Leon, of Galicia, of Aragon, of Navarra, of Valencia, Granada, of Portugal, of the Algarve, of Mauretania, of New Spain, of Royal Peru, of La Plata, of New Granada, Lord of the Isles of the Ocean Sea, Defender of the Faith (by the Grace of God), Prince of Toledo, well I think that is enough titles for now. I do have to write all of them at least a dozen times a day. Praise be to Our Lord and Savior that the laws of the realm all for notaries to charge by the page!

I suppose you want to hear about the first chapter. Well, for some reason His Catholic Majesty Don Carlos wanted me to start with his ancestor Enrique III (who is with God in Glory). I would have started a bit earlier, but I do as my master bids me. Now, Enrique III was born in 1379 to Juan I and his consort Leonor of Aragon. He took the throne himself in 1390, with his wife Catherine of Lancaster as his consort.

By 1399, the King and Queen remained childless, so it was a bit of a problem. Now, Don Enrique by this point still harbored the old dream of uniting the Peninsula under one monarch. By generations of marriage, he was related to the Kings of Portugal and Aragon, so he thought it wise to set his sights on uniting with his cousins on those thrones. The only problem was that neither Joao I of Portugal nor Marti I of Aragon saw things his way and both refused to recognize Don Enrique's very cogent arguments to be overlord of all the Peninsula. His advisers, meanwhile, pushed him to finish the Reconquista begun centuries earlier and drive the Muslim rulers of the Kingdom of Granada into the sea. And so Don Enrique hatched a plan to build up his military, with the stated goal, encapsulated in the Royal Pragmatic on the Conquest of Granada, given at Valladolid on March 4, 1400--I have a copy right here if you want to see it--calling for the conquest of the last Moorish kingdom in Hispania.

Don Enrique was not the most successful king that ever sat on the throne of Castille. He was definitely not the brightest of the luminaries that our royal family has produced. But I have decided to gloss some things over. After all, that is part of my job, to put the truth to paper and in the process make it conform to my patron's desires. I actually don't know much about Don Enrique III, except what my predecessors as royal notary have written down. So, even as he planned the conquest of Granada in public, in private his notaries were busy finding reasons to invade Portugal and Aragon. Portugal was the weaker of the two, but Portugal was also allied with England, one of the major kingdoms of northern Europe at the time. Henry IV was not a man to be trifled with, but maybe he would invade France and so Castille could invade Portugal while England was busy trying to regain past glories. So Don Enrique waited. Aragon would come first, but it would take some work. So he married his sister Isabel (about whom history has not left much of a record) to Marti I. She was a ravishing beauty, supposedly, but her best skills were in the area of intrigue, and she joined her bridesgroom in Barcelona later that year knowing full well that her brother meant to use her as his spy. She had been promised, in secret of course, that she would be viceroy of Aragon, but first Marti had to be subdued. He was always trying to gain the Kingdom of Sicily for himself or fighting with the Pope over Sardinia, so it would be an easy enough affair to wait until he was off on some Mediterranean adventure to tighten the noose around his own kingdom. A cunning plan, but would it succeed.

But I think that I have told you enough for one day. Come back tomorrow and we can talk some more.

 

[Boris ze Spider]

Very nice, I like the use of the notary as the main charachter

 

[Morrell8]

Forcing a PU on Aragon then?

 

[RedRooster81]

Yeah, the poor guy has to go through four centuries of court chronicles. Stay tuned and you'll see the flexible way he looks at the 'truth'.

Aragon is the target, given the choice between Granada, Portugal, Aragon, and France. Now for the next chapter.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Shall we have another "La Beltraneja" vs Isabel?

Let's see what Enrique manages to achieve...

 

[RedRooster81]

Chapter One: The First War of the Pyrenees

Ah, good, you're early. Time for your history lesson. Where did I leave off last time? Oh, yes, your ancestor Enrique III. Interesting fellow, to say the least. He ruled Castille for nine years before he really seemed interested in doing anything. Had a lot of bastards in the meantime, and the streets of Toledo ran thick with them. But I guess a young lady should not think too much on such things.

No, I think your father wants you to learn about politics, war, peace, that sort of thing. Okay, the year was 1400. Don Enrique was intent on expanding his realm. He ruled the largest and most populous of the four kingdoms in the Peninsula. Granada posed no real threat: her army was little more than an honor guard for the sultan, but the southern mountains were like open arms for more powerful Muslim powers who might want to do the Christian states harm. In time, though, in time. Portugal was at that time a small but prosperous kingdom of salt and wine traders. Mountains separated her from Castille, and the long Lusitanian coast and rocky ground made for a country good for sailors but not farmers. So he set his royal sights on Aragon. Until only a century before, Aragon had been an appendage of Castille, but her fate had since been intertwined with the many counties of Catalonia, a nation of seafarers and ambitious ones at that, who faced east with yearning for dominion over far-away lands.

Enrique raised his army, as I told you yesterday, with the intent purpose of crusading against Granada. He raised thirty-six battalions of a thousand men each, most of them infantry. He obsessed over his expanded army, drilling the men constantly and sending those he and his marshal deemed unworthy home. More than one of Enrique's vassal counts received a royal order demanding men of better quality. There was much grumbling on the Council of Castille about the king's new obsession with military drilling, even more scandal than his thirty-seven recognized bastards had elicited. The noble lords of the realm also grumbled that the king had selected Cristobal de Castilla, a low-born pig-keeper's son, or so they say, as his marshal. He knew nothing of court intrigue or decorum, but the man could fill the ranks quickly and drill them to death, and for Enrique that is all that mattered. Enrique turned the reform of the kingdom's defenses to one Gomez de Velasco (or was that Velasco de Gomez?) about which little is known, besides his penchant for wearing Moorish robes to court. But as time would tell, the walls of our cities stayed strong, so maybe Señor Velasco knew what he was doing. Even less is known about Felipe de Mendoza, the king's spymaster. Then again,
spymasters should not be matters of common discussion, so no wonder.

Early in 1400, King Martí I d'Aragó sent his marshal north and west into Navarra with a firmly worded demand for submission to his overlordship. The king of that little kingdom, Carlos d'Evreux, had no interest in hearing the demands of a Catalan sea-king. His father had been an aspirant to the French throne after all. Did you ever hear of Charles the Bad. Our King Carlos of Navarre was that heathen's much more pious spawn.

The Aragonese siege machines reduced his citadel to rubble in short order (it is unfortunate when great men only have one province to defend and inferior men try to rule empires), with reinforcements from Savoy and Sicily. Don Enrique saw his moment, and he signed an alliance with the Navarrese king even as the Marshal of Aragon demanded his surrender. And the King of Castille marched his armies east, invading Zaragoza and sending smaller forces into the Kingdom of Valencia, and captured all of the Aragonese strongholds south of the Ebro River. But Martí I was not to be fooled. He had kept ten battalions in reserve in Barcelona and surprised Enrique, who had kept the Castillian navy sitting in Cartagena de Levante. Your royal ancestor was not that smart, but he was dogged. Zaragoza fell to his marshal, while he himself retreated to Toledo to wait Martí I's retribution. Enrique III's men outnumbered his opponent's 16,000 to 10,000, but God was with the Aragonese. New Castille fell to Aragon, but the Castillians had in the meantime "liberated" Navarra and besieged every castle from Zaragoza to the French border. Enrique was content to let the King of Aragon despoil the heart of Castille so long as Catalonia fell into his grasp.

But Enrique was not done. He had not been to war before and like a man who first has opium, wonders why he had denied himself the pleasure before--though I must advise, milady, that you indulge in neither. In due time, he chased the King of Aragon and his dwindling army from one side of Castille to another and finally defeated him at the Portuguese border. I do not know what he did with King Martí when he caught him, but the Catalan chroniclers report that he never was quite the same again.

Enrique so loved war that he prolonged it his indulgence in it for three more years, in which time he invaded and conquered the Duchy of Savoy and the Kingdom of Sicily. Having finally remembered his navy, he also remembered that men can be transported across the seas with it, so Enrique the Slow toured the Mediterranean, bringing pain to those who had helped the King of Aragon. Martí, meanwhile, spent his nearly forty months in captivity writing letters of surrender to Enrique, who would have none of it. In the end, Enrique had himself crowned King of Sicily at Palermo (he allowed Maria of Aragon to keep the title of Duchess of Palermo) and on his way home foisted his bastard daughter Ximena--the child of his Moorish slave Fatima--on the heir to the Savoyard throne. Quite an exciting few years, all told.

The Treaty of Urgell ended the war in 1404. Enrique kept Alicante, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands for himself, another crown for his dull head to bear. He also imposed as I said before vassalage on Sicily and Savoy. And in so many years, he found himself to be ridiculed not as Enrique the Slow but as Enrique the Reviled, for he and his successors would bear the scars of this war on their royal shoulders for many years thereafter, actually the whole of the XV century! As I will tell you tomorrow, Enrique's only legitimate son, Fernando, would continue to harass the once proud Aragonese into submission and address our traditional enemies, the Moors and the French. If I have time, maybe we can begin to discuss the Italian Wars. Now back to work. I have five more royal orders to copy before midnight...

 

[RedRooster81]

Shall we have another "La Beltraneja" vs Isabel?

Let's see what Enrique manages to achieve...

Historically things could have gone a lot of different ways in the XV century. Juana la Loca was third in line for the united thrones, after Juan and Isabel, but both died pretty soon after each other. The would-be Isabel II could have united Portugal, Castille, and Aragon had she lived. Instead, Iberia became another jewel in the Habsburg crown.

In my alternative history you can look forward to cordial relations between Portugal and Castille--for now. But in the end, betrayal and bloodshed. Portugal so far is a useful ally, and I'll leave it at that.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

If there's no Phillip the Fair I'll be happy.

 

[Boris ze Spider]

Nice, when do you plan on completing the reconquista?

 

[RedRooster81]

Nice, when do you plan on completing the reconquista?

All in good time. Aragon first. My eastern neighbor has 12,000 troops, while Granada can only field 1,000 foot soldiers, and he is allied with the Barbary states and Morocco, so I'm not looking forward to that war.

 

[RedRooster81]

Chapter 2: New Possibilities, New Dangers

So, you don't think that I have my facts right. Let's see. The whole thing about Enrique III trying to gain Aragon through his sister Isabel? I forgot to explain. She was a beautiful lady, or at least that's what the chroniclers say, but Martí would have nothing to do with her. He returned from Sicily, just before the war with Castille, with a bride in tow. He had his own schemes, to inherit the whole island from his relations who ruled there.

After the First Aragonese War, Enrique returned to his palace in Toledo, where he enjoyed the easy life, surrounded by his harem girls and their bastards. At the urging of the Archbishop of Toledo, he had a lot of spacious churches built in all corners of his kingdom, and when it was time, he was laid to rest in the Cathedral in his capital city. Some rumors flew around about how Catherine of Lancaster, his rightful queen, tried to have him killed out of spite, and how her father John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, wanted to invade Castille to put Prince Fernando on the throne, at his pious daughter's request, but there does not appear to be any substance to it. No hard proof anyway.

He kept his spymaster Felipe de Nebrija close at hand just in case, and at the behest of the Council of Castille began to reorganize the kingdom's finances. He even appointed a German financier to help promote Castillian merino wool both at home and abroad. He left his heir with a full treasury, a stable political system, the large army that had brought prestige to the realm, but a tarnished national reputation.

Fernando, Prince of Asturias, was crowned King of Castille, Leon, Galicia, and Sicily in February 1420, three days after his father died of euphoria in the presence of the three slave girls with whom he was then sharing his bedchamber. Fernando V de Trastamara immediately embarked on a campaign to improve the national image and his mother's honor. While the reputation improved with time, he shipped his father's bastards, most of whom were the children of slaves and thus slaves themselves, to Sicily, where his distant cousin and vassal Fernandino of Aragon, Duke of Palermo, had need of strong backs in his sugar plantations. Among his virtues was marital chastity (where he acquired it only God knows, not from his father or either of his grandfathers), and he lived in simple style with his wife Maria da Luz de Aviz, the daughter of the great João I of Portugal. His courtiers thought strange his devotion to the small-framed queen, but it was one of those rare happy marriages arranged between

Fernando V's condemnation of his illegitimate half-siblings, all thirty-five of them, to an uncertain fate in Sicily was not a sole case of his character influencing his decisions. He was pragmatic and cool in his dealings with friend and foe alike. When the Lombard League in 1423 condemned his first cousin Ferran I de Lancaster, the successor of Martí I to the throne, for his ambitions to expand his influence over Italy, Fernando of Castille did not hesitate from doing his duty to Holy Mother Church. A coalition of petty northern Italian states led by the Patriarch of Aquileia besieged Catalonia, and so the pious Fernando declared war on his excommunicated kinsman. The war dragged on. Poor Ferran could only field four thousand men, and these Fernando smashed in one battle. The Italian army took Girona and Roussillon in short order, while Fernando captured what was left of upper Aragon and Barcelona. And there he waited for the Patriarch to make peace with Ferran and before the ink was dry on the Treaty of Girona, the King of Castille forced his own on his cousin, whose independence he took away. He allowed Ferran to keep the title Count of Urgell, but the other titles of the Kingdom of Aragon were integrated fully into the royal demesne. Fernando V decided to rule from Barcelona and perturbed the populace with the orgy of church-building that followed the conquest, and the king's order that the best wine of Catalonia be reserved for the High Altar of the cathedral. His seizure of what remained of Aragon only brought more condemnation on the House of Trastamara, but Pope Innocent was so thrilled that he named him Defender of the Faith and the Savior of the Catalans. The good people of Barcelona knew that they had suffered greatly when their city fell. For them, all that Fernando V had saved them from was enjoying good vintage.

Fernando V ruled over his patrimony and his conquests for a dozen more years. In 1434, he turned his attention to the Emirate of Granada, but it was a pitifully easy campaign compared to the conquest of Aragon. In 1435, having only reached middle age, the king caught of a fever that raged through the Castillian camp after Granada fell. He lingered on for weeks in a sickly state before succumbing to dysentery. So have so many great men gone from this world. I think that the municipal council in Granada still has his gilded chamberpot, which is brought out from time to time. Do not look so pale, my dear lady. Such events as these are the foundation on which your dynasty's stands.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

A pity the Fernando was king for such a short time...

 

[Qorten]

He did manage to unite the two biggest kingdoms on the peninsula and drive out the muslim government in the south though so he had a life to be proud of, although I admit he probably won't have find that very important as he was dieing

 

[Boris ze Spider]

How did you manage to acquire that much money in 30 years?

 

[RedRooster81]

How did you manage to acquire that much money in 30 years?

You might think it cheating, but I'm using the inflation only from gold option, which seems more historically accurate to me, and I don't take loans. o One of my pet peeves from the beginning of the EU series. I've kept up pretty well on research in all areas, but I keep the minted gold slider on a slightly positive balance. I guess the House of Trastamara for all its problems are fiscal conservatives, which I admit isn't that accurate for Renaissance monarchs.

@Kurt: I do make my monarchs into my mainline commander, so they don't tend to live all that long. Plus, I haven't been too lucky spawning decent generals and admirals. I had to think of a way to explain his death: he was a pious king, puritanical even, so I had him go ignobly from this earth clutching his chamberpot.

Fernando VI is an interesting guy, too. Coming up next: war with France, war with the Barbary states, and early colonialism, so stay tuned.

 

[Daan Riaste]

Great work !

And go ahead, liberate Southern France, from the greedy clutches of the unsophisticated Northern French kings. And boot the English back to where they belong.

 

[RedRooster81]

Great work !

And go ahead, liberate Southern France, from the greedy clutches of the unsophisticated Northern French kings. And boot the English back to where they belong.

I think you'll be pleased by the next couple of chapters. Castille proclaims herself defender of the Occitains and begins to reestablish the Visigothic kingdom. I think I'll set up a good sphere of influence in southern France and connect with my vassal the Duchy of Savoy. Away ye Franks!

The English are not a problem so far. They've stayed in the coastal strip in western Gascony, and have been good neighbors so far. After uniting the British Isles, it is hard to get them to give up Labourd like I wanted them to. Plus, they still have claims on Normandy and Paris, so we'll play nice for now.

 

[RedRooster81]

Chapter 3: Moors and Franks

Just a moment. Please let me finish this last line, and then we can talk. There. All ready for your father to sign tomorrow, milady. Oh, it's a memorial on how unmarketable saltwater fish from our Portuguese fisheries can be utilized to improve the productivity of English turnip farms. Simply fascinating stuff, really. But that is not why you are here, are you? Ah, yes, you want to hear about how Fernando VI embarrassed the French at their own game.

Castille and Her Neighbors in 1429

Don Fernando was an interesting man. His father was a man strict in matters of religion and morals, and the queen mother matched the late king point for point in terms of personality and the austere way that he chose to live his life. Rather dull, compared to his own father Enrique III. Fernando VI had grown up in the court of his maternal grandfather King João of Portugal. The queen, Philippa of Lancaster, was the sister of Enrique III's wife Catherine and thus his great-aunt. Fernando V had wished his son to be fostered in a court away from the decadence he witnessed around him in Barcelona.

The future Fernando VI gained from his Portuguese education a more cosmopolitan view of the world than he might have received in Toledo or even Barcelona and a concern for worldly affairs. João had come to the throne by untraditional means. He had been born out of wedlock, though not in an adulterous situation, and had fended off Juan I of Castille's attempt at uniting the Lusitanian throne with his own with English help. Fernando also learned from his grandfather how to rule. The King of Portugal at once centralized his realm and showed generosity to his subjects, and as the guardian of the Castillian heir, he was intent on teaching these matters to his grandson.

A regency council was assembled to guide the kingdom until Fernando reached his majority. The regency was brief, from October 1434 to February 1435, but just long enough to reveal the Portuguese influence on the royal court. The queen mother acted as regent, and adopted for the first time in Castillian history a genuine pro-Portuguese policy. Before his demise, Fernando V had pledged his father-in-law support for a crusade against Morocco, and the council thought it wise to honor the late king's wishes on the matter. The navy played a key role for the first time as a fighting force, crushing the fleet that the upstart Emir of Fez had assembled to retake Gibraltar.

The crusade endured for four years more, and Fernando VI, who took the field for the first time, demonstrated his new policy of vassalization over conquest. He defeated the Algerian navy, and then conquered its territory with Portuguese and Venetian aid, then demanded the submission of its sultan. He thus gained an important ally. As a key part of the strategy, he allowed his new vassal, who took the humbler title Emir of Algiers, to rule over his subjects as he wished, and he never pressed the Algerians to convert to Christianity. He similarly forced the Tunisians into submission during the same war, and combined with Algiers had put a stop to the rampages of the infamous Barbary corsairs against his kingdom and turned their attention instead to raiding the French coastline and during wartime conquering in the name of Castille. But for Morocco and Fez he took a different tack, retaining the strategically placed coastal cities of Ceuta and Melilla, while his grandfather retained Fez itself and set his eyes on taking the Moroccan heartland.

Queen Maria's indiscretions


But first Fernando turned his attention north. The Occitan-speaking population of southern France had begun chafing for independence, and Fernando VI warmly welcomed emissaries from the Count of Toulouse and his secret ally the Duke of Gascony. They offered homage to Fernando in exchange for military aid against King Louis--I forget which one, the twelfth? the thirteenth? While he plotted with his would-be Occitan vassals, his wife did some conspiring of her own, with the Duke of Gascony. What happened next is hard to discern. Maria de Visconti did commit adultery in the royal bed with her husband's honored guest, that much is sure. Some say that Fernando, who stumbled on the two lovers himself, killed his wife himself, as he felt passions of his own. Others say that he just locked her away for the rest of her life. In any case, once their son Juan became king, he could not locate his mother or her remains. The only sign of the queen by the next morning was her blood that pooled on the bedchamber floor and clumps of her auburn hair that Fernando himself cut from her head. But it is just speculation based on the historical sources whether he stopped at cutting off her hair and banishing her to a nunnery or killed her outright and threw her body to the pigs. The latter story was what her brother the Duke of Milan learned from a traveling Portuguese wine merchant.

His personal affairs in order, Fernando with his Portuguese allies and his Savoyard, Sicilian, and Moorish vassals pushed into southern France. The Milanese army that was expected to arrive to assist in the defense of Savoy never arrived. The prime object of the war for Fernando was the independence of Dauphiné, and if he could manage it that of Toulouse, Gascony, and the smaller southern principalities as well. Louis had recently gained momentum in centralizing his kingdom, which gave him more power, though his eastern and western flanks were still threatened by the equally ambitious Burgundians and Englishmen, so he had not achieved victory yet. Fernando was determined to be another thorn in Louis's side. After a series of brutal campaigns, Fernando gained some measure of victory. Dauphiné remained French for now, but the County of Toulouse, Fernando's neighbor to the north, became independent and his ally..

Having sated his northern ambitions for the moment, Fernando joined his uncle Duarte of Portugal in more North African crusading. Portugal gained more territory at the expense of Fez, and the close relationship between Portugal and Castille was reaffirmed. Fernando then put war aside for a while and focused instead on relatively peaceful expansion. He had during the last war received petitions from the merchants of Seville for the conquest and colonization of the islands believed to exist in the eastern Atlantic. With peace, Fernando used enticed some of his best naval officers to explore the western coast of Africa and into the Atlantic.

In 1454, this policy, which some of his courtiers romantically termed "The Quest for the New World," began to pay off. That year, the first Castillian colonists began to arrive in the Canary Islands, and established a new city on one of the larger islands that they named San Fernando de Tenerife in his honor. Merchants who established themselves there from Sicily introduced sugar production, and the Portuguese trading posts on the African coast provided as many slaves as they would ever need.

He continued to make grants for new colonies, known as capitulaciones, to the ambitious, who he flattered with the title of "Adelantado and Captain General" of whatever place they wished to conquer in his name. In August 1455, the Azores Islands, were discovered by accident as Captain Juan Ruiz was lost in a storm and followed the sea gulls back to their nests on the islands' craggy coasts. Cabo Verde was added to the king's dominions in 1463 and a new town, Salvador del Cabo, signaled the southernmost point at which the Castillian flag had ever flown.

The relationship with Portugal that had so guided Fernando's life as it turns out also guided him to his doom. His uncle Duarte was childless after many years on the throne, and so Fernando very publicly in 1466 declared that on Duarte's death that the throne should be united with Castille. His favorite uncle flew into a rage at hearing this pronouncement and their relationship was never the same again. Fernando, although settling into middle age, was as ambitious as ever. So once Duarte returned to Lisbon to fume over his nephew's words, the King of Castille proclaimed himself Emperor of All the Spains, the title that his ancestors had stopped using centuries ago to describe their dominance over all other Iberian sovereigns.

Within the space of two months, Fernando had cancelled the treaty of friendship and alliance that his father had made with Duarte's father, and declared war. His ambition was to depose Duarte and put himself on the throne. As a preliminary to the war, Fernando had moved the bulk of his army from Aragon, where from his father's time 40,000 men stood ready to put down the rebellious Aragonese, charge into France, or board transports to any point in the Mediterranean. Now, over twenty regiments of horse and foot stood ready in Galicia and an equal number in both Seville and Salamanca. The war went well as can be expected: almost 60,000 Castillians against some 12,000 Portuguese. The biggest problem was securing the Portuguese cities in North Africa, but this too was accomplished, as the Algerians began crossing into Portuguese Mauretania as soon as Fernando sent advance word of the coming storm of blood and iron. In nearly the last military action of the war, Fernando perished at the Siege of Algarve. The remnants of the Portuguese army, Dom Duarte's personal guard, assaulted the Castillian camp under a new moon, intent on regicide. Fernando died fending off the Portuguese marshal, a man named Afonso da Souza, who incidentally (perhaps not) had been his childhood rival. Although wounded in the raid, Prince Juan emerged victorious, and was proclaimed that night Juan II de Trastamara, Emperor of All the Spains, King of Castille, Leon, Aragon, Granada, Sicily, and Portugal.

In the morning, Juan II picked up his father's war banner and participated in assaulting the last fortress in the kingdom loyal to Duarte, and so won the war. But his story must wait until tomorrow.

 

[Boris ze Spider]

Very nice, did you change that font?

 

[RedRooster81]

Very nice, did you change that font?

Oh, the italics? I tried adding captions to some of the screenshots.

It's been a pretty wild game so far. I'm doing this in retrospect, one reign at a time. So now we have a united Iberia and North Africa in vassalage and growing influence over Occitania. But that's mostly what I plan to do for Europe. I don't want to take over the HRE at this point but keep it to the Mediterranean. So no Habsburg inheritance, no Dutch revolt, and we'll see how things turn out for Spain. Thanks for your comments. I do hope you are enjoying reading up on my adventures.