The main event of this session for Britain, as seen by the distant future, will be the adoption of the printing press. It originated in Bregenz, a small Bavarian city around Lake Constance, north of the capital; smaller than the other cities in the region, it was noteworthy mostly because of the Papermaker's Guild.
While the Royal Society of Britain quickly obtained a press, the potential was not immediately seen. After all, the various universities of England had long employed armies of scribes and had massive libraries of books; while it could create cheap copies, what was needed were new works of high quality.
It was the secondary cities of Northern England that first saw the possibilities of widely spread pamphlets; originally they were libelous, comedic, advertisements, pornographic, or otherwise distasteful, and the government felt secure enough to ignore them. What truly caught their attention was that while published in Northern England, they spread to the neighboring Anglo-Saxon lowlands, where people would learn English to read them. The British government had long been engaged in the project of not merely accepting many different cultures, but unifying them into a single English culture, and this was a new opportunity in that war for the culture; thus the President banned the use of printing presses to print anything besides English, while not banning the content of what could be printed in English.
As English had long been the sole language spoken in the major educational institutions, the Fleet, and the Army, this was not the beginning of the Anglicization of Britain, but it was the second major phase; the Norman and Norse influence is relegated to minor islands, Irish and Scottish are down to a single province, and Welsh and Anglo-Saxon are on the way out.
The main events for Britain this session, as seen by the people of the time, were the colossal wars. First, a note on diplomacy: at the end of the session, it seems that there are three great blocs. The Eastern bloc is Zamazon (red, northern Russia), Georgia (pink, southern Russia), and the Balkan Federation (dark blue) all allied to each other; Egypt, while not allied with Zamazon, likely deserves to be counted as well. The Southern bloc is Brittany (dark red in France), Bavaria (light grey north of the Alps), and Draconia (cream in Italy) all allied to each other; Naples (pink in north Africa), not allied to Brittany and also allied to Egypt, also should likely be counted. The Northern bloc is Thuringia (light blue in Germany), Ar Adunaim (dark red in Scandinavia), and Benelux (yellow in Flanders); while according to the British press they stand above Europe alone, outside observers would likely place them in the Northern bloc, despite only being allied to Thuringia. Portugal (in green) mostly stands alone, although it began the session allied to Brittany.
It began with the Thuringian Conquest of Stuttgart in August of 1568. The two German powers had been allies for much of CKII, but had not been allied in EU4; with their victory cards landing on each other, it seemed both inevitable and like a sudden betrayal at the same time. Allies of both parties stayed out, allowing the fight to be 1 on 1. Britain, which began the session allied to both attacker and defender, opted for neutrality, accepting a white peace to prevent the battles of overeager colonial nations from doing too much damage.
Sensing the opportunity, in February of 1570 the Balkan Federation, along with its allies in Georgia and Egypt, declared war on Thuringia with the Conquest of Zips. According to Thuringia, this was a betrayal; the Thuringians had made known their plan to declare war on Bavaria, in the hopes that others might join them, and was of the sense the Balkans would join in. Now allies joined in for real, including Zamazon once a truce timer was up. This was the first major opportunity for British troops to show their mettle, as I could move them with my own transports. While they fared well against the Zamazonian troops, they were hardly the pride of the North, tho Godfrey Judith, Britain's best general, was often the North's best general as well.
By 1571, it was clear the North could not fight two wars at once, and a peace with Bavaria was signed, ceding the victory card in Austria. The Eastern front went back and forth; at one point all of Riga was occupied, and then the northern front was pushed back to Finland. The North's troops laid siege to Temes, and then were pushed back to the Thuringian border.
In 1574, while the war in the East was still raging, Portugal declared war on Naples, hoping to take his victory card; when Naples had formidable defenders, and Brittany betrayed Portugal, the war only took a year to conclude. Naples took significant American holdings, and Brittany extended south into Catalonia, collecting his victory card.
As the 1570s came to a close, both North and East courted the southern powers. All sides had spent tremendous amounts of manpower to push the line back and forth without decisive victories; Britain, having exhausted 150k of reserves, was ready to pull back entirely. Bavaria, with a victory card in Yugoslavia, was also the main country that could get territorial gains from the war if it joined the North, but also having recently been attacked by Thuringia, that offer felt incomplete. The Bavarian Purge of Thuringian Heresy was declared in 1580, with Brittany, Draconia, and Naples all joining in.
Once again, two fronts was likely more than the North could manage, but with Brittany, Britain's long-time rival (and target of my second victory card) in the war, I decided to slacken recruiting standards and fight on.
Four years later, the Eastern front was lost. All told, the war between East and North lasted for 14 years, and buried 3.4 million men; a bit less than 1.5M for the East and a bit less than 2M for the North. A client state was carved out of the Krakow, eroding Thuringia's defense of its southeastern corner, and Vyborg lost to the Zamazonians. Most importantly to the Balkan Federation, Crete was ceded to Athens, removing the central base of piracy in the Med.
With one front, and additional mercenaries, the war between North and South took six years, ending with the northern coast of Brittany completely sieged down. Paris passed into Dutch hands, and bits of a Thuringian victory card in western Bavaria, and most importantly, the island of Malta, within range of the Aegean, now flies a pirate flag. (Britain, as all its demands were on the highly developed part of a secondary participant in the war, didn't get any territory in this war, but has favors banked for the likely repeat.)