Dev Diary 2: Holy Roman Empire (aka, holy roman border gore)
Finally, the second main player of the period is done. That is, Holy Roman Empire. Ruled by Charlemagne's son Louis the Pious.
As you can see from screenshot, the Empire is massive (and will get few Slavic tributaries still) and the division of empire seemed to favor making it primogiture.
You can also see it's internal borders are absolute border gore as many families did have holdings here and there though in this screenshot the kingdom vassals do cover some crossborder holdings. There are also ton of claims around to make sure it gets even more messier.
And of course, HRE at this stage has no-dejure territory (this I did intentionally) though so what can be expected is that empire will rapidly start it's collapse as vassals seek independence and if they do get it, there is no easy for for emperor to reclaim it. Granted, I probably have to give Louis some more starting prestige to take into account he had already done some military conquests or give him few vassal friends. But at least player should have a challenge keeping the empire together as real Louis had.
It was hard finding infomation on many rulers so there are plenty of ahistorical rulers but few were found anyway and imagination was used too. So for example, historical Baldwin who became ruler of Flanders is here as a child and his father (apparently a nasty bugger) is a playable count. Naturally, all of Louis sons hold kingdom level titles at this stage and all are playable.
One of the more interesting things is
Harald Klak who Louis attempted to put to Danish throne, perhaps hoping to get them convert to Christianity. I have took some liberties with years so Harald holds his "fallback" place in Frankish land while still being vassal of Danish king. This I had to make since it made sense as they were joint rulers. Later Harald would be kicked out from Denmark and return to Francia and convert. In game he is friend of Louis and has sympathy for Christendom. His brother holds Zeeland. This actually means that in this start date, Norse occupy 4 out of 5 holy sites.
Brittany is also "united" at this stage but this is because they were nominal vassals. So they are tributary of Louis, held by wrong cultured liege and there are two local historical vassals,
Wiomarch &
Nominoe who I gave claim to duchy.
That's it for HRE. I will check few things and put this WIP version available to page 1 as soon as possible. (Done)
Will there be a dev diary about his situation?
