The French Revolution, but done by dukes

[Jonathan Palfrey]

In my current game, France and Aquitaine have lost the monarchy and split into independent duchies. The effect is rather novel; I haven't seen it before. I suppose there must have been a successful independence war. It does, of course, leave the independent duchies relatively vulnerable to takeover by the neighbours.

Has this ever happened in the real world? Italy has been fragmented for large parts of its history, but was there ever a successful independence war by dukes? I think the effect is more normally achieved by a collapse of the central government than by deliberate fracture.

There was deliberate fracture in the case of Yugoslavia, but that's recent history.

 

[gdj]

Ties to the central government were in many cases more vague than in the game. In CK2 you are either a vassal or independent. In real medieval history, in many parts of the world, the real effects of owing allegiance to someone were very unclear. Thus, your question cannot be easily answered with yes or no, it´s a matter of interpretation.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

It's further complicated by the fact that even a historical "independence" war would leave everyone with some obligations to each other, which might then result in one of them leaning on the others to take the throne that they'd just destroyed.

 

[Secret Master]

There are odd situations in game that result in titles being destroyed when the realm still kind of exists.

A normal independence war should not, by itself, kill the top tier title. But if someone annexed the counties of the king of France in a separate war while the independence war was being won, it might result in the extermination of the title.

In real life, you could argue that the historical kingdom of Brittany died in a similar fashion, as well as the historical High kingdom of Ireland.

There is also the precedence of the Cordoba Caliphate falling apart into petty realms. See the 1066 start for an in-game depiction of what that looks like.

 

[Jia Xu]

It's not that unlikely. If you have a really unpopular king (especially a foreigner who inherited the title), vassals might be compelled to join a super faction that's going to tear the realm apart when they win. Sometimes the AI is going to get stuck with a king who is just hated by everyone and things can turn nasty very quickly.

 

[gdj]

It's not that unlikely. If you have a really unpopular king (especially a foreigner who inherited the title), vassals might be compelled to join a super faction that's going to tear the realm apart when they win. Sometimes the AI is going to get stuck with a king who is just hated by everyone and things can turn nasty very quickly.

Well, in theory maybe. In practice it´s rare neough because 1) independence factions as such will not destroy titles and 2) same culture/religion de jure vassals don´t join independence factions (which contributes heavily in making the ERE/HRE blobs so stupidly stable).

 

[Helios Panoptes]

Didn't that basically happen when the Italians duchies split from the HRE?

 

[Sernista]

The game's need for a clean, binary representation where you are either Vassals or Not is not helping it here, unavoidably. If the King is left knowing that none of "his dukes" will give him the time of day, does he get to keep a game mechanics king title? Unclear, because you want to ensure that one of the other dukes can earn the respect of the others, by words or swords, and proclaim himself a king in fact as well as name. The game just isn't set up to handle situations where multiple people "have" the same title, nor could it be without massive reworks.