(OOC)
And now word of explanation of the technical/mechanical issues and concepts we've had here. Some of them are related to the game having been quite a little different a longer while ago (this way played in early 2013 or so).
The alliance and the matrilineal marriage.
The game does not have an alliance mechanic of the sort that exists in Europa Universalis. You don't have an alliance other than either through blood or through marriage. Only relatives are allies. (There is an exception for 'cultural' ties with crusade winners recently.) Marrying a daughter to whomever you want to make independent makes sure that he will be your ally as long as he stays in charge, but after his death things get more complicated. So I made sure that the children of the future king of Georgia, who was married to a daughter of the king of France, would be of the French dynasty, i.e. Capets. That would make future kings of Georgia be of the same dynasty as the future kings of France. I dislike doing this, but it is the only way you can reliably protect an independent (at least without intermarrying in every single generation, which could even lead to the Inbred trait). It's either matrimarriage or vassalage. And vassalage often means that you have to quell peasant revolts, i.e. fight against the same people you're trying to protect.
Marine warfare (the ships and landfalls)
Pretty much every single thing has been nerfed in it, but two years ago a dexterous human player could inflict some pretty serious and efficient amphibious warfare on the AI. (You can still see some post-patch examples of this in my
CEO, AMEA AAR). Nowadays ships are extremely expensive to maintain when raised as levies, ship mercenaries are also very expensive. Any troops you offload from ships have only 50% of their morale (half the morale bar) when they land — it will take weeks before they get their full morale back, and a lot can happen during that time. Thus you are disadvantaged in battle, but your besiegers also have significantly worse morale than the defenders. Finally, the time it takes to embark or disembark also has been nerfed — it is much longer now, where it used to be close to 3 days only. That way, it wasn't the end of the world even when your siege force was attacked by a superior enemy army (2:1, 3:1 etc.) — the losses taken in the initial couple of days weren't too big. Now, however, you might even lose before you get the chance to load and land some troops into battle in the same sea zone. Thus, the usefulness ofyour fleets has been severely limited and while still not nonexistent it just no longer is the same what it used to be. In fact, you often won't even be able to escape from a sea province onto your fleets because the travel time to ships will be longer than the overland travel time from adjacent provinces.
The Khagan at the siege
He probably showed up randomly as the siege defence commander. There is no chance of actually capturing him. The ruler of the defending realm is likely to pop up in those sally events. If they show at all. Last time I tried there seemed to be no way to get them back, as they were confined to the message list. Or maybe I got something wrong. But in theory you should have them back if you change the new default message setting so that they pop up on screen and not only in the message list.
The banners of the duke of Abkhazia
It means nothing. The game simply shows the banner of the first army that was in the province. Thus you can be deceived until you hover the cursor over the province and check exactly who has troops there, and exactly how many troops.
Cordoning off for protection
The way the holy war casus belling works, you need a land border or some adjacent sea and can't declare holy wars over distance (before, you could; invasions all were long-distance). Making sure that local Muslim states have no borders with the tiny Christian independents would have made those small dukes etc. immune to holy wars in effect.
