A sign of things to come? The Serbian King goes to Norway
After helping the Ethiopian King expanding his realm and trade, we traveled to Aragon.
The tale of the traveling King can be read here.
Leaving Aragon after a most pleasent send-off by his most catholic majesty, the King of Aragon, we set sail for a distant country far to the north; Norway.
We, the king of Serbia, did not know much about Norway. They had not figured much in the doings of Europe, but one thing we knew about it: It had left the union it had with Denmark & Sweden. To us that meant that the Norwegians had just as strong a need for freedom as the Serbians have. Thus we came to offer our services to the King of Norway.
One of the last things we heard from our spies in Serbia was that our beloved country was vassalized on Dec. 17, 1469. Woe upon that day, oh woe upon the Ottoman Empire!
After being given the job as aide to the Norwegian King, we set about to look the country over. The first thing we did, was to look at the dp-sliders. They were rather bad to put it bluntly! However, we set to work at them, trying to bring the norwegian frame of mind back where it belong, as a open and easygoing - seafaring trader-nation.
Although we still have a long way to go, we are sure we will be able to present the King of Norway with a dp-slider setting that will be the envy of Europe within the next century or so.
Norway, a mountainious country with it's back towards Sweden and it's soft underbelly towards Denamark.
The 3 kingdoms had been in an union until recently before we, the most Orthodox Serbian King, came to offer our services.
Having seen where the danger might come from, we negotiated an alliance between Norway, Sweden & Denmark. Damocles' England was invited into the alliance, but declined. Englands ongoing disagreement with Scotland over borders, sheep, Whiskey and such might be a reason as Scotland was allied with Sweden already.
Our plan was to cling to Sweden as a limpet, while keeping a watchful eye on England. With the opening of Germany, Sweden were not the only enemy anymore! Denmark on the other hand, we viewed with some degree of disdain.
Denmark had lost all it's provinces but one (Gothland) and depended on it's vassal Sweden for it's economical survival as well as the armies needed to retake the lost provinces.
So we started the "reformation" of Norway with a change in the dp-sliders and then the colonization of Narvik & Iceland was prioritized. Finnmark had been lost to Sweden in a previous war, so we, the Serbian King, has started negotiations with the Swedish king over the possibilities of a puchase of Finnamark.
The Great Nordic Alliance was quite swiftly thrown into small wars where Denmark & Sweden tried to recapture former danish provinces.
Then, in 1478 England declared war on Scotland. Scotland asked for help from her alliance-partners, and after reviewing the plea for a couple of days we left the Great Nordic Alliance. Stab-hits rained in over us as norwegian fishermen went marching in the streets demanding to know what this meant to their fishing-rights off the coast of Scotland.
"Arrrrgh!!! How can this happen!!!" My carefully drafted dismissal of a renewed alliance between Sweden, Denmark, Scotland & Norway has been misplaced! And in it's place, the rather jolly and humourus answer to the crown-prince's stag-party has been sent. We are back in the alliance! The stag-party is off! The crown-prince got the no-thanks letter! There were scantily dressed women there! I missed out on it!!! And now we are at war with England.... oh woe on us.... woe on us... all those women and all that beer we missed out on... and all we have left is a stupid war we never wanted anyway.
The war against England consisted of a stream of diplomats trying to get England to agree to peace, while making sure the homefleet had enough funding to keep the homewaters safe. After sending the brunt of the fleet to Iceland we decided to colonize Eriksfjord in an effort to open up another port in case Iceland fell to the English navy or the armies from the kingdom of Bremen. That army had been on the rampage ever since Denmark declared on Holstein, an ally of Bremen. And they seemed to have a special love for Norway! Well, if this is a sign of things to come, Norway will be visited by german tourists sooner or later. May they leave lots of money in the norwegian coffers!
After the war between Scotland and England was finished, the english king finally granted a white peace to Norway. Denmark however was still being fought over. We, the Serbian King, adviced the Norwegian king to sit this one out and rebuild our coffers instead. Besides, we should try to increase our trade as well as changing the views out the norwegian society. We curbed the rights of the nobles and increased the centralization as well as trading more freely with everyone.
And thus the years passed. We adviced the king on trade and foreign policy, getting travel-passes through countries like Austria and Saxony, where the last of our cavalery armies met a glorious defeat at the hands of several thousand rebels. But what the heck... we never could use cavalery in Norway anyhow.
From now on, educating people on the needs for knowledge, trade and seafaring will be our prime advice to the Norwegian king. With luck, we will then be able to fund the Serbian uprising against the Ottoman opressors!
Serbia will rise again!
The question is when...