Wessex, 867: A Promising Start

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I'm two days (real-time) and a decade (game-time) into my latest 867 playthrough as Aethelred, and thought I'd start to create a thread for it since I had a phenomenal session today.

The Early Years: 867-870

History might come to remember the Great Heathen Army as something of a damp squib. This is because British historians tend to be Anglocentric and will neglect the fact that Sundreyar would, in later years, come to be the dominant power in Scotland.

In the immediate aftermath of the 867 invasion, however, Norse holdings in England were confined to York and East Anglia; the latter due to a sudden Islander attack that defeated the defending Wessex army. The remnants of that army headed north to join with Northumbrian and Mercian forces struggling against the invasion led by Halfdan Whiteheart. This intervention was decisive, and the Norse realm of Jorvik was restricted to the eponymous province.

Aethelred had not started out in great favour with his vassals, but his growing prestige and development of gregarious tendencies made him sufficiently popular that, when his half-brother Alfred named him a pretender to the kingdom of Wessex (threatened by the birth of Aethelred's heir), Alfred's rebellion gained no support and the not-so-great Earl of Dorset ended up doing a short stint in prison.

By 870, following the conquest of Devon by the Norse petty king of Nantes, three major Christian realms dominated England, with the Norse confined to isolated provinces and to Scotland, where they were hemmed in by Christian kingdoms of Scotland and Strathclyde.

Reconquest of England: 870-877

In 870, the king of Jylland threatened an invasion of England, targeting Mercia, and ever-loyal ally Aethelred of Wessex rushed to support the defence of the realm. Alfred was released to lead the Wessexian army, but played only a minor role in repelling the invasion as Mercian and allied Irish generals took command.

With the threat of invasion over, Aethelred turned his attention to retaking England, while incidentally securing his dynasty (he had a somewhat hedonistic temperament, combined with lavish generosity towards his wife, who bore him two further sons between these years). His Chancellor had fabricated a claim on Jorvik, a move aimed at isolating Halfdan's province from Norse who would rush to his defence in a holy war. Efforts to remove Halfdan by assassination gained little support, leaving his alliances intact, but Aethelred pressed the claim anyway.

Halfdan, devoid of forces of his own, called his brother Ivar into the war, prompting a combined Wessex/Mercian force to march to confront the main Ivaring army in Essex. Serendipity struck when the Christian army arrived just as Ivar died, forcing the Islanders out of the war without a fight. Foul play may have been afoot; the succeeding king of Sudrevyar was of the Mikli dynasty, leaving the Ivarings with Lothian and Suffolk. Halfdan's other brother, Sigurd (Ubbe's fate is not recorded, as nobody seems to care about him), by this point king of Jylland, agreed to join the war while Jorvik was under siege, but apparently involved in quelling rebellions at home never sent any forces to Britain.

With Jorvik in hand, and under the direct rule of Aethelred of Wessex, the landless Halfdan fled to the court of Bjorn Ironside of Sjopol, and was promptly appointed Marshall (but given no titles).

Ivar's successor, meanwhile, was not content to control Lothian, and soon rebelled against the usurper. With the Norse so heavily weakened in England, Aethelred seized the opportunity to declare Holy War for East Anglia, and Suffolk was quickly added to the Wessex domain.

Sudrevjar was here to stay, but in England was now wholly confined to Norfolk. Rather than take on the king of the isles (with whom Aethelred had cool but cordial relations), he turned to the remaining Norse intrusion, and declared holy war for Devon. Here he suffered his first significant military defeat since the war against the Great Army, as reinforcements from Nantes itself arrived to repel the attack, and the 1,000 strong remaining Wessex forces retreated to Mercia, again calling upon this reliable ally for assistance. The combined army, led by Wessex, engaged the Nantesian force and captured their ruler, swiftly ending the war and driving the Nantesians back to the mainland.


As of 877, the above map is the current state of play. My Norse vassals in York may yet prove troublesome (one now rather likes me, but refuses to give up his religion. I have my Chaplain working on that, and the other two Norse vassals in the same county, both of whom rather strongly dislike me). In case you're wondering what became of Alfred, he was briefly a potential threat when the Earl of Oxford joined his faction pushing for Alfred as king, however I dissuaded first Oxford and then Alfred, and indeed with enough persuasion from my Chancellor Alfred's opinion of me has risen to 100 (he's dropped his claim and pretender status in the tooltip; perhaps now that I have two sons he no longer has a claim?)

I have however never had a session quite like this - Mercia and Northumberland both have complete territorial integrity, with Mercia my longstanding ally and never having once refused to join my wars (my half-sister is quiescent as well - in most of my playthroughs as Aethelred she regularly plots to have me assassinated). Alfred has been completely, and mostly peacefully, pacified (I'll have to make him Marshall now). But what I find most interesting is the fate of the Ragnarssons and their lineages. There is no significant Ivaring family - Lothian didn't last long, and Ivar's heir is still alive and at large in Norfolk, but the Mikli family still controls Sudrevyar. Poor old Halfdan is facing what may be the most ignominious end one of the Ragnarssons could face, as a landless Marshall who - for some inexplicable reason - is reduced to plotting to assassinate one of my Norse mayors (which of course won't gain him anything since the title is open elective). I won't write him off just yet, though - he does have a dynasty, and Bjorn Ironside, ruler of a major Norse kingdom, could always press a claim on his behalf. Sigurd shows as little interest as he ever does in British affairs.

 

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877-893

Forgot to take a screenshot this time.

Peace in England was not to last; the 880s were perhaps the most violent decade yet for the Kingdom of Wessex. King Strigyid Ivaring, back in charge of Sudrevyar, showed that Viking ambition was not yet dulled, successfully seizing Cumberland from the Kingdom of Northumberland, and then declaring war on Aethelred to claim Essex.

The war didn't last long. Sudrevyar remained a smaller power, unable or unwilling to call on allies, and the 3,000 men it could muster were swiftly overcome. Aethelred rested to further consolidate his realm, but it wasn't long before he lodged a claim on behalf of one of his vassals to reclaim Cumberland and restore the Christian realm (except for the surviving Norse intrusion in East Anglia).

Left out of the line of succession, meanwhile, Alfred had become increasingly resentful and, joining forces with the Earl of Devon, launched a rebellion. With his forces weakened from a so-far unsuccessful campaign against a renewed Sudrevyar (now Skottish) army, Aethelred would still have been able to quickly contain the rebellion had Alfred not enlisted the aid of Mercia, King Bergheard seemingly being tired of supporting Aethelred in his apparently continual wars. Close but seemingly decisive defeats followed for the Wessex army, putting the rebels in danger of dethroning their king. Mercenaries tipped the balance back in Aethelred's favour, but an ambush by a 5,000-strong Skottish army crippled his ability to completely deal with the rebels, leaving an intact kingdom but one in a long-running civil war. Surrender to Strigyid drained the treasury, precluding further mercenary support.

Aethelred nevertheless began a recruiting drive, restoring a small but sufficient army capable of defeating the surviving Mercian forces. The assault on Dorset followed, however a remnant Mercian army was able to reinforce Alfred's own, kept in the field long enough due to his superior generalship, and the Wessex attack was repelled. It was not long thereafter, however, that a small force of newly-raised levies was engaged by a larger Dorset force. Alfred was killed in the ensuing skirmish, swiftly ending the rebellion and restoring royal authority.

Strigyid was not resting on his laurels following the successful defence of Cumberland; now he had his sights set on capturing Lincoln. Despite their support for the rebellion, Aethelred threw in his lot with the Mercians, and marched to join them for an attack on the besieging Norse. The Mercian army, however, while large enough with both mercenary and Wessex reinforcements to deal a decisive defeat to the Skottish army, was reluctant to engage, and funds soon ran out to support the mercenaries. Aethelred's attention was itself diverted by a peasants' revolt in York, that succeeded in defeating the first royalist army sent to contain it.

A larger force was mustered and sent against York, and this time the peasants were quickly dispersed. The leader of the rebels was banished from the kingdom, however another prisoner - Kjolborn - proved both a reliable soldier and amenable to conversion to Christianity, and was soon released. He later saw action as a general in a number of both Aethelred's and Aethelwulf's campaigns (EDIT: Aethelwulf later married Kjolborn to an Anglo-Saxon courtier in the hopes of removing all traces of his heathen culture from any descendants, and awarded him the earlship of Cornwall. Kjolborn continued to lead Wessex armies until his death in battle, aged 63, in the Wessex conquest of Lincoln).

By this time the Skotlanders had engaged and defeated the main Mercian host, but had taken losses. The returning Wessex army engaged and defeated the survivors, and proceeded to liberate occupied Mercian territory; the war ended with a Mercian victory soon thereafter.

Relief from the immediate Norse threat did not bring peace; Mercia was immediately engaged in civil war following Bergheard's attempt to revoke the county of Worcester. Aethelred decided to intervene clanestinely, plotting to have the renegade countess assassinated. He himself fell victim to illness, however, and died at the start of August 883. A dedicated hedonist to the last, he left 6 sons (one posthumously) and a daughter. His successor was Aethelwulf, a shy cynic who was immediately unpopular. In an effort to prevent a devastating civil war (with the Mercian one still ongoing, despite Aethelwulf's successful assassination of both the countess and her only heir), Aethelwulf reached a compromise with the potentially rebellious earl of Oxford, granting him the Duchy of Hwicce and so, until the formation of a unified English (or Welsh) kingdom, an independent realm. This did not deter rebellion by the earl of Middlesex, however he mustered no support from the king's other vassals and was defeated in a lengthy campaign by a mercenary-led force, while the new king cultivated additional prestige by successfully supporting Northumberland's holy war and restoring Cumberland to Christendom.

Having established himself as a strong ruler surprisingly quickly, Aethelwulf finally took on a task that his father had been reluctant to contemplate - a holy war for East Anglia. Skotland was a weak power, struggling for control against resurgent Christian elements in Scotland. With the Norse presence long-eradicated from York and Nantes, Halfdan recently dead without ever aiming to restore his claim, and the new kingdoms of Svithjod and Denmark, led by the surviving Ragnarssons (except Ubbe, an eternal courtier in the court of Bjorn Ironside, and ultimately chief of one of his conquered territories), focused on expanding their own borders, the Norse appeared to have lost all interest in England and no one came rushing to Skotland's aid. Almost as soon as the war began Strigyid died; the new Queen Holmfrid soon found herself ruling over a realm mostly occupied by rival Christian powers, and unable to raise a significant army.

Come 893, there are no Norse territories left in England and the Skottish intrusion into Ireland is tenuous. Wales remains the preserve of the feuding kingdoms of Gwynneth and Delbraith. Mercia, led by the stalwart King Bergheard the Quarreler and his wife, the only survivor of the three Wessex siblings alive in 867, and Northumberland retain their 867 territorial borders; except for independent Cornwall the rest of England belongs to Wessex, except for the three counties ceded to the independent Duchy of Hwicce. Most of the neighbouring mainland consists of the giant realm of West Francia, bordered by an intact Brittany and a long but narrow strip, Lotharingia, between it and the smaller kingdom of East Francia. Scandinavia is dominated by Svithjod; no unified kingdom has yet emerged in Norway. Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye is a local terror, but despite his frequent conquests Denmark has yet to expand far beyond its expected borders, and true to form he shows no interest whatsoever in England. Any surviving Hsiverks might yet cause trouble, but none have emerged to stake any claim to York and no Norse invasion has been seen or rumoured since Aethelred defeated the Jyllanders many years before.

 

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Shorter update, as I approach 919: The Kingdom of England has finally been formed by the King of Wessex, and the long-independent Duchy of Hwicce restored as a willing vassal after an English army put down a rebellion by the Countess of Oxford (a troublesome woman who at this point owns two of the three Hwicce territories). Civil war in what remains of Mercia (having lost Bedford, Northampton and Lincoln to Wessex and Chester to a briefly resurgent Skotland before that was itself taken by Wessex) has prevented it from being offered vassalisation, and Northumberland remains staunchly independent.

Aged 61, Aethelwulf is still King of Wessex, and now England, having spent his early years in frenetic activity as his poor constitution caused him to suffer repeated bouts of illness in his late 20s (including both pneumonia and smallpox) and so fear for his legacy.He rules a secure realm, the last rebellions having taken place over 20 years ago in Middlesex and Dorset (Aethelwold of Dorset, the instigator of two prior rebellions claiming the throne of Wessex, was more recently peacefully, ah, "dissuaded" from pressing his claim by Aethelwulf's spymaster). The first four years of the 10th Century were devoted to dealing with a new threat: an invasion by the newly-formed Kingdom of Norway. Joined by all the Christian British factions (except, notably, Mercia, King Bergherd apparently still reeling from the Wessex conquest of Northampton), Wessex eventually repelled the invaders and the effort devoted to this large force might have cost Haraldr Fairhair his kingdom - he ended up several years later as a petty king, while what remained of Norway was fractured.

Queen Holmfrid, having spent so much of her early years under pressure from Christian kingdoms reclaiming parts of their realms, had developed a reputation among her superstitious heathen subjects for being 'bewitched'. She was nevertheless newly-assertive while the bulk of the Christian forces were occupied with the Norwegians, and eventually reclaimed much of Scotland as well as - very temporarily, thanks to Wessex's French and Italian allies - Chester.

After years dominated by an ever-growing West Francia, mainland western Europe exploded at this point. France was formed, and then marginalised as its former ruler obtained the Kingdom of Italy. Italian territories in France were unstable and themselves soon collapsed into an emboldened France and the larger Kingdom of Aquitaine. This latter was an important development for the House of Wessex, as the new king of Aquitaine Cenute Karling was by now Aethelwulf's son in law by matrilineal marriage - Aethelwulf would go on to protect this interest in his first overseas foray, assisting Cenute to put down a rebellion.

In the Norse kingdoms, an area of seeming less and less relevance to England, Denmark went from strength to strength despite Sigurdr being the next of the brothers to die, of pneumonia. Svithjod remained the dominant power in the region until some time after Bjorn's death (the last of the Ragnarssons to die, not long after Ubbe), but by 919 it appears to have fractured completely.

Three kingdoms are now led by, or have heirs from, the Wessex line (although without the Empire of Britannia the Wessex dynasty can't inherit Aquitaine as it has the same rank as England. Seems there is no de jure Angevin Empire). Aethelwulf's brother Leofwine, one of several with no title (and who hadn't been appointed to the clergy) went adventuring and carved out his own petty kingdom in Tara (now Meath) in Ireland; his relations with his brother are however poor, and he resists efforts to join the new Kingdom of England as its vassal.

 

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Okay, probably done with more than occasional updates just because it's got to a point where there's too much happening, particularly as most of the rest of Arethelred's reign, and his successor Eadwald's reign was focused on the mainland, where there are many more political dynamics than in England. Most of that period was spent protecting interests in Aquitaine, and when necessarily assisting Centule with his bid to restore his throne from a usurper. He repaid me by having adopted seniority succession, and none of the Aquitaine Wessex dynasty ended up with any claims (indeed one was made a bishop).

Eadwald's reign was short; his successor Offa came to power with detractors, and faced the first significant uprising in the remarkably stable Kingdom of England (Eadwald's reign had seen no rebellions); the rebel was the Duke of Northumberland, England's largest landowner and controller of the kingdom's territories in Wales and one in Ireland. Putting it down was a task of several years, not helped by a widespread (but unfounded) suspicion that Offa was a coward, and the Duke's success in having him excommunicated.

Unfortunately the king of a newly-resurgent Norway had taken the opportunity to seize the Irish county. Recently married to a Danish princess, Offa repelled the Norweigians while the Danish (long since converted to Catholicism, the only major Norse power to do so) besieged their territory. The only later battle against the Norse would be the conquest of Connacht, once that achieved independence from Norway - Holmfrid the Bewitched had been deposed and relegated to Chieftess of the Isles, and her successors' occasional bids for power were made by Catholic Norse rulers.

England enjoyed continued stability, which Offa exploited to gradually claim much of Ireland and all of Wales except the two northernmost counties, a task accelerated by his own successor who eventually formed the Kingdom of Ireland.

The European battleground had moved to East Francia, helping to secure Bavaria (in the Fifth War for Bavaria, suggesting a degree of unsuccessful persistence on the Karlings' part...). Periodically, Offa sent his Chaplains to attempt conversion of the dangerously large pagan powers - Hungary, Poland, the Rus, Cumania, or the surviving Norse kingdoms, but with greater or (mostly lesser) forbearance, the savages refused to see the light and eventually imprisoned the unfortunate bishops. Tengri had been reformed early in the 10th Century. Islamic powers were on the rise - the Ummayads swallowed Africa and Iberia, while Byzantium was essentially destroyed by the eastern Muslims.

Christian Europe's borders remained mostly constant in Lotharingia, Aquitane and Germany, with a smaller France. As time went on once-dominant Italy almost vanished. Denmark remained a large, Christian bulwark at the frontier of the pagan onslaught, and England sent forces to quell independence revolts in Lithuania. Sadly, this was not to last - a rival claim to the Danish throne arrived while England was protecting the interests of Meath (still headed by the Wessex dynasty, and contesting control of Artois with the French). English forces should have arrived in plenty of time to salvage the situation, with the warscore going against the incumbent king but only slightly, however he must have been captured in battle since the war abruptly ended even as English forces defeated a large rebel army. The resulting Danish kingdom was immediately fragmented.

As I ended my session, in 964, Europe looked like this (once-stable Aquitaine had also just splintered, which should give me some openings):

I'd just accepted Meath as a vassal, I like to think because they recognised the importance of my forces in protecting their holding in Artois (but actually because now I had the kingdom of Ireland, I was the de jure liege, and the dynasty was already Anglo-Saxon).

 

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More exposition to come, but as a teaser just a taster of the world in the year 1000 AD:

Let the speculation begin before I explain how the world turned out this way...

 

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The Story So Far

I've decided to take a different approach to this AAR and, at the turn of the millennium (yes, I know it's not really the millennium until 1001), take a stock-take of the current state of the world and its major (or otherwise interesting) players in each region are as a series of posts rather than just narrate the events of the last nearly 40 years.

Britannia

The House of Wessex

The Wessex dynasty is currently headed by Emperor Scule I of Britannia, an empire formed less than five months ago and which controls all of England, Wales and Ireland, part of Scotland, and Artois. Able to field over 30,000 men at need, this is the largest power in the Christian world. The 38-year-old Scule is also King of both England and Ireland, generally popular among his vassals, being charitable, kind, gregarious and highly skilled at diplomacy, traits the Wessex ruling family has cultivated since the time of Aethelred the Cruel (the only English or Wessex king to be awarded a moniker, his successors - Aethelwulf, Eadweald, Offa, Cytelbearn and Scule - being as unimaginative with nicknames as they are imaginative with first names).

Scule's reign has been secure in England and Ireland, having good relations with the most powerful landowning family, the House of Northumbria, and most of his other vassals, although dealing with a peasant revolt at home may have fatally delayed setting sail with forces that could have prevented the fall of Byzantium. He has continued his father's adventures (although arguably in Scule's case often misadventures due to their unintended consequences) in Europe, honouring both his alliances with Aelfreda of Aquitaine (installed as ruler by Cytelbaern) and his wife's realm of Asturias. Most disastrously, his campaign to claim Byzantium for Aelfmar of Wessex only weakened the empire by precipitating a succession crisis with multiple claimants, and soon after its core territory was claimed by Hungary while the Byzantine Empress Eadburg of Wessex died under siege in her last remaining holding. Scule abandoned designs in the east after this experience - the politics there are Byzantine.

Rumours abound that Scule takes a more subtle approach to politics than his predecessors. Two Byzantine claimants died in suspicious circumstances shortly after Scule was called to war to aid his kinswoman; a later rebel in Lotharingia suffered a similar fate, and a leading member of the French Karlings followed soon after. Of course it's unlikely he had anything to do with a spate of deaths among Danish royalty - although he was at one point third in line to the Danish throne, the suspicious death of KIng Anders the Just and his son - which fragmented the former giant state into the independent realms of Denmark and Germany - removed him from succession altogether.

[This arose from my not understanding succession laws - Scule's claim came from being the son of a Danish princess, and as long as Anders' dynasty was in charge I thought I should have been in line. I couldn't get at the second in line, who had no vassals or courtiers and so no potential co-conspirators, so I thought that killing the king would achieve the same objective, in getting me closer to the top and also putting the new king within reach. Right about the second, who died soon afterwards in case I was still in line but out of the top three, but wrong about the first. Unfortunately, Scule lives 600 years too early to be warned of the perils of assassinating Danish kings].

The Wessex dynasty controls several other holdings in England as vassals, in Suffolk, Essex and Gwynned. The only other notable Wessex lineage in Britannia is, however, Dorset. The Alfreds and Aethelwolds of this unimaginative branch of the family have tended to side with rebels, although usually escape permanent stigma (as in the succession crisis when the pretender Eadwald of Connacht challenged Cytelbaern, but his several allies among Cytelbearn's vassals were not considered traitors). Aethelwold, the current holder of the title and now 61, does however follow family tradition in periodically founding or supporting factions, so keeping an eye on him is a necessity for the current monarch.

House of Northumbria

The small but pragmatic House of Northumbria has ruled the kingdom of that name since 862. It survived intact through the rampages of the Great Heathen Army and later conflicts with Skotland, and willingly vassalised itself to the new Kingdom of England upon its formation. Its members typically share several characteristics in common with the ruling Wessexes, easing relations, and in return Northumbria has been free to pursue its own claims outside the kingdom. The Dukes of Northumbria have however sometimes chafed under restrictive royal authority; the one time this came to all-out civil war, early in the reign of King Offa I, Northumbria held out for four years before being defeated. In 999, during a brusing embargo war against Amalfi, Northumbria backed Thorfdr of Cornwall's protest in favour of medium crown authority - disinclined to delay his imperial ambitions by fracturing his domain in civil war, Scule acquiesced. A check on the power of Northumbria lies in resentment among the remaining vassals in England, who periodically agitate for the revocation of the Duchy of Deheubaerth, a Northumbrian title (Cytelbearn publicly endorsed these concerns, but the loyalty of the Dukes of Northumberland gave him no pretext for action). The 23-year-old Aelfnoth became Duke of Northumberland and Deheubaerth in 999 following his father's death from depression.

Havi

The 43-year-old Thordr Havi is notable for two things: being a troublemaker (although rarely an openly rebellious one) and, as Duke of Cornwall, being the most significant bastion of Norse culture left in the world following the conversion of the Scandinavian territories to Danish, Norwegian and Swedish culture (otherwise, Norse culture survives only in the northern islands of the British Isles and in the Barony of Richmond. York recently became Anglo-Saxon, so the latter may soon change). Thordr's own ancestry is Yorkist - he's a third-generation descendant of the reformed peasant leader and later military leader Kjolborn (but has inherited none of his martial prowess).

House de Rohan

During Cytelbearn's reign, one of his Irish territories was attacked by a Breton adventurer styling himself Kongar the Conqueror (because if you're called Kongar, you want to make use of the name). Kongar did not, in fact, conquer anything, but once defeated he and his family took up residence in Cytelbearn's court, and his son Konan was awarded the newly-formed Duchy of Lothian. Konan's tenure lasted barely three years, and he was succeeded by his recently-born daughter Burgflaed. Konan readily adopted Anglo-Saxon culture and passed this on to his daughter. Only 23 now, and with such a short-lived predecessor, Burgflaed has not had much impact on British politics, but her family story is interesting and for many years her uncle Iocilin has been the most effective Chancellor the realm has had. She herself has picked up some of his diplomatic skills.

Clan Ua Bruiun Ai

A formerly extensive Irish family, Ua Bruiun Ai has almost been bred to extinction. Its current, Scottish, head, the 54-year-old King Colman I, is however the only remaining major landholder in Britain independent of the Empire of Britannia. The King of Scotland is also a usurper, having deposed Andrew of Clan McApin. Given the trend toward unification, and aggressive expansion into Scottish territory by Northumbria (the latter responsible for the death of the long-lived King Hugh in battle), he may also be the last king of Scotland. Sadly for him, Uganda isn't an available holding.

House Gaultske

This formerly Norse family has fallen further than most in both membership and territorial extent. Young King Magnus' list of claims would make him an eyewatering proposition to anyone who could secure a matrilineal marriage (perhaps with his sole son - I hear Magnus Magnusson is quite the mastermind) and who wants to own a large portion of Scandinavia, but modern Norway consists of exactly two counties both in the north of Scotland, and is likely to have neither for long as he is losing a war to the petty king of Orkney.