The king is a noob

Last summer several friends encouraged me to pick up Crusader Kings II, a video game which, when I had to explain it to my mother, I called a "medieval politics simulator." I have ended up sinking a good amount of time into what Wife and I have simply been calling "Europe," as in, "Have you been in Europe all afternoon?"

Part of the game's appeal is its detailed dramatis personae: you can play as a ruler of almost anywhere, from emperors down to counts, and (at least from 1066 on, I think), all the people you can play as are verified historical personages, with Wikipedia pages and everything. Of course, once you take control history goes off the rails. By the time you've played your first character's heir, and then their heir, and so on for a century or so, things can get pretty fanciful (such as, for example, a continental Cathar Irish Empire, or a Nubian king simultaneously holding the thrones of the Holy Roman and Byzantine Empires). It's a game where politics are intensely personal, and some time (not today) I want to get into the ways it demonstrates 1) a game without a set story can still have a strong message; 2) game systems are worldviews; and relatedly, 3) simulation is political. (I've been paying attention to some interesting video game commentary lately that's been feeding into this.)

But right now, I just want to appreciate CK2 as a story generator, and share a few of the imagined lives that have emerged from it. Some characters, especially in the first few generations of any given simulation, I have grown kind of attached to.

Gaudiosa the Cruel, Queen of León

Gaudiosa was my first fictional ruler, the daughter of real-life King of León Alfonso VI. In real history, Alfonso ruled from 1065 to 1109, being briefly deposed by his brother Sancho (King of neighboring Castille) in 1072. He lived to be close to 70, had five wives, a few mistresses, and six children. His eldest daughter and successor married into the house of Burgundy and that was the end of the dynasty.

Things went differently in my game. Taking over Alfonso in 1066 my first move was to get him married to a Byzantine Princess. (I was a little dodgy at this point on how to marry my characters advantageously, so this union didn't do a great deal for him politically but at least it was novel.) Alfonso made war on his brother Sancho at the first opportunity and took over the Kingdom of Castille. He then died suddenly during a celebratory tournament, leaving the crowns of León and Castille to his 3-year-old daughter, Gaudiosa. (On the ruler's death, I stopped playing "as" him and "became" Gaudiosa.)

Gaudiosa was lucky in her guardian, a loyal, upright, and kindly man who taught Gaudiosa her virtues and succeeded in curbing her vices (most troublingly, a penchant for torturing small animals). Unfortunately, he died while Gaudiosa was still young and her next guardian couldn't keep her from developing a sadistic streak. But I tried (and so, by extension, she tried) to remember the mentor of her early youth and grow into an upright ruler.

Much of the politicking of Gaudiosa's regency revolved around trying to arrange a betrothal between her and the heir to the neighboring kingdom of Galicia, which would unite most of the lands that the historical Alfonso VI had managed to rule. The King of Galicia would hear none of it, so Gaudiosa began to court both the king and his heir directly with gifts. There was never a betrothal, but when the young man came of age and came into his inheritance (the one quickly following the other) he agreed to the marriage his father had rejected. There seemed to be something of a love story in it. More pragmatically, their heir nearly inherited a united northern Spain (though in fact, through some genealogical snafu, she inherited a patchwork).

Gaudiosa reigned for fully 70 years. She made frequent (and variously effective) wars on the Muslim Caliphs to her south, and dealt with several peasant revolts. There was an element of tragedy to her epithet, though, because in spite of her best efforts to the contrary she became known as "Gaudiosa the Cruel." Indeed, when you spend your nights lying awake, in a concerted mental effort to not go torture the prisoners in your dungeon, you probably won't be remembered for your gentle spirit.

Dirk V "the Old," and the Rain of the Holy Roman Emperors

Oh Dirk, you sneaky bastard. Dirk V of Holland was also a real person, but his life in my game unfolded quite differently than history. When I took control of him he was a boy of 14, and he spent the rest of his upbringing learning the various combinations of cloak and dagger. Upon coming of age, Dirk was apparently far-and-away the sneakiest man in all the land.

Dirk's liege lord, the Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich IV, soon invited him to be the royal spymaster, a title which Dirk would hold through the reigns of at least four emperors.

Heinrich IV quickly died a natural death. (His successor kept Dirk in his position as spymaster.) It was only later that Dirk started working on a plan to make Holland independent of the Holy Roman Empire. Doing that, however, would require a weak ruler he could impose his demands on.

Dirk had the realization that, when all of the spooks and scoundrels in the king's service answer to you, it's astonishingly easy to knock off the king himself. Indeed, a beam soon gave way in the rail of a battlement as the emperor took a walk, and his imperial majesty fell to his death. Awkwardly, the carpenter who had weakened the battlement had an attack of conscience and fingered Dirk as the mastermind of the assassination.

Somehow, this didn't have a noticeable impact on Dirk's reputation. The new emperor, in fact, invited Dirk to reprise his role as arch-schemer. Dirk was, after all, the most qualified, and the new emperor may not have shed many tears over the passing of the old one.

Tragically, shockingly, an unknown assailant (it was Dirk) soon pushed the new emperor from a high rampart, and the second consecutive Holy Roman Emperor accelerated into the afterlife at a rate of about 9.8 meters per second squared.

And no one suspected Dirk. One wonders if the Rain of the Holy Roman Emperors might have continued indefinitely, but the next emperor was a child, and so he won the grand prize: ot falling to his death but instead being presented with an ultimatum from various territories seeking independence, led by Duke Dirk of Holland.

Dirk V lived to be known as "The Old." I imagine the epithetiers were alluding to his ability to kill the most powerful man in Christendom twice and somehow still die of natural causes himself.

Aodh the Gentle, King of Ulster

Aodh was a king of the early Irish, a nominally Catholic people who lived as disorganized tribes and were, frankly (and, to be honest, because I enjoyed it this way) barbaric to their neighbors. Aodh, however, was zealous both in his Catholicism and his desire to see his people become more civilized.

As a youth, Aodh suffered from fits that his family interpreted as demonic possession. It provided an interesting bookend to his rule.

Without going into detail about administrative reform, King Aodh succeeded in moving his kingdom into a more organized way of life. He expanded his kingdom, and generally did a pretty good job kinging for most of his life.

Then one day, on a campaign for a war that didn't turn out well (at least, for his allies--Aodh himself was just being neighborly and it wasn't any skin off his nose), Aodh saw a comet and took it as an omen. That's when things started going downhill.

Aodh started hearing a voice, which he became convinced was the voice of Jesus Christ. This in itself was not a disaster for the kingdom: in fact, it might have done Ulster some good. After all, if Jesus were telling you to do things, they would probably be for the benefit of your neighbors, the poor, and so on. Following the advice of the voice in his head, Aodh began living a concertedly virtuous life. He received back into his court an aged concubine who he he had once loved and discarded, now unlovely and consumptive. His love for his lawful wife became the subject of much comment.

The voice became more insistent, as head-voices probably tend to. Aodh drained the royal coffers giving alms, and eventually ended up giving alms on credit. And eventually--finally-- the voice warned him of the scheming of bishops and cardinals around him, and Aodh broke with the Catholic Church to follow what seemed to him a simpler faith.

In his time as king, Aodh had made enemies, but he had never antagonized anyone on the scale of professing heresy. All his neighbors pounced, raising arms against him as a heathen. Aodh's allies, and he had a few, would not move to help him--kill real Christians to protect a heretical madman? Never. Suddenly Ulster stood alone, it seemed, against the whole Christian world.

That would soon have been the end of Aodh, Ulster, and the nascent Irish state, if not for something that could itself have been divine providence: King Aodh died peacefully in bed, at what everyone agreed was a reasonable age. The crown passed to his son, an uncontroversial Catholic. The armies arrayed against Ulster collectively blinked, muttered a few awkward and insincere apologies, and returned home.