October 1100
Okay, it's time for a big reshuffle.
First of all, Roman sent a 'friend' after some of the more undesirable elements in the court that his father left behind. A lady hearing voices was found dead one morning and considered to have passed away in her sleep. What the reason for that extra pillow was would remain a mystery, but Roman wasn't about to disagree.
Soon after his wife managed to survive one poisonous meal, although she never suspected anything. The second time did her in as well, and spoiled meat was blamed.
With his wife and rival out of the way, this made Roman eligible to marry again. As he has no decent Spymaster (Ksenia is already 67 years old and probably won't last much longer), he set his eye on a 31 year-old lady from Crete with an impressive 19 Intrigue that shared several personality traits. The ruler of Crete likes us (having a shared religion helps a lot), so I have good hopes.
Andrei, the grandson that is still eligible to marry, likes Roman even less than he did Vseslav. Ugh.. well maybe we can use him to improve our relations with Poland so I proposed a marriage between him and a female courtier with halfway decent stats.
Finally, Rostislav was granted the provinces of Zhmud and Sudovia in addition to Kurs. He didn't mind both being in revolt too much and is back up to 100% loyalty now. The other vassals are following suit, with the sole exception of Rogvolod, who is gaining loyalty at about half the pace.
Roman's marriage proposal was accepted, giving him not just a beautiful wife, but also a truckload of gold to play with.
I'm not sure why Crete would pay us for stealing their Spymaster, but I'm not complaining.
Isn't she pretty?
Now go and have some more babies.
November 1100
Some events to greet us at the start of the month:
Hopefully settling down will do Andrei some good. I have no idea how a new papal controller would affect us Orthodox, but I figured I'd mention it.
With some gold to spend, I have Zemigalians start building a Forrestry, and Vitebsk a Tile Factory. Most provinces are currently unable to build improvements, which I expect is because the technology hasn't spread there yet. West Dvina is still terribly backwards in case anyone's interested.
Most of the money I keep for the later war to secure the Lithuanian crown.
Later during the month, knowledge of Charcoal spreads to Vitebsk.
December 1100
The loyalty of our vassals has grown to the point where I enact Popular Law. This drops Davyd and Rogvolod to somewhat disloyal, but both will climb back up again soon enough.
The Bishop of Sudovia (one of our loyal vassals) asks us to Foster his daughter. I accept the request, figuring that depending on how her court education turns out, she might make a good wife for Grigorii.
Later that month, Aibinn falls deathly ill
That pretty much destroys her future chances of being useful to us. But that's what you get for hating your liege.
1101
January 1101
Sculptures spreads to Velikiye Luki (our most northeastern province).
Veleslava (Old Vseslav's daughter from his second wife) decides she hates God for taking her daddy away. How this will affect her ecclestial upbringing remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, Andrei finally decides he doesn't want to be part of our court anymore.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out! :wink2: Given that his traits would erode any loyalty I could buy again over time, giving him the boot felt like the least headache-inducing option.
Also, the Pope dies. Long live the Pope.
February 1101
We get a pretty good event:
Roman decides to do a little bit of prodding, and manages to convince the church to get off of their asses and start preaching about peace and forgiveness and all that good stuff. Realm stability is back up to 0 for a small amount of Piety. Fair trade I'd say.
March 1101
A month in which absolutely nothing of note happens.
April 1101
We get a chance to befriend the heir of another ruler.
I have no idea where Gallich Mersky is, but can't see why we shouldn't accept the friendship. After some map-searching (is there an easier way to find out where a specific province is located?), I find it to our east and we already enjoy good relations with current ruler. Having a friend and potential ally there should give us good security in the early stages of kingdom, so this was probably the good option.
May 1101
Jacwiesz finishes constructing a mine. I don't build anything new at this point, preferring to keep the gold for our upcoming military campaign.
June 1101
Our realm has recovered enough from Vseslav now to capture the last provinces to claim the Lithuanian crown. I mobilize the provinces surrounding Sambia and Scalovia and start marching them up to the border. This puts our income in the negative as expected, but we have enough gold to shoulder the cost for a few months. With the amount of men on my side, I don't expect this war to last for very long.
When everyone is in position, I declare war on both provinces and march in. This apparently triggers an alliance the high chief had with someone else and they also declare on us. I eventually find the allied province somewhere in Siberia.
Whatever.
July 1101
Apparently war wasn't exciting enough for one of the sons of Roman's wife's first marriage:
The guy is loyal but has very unimpressive stats. I certainly not going to chance our marshal dying, so go for option one. He survives, but I forgot to check if he picked up any trait from the event.
With Roman's attention elsewhere, the peasants in Zemigalians think it is a good time to start complaining about us forcing the Orthodox church on them.
Well, too bad. After quashing the dissent, the province is looted and revolting, but also Orthodox.
August 1101
The battles are underway now. To give an indication of why we're going to win this:
Yup, 25% of the opposing army is made up of peasants wielding pitchforks.
While the battle is underway, we need to make a choice on how to raise Grigorii:
I remember reading somewhere that we should raise potential successors ourselves, and since Grigorii is Roman's only child and successor right now that seems to be the best option. It's darn expensive though!
The battles ended as expected, with solid victories for us:
The armies start advancing to the capitals afterwards.
September 1101
Zemilgalians finishes the Forestry it started on earlier. With the province looted and in revolt, it's not doing much good at the moment but it will help as soon as it recovers.
One of the little ones grows up:
She picks up the Arbitrary (+1 martial, -1 stewardship), Selfish (+1 stewardship, -2 yearly prestige, -1 yearly piety) and Stubborn (+1 Martial, -1 Intrigue) traits. I'm not sure whose child Ekaterina is, and forget to check it due to the war. Arbitrary is not a very promising trait to have though.
Fighting in Scaldovia reaches it's inevitable end.
From what I remember we should vassalize the other province first so for now I don't do anything. The High Chief tries a white peace which I decline. The battered remains from his regiments try one or two counterattacks, but are beaten without any losses on my side.
Not all of our court agrees with our military conquest it seems. From what I remember Thomas was disloyal to begin with so his loss wasn't too bad.
October 1101
Sambia is also liberated by our forces and we enter negotiations with their leader, demanding him to vassalize to us.
More peasants think to take advantage of the war to voice their discontent.
I think the peasants got the extra -0.15 as well as peasant loyalty in Memel was down to 0% when I checked. I raised their power slightly to avoid revolts.
We also get this event:
I don't really see what the point of the first option is; we're not looking for more enemies right now. I go for option two instead, and Roman doesn't end up picking up any more traits.
The province of Memel also finishes a Tile-factory.
The Chief of Sambia gets back to us:
Now that we have stolen his vassal away, I enter in negotiations with the High Chief of Scalovia and basically tell him to start packing because the province is now mine. The almost immediate response leaves our realm looking like this:
Since we now have enough provinces, I go for the crown and..
..discover it costs 250 gold to create the title.
Now that wouldn't have been a problem if I had remembered to take the treasuries of Sambia and Scalovia as part of the peace negotiations, but I didn't. Instead, we will have to sit on our hands dreaming of the crown for a while longer. Oops!
With the High Chief of Scalovia gone, I offer a white peace to the far-away tribe he was allied with. They later refuse it for reasons that aren't really clear to me.
Towards the end of the month, another one of the daughter's of Vseslav's second wife grows up:
She ends up gaining the Just and Pragmatic traits. Her stats are fairly promising, but like all of her siblings she's very disloyal. Her mother is slowly gaining loyalty though, so not all might be lost.
November 1101
The prince of Kiev wants an alliance:
Kiev is a fairly sizeable Duchy to our south, and doesn't seem to be in any serious rivalries. I accept the offer to gain another ally while we establish ourselves as a kingdom.
War is good for something else as well it seems:
Sure, I'll take that.
December 1101
Now that the war is over, Roman finally has some time to spend with Grigorii. We got the following event:
Much as though option 4 was appealing, we should probably stick with the parental upbringing so I went for option two. Grigorii acted like a child and picked up the Stubborn trait for that. Not a great result, but there weren't too many good outcomes in there anyhow.
The realm itself continues to stabilize:
Zemigalians is still in revolt over the forced conversion, but at least it's doing better.
At about this time, I notice that one of the units marching across the land is actually attacking the province it's in. Oops. I still don't know if there's any way to tell what any given regiment is up to, but dissent in Zhmud apparently grew to the point of spawning a rebel army. I raised an army in the neighbouring province and started marching it over to sqaush the rebels.
1102
January 1102
The Rebel army was sqaushed thoroughly. The army is disbanded again and returning home.
The kids of Vseslav's latest wife (who is starting to warm up to us) are continuing to keep us occupied. I didn't see too much reason to sow the seeds of a rivalry. Nothing happened afterselecting option 2.
Later on the infant daughter of Andrei dies. Aw.
He and his wife seem to be pragmatic about it though, and she's pregnant again the next month.
February 1102
We get an event allowing us to give in to demands from rebels in Aukshaytz or hang some traitors (I forgot to take a screenshot of this). I was about to reach for the rope, but then realized the province was already Orthodox. So instead I took a small prestige hit and gave into their demands, thus ending the revolt in that province.
March 1102
This looks familiar:
Unfortunately luck wasn't on our side this time around. Scalovia is now looted and revolting, and still pagan! Can't be lucky all the time I suppose.
Ksenia (who is 69 by now, with no siblings, friends or successors, and a rival of Rovgolod) decides to follow Andrei's example.
Can you guess which option I picked?
I anxiously await the end of the month, we should be able to crown ourselves next month..
April 1102
..but we end up with 249 gold.
Lovely, I knew I should've checked our income beforehand. One more month then.
While I slap myself, knowledge of Reinforced Leather spreads to Jacwiez, and Vitebsk finishes constructing a Tile-factory.
May 1102
Oh yes, it's overdue.
It's good to be King.
This is where I halted the session for now. I think the next step would be to scoop up the remaining Pagan provinces that are bordering us, but what to do after that?
Two things of concern:
Davyd seems to have pushed himself in front of Rostislav again in the line of succession. This may be caused by Rostislav giving some of his titles to his sons, but what can we do to rectify this?
Also, Roman still hasn't gotten himself any other kids. At 47 now, how much hope should we have for family expansion?
I'll pick up the save again tomorrow, and will start making some haste to finish the turnset.