Toggle Background Color
Chapter 2: Kicking People While They're Down
Last time we got introduced to Queen Tamar and her enemies. Now we're going to introduce the Hashimids to the business ends of our swords.
I think it says a lot that this kind of thing no longer surprises me. I do love the King of Scotland's adorable frown. It's like he's saying "But I wanted ALL of the Almohad Sultanate!"
While I'm plotting to have a guy murdered and fighting the Hashimids, Tamar sleeps with some random Courtier.
Poor Valdemar. He's been married for only a few years and his wife has already cuckolded him.
Our army's looking pretty good. Lots of heavy infantry and some horse archers. As we are part of the Greek Culture Group, we get access to the Cataphract retinues, which is one of the best retinues in the game. The only problem is that it's rather expensive.
I've always hated this message. I've never had the desire to declare random person A a heretic and this message pops up all the time.
Our bastard daughter is born and she's a genius! 
And she's not legitimatized! 
Even if she was, she wouldn't be part of our dynasty. Oh well.
That's our second holy war down and it looks like Khiva is having some problems. Things are looking good so far.
I'm going to hand off that title to my lover, who has a massive +75 opinion boost towards me. I'm not getting any problems from him.
Our attempts to get a powerful Orthodox friend in the north go very wrong. At least we can holy war him.
This time we're pregnant with our actual husband's child. While we are pregnant, he'll have a +25 opinion boost towards us. He's kind of upset about us cheating on him.
Catholics get a bunch of holy orders. We only get them if we somehow get control of Jerusalem. That's not going to happen.
Here's our second legitimate child. Because we have gavelkind, we're going to have to split the kind between the two kids. That sucks. I'm going to change succession to Elective. That way we get the best kid of the bunch and our vassals love us for it.
Right now there's a Jihad for Jerusalem and for some reason Saladin is twiddling his thumbs. He has by far the bulk of muscle in the Islamic world and he's doing nothing. 
More icon fun!
Well this is alarming. The Seljuks have taken control of the Duchy of Azerbaijan and are now right next door. That retinue can't come fast enough.
It's child raisin' time and our son is already telling lies. They grow up so fast.
But we've done all the stabbing we need to do, and our son needs to get every last man out of his vassals.
A few things to note.
1. We've begun to convert the captured enemy provinces.
2. The Cumans are at worth with the Rurikids. Azov would make a lovely merchant republic, don't you think?
I think we can all agree that this is an excellent event to get for your kids. Brave, Patient, and/or Kind? Sign me up.
Excellent.
Yes.
Gonna ransom some dude, doo doo doo.
You're on a roll kid. Don't stop.
Punching above our weight class? Check. In a fair fight the Khan would wipe the floor with us. That's why fair fights are for suckers.
Fun fact: the Seljuks decided to launch an invasion. You know, the kind of CB that takes an entire kingdom. A recurring theme in this LP is that everyone will use the Invasion CB on us. Everyone.
I was too panicked to take good screenshots but if you look in the lower right corner we're actually winning. I got very lucky with the initial fight and was able to catch the Seljuks off guard. We'll win this fight too.
Well this is a nice prize. Capturing the ruler's children (and adult Muslim children usually have titles) will give you some good ransom money.
And now I will bankrupt the Seljuks.
We got about 800 gold from these guys.
Son of a bitch.
Next Time: The Joys of Mercenaries