PART NINE: Wolfe of the Steppes (1118-1126)

Forum > Paradox Development Studio > Europa Universalis IV > EUIV: User Mods > Terra Totalis Omnium > 12th Century Bookmarks?

Hi.

First of all, let me just say I really appreciate the sheer scope and ambition of this project. 11 AD to 2011 AD is a lot of material to cover! And I’m sorry I made fun of your name, even though I’m pretty sure it doesn’t actually mean anything in Latin. So I really, really don’t blame you for getting a few things wrong. How could you not? Still, Byzantine history is a bit of a specialty of mine, and I want this mod to be the best it can be! So I thought I’d take a look at some of the bookmarks between 1118 and 1130 and give my two cents.

First of all, I’m slightly dubious of the localization you’ve used for the BYZ tag. I mean, yeah, sure, you can draw a straight line from Augustus to Eirene II, but that line runs straight through Byzantion, you know? The Byzantines calledthemselves “Romans”, sure, but they aren’t the ones sitting around in 2014 playing video games. This era of imperial history is conventionally periodized as the Byzantine Empre, so for the sake of clarity for English-speaking audiences this mod should really follow the same convention. If nothing else, they’re used to seeing that big purple blob in Anatlolia and Greece labelled “Byzantium” in vanilla Paradox games.

At the very least, you could at least stick to English and not call it the “Basileia Rhōmaiōn”. That’s just weird.

Let’s start off in 1118, when Eirene II took the throne.

Anyway, this isn’t a big deal, but I just wanted to point out that it’s kind of a bummer that EU just abstracts regencies into regency councils, since the Dowager Empress Ingeborg Hvide is a pretty interesting historical character— a Danish noblewoman plucked from Scandinavian obscurity to become the wife of a Byzantine emperor— and then ruler of all the empire during her daughter Eirene II’s minority! Pretty cool IMHO.

She let Eirene’s aunt Konstantia (elder sister of Iouliana Konmene, who wrote the Alexiad– you guys did read the Alexiad when you were researching this, right? She calls the Byzantines the “Roman Empire” a lot, you’d like it) out of jail, which signalled a crucial break from Meletios’ heavy-handed handling of his vassals in favor of a more Alexian clemency.

Anyway, the regency lasted less than a year, so I guess it’s not worth worrying about.

What’s with the weird stats you gave Eirene, anyway? She wasn’t exactly Alexios (of course, it probably doesn’t help that our main source for her reign is the Anatolian Letters, written by a Saimid spy with an axe to grind, instead of say a loving paean written by her own daughter), but ADM 1 DIP 1 MIL 1 seems excessively harsh.

She also believed deeply in an Orthodox-motivated notion of self-improvement– but I suppose I’m verging on “too granual for an EU4 mod to worry about modeling”. Still, it bums me out to see Eirene get a bad rap like this.

By the end of her first year on the throne, she had already shown substantial improvement in the arts of statecraft. Maybe you just got confused about how EU4 ruler stats worked and statted her out as a child? Hm.

Now, this is a bit outside of my specialty, but since it happened in 1118 I’ll mention it– I’m not really sure about the King Possessed By Satan event chain you have firing in France after Louis VI comes to power. I’m not really sure why it was worth the effort, given that the Capets were deposed by the de Blois like, what, two years later?

Also, King Richard I of England was a Norman, but not a de Normandie, if you get me. Also, for some reason when I tried to load as him the King Possessed By Satan event chain fired for him, too.

Anyway, back to the Byzantines. It’s important to note that Eirene II devoted a lot of time and effort to public works projects and improvement of the empire in general and Constantinople in particular. Maybe this could be represented by more buildings in the Thrace province starting with the 1118 bookmark? Just a suggestion!

You also have the Byzantines in a royal marriage with Kiev starting in 1120. Eirene did renew her father’s alliance with Kiev by marrying off the Dowager Empress to a Kievian prince, but on observe games I’ve noticed that like half the time (when the save doesn’t wind up corrupted) I’ve seen the Rurikoviches inherit Byzantium, which can’t be right. Ingeborg wasn’t even a Konmenos! Like, duh, we aren’t talking Ptolemies here, this is a family tree that branches.

Anyway, in spite of what I suspect you mostly remember Eirene II, let’s also remember that she continued the ongoing Komnenian project to encircle the Black Sea, launching a holy war against the Pecheneg rump state in 1122 to claim Moldau.

Granted, it was not a terribly challenging war. Maybe it was a bit harder in real life than in TTO, given that for some reason the Pechenegs still have like mil tech 1 in 1118. I guess it’s hard to balance techspeeds across thousands of years without strange outcomes like that, huh?

Still, it led to the end of an independent Pecheneg state on the steppes– a pretty big deal, I’d say.

Still, it wasn’t the end of the Pecheneg title— Khanum Tekçe converted to Orthodox Christianity from Tengri (note to TTO devs: the pre-Byzantine religion of the Pechenegs was Tengri, not “noreligion”) and became a vassal of the empress. The various Orthodox Pechenegs who had inherited the lands of their Tengri brethren under Byzantine auspices– the khans of the Pechenegs and the merchant princes of Belgorad in particular– would remain a potent force in the northern empire for some time. Also, Tekçe’s status as a vassal queen shouldn’t be understated. I feel like the Pechenegs should keep their cores even after their tag vanishes after the 1122 bookmark– wouldn’t be cool if the Saimids could force the Byzantines to release Pechenegs or something?

For some reason you have an heir named “Isaakios Konmenos” spawn in 1122. This didn’t ring a bell, so I did some researched and learned that Eirene did in fact have a son named Isaakios– but he was a bastard and never acknowledged as an heir or even a proper member of the imperial house.

Anyway, I still think you’re really selling short Eirene in the stats department. Even a hostile source like the Anatolian Letters acknowledges her substantial personal canny, fending off assassination attempts and lining the state’s coffers with smart bets on chariot races. Did you know that Eirene III favored the Greens even though her grandfather literally raced for the Blues? Strange but true. Anyway, the money went straight to her building efforts. Did I mention that Thrace needs more buildings?

While we’re at it, let’s take a look at the Great Fire of 1124 event chain. You have the event fire (er, so to speak) in 1124 and have the Byzantines lose their Greek fire naval modifier. It’s true that the fire led to the temporary loss of the Greek fire formula…

She very quickly set about reacquiring it though, targeting a pirate organization that appeared to have its own supply:

It was a triumph of Byzantine espionage and naval prowess, and I like to think that if it wasn’t for what happened later on, this is the kind of thing we’d remember Eirene for. Certainly not the sort of stuff a 1/1/1 monarch would be doing, anyway.

Did you know that Eirene was friends with Iouliana Konmene? It’s too bad the Alexiad ended after the end of Alexios’ last war against the Seljuks, since we could really do with a more sympathetic account of his granddaughter’s reign.

I was glad to see that Eirene’s daughter— named for her friend— was correctly listed as the heir from 1125 onwards in the history files. Since, unlike Isaakios, she, you know, was the heir and not a bastard fathered by some court rando.

There was a brief civil war in 1125 when Empress foiled yet another assassination attempt, this time catching a petty noble red-handed.

Given that the renegade Kephale didn’t even have a whole province behind her, it’s likely too minor to bother trying to represent in your mod. Still, I think that this slight destabilization of the empire helped explain some of what happened in 1126.

Okay. Okay. No more putting it off. Let’s talk about the Bulgarian uprising of 1126. Basically, what the fuck? I mean, it happened, it was a huge deal, etc.— but the implementation of it here seems very… I don’t know.

I mean, yes, the Bulgarians had a huge army, they were remarkably successful in motivating the local populace against their Byzantine overlords, etc. A 14,000 strong army in the 1100s was nothing to sneeze at! But the 100k troops you gave them might be a bit much? Especially with the 100% morale bonus they get “as a Bulgarian state”.

I think it’s important to note that the war could have easily gone either way. The Byzantine army as a whole was without doubt stronger than the Bulgarians’.

The Bulgarians actually very cleverly baited the Byzantines into battle at Philippolis before they’d consolidated all their forces before bringing in a much larger force and overwhelming them.

Still, if Eirene hadn’t had dropped dead of some random illness at the age of 24, she might have salvaged the situation.

And I’m not saying this to put down Bulgaria, all right? If anything, it’s even more impressive that they beat the Byzantines without fielding an army of a hundred thousand Bulgarian supermen, right? Anybody?

Speaking of Bulgarian supermen, how is Tsar Ioakim ADM 6/DIP 6/MIL 6? Just because he’s an important historical figure doesn’t change the fact that he was illiterate and wasn’t really very good at anything besides soldiering.

Anyway, I’d keep commenting but after the war Bulgaria kept on tag switching between Kingdom of Bulgaria and Empire of Bulgaria and then EU4 crashed.