A Tale of Five Empires

I bring to you today one of the final chapters of the tale of House Estrid (formerly House Ylving), who start in 1066 as the rulers of Denmark. This is actually the first game I started of Crusader Kings II, before all of the expansions (except Sword of Islam) and patches. I've started a few others, but I always come back to this one, and thankfully the save has had enough integrity not to explode after each major update. This being my first game, I didn't really know what I was doing initially, which led to some interesting situations (such as having a Danish Catholic rule the Byzantine Empire for about 5 minutes before it turned on him). Since I've only recently developed an interest in doing AARs, I don't have any screenshots chronicling the previous 300+ years of history, so instead I'll give a very brief background and then show a few of the recent highlights.

Brief History:

The noble House of Estrid starts in 1066 with King Svend II of Denmark (quickly known as "the Old") and his many illegitimate children. However, the old king manages to have a single trueborn son before his death, young Prince Wulfgar. Due to the elective succession rules in the kingdom at the time, one of Svend's older bastard sons takes the throne, but he turns out to be little more than a regent for the youngest of King Svend's sons, for he dies shortly after Wulgar comes of age. The nobles wisely decide that only Wulfgar can be the true king of Denmark, and since that day a bastard has never again sat on the throne.

Over 150 years later, in 1237 A.D., King Aleksander II, a man all agree is an attractive genius, hands a bag of gold to a shadowy man outside his door before going to grieve over his mother, the recently deceased Empress of Byzantium. As his mother's firstborn son (and thanks to the fact that Born in the Purple wasn't a trait yet), he inherits the ERE as well as Constantinople itself, a place of power that would only grow into a more potent symbol under the control of House Estrid over the next century. First, however, the Greek lords must be convinced that Basileus Aleksander I "the Wise" is a worthy master, something that over half of them don't agree with and make very apparent with a dozen rebellions erupting all over the empire. Some territory is kept, but much is lost, and the success of the rebels pushes crown authority to an absolute minimum. The Danish usurpers will have their work cut out for them, but true to their Nordic roots they are a hardy, resilient people, and Aleksander is already planning the course for his future descendants to not only retake the ERE, but obtain some other prizes in Europe as well...