The Mediterranean Hamentashen: A CK2-HIP de Hauteville AAR

[Queequeg]

So as I mentioned on Facebook a while back, I had a really great Sicily game on CK2-HIP a while back, and thought I'd do an AAR on a similar campaign.  I'm off for a big adventure in the Mediterranean pretty soon too, so this will give me an excuse to read more about the Early Middle Ages Medd, which I barely need but is still useful. 

It shouldn't surprise many people that the Sicilians are one of the small, poor, brown non-Sunni people that I'm obsessed with.  I've loved Sicily at least since I first saw The Godfather Part II, and have seen it so many times that I'm capable of repeating most of the  non-English dialog despite never having even encountered the language.  I read The Sicilian Vespers in middle school, but my interest in the area was relatively limited later on because I didn't focus on the Latin West in school. 

Still, the de Hauteville Dynasty are one of my favorite dynasties in European history.  Robert and Bohemond are principal figures in The Alexiad, probably the most famous work of history by a Byzantine author; she compares my first character, Robert, to Achilles.  Robert is also featured in Dante's Divine Comedy, as one of the warriors of the faith. 

Besides that, the brief existence of the independent Kingdom of Sicily saw a completely outsized importance on the history of Latin Europe and Catholicism.  Bohemond was one of the  most important commanders of the First Crusade, Palermo was one of the great centers of transmission of Greek and Muslim knowledge and culture to the Latin West, and in some respects that I'll get in to later on Sicily prefigures, or at least gestures towards, the Renaissance.   

This is also the period that sees the emergence of a Sicilian language and contemporary Sicilian culture.  There is limited evidence of a continuous Latin language presence throughout the Late Antique, and the Sicilian Language of today shows heavy influence of "Gallo-Romance" (North Italian, Norman, French, Provencal), Greek and Arabic.  HIP uses nativized titles, so instead of being the "King of Sicily", when Bohemond I decides to go Sicilian culturally he becomes Re di Sicilia, and his Chancellor is Duca Ippolito di Tunis, is Spymaster.  I plan on doing a few entries from a first person perspective based on the introduction of Baudolino, one of my favorite books and the second "adult contemporary novel" I ever read (yes, this explains a lot). 

I don't plan on powergaming.  I play CK2, moreso even than other Paradox games, as a kind of state/dynasty-roleplaying.  I'm me, so I will generally avoid direct conflict with the Byzantines that Bohemond and Roger were so (in)famous for, instead focusing on North Africa. Roger II conquered Mahdia under the command of one of my favorite people in all of history, George of Antioch. The Sicily of my play will basically be that of George and Roger II-nautically oriented, innovative, tolerant, centralized, aspiring to restore elements of classical civilization, but also deeply invested in the eternal Muslim-Christian conflict.  I avoided this in my last game, but I'm also going to try to break up the HRE's holdings in Italy as best I can.  In HIP, at least, a lot of the Italian areas end up Germanizing and this horrifies me, and the Kingdom of Sicily was eventually completely fucked over by the Hohenstaufens historically so this seems historically appropriate.  I'll also be designating certain Lucky Rulers, in part because in most of my HIP games the Muslim powers get steamrolled and I want that sweet, sweet holy war CB. 

Here's a bit on the Sicily of the period before I do my first PoV entry.   



This is Italy during the height of Byzantine power and before the first Norman incursions.  The Principalities of Salerno, Benevento and Capua and the Duchy of Spoleto are ruled by remnant of the Lombards. The southern Lombards have been at war with the Byzantines and the occasional Muslim attempt at earnest conquest rather than raiding for the past 300 years, and the region is isolated and relatively backwards.  Lombardy, Tuscany and the Veneto are already becoming wealthy from trade and their placement along the pilgrimage routes to Rome.  By comparison many of the Lombardian principalities are conservative-looking at a list of rulers of the Mezzogiorno retain recognizably Lombardic names, many of which sound Anglo-Saxon.  The Lombards, apart from perhaps Spoleto which maintained a close relationship with the Papacy, are isolated both from the Carolingian and Macedonian (Byzantine) Renaissance, and the explosion of castle building across Catholic Europe has yet to reach the region. 

Sicily had been largely conquered by the Arabs in the 9th Century under the independent Arab Aghlabid Emirs of modern Tunisia.  With the decline of Aghlabid power, a local dynasty, the Kalbids, took root.  Sicily became a center for Sunnis fleeing Shia Fatmid persecution, despite the fact that the local Kalbid Emirs themselves were Shia.  Like the Mezzogiorno, Sicily is a site of constant conflict.  The Byzantines, especially during the military campaigns of the mid-late Macedonian Dynasty, made real headway in to reconquering the island.  But Byzantine Italy is the marginal periphery of an Empire that is, thanks in large part to Basil II and the Doukas, hollowing out at the core.  The Byzantines, like the Romans and unlike the Classical Greeks, are not a nautical people by nature so constantly defending Italy from continued pressure Lombard, Muslim and now Norman pressure is increasingly tenuous.

I think it's likely that a lot of what we think of as "Sicilian" has already begun to emerge in this period.  As anyone who has seen The Sopranos will tell you, The Mafia emerged in part because foreign rulers were frequently incompetent or brutal, and quickly replaced.  Like Muslim Spain, Muslim Sicily appears to have been driven between sectarian (Christian-Muslim, Sunni-Shia) and ethnic (Arab-Berber, Arab/Berber-Greek/Sicilian) in a way a region like Tuscany simply wasn't . The Aghlabids brought with them new agricultural products (oranges, lemons, cane sugar) and techniques, but it doesn't appear that Muslim culture penetrated deeply in to the Sicilian countryside.  While there does appear to have been a degree of inter-confessional toleration during the Muslim period, there is also evidence that the Norman conquerors were treated by the local Christian majorities of Sicily and Malta as saviors, which likely facilitated the eventual triumph of the Latin Rite in Sicily and the wider region.   

I'm going to go ahead and guess that, because this is Languish, most of you already know something about the Normans.  They're big, tough people who married Viking seafaring and daring-do with emerging French Chivalry and took it to basically every place from Spanish Galicia to the Sinai.  Robert's grandfather was likely so close to his Norse roots that practice polygyny like a pagan, but Roger and Robert de Hautville, as well as Robert's son Bohemond, would do more to spread the Catholic faith than any Catholic warrior since Charlamagne. Anna Comnena explicitly makes the comparison between Normans and Turks, and I think there's a great deal of truth there.  Just as the Turks will eventually rule every land from Smyrna to Bengal, the Normans are new converts who bring new techniques and the incomparable zeal of the converted.   

[Caliga]

Still, the de Hauteville Dynasty are one of my favorite dynasties in European history. 

Mine too.

[Martinus]

Same here. Maybe half of my CK2 games were as de Hautevilles (with the second spot going to the Burgundian dynasty).

[Valmy]

The de Hautevilles were nothing but a bunch of cynical powermongers!

I don't think Muslim rulers were eager to gain converts among people they could tax right? So it might be intentional that they left a lighter cultural impact on Sicily than one might expect.

[garbon]

I generally prefer de Normandie.

[Queequeg]

I don't think Muslim rulers were eager to gain converts among people they could tax right? So it might be intentional that they left a lighter cultural impact on Sicily than one might expect.

Islam is a huge thing.  The Ummayads discouraged conversion in many cases for the reason you referenced, but you'd still end up with a lot of conversions, and non-Arab or mixed ethnicity Muslims lead the Abbasid Revolution.  The Almohads and Almoravids in Spain both actively persecuted Christians and Jews.  The Almohads exiled all those who did not convert hundreds of years before the Catholic Monarchs did.

[Razgovory]

If you are going to do an AAR, you really should post some screenshots.

[Queequeg]

I was originally running an older version of HIP, using a pre-Horse version of CK2, but I wasn't happy with how the game was turning out.  I had a ludicrously great lucky streak-I got 4 kings and an Emperor named "Bohemond the Just" and won three successive crusades-while a lot of the great powers of Europe collapsed.  A Capet King of France pushed his claim on the HRE, and apparently the same title holder cannot have KoF and HRE, so when he died all of France and the HRE were unified under an elected German.  Eventually the French duchies got their independence, but no King of France emerged.  I got all of Iberia really, really easily, and though for complicated reasons I ended up with a lot of Andalusi vassals, and the Ziryun and banu Abbad families ended up playing really interesting, crucial roles in the Sicilian Empire, the lack of any competition made it boring, and I knew the update was coming.

And holy fuck was it an update.  I got Horselords and the Content Package, and it looks and to a certain extent feels like a new game.  A lot of the cultures here are completely new, and the personal graphics are completely updated and reworked.  It's great, but a lot more difficult for reasons I'll get in to.



Here's the general political situation around 1066.  In this screenshot I've already got my ass handed too me by the "Rhomaioi"-usually I just attack Epirus until I can get a white peace, as it's a lot more difficult to expand in to the Byzantine Empire than in to the Islamic world because of CBs.  Also, because I love both Sicilians and Byzantines and like to imagine they were totally cool with each other and the Byzzes were able to dedicate a lot more resources to the east.



Here's the beginning.  Count Robert "the Weasel" of Apulia and Calabria.  Robert by this point has already had a storied career, alternatively fighting for and against the 'native' South Lombards (here they're called Langobardi, I think), the Byzantines and the Siculo-Arabs.