This guy's my cousin over in Hainaut. I tried to murder him to get his land, but my crappy intrigue and mediocre diplomacy didn't even get me to 50% plot power. He now has a son, but murdering him and his heir(s) should be doable now with 16 intrigue.
One of the very first things I did was bugger this guy over for his land. He called Burgundy into our war, which I could've easily dealt with but it probably would've meant up to 1000 casualties. Fortunately, I captured him in the second battle. Normally I ransom people when I'm winning a war because I like getting 70 gold, but I reaaaally wanted in on the crusade, which was called a mere 31 days after I began playing.
This is Europe right after I won the crusade. I didn't have time to take any more clay in the homeland because of how early it started, so my holdings are pretty much Flanders and the cancerous blue in Anatolia (most of which I gave to various claimants). If you'll look to the bottom right corner, you'll notice France is at war with the Kaiser. This was problematic because he wanted Ghent, as Lohrenswald predicted. What made this twice as awful is Ghent is actually a really freakin sweet county, tied with Brugge for best. It was a full third of my demesne troops, so I wouldn't stand for the Kaiser's tomfoolery. I declared independence.
Unfortunately, the only screenshots I took during this war were of my allies, William the Conqueror and Alfonso III of Castille, Leon, and Galicia, and my inability to call them to war for whatever reason. Maybe because my son was betrothed to Philippe Capet's daughter? Either way, screw them. And then Willy died literally a month before I won and Al got into a revoke war so I couldn't even use them to press a claim somewhere.
While crusading, I got crusader, brave, and zealous. I had 100 relations with pretty much every vassal after that (especially because I made a point of giving vassals and my son crusader too). The pope died in the middle of my independence war, which got me another 1000 troops from the clergy. I had more than twice as many men as France, sitting pretty at around 5k. France had been hammered by England and the Kaiser pretty seriously, so I was in a really good spot, in spite of my allies' uselessness.
Right after I won independence (about a year before my death), I attacked Brittany over Leon. The claimant was in his mid-70s, so I was pretty worried he'd die, but fortunately he didn't. Pretty sure he's actually still alive. I realized then that my only hope of survival would be to swear fealty to one of the four major players I was next to: England, Byz, HRE, and France. England was out because god would that be ugly. I didn't pick Byz either because DEUS VULT. I almost picked HRE because my wife's the Duke of Saxony's brother and he has two daughters, but she made me break up with my lover so screw her wrinkly ass. I also legitimized all three of my bastards right after that.
So I went right back to France. I had the most claims there, and I just got my bastard baby son betrothed to the Duchess of Burgundy, who was in danger of being usurped. I first went after Vermandois because my Karling claimant for that was in his 50s, and, well, you know how that ended.
Looking ahead, I've build a pretty solid power base for Arakhor. It should be a trivial matter to break free of France again (or even put my son's wife on the throne) and then join the HRE to take Saxony. I'm PRETTY SURE my wife's claim is inheritable but if not, I'd recommend handling that asap cause she's like 50-something. Continuing vulting for deus in Anatolia's not the worst idea, but the Seljuk blob of Rum and Persia is something upwards of 20k troops. Persia's losing lots of land to rebels, though, so maybe it's not a bad idea. Armenia Minor's easy pickings as well. Forging a duchy claim would be possible with my chancellor, who is above the dip threshold for doing that. Also, worth noting that he's a county-level mayor. I made his duchy to become a grand duke for dat +1 demesne limit and get a de jure claim on Chios, plus Syrma is a good place for a merchant republic once we hit kingdom-tier.
Or Arakhor can just not do any of this because it's his game now.
