Okay so about 16-17 more years have passed I think. might be closer to 20, don't rememeber.
Along the way I get two more sons and a daughter IIRC. the two sos I think are called Gerhard and Eduard, the girl I dunno (Lohrenswald for father of the year)
so through shrewd diplomacy I manage to get high crown authority in France and make the succession primogeniture
I bethrothe Megatron to the eldest daughter of the king of Scotland in hope of getting that kingdom for him (yes he dies we'll get to that)
the emperor wants to revoke the duchy of york so I end up giving that to a local bishop instead
Also there are Jihads for Sicily and Andalusia going on but they fail
Soundwave gets removed from the line of succession but he dies a few years later anyway so
at some point I take over the last independent guy in southern France/Aquitane
Now that France is high crown authority and primogeniture succession, I can create England, giving it the same laws
I even get free investiture there
oh yea btw Wales is a kingdom
most of the time I've had carousing focus, but for a few years I use intrigue to get plots going
Anyway my uncle, the hexabishop of England is expected to become the new pope
after a few years he does become pope, and when that happens, he loses all the duchies in England to a noble vassal
Unfourtunately as pope he doesn't really like me all that much :/
also I think I bethrothe my brother to the queen of Denmark, patrinarilly even, so there's an ally we get there
I finally decide to use my claim on Saxony. What I do is assasinate the duke of Saxony. Since his son isn't of age, Saxony ends in a regency, which means I can press my weak claim, which I do in order to get a vote in HRE elections.
But then I notice that because of that I can press my claim to the HRE throne (the faction I mentioned last update got disbanded)
The following war is long and tough and involves a lot of master tacticks and strategems and and and
One thing was that many of the emperor's troops were in England to crush rebellions when I declared war (got no allies with me), so I did a bit of divide and conquer strategy
you know those norse dudes in the north of Sweden? While I'm busy fighting the war they swoop down to Brügge and kidnap most of my family
also first born son dies
to release any of my three sons costs 110 gold, and I'm really hurting for money for most of this time, so most of them spend years in captivity
Also as you see there's a crusade for Jerusalem, some guy in Britanny gets it.
through mastery of warfare and tacticks and stratagaems I win the war:
btw papacy and Pisa have de jure shifted into own kingdoms
Now as emperor I don't have it easy. my heir is in captivity (I eventually just buy him out), the duke of Swabia is leading the election to succede me, most of my vassals don't like me, and I'm above the vasall limit
I try to think of ways to get fewer vasalls, and as it turns out, HRE has kingom viceroy laws...
I am terribly sorry if this is a bad idea. What I don't know, but fear, is that if my heir doesn't become emperor, and the viceroys are still around then, that they go to the new emperor instead of him. I really don't know...
worse still, I even give France away as a viceroyality :/
I hope this doesn't end in tears
anyway sure enough, soon a rebellion starts, but it ends anticlimactically
not long after the Hansa shows up, and I let them do their business, even though it's probably a bad idea (king vasalls are unruly)
Then there's another rebellion
yea...
while the war goes on, I finally get Ultra Magnus out of captivity. Unfourtunately, the eldest daughter of Scotland has now married, so I wed him to the second oldest daughter of Scotland
I hope Quintillus can somehow capitalise on this
Anyways I win the war (allies want to join now is one thing, but another is simply that I'm more powerful)
I revoke a bunch of titles, and give them to other people I hope like me better, but I'm not able to capitalise too well on it
HRE currently has medium crown authority. My hope is to get it high and install primogeniture like I did in France, but things aren't looing so great
Also I revoke France from the guy who rebelled and give it to one of the dukes who I am friend with because corousing
He soon dies and I give France to my brother in Normandie
who hates me now
and is a lollard
yea I'm terrible
anyway NEW REBELLION
I manage to defeat them, but they also got attacked by the king of Poland, and I can't make peace if Poland occupies any of their territory, and I'm not terribly keen on fighting Poland, so I think I'll just let them take the county they want (yes it's bad to lose territory but I'm more worried about keeping our line to the throne).
This still hasn't ended because I had to end the play seccion kinda abruptly