The Reign of King John the Just of Ireland Pt. I

Welcome back to my Crusader Kings adventure. Last time I wrote a looooong post on the reign of my father King Whillump of Ireland. This time I'll split it up into reasonable sized posts. For a brief recap last time I was playing as King Whillump I of Ireland, named in honor of my beloved pet. Want to see a picture of the real Whillump go to my sister's tumblr her name is poke-bank, she's a brilliant artist ask her for a commission. I'm sorry I wanted to link a picture here but because of the crazy thunderstorms now pounding my neck of the woods or problems with Chrome I can't link it right now.  We created the kingdom of Ireland and are now trying to eat up the rest of Britain and create an empire. This is the point in the game I get bored and start over as something stupid. However I am determined to finish this time and spread the swine throughout Europe.

Anyways we are King John the Just of Ireland. We are a brilliant character here. Midas Touched, Genius, Zealous, Just, Kind, Humble and Honest. The goal of the moment is to create the Empire of Britannia. I have never managed to do this, but with the luck of the Swinebreath's we'll take over Britain.  I'm King John I of Ireland. I guess my grandfather Petty King John of Connacht wasn't important. I am currently married to Countess Hotdog of Faereyar and I have three children: Adelaide, Joan, and John. I am a much better person than my father so I will be eternally faithful to my beloved Hot-dog. Our children, except Joan, are just basic paradox pudding. We have two girls and a boy. The Succession is set to elective right now so I might just nominate my genius daughter as successor. In fact that is exactly what I do. Princess Joan will be our heir unless we live a long long life and Princess Joan's male children take precedence. It's 1128! God Dammit! Woman should be able to rule.

We have no real threats to our glorious green throne. Our Sister, Emma, died as a teenager and our brother Whillump is one our vassals. However he is a nice guy and as you will see we have a close brotherly bond. King John takes the ambition to improve his intrigue because it's pitiful. Lucky we're in Ireland or John would probably be six feet under right now. 

A shot of my beloved brother Whillump and his Dutch dwarf wife. Father tried to switch from stewardship to diplomacy but failed miserably with Whillump. Bishop Arthur was a Grey Eminence but that fat bastard turned my brother into a gluttonous, shy, greedy, man. That's probably why father chose me, the younger brother, over him. Whiillump is a Swinebreath and as long as he behaves himself we'll have no problems. 

The only important part of the world right now is Britannia. What? There are other cultures and religions doing cool stuff? I don't care. The bullshit that is the middle east is not important to the Swinebreath's quest for dominance. Maybe later on we'll mess around with that but right now we don't particularly care whether Jerusalem is ruled by a Jew, Muslim, or Christian. In fact it would be most amusing to me if a West African Pagan took over Jerusalem. My biggest concerns are centered on the Kingdoms of Norway and Scotland. As I mentioned last time somehow the Norwegians and the Normans intermarried and England exists as an independent Anglo-Norse state ruled by the heirs of both William the Conqueror and Harald Hadrade. My prudish celibate Aunt Julienne was supposed to stay on the Scottish throne for a little longer. However the stupid whore went and died not long after my father. Leaving fat ass King Malcolm to remarry and produce heirs. After all the work father did to try and destabilize the Scottish throne we will not let this rest. 

While plotting to kill the the Scotch Queen I came across my father's prisoners.. Oh dear lord. They are all young-ish women that my father imprisoned while he was consolidating the odds and ends of Ireland. It is noteworthy that there are no male prisoners here... Oh dear perhaps Papa was a bit more cruel than we thought.

 It seems that somewhere down the line I became a rival to my cousin Philip. Remember Philip? He was of one the minor Swinebreath branches of the family tree. My father tutored him to be a ridiculous asshole of a medieval man. We don't need rivals sitting in our court and Philip's a Swinebreath so we somehow marry off dear Cousin Phil to a hook nosed Italian Countess. He will be back though... Philip is a piece of shit who doesn't know his place.

I am somewhat different from my father, while he took a giant oak switch and beat the shit out of my sister Emma for stuttering, I am lazy so I just let idiot John to take his time. As we've said John is not our heir so it doesn't really matter if he can't form complete sentences. Joan is my pride and joy and my other children can fuck off.

Whilst ignoring my three young children I scout out dumbass title claimants. I'm not really strong enough to fight the Scotch-Norse-Anglo Blob but it would be nice to have an heir that has some claims to Scotch land. I despise the Scots and their hideous tartan skirts. With some luck I'll have them safely crushed under the girth of the Swinebreath empire before my death. 

My wife spits out another genius daughter. Why Princess Isabella? Why couldn't you have balls! Unfortunately medieval sex-change surgery is non-existent. I will have to greedily stash away buckets and buckets of gold so that my brilliant daughters can rule Ireland and chop off the testicles of  any vassals who have a problem with a female ruler. I'd kind of like to play as a female character. I am in real life a girl and underhanded dirty deeds of the few female rulers in medieval Europe interest me. In fact the first character I played was Eleanor of Aquitaine. 

While waiting for my disappointing councilor to fabricate some claims on Wales, I find this... What the fuck is this? I was just curious how the pagans were doing but some how I ended up in the college of cardinals. I can't figure out what is what but I toss in 10 gold for Bishop Adumb. I've never paid much attention to the church, as long as they don't excommunicate me I don't care,  but I guess this is probably only useful if you have land in Italy and want the Pope to be your BFF. The Vatican is far far away though and the Swinebreath's aren't particularly holy. So we probably won't be back here.

However I will continue my other relationships with the sacred men of this blessed church. They are all good men I'm sure. When was the last time you heard of anything bad being done by a priest? 

Oh we had another daughter. She's not a genius like Joan and Isabella though so you will never hear about her again, barring complete and utter bullshit.  I'm not sure what I'll do with little Constance but it won't be interesting.

Remember my cousin Philip? The rat bastard is still in Italy but that doesn't stop him from trying to kill me.  I'm also concerned about the way my spymaster is addressing me. You're lucky I'm kind you obnoxious Jewish prig or I'd toss you in the dungeons like my father did with all those girls. 

Next Time We Deal With Philip and his bullshit, then go on to conquer little chunks of Wales.

  

Neopets: A Look Back At My Childhood

I was going to play a little more Crusader Kings II since my last post got a lot of hits but before that I wanted to go back an look at this. Neopets. I loved this silly stupid website when I was kid and now I'm back to try and and remember why.

But wait you say, "Lauren you're a foul-mouthed asshole get off that kids site!"

Chill out people I'm only an asshole on my blog and I don't plan and spending much time on the neoboards. If they are how I remember them it's just a bunch of tweens fighting back and forth about the latest Disney star or roleplaying Warrior cats, and that doesn't much interest me. I just rediscovered this place and I'm not about to get banned right away for getting in some petty fight with a 12-year-old. I'm just trying relive some of the magic.

First things first this is Neopet's and I need pet. I'm not feeling overly creative right now so I don't really want to create my own. So I go to the pound to see if there is anything interesting that was abandoned. Plus isn't that how it's supposed to be in real life? You're supposed to go to the pound to find a good pet at the pound and not the puppy mill.  See that cat in my profile pic? That's my sister's boyfriend's cat Lioness who we found as an abandoned kitten with her two sisters in the woods last year. Isn't she gorgeous? She's obnoxious just like me. So to the pound I happily go wondering if the creators of this site have added any new pets since I was eleven. After some refreshing I find this hilariously named creature. ThirtySixToes. Brilliant. I don't know who you're last owner was but I think they were a bit like me.

Oh and I got a random event while refreshing in the pound before I found my pet. That's one of things I always liked about this site. Anyways this weird ass Asian Samurai Toad pops out of nowhere and gives me a codestone. What's a codestone? just some piece of shit you can sell later for a bunch of neopoints. We'll get to that later when I open my shop though.

And what do you know it's just like the real world. When you get tired of your pet's you just roll 'em up in a bag and throw them out of your vehicle going 55 mph down I-95.  It seems like that is exactly what happened to poor ThirtySixToes here. He's a male Tuskaninny (Neopet's version of a seal or walrus type thing) and he's about two years old and starving. Last time I played neopets I also had Tuskaninny and it was yellow too! Oh the memories. Anyways part of the game here is that you have to feed your pets just like in real life or they will get sad, though unlike in real life they won't die if you don't do it.

After trolling around the site and doing some of the daily events I remember I gather up a enough food to satisfy ThirtySixToes. Thank goodness, I'm an evil son-of-bitch but I always feel bad when I looks a the sad animals on TV or the sad neopet portraits. 

So I feed ThirtySixToes all this fancy food to make him happy then I remember... God dammit I could've just put him in the hotel and he'd have gotten fed there for super cheap too. Yeah you can stuff your pets in the cheap 5np motel if you're a lazy piece of shit and don't feel like feeding them everyday. So what else can I do on this site?

You can go fishing and reel in ridiculous shit like water. I'm so proud of you ThirtySixToes I sent you to get a fish and you brought me back water. That's it I'm going to beat you and lock you in a shed tonight with no food as punishment. Just kidding, I love animals, they're probably the only thing I love and even if ThirtySixToes is gianormous god damn disappointment who brings me water instead of fish I'll steal lavish affection on him.

You can also dress up your pet but most of the clothes you actually have to pay real money for. Sorry Toes but I'm 22 and it's no longer socially acceptable for me to spend money on Neopets. We'll have to wait until we get big bucks before we can dress you up. That is a beautiful manly floral dress though fit for every hunk of manly neopet out there. 

There are also the daily spinny wheel things and tombola's etc. etc. Some of which are just down right bizarre. Here were are at the giant omelette. Which looks like a bloated tortellini that is vomiting on a tree stump. Don't question it just take the free food. You can feed it to your whiny pet or sell it in your shop, sometimes you even get rare or interesting omelettes. Of course I didn't, since neogod hates me. 

There are games of course including this one called keyquest where they try to leech more real life money out of you by suggesting you buy custom avatars to play as. Also this one of two multiplayer games on the site, so remember if you're about to lose the mature thing to do is throw a gigantic fit and disconnect so your opponent doesn't get their prize.  Most of the games though are well... kids games not really much that I'd enjoy now. Though I still get a kick out of Typing Terror, because Typing is just about the only thing I've ever been good at. You earn virtual money doing this which if, your like me you hoarde in your bank forever and ever just because you know that neopets is the only place where you'll ever have so much money.

Then there is the habitarium which is only just barely multiplayer. You can give your neofriends your excess crap or raid them when you know they're offline sleeping and kill all their bugs, destroy their buildings, and rape their breeders. It's kind of slow paced so I never liked it much.

There are also guilds where you can hang out with your friend and talk smack to each other. Brag about how much fake money you have and try and swindle expensive items out of the newbies. I was going to create one but my account isn't old enough, boo. I don't want to join anyone else's stupid ass guild I only want my own!

Then there is my favorite thing. Shops. I guess it's because I'm a sleazy salesman type of person but I always had fun running my shop and raking in the dough from my fellow players. The best way to do this is to buy stuff from the Neopets shops and then mark it up a few points for a profit, but you have to have a fast server or some of other asshole will get your item first. The easiest place to do this is the bookstore. I wanted to set up a shop to do this again because like I said it's one of things I still find a lot of fun about this site as an adult. However you have to be at least 24 hours old to have a shop so damn I have to wait. 

So that's basically neopet's and a big chunk of my childhood. There's also the Battledome where you make your pet's fight other people's pet's to the bloody death, kinda like pokemon but I never liked that so I'm not gonna talk about it. I don't know how often I'll actually be playing on this site since I do have real life responsibilities and stuff to do now but it's still sort of fun. If there is anyone else out there that still plays on here swing by and give me and ThirtySixToes a visit. 

Crusader Kings II: The Reign of King Whillump I of Ireland

So continues the epic tale of the Swinebreath dynasty and their quest to take over all of Europe in the most passive-aggressive way possible. Last time we started the game as King (really Duke) John of Connacht. It was your typical Irish start. We only managed to takeover two other tiny pieces of Ireland during our brief lifetime of 41 years. We married a nobody lowborn woman named Onna who happened to have the strong trait and produced a magnificent brood of seven children: Whillump, Nikolai, Stella, Julienne, Winston, Pepsi, and Violet. At the time of our death only the first three had reached adulthood. Our son and heir Whillump was awarded the county of Tyrconnell and married of to a strong Italian noblewoman named Adelagita, which sounds like what you'd call one of Godzilla's sisters. Our second son Nikolai married the hideous melted face Baroness Mathilde of something in France. Finally our eldest daughter was hastily and unwillingly wed to Prince Heinrich of the Holy Roman Empire and is now the proud parent of a little imbecile child also called Heinrich. We died after a tragic sex accident and possible homicide in the bedchamber of our embittered wife and thus the throne passed to King Whillump.

So here it begins the glorious reign of Whillump I named after my glorious pet rat, Sir Whillump the Lump. This is and old screencap of us at sixteen and we are one sexy hunk of man. Check out that fetching porn star mustache. We are a somewhat better character than our father being a Midas Touches, Deceitful, Ambitious, Gregarious, Just, and Zealous fellow. How one can be both a deceitful and just is beyond me but I won't argue it. We are now 21 and married to Adelagita who is a Skilled Tactician and Strong plus a bunch of other unimportant crap. She is slightly younger than us and will hopefully spit out a ton of babies like our mother before her.

It was a smooth succession. Surprisingly smooth, our father was murdered at the perfect time it seems. All of our other title claimants are either children or safely married abroad to people with no armies. Our vassals consist only of the teenage Count of Breifne who hates our guts, and a bunch of little dumbshit mayors and bishops who can't do anything against us because we'd lock them up and chop off their balls... oh wait never mind we aren't Greek. Dammit. Why did I pick the lame ass English culture? Because it had pronounceable names and kickass archers? Well that's stupid. I want to blind my enemies and chop off their testicles. Next game, I suppose. Take note that for some reason my mother became depressed after father's suspicious sex accident, cry all you want mother I know what you did to him.

A couple of uneventful years pass then BANG! We earn a bunch of claims at once and our conquest of the remainder of Ireland starts to gain some much needed momentum. By the age of thirty we have gained the counties of Tyrone and Ulster.

Our next two siblings come of age as well. Pepsi makes a marriage to another Baroness Mathilde, though unlike my first sister-in-law this one is reasonably good looking. She is a slightly older woman but with no heir, with a little bit of luck hopefully Pepsi has inherited father's super sperm and manages to impregnate Mathilde before she crustifies and spreads the Swinebreath dynasty deeper into the baronies of France. Our sister Julienne makes a rather useful marriage to Prince Malcolm of Scotland, who is only the grandson of the King of Scotland right now but barring utter chaos and random Paradox bullshit he will one day be King himself. This is a useful alliance to have since Scotland is the only real threat to us right now. We also seize custody of Aed, the six-year-old son and heir of the Count of Breifne. With a little luck we'll make Aed into a content Englishmen who will not threaten our throne.

There is only one concern during this happy period. I am entering my mid-thirties and my wife, Godzilleta, has not spit out any kids. God dammit why?!?! You stupid Italian whore, make babies! I know it's not my fault, I am one of seven children, and furthermore by the logic of the medieval era infertility is always the wife's fault. Moron Pope Hemorrhoidas I won't let me divorce her so I start a kill plot. Maybe I'll take a page out of my dear mother's book and knife her in the back during sex. It seems word of my plot reached Adelagita because not long after starting this plot she decides stop whatever birth control witchcraft she was up to and get's pregnant. Finally! I cancel my plot and happily continue on my course.

Despite my excitement over finally overcoming this hurdle. I forget to take a screencap of my son's birth. So this is what you get, here he is Prince Whillump. He has no special traits at birth which is okay... I guess. Really thank god, I would've had problems if the throne passed to my stupid brother who married the ugly baroness in France. The Swinebreath's wouldn't have died out no worries there, for Nikolai and Mathilde apparently have a great sex life and have produced a large brood of children, but I when inherited I'd be playing as character I hadn't had much control over in the past several decades. Also all of my children would've been in their mother's insipid little French barony and also out of my control. I'd also have to figure out what the hell to do with said Barony when it eventually passed to me. Now hopefully I'm blessed with a longer life, and less vengeful wife, than my father and live to see little Whillump II reach sixteen.

Speaking of my mother, she's been decomposing, forgotten in the depths of my court. Shortly after Whillump's birth I get this pop-up. Ick! Mother what pit have you been frequenting you've caught the dreaded pox! First you murder father and now you make this scary splotchy portrait what I have to look at for all time when I peruse the Swinebreath family history. Curse you mother, you evil witch. More importantly, OH SHIT THERE'S SMALLPOX IN MY CAPITAL! 

Fortunately the scourge passes without killing anyone important. Then this infuriating event happens. My wife, who had henceforth refused to bear my children until I put a dagger to her throat, produces a second son and a genius. Why? Why God Why? First only my little sisters inherit the strong trait and now my second son and not heir, is a genius! I might just have to kill off Whillump Whillumpsson... but not yet as a further twist of the knife Genius son is born sickly. Fantastic.

A few more years pass bringing me another Irish county, now I have enough to become King of Ireland when I have enough money. Yes! Whillump will be a real king and not some shitty little Duke. The last of my ignored siblings grows up, if you're interested in what happens with the rest of them you can visit the Swinebreath family tree here. Then Pope Hemorrhoids I declares the first crusade of the game. I would join this glorious event but alas I am still trying to consolidate Ireland, and if your remember Hemorrhoid's here wouldn't grant me a divorce when I needed it. So you know what screw Pope Hemorrhoids, screw Jerusalem, and screw the crusade, I'm going to sit here in Ireland and sulk. 

(edit: I realize since writing this that the pope has switched from Pope Hermodias or whatever to Pope Urban, but I'm still not helping him.)

My sister Julienne became Queen of Scotland a little sooner than anticipated, mind you she is a claimant on our father's crap so that is concerning since Scotland is right next door. What on earth? King Whatever-He-Was was supposed to reign until I wrangled the rest of Ireland. But no Julienne's brother-in-law, Prince Magnus, who might be the illegitimate son of Chewbacca and Princess Leia, had to go and murder him. Why? did you like your older brother that much? However it seems father taught this sister well because not long after becoming queen she closes her bedchamber to Malcolm forever and becomes a celibate without producing any heirs. Good job Julienne, you were always my favorite sister. You'll notice my change in portrait, we'll get to that in a minute.

We round out our rather small brood with a daughter, meet Emma who in sixteen years will be placed on the auction block and sold to the highest bidder just like my sister Stella.

Then we get the first of our Jewish exiles. Mind you King Whillump I is zealous bigotted piece of shit so I looked up this here heathen with the intent of tossing his infidel ass in my dungeon. Then I saw his massive diplomacy skill and my deeply ingrained hatred of Jews suddenly disappeared and I made him chancellor and married him off to a nice girl in my court. As you will see he ended up doing well for me. 

Finally at the age of forty I earn enough money to become King of Ireland. Yes! I only own roughly half the country at this point but forget that I am a King! Not some nobody Duke. I think the crown suits me well it certainly distracts nicely from the porn star mustache and my receding hairline. Next step is to seize the rest of the country. Also a look at a couple of the traits I picked up since childhood, I have become a scholar and also fallen victim to severe bipolar disorder picking up the wroth trait. I also picked up the rough terrain leader because I'm stupid and didn't realize that most of god damn Ireland is flat making that trait useless.

First though, I take a bit of break from conquering my own country and throw a Grand Tournament. I guess you can now throw these more than once per reign now but I probably won't bother, mostly because I never remember to do these things after I get enough prestige.

Somehow through cheating and massive amounts of bribery I win my own tournament. I also gain a nickname. I am King Whillump the Just, sure beats King John the Lame if I do say so myself. Who knows I might go down in history as the most glorious of Swinebreath dynasty. 

The crusade Pope Hemorrhoids declared like six decades ago finally ends. It is one by the Holy Roman Emperor and current owner of my sister Stella. It doesn't seem like this will be for very long though because barely a day ticks by before the Caliph declares a jihad for that exact same territory. And this will go on for centuries and centuries. Hell we're still fighting over god damn Jerusalem today. Whether the Swinebreaths will get involved in this mess is still to be determined, right now we just want what's left of Ireland.

My youngest and least important child is starting to resemble her imbecile German cousin Prince Heinrich. She is having trouble learning to talk. Spit it out girl! I will not raise a bloody stammerer! My methods seem to work and Emma becomes an ill tempered little brat just like her papa, but at least she doesn't stutter.

I also have the first of vassal problem, albeit a minor one. Countess Una, the earliest known possessor of Cherry Robitussin hair dye, tries weasel a duchy out of me. No! Go away cough drop! Ulster is mine, mine MINE! No woman, especially an Irishwoman will ever rule that Irish duchy. It will stay in the the sweaty English hands of Swinebreath for all eternity and there is nothing you can do about it.

I also commit my first infanticide of the game. What? You have problem with medieval child murder? Why? That poorly named Scandinavian imp was a threat. You see my genius son, John, is betrothed to it's sister, the Countess of Faereyar and Tryggve Anrkjellsson was a potential title claimant and future pain in my ass. Now I've secured my daughter-in-law's place as countess and earned my favorite child a nice chunk of Norwegian land when he grows up. Thus spreading the Swinebreath's into another part of Europe.

I devour Kildare, another chunk of my rightful domain thanks to the handy work of my faithful chancellor, Shesna.

Meanwhile somewhere in what looks to be southern Siberia the Tengri faith manages to reform itself. As a zealot I would usually be outraged at such things but Russo-Asia is far far away and there is nothing to be done about it right now.  Besides I learned to like Jews, as long as they are skilled diplomats, so maybe I can like the Tengri as well.

We also get another stupidly named Pope. Pope Telephone II... What are these names! Who thought them up? Did I edit them in there myself? Were the real medieval Pope's really named so stupidly? I mean Telephone is better than Hemorrhoids but it's still really bad. Oh well maybe at least this one will give me a divorce next time I have a wife who won't sleep with me.

Lastly, the ancient crustified Holy Roman Emperor died and my sister, Stella, becomes Empress. Time has not been kind to this sister unfortunately she's only forty-one but her face already seems to collapsing in on itself. Poor Stella. She has four children now, including my favorite nephew the imbecile heir, Prince Heinrich. He's now a duke of something not important and is married to yet another Mathilde. Seems that Mathilde was the Emily of the 1100s. They aren't Swinebreath's but it's still cool that the Holy Roman Emperors will be descendants of King John the Lame.

Time grinds on and very little of importance really happens. Amusingly one of my bishops want to duel somebody. Whatever happened to thou shalt not kill? Whatever I'm not a good Christian anyways go ahead and do it Bishop Arthur just don't get too much blood on the holy vestments. I expect my churches to be in sparkling condition on Sunday regardless of who get's murdered in them during the work week.

Then some little Count in Ossory fabricates a claim on my main duchy, Connacht. Stupid Jedi bastard! Look Obi-Wan Kenobi, I should rightfully own your lands anyways and fabricating claims on my stuff will only enrage the swine. I wonder if anyone has made a Star Wars themed mod for this game. Probably not it would cool though.

The next thing I know a whole brothel full of women start throwing themselves at me. Seems the way they look at me has changed since I became King. I think it must be my charming disposition and devilish good looks though. Of course knowing what happened to my father after all the affairs he carried on I shoot them all down and remain faithful to my beloved Godzilla. It doesn't stop one of them from trying to pin a kid on me though. Who are you? Go away I swear it's not mine. I swear I did not have sex with that woman! 

I'm also having fun raising my nephew Philip. The son of my brother Winston, the only one of my siblings to stay at court. Since Philip will never be my character I can mess him up and then marry him off to some poor baroness somewhere. Under my wise tutelage Philip becomes both gluttonous and cruel. He rather reminds me of my late father.

As I begin to grow old and crusty, I gain another slice of Ireland and then promptly get into a war with Scotland. You see my brother-in-law the Holy Roman Emperor has an annoying habit of sending my all these call to arms. Being the pro player that I am , I just accept them and ignore so I don't lose prestige. This time the dumbass got into a war with my other more useful brother-in-law, the King of Scotland. Oops... this time the war ends without me taking any major damage. I guess the King of Scotland was too busy fighting over the actual war goal to really care much about Ireland. Still all this bullshit is beginning to take a toll and at age forty-nine I become stressed. I've lived almost a decade longer than my father and as of yet have not been attacked by my wife during sex. However I have a feeling that the reign of King Whillump will be ending sooner rather than later.

My eldest son comes of age and becomes just a god awful character. I tried to switch education traits from stewardship to diplomacy but failed miserably. The only English Grey Eminence I could find botched the job and returned to me an utterly useless child. That's it. I cannot play as Prince Whillump. After disentangling myself from that stupid claim war over Brugge, I hastily change the succession law to elective and nominate Prince John. I'm actually tutoring Prince John myself so while he won't be a great diplomat he'll at least be better than Whillump. As for Whillump, I grant him the county of Tyrconnell and since there aren't any eligible heiresses I betroth him to an eight-year-old Dutch dwarf. Hey I'm a big fan of Tyrion Lannister and I would have no problem with some of the Swinebreath's being little people. In fact I want my descendants to be as hideously malformed as possible. Any hunchbacks, clubfoots, harelips, or dwarves will hold a special place in my tiny tiny heart. I just hope my son appreciates this prestigious match as much as I do.

Then finally I do it! I eat up the other little bits of Ireland still ruled by actual Irishmen. I am so proud of myself I actually have a country a real country. To add the glory I murder a priest in the heat of battle. I may forever rot in hell for this act but it will not dim the satisfaction I felt when driving my sword deep into his heart. Now here's a lot at Ireland and most of the rest of Europe in a very inaccurate looking 1119/25 map of medieval Europe. It is a hilarious mess out there. Spain is in shambles, and Russia is muddled green and brown vomit of Orthodox and Pagan states. England too is all sliced up partially ruled by the Normans and partially by some weird independent Norwegian characters, I'm guessing the descendants of Harald Hadrade who didn't inherit Norway. Scotland however is getting unnervingly large, and is still ruled by our brother-in-law and celibate sister. We'll have to do something about that, though suspect is won't take much to cause a nasty succession war once old Malcolm kicks the bucket. The Swinebreath's who aren't killed in the bedchamber seem to be living rather long lives. So unless the AI is smart enough to arrange a divorce King Malcolm will die childless.

And another irritating vassal. Okay Duke Conchobar, whose name reminds me of a fruity tropical drink, you are not a Swinebreath threrefore you will never rule Ireland. Now change your ill advised succession vote right now before I drop my sleazy chancellor Shlemo on your counties and revoke them all.

Also my dear brother-in-law Kaiser Heinrich is still fighting over that worthless little Israeli kingdom, and it is still not going well. This is the bazillionth time he's asked for my help. Sure Heinrich I'll help, I'll march my tiny 3,000 man Irish army down to Jerusalem right now and fight the 80 million stack Shia Caliph's army. Now go away and the King of Scotland better not join this on the opposite side.

My chosen heir, Prince John finally comes of age. I grant him the Duchy of Ulster which keeps the nagging Countess Cough Drop Hair of Oriel off my back and allows him to vote for himself as heir cancelling out that bastard Conchobar. He's still betrothed to Countess Hotdog of Faereyar, whose brother we murdered all those years ago. We probably should've just married her to our other son but you see Faereyar is one of those odd chicken nugget shaped islands to the north of Scotland. With any luck the crown law in Norway is still low enough for us to seize this strategic little chicken strip from the Norwegian King's frostbitten hands. If not it'll hopefully pass on to one of Prince John's younger sons and thus still be ruled by a Swinebreath, though it will not be part of Ireland.

With King Whillump getting up in his years we're playing it safe and not trying to eat up anymore land. For the time being I entertain myself by killing off male members of the Scottish royal family to further the chances of a succession war when Malcolm dies in the near future. Malcolm is marvelously gullible it seems, in fact he's even happy to help kill off some of these people. Fat Ingrateful Bastard! That was your younger brother Prince Magnus! The same Prince Magnus that murdered your father and put your blubbery rear on the Scottish throne in the first place.  

My last child grows up then promptly dies of postpartum pneumonia. Damn medieval medicine you killed my daughter! My nephew, Philip, also grows up too and turns into a pretty despicable young man. However as I raised him as my own son I will find him a nice baroness and allow him to spread the Swinebreath DNA. Unfortunately it seems Emma's death proved to be the final straw for poor King Whillump because after she dies he promptly succumbs to severe stress. And just in time too because this post is already ridiculously long. Swing by next time to read about the reign of King John II.

As a last little thing here is a shot of two baby Senegal parrots! My sister is adopting one of them in June and we need a name. They are both female and we are stumped. Leave a suggestion in the comments if you like. :D