Old King Áed can look back on this reign with satisfaction. From a slow and inauspicious beginning ruling the petty kingdom of Connacht in the west of Ireland, he’s taken over his neighbouring territories with steady zeal, conjuring spurious claims on them and invading with an army that’s grown with every new acquisition. At 84 and infirm, he doesn’t have long to live, but it’s a grand age for a man of the late 11th century. Sure, he’ll probably never quite realise his ambition to become the King of Ireland, but he’s given his line a chance to play a leading role in European politics that he never had.
It’s a pity about his grandson, though. Tadg is Áed’s heir, and he’s not a patch on his recently deceased father, Ruaidrí, Áed’s son and firm marshall of his armies. Tadg’s a pushy sprat, demanding a title and lands of his own. You’d have thought he’d be content with being married to William The Conqueror’s daughter, Cecilia. That’s prestige right there, and the key to our dynasty’s claim on the English throne – once we’ve gathered enough power and influence to be a contender.
So when Áed finally gave the plains of Oriel to Tadg as his own seat and Tadg promptly threw Cecilia in prison, you can imagine his sense of horror at the prospects for his line. What the hell was the boy playing at? And then it dawned. Cecilia had a lover. Tadg couldn’t even keep his woman in check, and now her dad hates him. Great.
Crusader Kings II isn’t a standard PC strategy game. Sure, it’s played from a map view and there are tables of stats to lose yourself in, there’s gold, Piety and Prestige to be collected, and tech upgrades to build. But actually, what you’re playing is The Godfather: The Game. It’s Dallas. It’s Game Of Thrones (there is, to prove the point, a Crusader Kings II mod that models the entirety of the Western Kingdoms). It’s human drama generated from the game’s tangle of family trees, geography of alliances and individuals’ traits and attributes.
Essentially, you’re managing relationships, keeping friends sweet and enemies on their toes. You need to tend your council – your marshall, chancellor, spymaster, chaplain and steward, who manage your tax gathering, diplomacy, religious dealings and more. You need skilled replacements to be ready should anyone die, and it’s a good idea that they don’t start plotting against you.
You often feel like Tony Soprano, in turn putting an arm around your bishops, mayors and vassals as they come to you with their irritating little problems, and ruthlessly punishing them should they even hint at betraying you. You wonder what power really is if you actually seem to spend most effort just tending the weaknesses and problems of the people who are meant to be your servants. You can never just thunder off to war and glory – there are always laws and the grumbling heads of your holdings to take into account, not to mention rebel uprisings, assassination attempts and heretical religions ready to undermine your closeness with the pope. You can even always see everyone’s opinion of you, and why they think it – rule can often devolve into paranoia as you desperately grip onto control.
Then there’s your often sprawling family, members of which will want to forge their own lines and claim their own lands. Keeping tabs on them while ensuring the future of your direct lineage – your ultimate aim, for on the death of your character you move on to play as its heir – is where managing relationships becomes acute. Children will share the basic characteristics of their parents, so it’s important to find a quality spouse when arranging matches for both yourself and your family members. They need to be fertile and young, so they have a long life of creating babies ahead of them. Watch out for the Lustful trait, too – though particularly fertile, they come with the risk of taking on lovers.
And on top of all these considerations come the questions about using marriage to forge alliances (and claims to titles), and of gaining Prestige, one of Crusader Kings II’s main marks of success, by marrying above your station. And yet many families will refuse your advances if you’re lowly or connected with their enemies. You can spend hours browsing lists of eligible consorts, weighing up pros and cons and teasing out the legal ramifications of the titles and claims you might win: you can become the Earl of some distant land, but will you get to hold it?
Old Áed really struggled with marriage. At the start of our time with him in 1066, it turned out when he tried to marry off his only son that not one of the local aristocracy had any female children, and his house just wasn’t powerful enough for families further away to bother with. That might explain a thing or two about Tadg.
There’s therefore a lot of micromanagement to Crusader Kings II, but it’s not about build queues and resource administration. Even war is largely a matter of assigning good generals and the sheer weight of the numbers of troops your holdings can supply you. Instead, this strategy game is about people, about human drama in a genre that tends to drop the personal in favour of the grand scale (which Crusader Kings hardly lacks for, either). It’s about riding the razor blade between ruthless exploitation and benevolent leadership of your loyal followers. Trading on society’s deepest fundamentals – power, kinship and procreation – it tells great stories that stem from the same source as the finest epics.
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