After a century of conniving, warring and diplomacy, the Anglosaxon invaders of Essex ruled over the entirety of the British Isles and began looking to the continent to secure wealth from the remains of the Roman Empire. After having converted all of the druidic pagans to germanic paganism the Christians arrived in Anglosaxon Holland and from there everything went full Chalcedonist, essentially making much of the Germanic efforts pointless. With the conversion to the Christian faith however, the political allegiances of Europe quickly changed. The Germanic Angles and Christian Anglosaxons remained stalwart allies despite the fricative faiths (largely in part because of the greater northern Norse threat), and the pagans who fought Chalcedonists became Arian Christians, and the pagans who fought Arian Christians became Chalcedonist Christians.
Having secured the British Isles completely, the Anglosaxons were quite bored, looking for people to pick fights with. So they began picking on old rivals, with the Germanics of the Netherlands finding out firsthand that their Essex rivals were considerably more powerful than they last remembered. The Anglosaxons planned on taking over the entirety of the Frisian coast, and after destroying the Soisson, Dutch and Norse navies one after the other the north sea easily belonged to England. Conquering and holding onto those provinces would be considerably more difficult, as the British Isles simply could not replace its dead men with the same ease it did for its ships.
Allies helped. Purple = Allies, Green = less than friendly neighbours and turquoise = Everytone else. With the Vandals, Angles, Burgundians and the juggernaut of the Byzantine Empire amongst England's friends, on the sea England had no hostile competitor and on the mainland all enemies had an English ally poised at their backs.
King Philip Aetheldring also had a neat trick up his sleeve. His predecessors had conquered the isles with swift ease by granting autonomy to disgruntled druids, by creating Germanic vassal states that were in turn annexed over time - and also by abusing Welsh immense hatred of their druid neighbours to decisively turn the coalition against the Anglosaxons in the Anglosaxons' favour. In the European continent however, the same strategy would be insufficient. Endlessly warring with powerful barbarian Kingdoms and insurrections would quickly drain England's resources and undo much of her progress into the Frisian coast. The plan then was to create a vassal state to sort out with local insurrections and to rule over the continent in England's stead. What better mandate for this altruistic conquering than that of
the Roman Empire?Granted, the Western Roman Empire was now nothing more than a single province on the French coast, whose Emperor was as respected as some minor dukes, whose Emperor answered to King Philip Aetheldring. The important thing though, was that once the Gauls were once again subjugated, the English would be able to count on a Roman juggernaut as a European attack dog of Cerberic calamity. Given the possibility of marriages resulting in personal unions with Philip's allies, the entire Roman Empire itself could be rebuilt in time. With the Romans administering as Romans do, the Anglosaxons could be left to the practices of trade and killing things!
Oh, and Tokyo has been confirmed as real before the end of the 6th century.And the Abbasid Caliphate is wedged precariously between the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires. I wonder what is more confusing, the fact that the Caliphate is the leader of the Islamic world when Islam does not exist yet, or that the Abbasid Caliphate's official state religion is Chalcedonist Christianity.
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Topic: Europa Universalis IV (Read 451490 times)