Iron Century Piasts: Part 07: 1014-1024: Queen Zwinislawa, the Warrior Philosopher

Queen Dobroslawa of Poland died under suspicious circumstances I had nothing to do with, and my cousin Vasilko who's Russian took over Poland. He somehow switched to Polish culture later.

While Pechenegs and the Norse were wrecked, Germans and now Khazars started attacking with full force. Germans were beaten back without too much trouble, but while we were busy defending from the Khazars, Vasilko decided to declare Great Holy War for Bohemia. Good idea, awful timing. I tried my best to help both wars at once.

Vasilko managed to take over Bohemia and crown himself a double-king. I was so impressed by Vasilko's actions, we had a wartime romance in Bohemia which resulted in a baby.

Khazars we only managed to white peace, with great effort.

Blood of the Warrior Philosopher

My mother Zofia, Satan's lover, died at ripe age of 70.

I felt awful about it, that I had a romance with my horse, and even nominated him a chancellor for a while. I got better eventually.

A Norse OPM asked me to mass convert his realm to Slavic, and I agreed, even paying for construction of a Slavic church in his capital. His lands were conquered by heathens soon enough.

High Chief of Tver was still old Slavic, so I invited his heir and talked some sense into him. Then by a coincidence the heretic high chief had an accident. Who would have thought.

I got 5k prestige, and decided to try for a bloodline. The most obvious one was no win 15 wars, and so I did that, becoming known as "the Warrior Philosopher".

I spent most of my realm so far fighting Scandinavians, and it might be a good idea to try crowning myself Empress of Scandinavia. I'm doing it a great favour, converting their backwards tribal societies into modern feudal system, with my numerous children each getting a duchy in this frozen wasteland.

Dreams of an Empire

I only control 28/98 countries, and need 79 to create a legitimate empire title, but it's largely a matter of persistence. Local pagans are weak, and Catholics

My cousin-lover Vasilko has 34/72 (needed 58) of the potential Wendish Empire, but he can't complete it without attacking either me or the Germans.

My other cousin Mieszko II has 50/90 (needed 72) of potential Empire of Rus, and it would be relatively straightforward to just seize lands from Russian minors, but Khazars are giving him so much trouble, his mind is not on expansion.

It's a race.

Also it looks like elders of Ruthenia/Novgorod refused Mieszko's choice of his son to succeed him, and would rather see me on those thrones. It's very smart of them.

It's a reverse situation in Poland/Bohemia, where my lover wants me to succeed his throne, but his elders would rather see Agafya on the throne just to spite him.

My husband is not happy that his claim to Empire of the Romans is not pressed, but I only got to 50 ships for 8.2k army. His children will have Constantinople. Or at least the children he thinks are his.

Of my 11 children (8 still surviving), I had there with 8 men, but my husband has no idea:

• Waclaw was a bastard from before I got married, vanished without a trace, rumors of Satanic rituals are obviously silly
• Stanislaw was actually Milzas's
• Sanbor was Swietoslaw's, and is my chosen heir as ambitious strong genius
• Gosciwuj was Zegota's, died a sickly infant
• Odon was actually my husband's
• Malowuj was actually my husband's
• Katarzyna was Zbyszko's
• Konstancja was Zegota's again, died a sickly infant
• Jadwiga was Lambert's
• Wincenty was actually my husband's
• Maslaw was my cousin's Vasilko's

Well, 3/11 his is not the worst result.

France is slowly reforming, with Bourbon queen gone and only 3 claimants remaining.

Barcelona king has extensive holdings in Italy as well.