I had gavelkind inheritance, but my third son was a total imbecile, so I really had to switch to primogeniture.
My son in law emperor of Japan dragged me into defending his Manchurian holdings against the Mongols. I had too few troops to make much difference, and even fewer ships to transport them there - even for Lavapura to Guanxi, my army had to split in half.
One independent group of Mongols was raiding all the way to South China, at least I could deal with them.
Emperor of Japan made it as painful as he could, but in the end he had no chance of stopping their hordes.
My wife died so I married my niece, who's claimant to remnants of Wu Empire, now renamed Han. It was of course pointless claim, it's 2 counties with no future, even if once that was a strong regional state.
My father started construction of Great Lighthouse of Pegu, third great work in the realm. He died of old age, with my uncle becoming the new Grand Prince, also very powerful and competent ruler. My cousin who'd be next in line - maybe not so much.
Buddhism suffered major blows as Pala dynasty which held two of its holy sites lost them both to Hindu heathens. To counter this a bit, I sponsored missionary work in South China, and found a claimant to Cambodia, converted him, and split the Champa-Cambodia double kingdom by force.
Unfortunately queen of Champa managed to sack my capital, and take hostage a lot of my family, so after the war I had to pay her a lot of gold to get them released. Claimant's Cambodia fell apart a bit, with some vassals winning independence. Either way, I got rid of strong hostile country.
Finally, taking one county at a time (except for one holy war for Hainan, as it was somehow still Pagan) I got 13/24 counties of Guanxi, and proclaimed myself a king.
Backup plan of going for Guangdong also went quite well, with 8/19 done.
And it was quite close. Initial chaos of that region is pretty much over, and Chu and Song Emperors mostly swiped everything I didn't. Normally AI is slow at that, but they have duchy level CBs and I only had county level CBs.
Now I'll at least have duchy level CBs for the rest of Guangxi against Chu. It shouldn't be too much work to get second crown of Guangdong as well, and then de jure that against Song.
I'm also heir to my half-brother, and then I'd get crown of Lavo, and then I'd be able to get some of my uncle's vassals under me.
So far having those two disconnected parts has been awkward, I'm not sure if I should let Lavo go, or try to connect them - crushing Champa-Cambodia was definitely helpful step towards connection, but it would still be a huge project.
Meanwhile Catholics are doing a lot better than expected - Latin Empire is strong, crusade for Egypt succeeded, and most recent Jihad for Sicily collapsed.
This time Mongols don't waste time going West against Khitan and Cuman hordes. They defeated Tang and Yamato already, and are invading Tang the second time already.
Qin went Pagan, so lost their claim to China, but I manually let them keep their name, as mod would call them with e_dyn_random_numbers.
China is currently getting divided into Mongol, Tang, Song, Chu, and Guangxi parts, with remaining areas shrinking fast, but that could change fairly quickly.
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