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| Tadg had a tendency to indulge himself during his reign |
With a new castle under construction, things were looking up for preparing an invasion of either Briefne or Tyrconnell. However, due to some problems with taxation policy, my lack of understanding when creating vassals, and not grasping retinues, I've had to put those plans on hold. When my second castle was completed, I made the mistake of creating a new vassal to take care of it. Unfortunately I didn't understand that this wasn't really necessary at the time since the place's existence would not cause my demense to become too large, consequently angering my nobles. I could leave it vassal-free, but I didn't. This resulted in my having a far smaller levy than I would need for an attack on Brienfe. I would have to wait for that vassal to die, freeing up the castle, or strip his vassalage from him, which would make him super angry. So, now I wait, and improve my castles. I'll also have to get a handle on making a personal retinue, but more on that in a separate post.
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Just because you're a duke, it
doesn't mean you don't have to
answer difficult questions |
So, here we are, a new ruler in Connacht with an opportunity to reclaim the title of Duke for his family. Would I usurp it? Absolutely! It turns out that this costs quite a lot of money, though, so I had to be patient while scraping up the 180-ish gold that I would need to perform the deed. With time, Tadg made his move, and became a duke just like his grandfather. As you can imagine, Briefne was none to pleased about this, but they started it by usurping the title in the first places, so, nya!
During his reign I'd have to say that Tadg has been the most ennui addled ruler that I've ever played in this game. He would get bored easily, and eventually decided to go and have an affair with his uncle's wife. I didn't even have a say in it. His bad behavior even resulted in a bastard son who I chose not to legitimize, humiliating his mother, infuriating his uncle, and leaving the boy with a deep-rooted hatred of Tadg and his house. Nonetheless, this went on for years, and for reasons I've yet to figure out Tadg's mistress, Helie, just kept on coming back to him no matter how poorly he treated her.
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| For science! |
As time wore on, the duke began to mellow with age. He eventually gave up his philandering escapades, and realized that he actually loved his wife. From then on, the two got on wonderfully. Tadg even developed an interest in science, taking it upon himself to try and invent a flying machine. Somehow he managed to sucker the local dung collector, Melrick, into test piloting the thing for him, and as you can probably imagine things didn't go so well. Miraculously, the pilot survived the first test, but after that he convinced Tadg to steal another local inventor's flying machine and try to claim it as his own. Upon testing this one, the machine plummeted to the ground, killing Melrick. With that, Tadg decided to give up on his experiments, and just focus on ruling his dukedom. The whole escapade did earn him a couple of points in learning, though, so it wasn't all for nothing.
Shortly after this, Ireland was once again facing the threat of a tuberculosis epidemic. I kept my fingers crossed that Connacht would again manage to escape being afflicted by the disease, but I wasn't so lucky this time. At first it trickled into my region, and before long it was tearing through my court, sinking its claws first into Tadg's brother, then hitting several of my nobles. There were a number of deaths at the hands of the illness. As luck would have it, though, it also managed to kill some of Tadg's enemies in his court, including his uncle who was still none too happy about Tadg's affair with his wife. Even my duke was struck by the disease. He managed to pull through, but died a couple of years later due to another illness.
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| My first Regency |
The worrying thing about this is that Tadg's eldest son, Heinrich I, has not yet come of age, so his mother is acting as Regent until then. Heinrich is already 14 years old, though, so it won't be long until he's a full-fledged ruler. He just needs to tough it out through the transition period, and hope no one holds it too much against him for the heavy German influence upon him from his mother's side of the family.
If he can hold things together, and bring his nobles in line, he could have an interesting run on things. He still has a de jure claim on Briefne that he can exercise, and his father poured quite a lot of money into castle improvements, so maybe he'll be the one to start Connacht on the path to conquest. It certainly helps that I think I have a better grasp on that element of the game as well. Before that, though, I'm just going to focus on getting Heinrich to adulthood in one piece.
To Part V
