Mighty King Martin
From a duchy, Barcelona has become a King that is racing for the Empire of Hispania. Of course, Barcelona will be remembered as Empire of Barcelona, soon.
Hispania was in pieces. 3 Christian Kingdoms, 1 Christian Duchies and lots of Islamic realms….
I started the game in 1066 when Hispania was not a place to look for peace. Power race was growing relentlesslty. Two sides of the world was teeth to teeth to win over this valuable place, which have Gibraltar Pass. This valuable place needed an order. However, providing this order was not a thing that a common man can do. It was a holy cause only a dutiful can handle.
Military
Being a small duchy, Barcelona needed to grow itself from scratch. Being not renowned or glorious, my only and best course to conquer new lands was to win them over military.
Conquering new lands is timetaking because the ruler needs to fabricate claims because my first ruler was not that influential to take interest of claimants.
But I was lucky, I was surrounded with As’haries and declaring war to them was easy because the first ruler was dedicated to his faith. With lots of piety points, I was able to conquer lots of As’hari counties. Military is not limited to this. I needed to make strategies for my army to win sieges.
“Teach me”
House Barcelona
Mangonels
These mangonels saved my time and economy so much time. These are must equipments if a ruler wants to conquer a new land. With mangonels and onagers, sieges lasted 3-4 months at maximum.
Dread and Keeping Conrol
Being a bigger and bigger realm, my vassals was not easy to control. Because my vassals was always looking for a way to create a faction and take control. This was a big obstacle for me because I was forced to make money for wars as well as handling uprisings. The easiest and most practical solution for this was to be fearful.
“Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”
William Goldman, The Princess Bride
Barcelona’s primary ruler needs to be fearful so that its subjects cannot dare to take a step to interfere its affairs. The most effective way to do that is having some prisoners from different faiths, AKA Islamic prisones.
King Christopher, who founded the Kingdom of Barcelona, was the most fearful ruler of the Barcelona Dynasty. This allowed, Christopher to found the kingdom and expand it even more.
Having prisoners at hand and executing them gained so much Dread that Christopher was at its maximum of fearfullness. Not a single vassal was daring to question my rule or declare a vassal war. Because Christopher was the diciplined liege they ever had.
Child Ruler
As Christopher was aging, it was his time to depart from this world. I know that I needed to make my heir a valuable one because I was in control of a large kingdom and traits was really valuable. My heir at that time was Clement. However, Clement was really old and had many bad traits such as being Gluttonous.
Infante Clement
Being Gluttonous was a really bad trait for me because being faithful is the main key to conquer lands of Andalusians. So, I decided to Disinherit him make a new heir from my late wife. Therefore, I was a able to continue with King Martin who was much better and younger ruler.
However, Christopher passes from this world a bit early and I was left with King Martin at the age of 6. Playing with a child had both benefits and disadvantages.
Playing with a child ruler was giving me a time to set up my ruler. I was able change his Education Focus. Changing the focus was really practical because I was able to determine Martin’s focus for the rest of the game. Another good thing is that Martin was able to encounter with challanges to gain new traits. Beginning with a child ruler feelt much more like I was playing with a character rather than playing with a country.
Disadvantages of it was that simply I was playing with a child. Martin was not able to decide on any affairs of the kingdom because he was not grown enough. While Marting was setting up his character traits, his Mother Queen Mathilde was handling the kingdom as Queen Regent. But this situation gave me enough time to scretch and plan on expanding my kingdom.
Conclusion and Fate
Even though I was able to create a Kingdom out of a small Duchy, it nearly got me a century to create Kingdom of Barcelona and conquer third of Hispania. I want conquer Hispania and create Empire of Barcelona but it is obvious that it will take me another century to achieve because I have huge kingdom in my way: Castille.
I was not able to unite Christian rulers because Castille was fast enough conquer and unite other Christian rulers while I was dealing with As’haries on the other side of the country.
Besides, not focusing on Stewardship somehow made me poor, Christopher was a wealthful ruler but not Marting is going into debt everytime he joins to a war. I need to handle this swiftly because lots of wars are awaiting me.
With Aquantine and Hungary on my side, I believe that I will be able to defeat Andavulians and unite with Castille Kingdom.
-Furkan Doğancan Baytemur
Playing with Past 
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