The Wilting Flower of Chivalry - 1360 IH

**Barry Goldwater** · June 27, 2011, 05:37 PM

The year is 1360.

In Western Europe, France and England are still bitterly fighting the Hundred Years' War. Edward III of England has staked a claim on France, and following a number of spectacular triumphs such as Crecy and Poitiers, he has no desire to give up the war - though his people, weary and poor after nearly thirty years of nonstop war, certainly do. Meanwhile, France is effectively a kingdom without a king - their actual ruler, Jean II 'le Bon', has been a prisoner of the English since the catastrophe at Poitiers in 1356, leaving the kingdom in a flux and the French nobility free to plot against their rivals behind the curtains. Considering that they are still at war with England for their very existence and that the French people have also been badly bloodied by thirty years of grueling conflict, this is easily the worst possible time for the kingdom to fall into anarchy.

Further to the south, Castile languishes under the tyranny of Pedro 'el Cruel', an arbitrary and (as one can tell from his epithet) harsh ruler - though surprisingly also one rather tolerant toward the Jewish community - who has locked the state in a war with neighboring Aragon, the so-called 'War of the Two Peters'. This conflict is also another sideshow in the greater Hundred Years' War, however - the English have thrown their support behind Peter of Castile, while the French have backed Aragon in a bid to secure their southern flank and deny the English another ally. Worse yet for Peter however, his half-brother Enrique is plotting to remove him from the throne...

In central Europe, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation remains a fractured mess of little duchies, counties, prince-bishoprics and what have you. Emperor Charles IV, however, has succeeded in bringing a measure of stability to the empire through both words and the sword. The same cannot be said of Italy, where the merchant-republics Genoa and Venice still have their traditional feud, while the highly ambitious and sadistic Galeazzo Visconti has ascended to the throne of the rising power that is Milan, and to the south the Kingdom of Naples is attempting to punch above its weight in the Balkans. The Pope doesn't even reside in Rome any more - he now lives in Avignon, a virtual hostage and mouthpiece for the French, a sad state of affairs that few other European states are willing to tolerate.

Further to the east, the aftershocks of the Mongol invasions of the 13th century can still be felt. The Golden Horde still controls a vast swath of Russia and the Northern Caucasus, though it is growing increasingly unstable as petty khans fight each other openly for the right to call themselves the heirs to Genghis Khan's legacy. Two great principalities have emerged from the ruins of Kievan Rus' to contest the Mongol hegemony in the east - the Republic of Novgorod and the Principality of Muscovy, the latter having subsumed the last proper heirs to the Kievan legacy, the older Principality of Vladimir-Suzdal. Meanwhile, Poland and (now-Catholic) Lithuania must contend with the Teutonic Knights, a German military-religious order rightly feared for their ferocity and zeal in battle.

In the Balkans, Louis d'Anjou has led Hungary into its Golden Age, making the Magyars the uncontested master of the Balkans. Further south, the feuding Slavic states of Bosnia, Serbia and Bulgaria still stand, as does the declining Byzantine Empire. The Serbs have gained an enormous amount of territory under the brilliant leadership of Stefan Uros IV, but Stefan 'the Mighty' is now dead and his weak son, Stefan Uros V, has allowed the empire to decay in the hands of constantly feuding magnates.

Lastly, in Asia, the Mamluk Sultanate - one of the few kingdoms to actually defeat the Mongols in a meaningful, lasting manner - is supreme, if only as a massively decentralized state. The rising power of the Ottoman Turks sit right on the gates of Europe, prepared to take advantage of Byzantine weakness and Serbian instability, and in time they may become a threat as grave to Christian Europe as the Arabs in the 8th century. To the east, the Mongol Ilkhanate has disintegrated into a number of smaller states governed by Mongol families, the largest of them being the Jalayarids who control Baghdad. Some of the worst ravages of the Mongol invasion - such as, for example, their obliteration of Baghdad in 1258 - can still be felt here, as much of the region has been left hopelessly poor and depopulated.

The Renaissance is on the rise, spreading out of Italy to the rest of Europe, and bringing with it a tremendous number of new ideas and innovations - among them gunpowder, bound to transform warfare for all who come into contact with it. Chivalry is being increasingly relegated to the courts of high society, as the old days of massed knightly charges have been proven obsolete in slaughters such as Crecy. As previously mentioned, the Roman Catholic Church is also threatening to split right down the middle, as the French have always been trying to exercise influence over the Pope in Avignon - something their enemies, from England to the rulers of the fractured German and Italian states, cannot tolerate.

Will you be able to survive the beginning of the end for the Middle Ages, or will you be trodden underfoot by your enemies? Or, even better, will you be able to emerge into the Renaissance at the head of a freshly centralized and reinvigorated empire?

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