We as chatters are intimately familiar with succession crises, as foul pig-dog pretenders scramble over the dead OP's body to make the new chat.
Here are some of my favorites:
1066 - ENGLISH THRONE [The Norman Invasion]
CAST
Tostig Godwinson (by jealousy?)
Harold Godwinson (by council election)
Harald Hardrade (by right of conquest)
William II of Normandy (by papal allowance; by being a favorite of Edward the Confessor)
Wherein an early death of a childless king leads to claimants from all portions of Northwest Europe.
129 AC - IRON THRONE [The Dance of the Dragons]
CAST
Aegon II Targaryen (by being the strongest male claimant)
Rhaenyra Targaryen (by being the designated heir)
Wherein the practical concerns of agnatic-cognatic primogeniture are exposed.
1700 - HABSBURGS [The Spanish Succession]
CAST
Louis XIV of France (by hereditary right)
Joseph Ferdinand (technically second...ish in line)
Wherein inbreeding, promising not to inherit claims, and a giant empire can only lead to good things.
1455 - ENGLISH THRONE [The Wars of the Roses]
CAST
Lots
Wherein we learn that you should not legitimize your bastards, and that deposing your older brother may lead to a loss of stability in keeping your own line on the throne.
Posts
until the chatters grow into boulders lush with moss
Long live the [chat].
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
i might have randomly realized why the pa comics have slowly become oddly unsettling to me recently
Gabe has used increasingly thin vertical oblongs for pupils over the last few months and the result is creepy
all hail his Mannis-ness
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
May it be long and ever full of new posts
Pardon, your grace?
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look the Russian winter
Stylish hat
The French cannot help themselves.
This is like 90% of how it happened, absolutely
Turkish succession and harem plotting seems to be the most fun way to go about all this
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
He'd rule with a padded velvet glove
what the realm needs is an iron fist
Stannis for President 2016
the entirety of the European Royalty freaked out when French went all Republic.
Napoleon had been a kickass military commander and started winning some actual influence and power and money during the first and second coalition war.
He became more popular than the current government at the time and pulled a coup. No one seemed to mind at the time because he was basically the best military man France had at the time and everyone wanted to kick the shit out of France.
Winning wars
Bringing the (war) booty
Fucking up Austria (the hatred of Marie Antoinette was partly because she was Austrian, they really did not like Austria)
Good economy from enhanced trade networks within the empire, plus generous policies towards liberalisation of industry (before he got too big for his boots and tried to blockade English goods)
Hilariously rigged referendums on his decisions (the plebiscite over whether he should become emperor was something like 95% in favour., even within Germanic areas he'd conquered)
Edit: He also ran an extensive network of secret police, had dissidents frequently killed, utilised propaganda mills, and repressed any conquered states that so much as looked at him a bit funny. As laudible as his attitudes towards common law, infrastructure, and freeing of many germanic areas from the feudal system was, he was pretty much the leader of a harsh military junta in all but name.
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Stannis for President 2016
Brittle iron...
He was first co-king with Magnus the Good for a year, when Magnus died Harald went about strengthening his position. He was rich enough to buy the support of most, and brutal enough to get those who would not be bought out of the way permanently.
A veteran of the Varangian guard, he was a brutally effective commander. After a wark with denmark - he thought that there was no good reason why he should not also be king of denmark - he went about securing norwegian dominion of eastern norway, which was dominated by the danes who made good money from the trade there, very brutally. Hs small but highly competent army went through Viken (the areas west and east of the oslo fjord and skagerrak) and Opplandene (the Uplands, the lands... up from viken) beating down all resistance and, as the skalds put it, left the plows in the fields, meaning his men burnt all the grain and slaughtered all the cattle, so that the people there would have a hard time making it through winter, and if they did, they'd have no animals to work the fields with come spring. It's in this campaign that Oslo comes under norwegian control, having existed for about a century as a trading town, dominated by the danish.
When later the english throne stood empty he thought, there's no good reason why he should not also be the king of england, and so he sailed over with 300 ships. It didn't go so well for him, but defeating him didn't go so well for Godwinsson either, as the victory was dearly bought.
his plain greatcoat and plain hat made him stand out among his generals, gilded to the teeth, more than any amount of brocade would have
What the hell? How did the people love him like that?
Soldiers love a general who wins wars.
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The people is one thing, the soldiers would have carried him on their backs barefoot to china. He was their man.
See Caesar, Julius
And a long list of Emperors thereafter :P
Soldiers fight for a lot of reasons, but mostly to get paid and not die while trying to get paid more
History being so kind to Napoleon isn't really an accident.
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(I had a Fenrik who was a bit of a history nerd who got bored with making us practice standing at attention and marching up and down the square and decided to seize the opportunity to play with tin soldiers, with real soldiers)
I just go
"And not to long before that a little Corsican guy used French units as the core of his army and conquered the majority of the world that mattered at that time."
History loves him because he made so much of it
but we got Johnny yaaaaaaay
In WW2 France wanted to jump bad at Germany from the get, but Neville Chamberlain was a fucking pussy. Them getting steamrolled was just simply a byproduct of industrialization and superior production capacity.
Recently though their attitude of appeasement and putting their heads in the sand is what annoys me.
If Charlemagne counts, they really did it twice. But it's arguable.
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