A Kingdom In the Clouds: A Ü-Tsang AAR

[Andrzej I]

Okay the pictures should be visible now.

That's one frightful Abbasid empire!

I think it was finished under him but a lot of the heavy lifting was done by his father and predecessor. Still, as you say a fitting name!

Curious, if I may ask, what was the father's name? Curious if he got an epithet as well.

Actually it is Wratyslaw without the 'h':

View attachment 522194

Poland proper has a smallish Muslim core around Krakow but a wider hodgepodge of Slavic and to a lesser extent Germanic and Christian counties.

Strange! I can only imagine the religious tensions that may erupt in the coming years, especially with the child king.

 

[stnylan]

One thing I truly hope from CK3 is that the large realms get broken up more often ... though if they do implement such measures I am honest enough to admit there might be times when I start cursing the game for tearing apart my empire

 

[Bullfilter]

Taking up your offer of commenting on past chapters: part 2 on Gyalpo Palkhorre. Beautifully written: I loved the line of the vassal who did not want to see the sword of his king stained with the blood of a coward! Among others. Also the description of his late decline into senility at the end of a long and successful reign, where his greatest ‘conquest’ came through diplomacy and friendship.

 

[Specialist290]

Map updates are always interesting

I'm getting the distinct impression that Christianity is fighting a desperate rearguard action against the Muslims, though they seem to be making some limited headway in the northeast against the pagans -- but then, see also Poland. Speaking of, Muslim Anglo-Poland is certainly worth a curious glance, though I wonder how long the English will stand for being ruled by a foreign infidel (assuming of course that Islam doesn't eventually take root on the Isles).

The Abassids look to be the "superpower" of the map, at least among those who aren't under the aegis of the Chinese. I shudder to think what a confrontation between those two would look like, if it ever came to full-scale war.

And, of course, the continued survival of Jewish Khazaria on the steppes continues to delight and impress

 

[Telcharinogrod]

A Polish Muslim rules England? That's bizarre even by Paradox standards...

 

[Bullfilter]

Just read of Palkhorre’s sad end - from conquering warrior king to being drowned in a bathtub! A metaphorical tear was shed.

 

[RossN]

Gyalpo Purgyal Daktri 'the Merry' in 1110 AD.
​

Part Seventeen: Gyalpo Purgyal Daktri 'the Merry' (1110 to 1114 AD)

At his birth no one would have assumed that Prince Daktri would one day take the throne. He was the product of a dalliance and seemed destined for little more than a long career as a minor princeling and court sycophant. Only a succession of deaths with older half-siblings followed by the final succession of his living half-brother Udumsten to the throne of Guge had left the way clear for this least likely of gyalpos to win the crown.

At twenty seven years old Daktri struck most who spoke with him as pleasant and good-natured if maybe with a streak of quiet pride, not particularly tall but bearing much of a likeness to his mother about the face and eyes. A patient man he had spent years waiting for his mother to join the gods and been happy to trust her promises that his time would come. He was a skilled soldier with the traditional Purgyal love of horse and the hunt, though his deepest passion and eventual undoing would be his greed. It is probably safe to say that Daktri would have been a happier merchant or quartermaster than monarch.

Even during the depths of the Black Death the Purgyal dynasty of Ü-Tsang had been good with money, or at least been able to find people who were. Besides the surplus of the Silk Road much of the royal purse came from Assam. The monarchs of Ü-Tsang also held the crown of Kamarupa and most of the richest land of that country belonged directly to the Purgyals. Furthermore what treasure that came their way tended to be either spent wisely or not spent at all. Other kings and emperors may have had theoretically wealthier domains but wars had a habit of draining those treasuries dry. When he came to power Daktri was at once one of the wealthiest men in the world. Unfortunately a full treasury brought no joy. Daktri was at once his own worst enemy; he invested coin in building up fortifications, training grounds, monasteries. All of it was a sound investment as the Gyalpo knew well, but it still gnawed at his soul to see more money flow out than flow in.

Daktri had inherited a war with his kingdoms. In the last weeks of the reign of Torma II a cabal of Old Bön priests, shamans and aristocrats had launched a rebellion in Eastern Ü-Tsang. If anything it was a shock the revolt had not come sooner. For years religious conservatives had complained about the toleration the monarchs showed for foreign faiths. The completion of the Royal Library of Taktsé in Torma's reign had seen a steady trickle of Taoist, Hindu and Buddhist scholars. Many, it was rumoured, were powerful magicians who consorted with strange and duplicitous spirits. Nor where the religious conservatives all that happy with even the official Bön faith with its hierarchy, official dogma and its politics.

A revolt was never welcome but it would prove an opportunity for Daktri to prove his regal qualities. A practiced and skilled soldier who was close friends (and perhaps more the court gossip ran) with his marshal the campaign would prove an easy one for the young monarch. At the Battle of Gyangzê in October 1110 Daktri crushed the rebels, encircling the enemy army almost before they realised the loyalist forces were nearby.

Daktri's victory at Gyangzê, 4 October 1110 AD.
​

Victory at Gyangzê and another a few weeks later at Lhoyu saw Daktri's stature grow rapidly among the commoners and, more significantly, the great barons. Abruptly he was no longer the amiable princeling of scandalous parentage. He was now a great and powerful warrior king. This transformation owed much to the Gyalpo's own qualities but he had an excellent assistant in his great general Tritsuk.

Marshal Tritsuk was a man of truly obscure origins, the son of illiterate peasants from some nameless village at the edge of the Himalayas. He stuttered in times of high emotion and was not above warping the truth to his liking, a legacy of his battle up the ranks. Yet in sheer ability either as a swordsman or as a commander of men he had no equal in Eastern Tibet. Daktri had first made the soldier's acquaintance in the days of Torma. The old Gyelmo's great love had been the hunt and Tritsuk, initially simply another royal guard had proven himself a dozen times over stalking deer and leopard alike. On one such expedition Prince Daktri and Tritsuk had fallen into conversation and what had begun as a wager as to who could bed one of Torma's more fetching handmaiden's had ended with the two men discovering they were rather more interested in each other.

Marshal Tritsuk, 1111 AD.
​

The love affair between Daktri and Tritsuk continued after the prince reached the throne but though many courtiers at least suspected what was going on there was surprisingly little grumbling even from those who might have feared the rise of 'court favourites'. The Marshal was so obviously capable no one could claim he owed his rank to his campaigns and strategems employed in the bedchamber, while Daktri's personal popularity with the people made him immune to harsher criticism.

The one element of public unease was the succession. Daktri was unmarried, and with the death of most his brothers his immediate heir was his niece Princess Pelmo of Guge. The teenage Princess Pelmo had very nearly inherited the Kingdom of Guge but her father - Daktri's half-brother Gyalpo Zindé of Guge - had died prior to her own birth so the crown had gone to her uncle. In 1110 Princess Pelmo was heiress presumptive to Ü-Tsang and retained a claim to Guge. A few diehard romantics hoped that this seventeen year old woman could yet be the person to unify Tibet.

Daktri was fond of his niece but he was certainly not going to marry his brother's daughter as some of his more enthusiastic advisors suggested. The Gyalpo had not yet settled on a bride, though it was axiomatic that she should be wealthy and even aside from the too close blood link Pelmo was hardly that. However he also had a duty to the family succession. Enter Tritsuk. In March 1110 Daktri officially ordained a marriage between his boon companion and his niece.

In some ways it was not a terrible match. Marshal Tritsuk would never be the platonic ideal of a dashing gentleman but he was intelligent and generally honourable. Princess Pelmo was a shrewd young woman and a gifted conversationalist, adept at papering over any faux pas made by her new husband in social situations. Surprisingly she even had something of a passion for military history. What rankled though was the social gap. Pelmo was a princess twice over, raised in Taktsé. No matter how far he rose Tritsuk still carried his humble origins in the timbre of his accent, the countless rural superstitions he clung to and his obvious discomfort in court robes when forced out of his armour.

Daktri was unruffled at the unease some of the great barons felt at matching a 'yak to a prize mare'. The Gyalpo was as ready to fight his friend's corner in the social arenas as Tritsuk was to fight for his monarch in the field. The stature of the two men forbade any overt complaints, but it was hard to miss the chill at court when the nuptials were announced. The Gyalpo, his own blood mixed with those of commoners could see the truth behind the grimaced and sniffs of the great barons - more than one grandee had dreamed of marrying Pelmo himself.

As the Gyalpo entered his third year on the throne Daktri appeared to be doing splendidly. The kingdom was stable and prosperous, the defeat of the Old Bön had ended any real internal issues and his foreign policy, or rather his continuation of his mother's foreign policy, had remained successful. The Gyalpo had retained his embassy with the Zhao, continuing the complicated dance as China slowly returned to stability. As always the Tibetans were faced with a mixed blessing in a healthy Middle Kingdom. There was at least the possibility that an internal revival of Chinese strength and unity would see a military revival of the Western Protectorate. On the other hand the Silk Road was the very lifeblood of Ü-Tsang so a wealthy Zhao Empire made for a wealthy kingdom.

By late 1111 AD Daktri's obsession with making money had begun to take its toll.
​

It was the money that worried Daktri, that kept him awake at nights. A peace treaty with the Son of Heaven in Nanjing could indefinitely stall the march of armies and the Gyalpo knew that the relief expedition that Torma had sent had won Chinese gratitude but he knew how unstable China could be. Barbarian invasion, rebellion, famine, plague... there were so many aspects that could shake Chinese prosperity. While almost everyone east of the Abbasid Caliphate feared Zhao strength Daktri might have been the only man alive who feared Zhao weakness.

The Radhanite Jewish colony at Dibarumukh had proven a great success and when a representative of the Ebheri family of Persia arrived at Taktsé in June 1111 Daktri was delighted. The thirty three year old Avomai Ebheri had been inspired by word of Tachlifa Ben Michael's rise but aside from his faith and an innate shrewdness the two men were very different. Unlike the charming and urbane older merchant whose ambition was always covered by friendly conversation Ebheri was a man with a chip on his shoulder, embittered by a chequered life in the snakepit that was the Caliphate's merchant world [1]. Despite all his poor personal qualities the Gyalpo was eager to set up a new Radhanite colony, this time in Tibet proper. The Gyalpo promptly appointed Avomai Ebheri governor of the city of Kungarr near the capital.

Even with this plum that had fallen into his lap Daktri was unsatisfied and for the first time his internal preoccupations tipped into something more obsessive. From the beginning of 1112 on many began to notice a change in the monarch's habits and appearance. The Gyalpo's speech, once affable became snappish. Everything seemed to irritate him and more than one junior courtier found themselves fleeing in the opposite direction once they saw Daktri striding down the corridor, face like a oncoming storm. It wasn't just dark expressions that appeared on his face. Princess Pelmo, visiting her uncle after an extended hunting expedition with her husband was shocked to see how many fresh lines marred the Gyalpo's face. He seemed to be aging a decade by the month and naturally the old whispers of the Purgyal family curse returned to prominence. In this incarnation of the legend the war against the Old Bön added dry tinder to the fire; Daktri was not simply the victim of an age old evil but the target of living witches and necromancers.

Not everyone was so quick to blame sorcery and the court physician was able to diagnose the stress that gripped Daktri. At the best of times ruling two kingdoms demanded much and Daktri's all consuming terror of running out of money magnified every personal difficulty. Unfortunately there was no obvious solution as Daktri's very drive prevented him taking a rest beyond a few hours a week spent recovering in the Royal Gardens. Even hunting, the very activity that had brought him into the company of Tritsuk was an intolerable waste of time for a ruler.

At the beginning of September 1114 after an ill-tempered meeting with his Council the Gyalpo spent a sleepless night at work over a new proclamation on taxation. Servants discovered the monarch sprawled over his desk, fingers and cheeks stained with ink from where he had fallen, his breathing unsteady. Desperately the servants and then the court physician attempted to revive Daktri with strong wine. Though he managed to regain consciousness he proved too weak to audibly speak and soon after closed his eyes for the last time. By the time Princess Pelmo and her husband arrived it was far too late...

The death of Gyalpo Purgyal Daktri, 4 September 1114 AD.

​

Footnotes:

[1] The immense Muslim empire to the West was both famously rich and infamously financially unstable. More than one Caliph had died bankrupt due to foreign wars and inevitably the Jews tended to be vulnerable to spendthrift monarchs expelling them rather than repay loans. The Jewish families that sought refuge in Eastern Tibet in Daktri's reign were primarily Persian and Syrian in origin escaping such treatment.

 

[RossN]

That's one frightful Abbasid empire!

Curious, if I may ask, what was the father's name? Curious if he got an epithet as well.

Strange! I can only imagine the religious tensions that may erupt in the coming years, especially with the child king.

He is the son of Mieszko II of Poland who did not have an epitaph.

Strangely Poland 'proper' - a small but real kingdom around Warsaw is ruled by a religiously Slavic branch of the same dynasty.

And yes that is a big Abbasid empire!

One thing I truly hope from CK3 is that the large realms get broken up more often ... though if they do implement such measures I am honest enough to admit there might be times when I start cursing the game for tearing apart my empire

Heh... yeah it is both a blessing and a curse.

To be honest my concern with CK3 is that the game might get unmanagably big in scale - I like Imperator but every time I've tried to work one of the bigger countries the sheer scale is too daunting. CK2 has a very nice scale I feel.

Taking up your offer of commenting on past chapters: part 2 on Gyalpo Palkhorre. Beautifully written: I loved the line of the vassal who did not want to see the sword of his king stained with the blood of a coward! Among others. Also the description of his late decline into senility at the end of a long and successful reign, where his greatest ‘conquest’ came through diplomacy and friendship.

Just read of Palkhorre’s sad end - from conquering warrior king to being drowned in a bathtub! A metaphorical tear was shed.

Thank you very much, I'm glad you like it! I really tried to make the personality of the characters come across.

I have to admit there are some times when the fates of my characters has emotionally hit me, whether they be positive or negative. I'm happy it worked even if it wasn't the happiest scene I've written.

Map updates are always interesting

I'm getting the distinct impression that Christianity is fighting a desperate rearguard action against the Muslims, though they seem to be making some limited headway in the northeast against the pagans -- but then, see also Poland. Speaking of, Muslim Anglo-Poland is certainly worth a curious glance, though I wonder how long the English will stand for being ruled by a foreign infidel (assuming of course that Islam doesn't eventually take root on the Isles).

The Abassids look to be the "superpower" of the map, at least among those who aren't under the aegis of the Chinese. I shudder to think what a confrontation between those two would look like, if it ever came to full-scale war.

And, of course, the continued survival of Jewish Khazaria on the steppes continues to delight and impress

The Jewish people are doing very well in this timeline. Indeed I'd almost considered having Tibet convert to Judaism but the marriages and inheritances never quite worked out.

You are right that Christendom isn't as successful in this timeline, but I have seen games were it has done worse. Who knows how the future will work out?

The Abbasids are quite frightening but I have very little direct interaction with them - though I expect that to change if I ever do actually unite Tibet!

 

[Nikolai]

That's an ugly way to go.

 

[stnylan]

I am sorry, but every time I read Daktri my brain kept wanting to insert Dakri, of which Nanny Ogg is passing fond

This rather ... distracted ... me from the episode.

Alas, a dakri never lasts as long as one hopes

 

[Specialist290]

There's a reason it's sometimes called "gnawing greed" -- the obsession with gaining more and more can get so overpowering that one neglects the good things they already have. Gyalpo Daktri has learned too late, alas, that it can even gnaw down one's very health.

 

[eoncommander]

Sad that Daktri's greed got the better of him; but I am fascinated by Tritsuk's meteoric rise, and hope he has a role to play in future events.

 

[RossN]

Gyelmo Purgyal Pelmo in 1114 AD.​

Part Eighteen: Gyelmo Purgyal Pelmo 'the Scholar' (1114 to 1158 AD)

No monarch of Ü-Tsang left her kingdom more changed than Pelmo the Scholar. Her long reign permanently altered Tibet.

The young woman who would grow into a figure both hated and revered had been cheated by misfortune out of the crown of Guge before she was born. While her mother had been four months pregnant Pelmo's father had died and the crown of Western Tibet passed on to another of the Purgyal clan. Throughout her life Pelmo never forgot and she never forgave the grandees of Guge for robbing her of her inheritance. It would many years before she achieved her revenge.

But there is more to this singular monarch than her wars. Many Purgyals had possessed a strong personal faith but Pelmo was perhaps the first ruler of Ü-Tsang who was tuly religious. Initially her inclinations were orthodox. In 1114 days after her coronation Pelmo ordered her late uncle Daktri be given a funeral, not in a tomb as had become common practice through Chinese influence but with the ancient ritual of a 'sky burial'. The mortal remains of the late Gyalpo were, with great ceremony, exposed to the winds and the snows and the birds of prey so that the living soul could travel on from the prison of mere flesh and bone.

Ironically it was this early commitment to ancient faith that made some assume Pelmo would be an ultraconservative, akin to those who waged rebellion against her uncle and grandmother. Pelmo herself may have believed that, but even in her early days her embrace of religion was not exclusive. The Gyelmo's faith was broad and generous, prepared to listen to the diverse views of her subjects. It was through this tolerance that she would become friends and eventually lovers with Sahil of Pokhara - a Nestorian Christian.

The Nestorians, more accurately called the Church of the East had deep roots in Tibet. In the early Ninth Century the Patriarch Timothy I had even ordained a Metropolitan Bishopric for Tibet, then a unified and Buddhist ruled empire. Timothy's grand design had come to nothing but for another three centuries the Nestorians had been a living presence on the Tibetan plateau. Nowhere a majority they still composed a sizeable presence in the towns, especially in the merchant classes where their links both West and East rivaled even the Radhanite Jews; the Nestorians had many co-coreligionists in China and the Silk Road was popular among hardy and ambitious pilgrims. On occasion even members of the Purgyal clan had professed the faith. Hard hit by the Black Death the start of the Twelfth Century had seen the Nestorians begin to recover lost ground under the pluralistic reigns of Torma II and Daktri. The great advantage the Nestorians possessed over, say, the Radhanites (who were also strong in the Tibetan cities) was that the Nestorians were much more open to winning local converts and marrying outside the faith, which tended to bring those spouses and their children into the Nestorian fold.

It is very hard to say the exact numbers of Christians in early Twelfth Century Ü-Tsang. In proportion of the population and in real numbers they were perhaps inferior to their counterparts in the Abbasid Caliphate, but there was no Christian in Persia or Syria as highly placed as Purgyal Babu, the son of the chieftain of Pokhara and a (very) distant cousin of Pelmo. Babu came to the attention of the monarch when her own lama denounced him for his open Nestorianism.

The Gyelmo's first interest in Christianity stemmed from a minor scandal in November 1118 AD.
​

Purgyal Babu had been remarkably careless but he was not alone in his faith. His father, Sahil of Pokhara was a member of the Gyalpo's council, as Tritsuk's successor as Marshal [1]. Even if Marshal Sahil had not been a loyal and efficient courtier Babu would probably have been let off without punishment. As it was Pelmo would learn much of Christianity directly from a man she knew well and was predisposed to liking. Pelmo believed in Dralha Yesi, the great protector god of her line and in all the many mountain gods of the Bön faith but there was something powerful in Sahil's talk of the gnam bdag (Tibetan for 'Heavenly Lord'.)

Many years later in her semi-autobiographical tome Confessions, Pelmo spoke of the process of faith. Though not a direct account of her own conversion to Nestorian Christianity it perhaps captures something of her feelings in the fevered Spring of 1119:

'... I slept poorly in those days, my dreams were dark and full of mysteries. All the pillars of knowledge that my family had built seemed to be crumbling away as doubts besieged my soul. Yet even in the nightmares I heard a gentle voice stirring, growing louder by the night. The voice came not to chastise or to blame but to speak of love and forgiveness of my sins. I know now that the Heavenly Lord was speaking to me. That He had always spoken to me even if I had never before listened...'

At a certain point in early 1122 Pelmo secretly converted to Christianity. For a time Sahil of Pokhara and some of his household would be her only true confidants. The secret created a new point of tension between the Gyelmo and her spouse. The marriage between Pelmo and Tritsuk had never been a romance for the ages. The peasant general and the princess had been brought together by her uncle largely, the feeling went, as a reward to a superb and gallant soldier and boon companion and in many ways the two lived seperate lives [1]. Still despite the differences in age and temper there was a certain respect there. Tritsuk had stepped aside from the Council after his wife took the throne, but this was not seen as any slur on his abilities simply tradition and he continued to be the senior general of the realm. The Gyelmo relied on him not just for strategy but also as an insight into the world of the Tibetan peasant that she, as the daughter and granddaughter of a monarch had only a hazy notion of. For his part Tritsuk remained stolidly loyal.

For two years Pelmo kept her new faith secret, attempting by subtle means to identify and sway sympathisers among her own court. It was a paranoid and exhausting time and it cannot have given her much hope but she persevered. The turning point came with the sudden death of Tritsuk in March 1123. The big bear like soldier, veteran of a hundred battles passed away peacefully sitting by the fire in his household. Pelmo, at the time heavily pregnant with her third and last child was shocked at the sudden sense of loss she felt. Hardly having dreamed she had even much liked her spouse his absence was suddenly unbearable. So she turned further to her faith, building on the courage and conviction she found there.

On 7 August 1123, not long after giving birth the Gyelmo publicly revealed her conversion to Nestorianism.

Pelmo publicly reveals her faith, August 1123 AD.
​

Pelmo's adoption of the Nestorian creed excited the small minority of her subjects that shared her faith and alarmed the Bön clergy and ultraconservatives but the great barons of Ü-Tsang had a muted reaction for three reasons. The first was that the kingdom had essentially been pluralistic for several decades and Bön itself was a syncretic faith; especially in the towns many Bön faithful might offer prayers to Jesus Christ as one of a number of gods (and some Tibetan Nestorians had little difficulty incorporating Bön elements to their faith.) The conversion of the monarch was not welcomed exactly but the pragmatic tolerance embraced by Torma II and Daktri held strong. The second reason was that Bön proper had waned in popularity in recent decades thanks to its connection with the court of Guge and the recent Old Bön rebellion.

The third reason and perhaps the most important was that many of the grandees entertained hopes of marriage. Pelmo was only thirty when she became a widow and of proven fertility. The chance to marry a charming and fabulously wealthy queen was reason enough to put up with her eccentric religious tastes.

Despite her Nestorianism Pelmo continued to stress a personal tolerance for pagans as shown in this incident from 1128 AD.

​

Pelmo was far from stupid. Personally the Gyelmo had little interest in re-marrying, seeing any such move as complicating the already difficult inheritance of her sons. She was happy to dangle the carrot for the rest of her reign however, dropping just enough hints and letting the grandees draw their own conclusions.

It was a characteristically canny and tough minded move from a woman who was determined to survive, and even if she was never physically courageous the Gyelmo could be lioness on other battlefields. Pelmo knew that if the Christian faith was to flower in Tibet it needed protection and tenderness. Throughout her long reign conversion would be encouraged but never forced and with one - admittedly prominent - exception she would be remarkably tolerant in matters of faith.

The Church of the East by its very nature had always embraced a pragmatic path to their non-Christian neighbours. The Patriarch at the time of Pelmo's conversion (and indeed for most of her reign) was Surin III 'the Just', whose see was in distant Damascus. Though few regarded him as the greatest of theologians his fair minded approach was much praised and in his letters to Pelmo he would call upon every aspect of that virtue on perhaps the biggest issue for Tibetan Christians: the transmigration of the soul after death. The vast majority of faiths practiced in Tibet held some sort of belief in reincarnation and the Gyelmo herself and most of the new Nestorian clergy in her kingdom continued to hold to this belief [2]. There had been some early members of the Church who had accepted transmigration of the soul [3], but by the Twelfth Century that view was firmly outside the Christian mainstream.

Surin was unwilling to anger the woman who was by far the most powerful Nestorian lord and aware that the wrong move could strangle a Nestorian Ü-Tsang in its infancy. In particular he feared, not without cause, that Pelmo might instead chose to embrace Judaism. On the other hand he was deeply aware that the Nestorians of Syria and Persia would be angered at an official acceptance of what they regarded as heresy. So he temporised. In his letters to Pelmo he proved vague and illusive about such matters, while praising her efforts at bring the word of the Lord to her people.

Pelmo, whose theological learning certainly surpassed Surin's was not blind to the fact that the Patriarch was trying very hard not to give her an answer, but as a pragmatist herself she could appreciate his creative ambiguity. Her own faith (after a wobble due to an unsatisfying attempt at a pilgrimage) grew firmer over the years but she never abandoned her old high minded tolerance and the sorcerer and the soothsayer remained fixtures at her court.

Patriarch Surin III 'the Just', the leader of the Nestorian Church for most of Pelmo's reign, pictured here in 1146 AD.​

Sahil of Pokhara died in 1128, temporarily weakening the Nestorian faction at court. However the following year saw the Christians woo Thupo Sharpa Changchub III of Dêgê, one of the most powerful of all the barons to the cause of Christianity. Changchub had been won over by the promise of Sahil's old seat on the Royal Council, a characteristic use of the carrot on behalf of the Gyelmo. With his conversion a trickle of other barons would follow, eager to gain a position in the inner circle. The process would be far from complete even by 1158 and Pelmo's death but the elite would slowly turn Christian.

The rest of the kingdom proved harder to convert. Pelmo was willing to allow lamas to hold office until they retired or died and could be replaced by Christian bishops. This greatly eased internal strife between clergy and throne and the Gyelmo's sheer longevity made it politically possible but it slowed the spread Christianity outside of the towns. The peasantry would remain overwhelmingly Bön, and at Pelmo's death more than one chronicler would note the prayers being offered to pagan deities to safeguard the Nestorian monarch's soul.

As tolerant as she was domestically Pelmo did have cause to draw the sword of religious war late in her reign. That side of her however must be considered in the complex and frequently bloody relationship she had with her uncle and cousins...

A religious map of the Tibetan Plateau, 1158 AD.​

Footnotes:

[1] Rumours would continually swirl over which if any of Pelmo's three sons had been fathered by Tritsuk for all he was the official father.

[2] This included even some of the Radhanite Jews, though ther concept of reincarnation tended to differ from their Bön, Buddhist and Taoist neighbours.

[3] Specifically Origen of Alexandria.

 

[RossN]

That's an ugly way to go.

Yes, a sad end to a promising monarch and likable character.

I am sorry, but every time I read Daktri my brain kept wanting to insert Dakri, of which Nanny Ogg is passing fond

This rather ... distracted ... me from the episode.

Alas, a dakri never lasts as long as one hopes

Heh, well you do at least have good taste in books.

Some of the names have tripped me up on occasion I admit.

There's a reason it's sometimes called "gnawing greed" -- the obsession with gaining more and more can get so overpowering that one neglects the good things they already have. Gyalpo Daktri has learned too late, alas, that it can even gnaw down one's very health.

Indeed. I have to admit I was shocked it actually claimed his life so swiftly. That was distressing and I can only imagine how it must have been received by his subjects!

Sad that Daktri's greed got the better of him; but I am fascinated by Tritsuk's meteoric rise, and hope he has a role to play in future events.

Tritsuk passed away relatively early (of natural causes), but i do think Pelmo's relationship with him shaped her tolerant and gradualist approach to the peasantry after her conversion. By getting to know him she really did have a better example of the 'commoners' than many of her predecessors!

 

[Nikolai]

Aha, som Christianity finally got to the top. Nice.

 

[ShadorEM]

Yeah, gonna be honest, this killed any interest I had in this story, especially since you appear to have engineered this just to appeal to the two or three users that didn't shut up about Nestorianism.

 

[stnylan]

To be honest I never really considered this possibility. Very intriguing.

Both hated and revered - when someone has a epithet like that you know that, whatever else they did, they did stuff. Lots of stuff. Very interesting indeed.

 

[Specialist290]

The conversion does seem to come a bit out of the blue, but I think you do a decent job of building it up convincingly. I don't really have a dog in the fight as far as a Nestorian Tibet goes, but I think we can bend the rules of plausibility a little in the interests of telling an interesting story.

I wonder if, in this world, Tibet will become the core around which the legend of Prester John forms in the West.

 

[stnylan]

I wonder if, in this world, Tibet will become the core around which the legend of Prester John forms in the West.

I have absolutely no evidence for the following, but I have always kinda assumed Prester John was influenced by the idea of Nestorianism getting confused with the Manichaean states of central Asia, and elsewhere in the world with Ethiopia.

 

[Viden]

Unifying Tibet via Holy War? That was unexpected.