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Leading the County since she was a young girl, Cixila's reign was dominated by the fear of nomadic incursions.
Mostly ignored by the Basileus and court politics, Cherson was an easy target for the Khazar Ashina clan. They sacked the town shortly after Philaretos' death. Both of Cixila's aunts were captured, and while one of them, Aspasia, died as Khan Çat'n's prisoner, another was forced to become a concubine of some nomadic warlord. This experience would be a guideline for her reign.
When the regency was over, Cixila's efforts were concentrated on improving Cherson's defences. The taxes were all spent on walls and military training facilities, and the Countess was often present in Constantinople arguing her case, only to be ignored by the ruling Basileus at the time, having no time for a heretic Goth and her heretic people.
She put herself as well as her children in service of peace with the nomads, as she married a Dulo. The blood of Attila in his veins, the Ashina respected Cixila's son Theudis enough for him to marry Peksen, daughter of their Khan.
But these marriages didn't save Cherson from multiple nomadic raids over the decades of her rule. Paired with the town's improved defences, the damage was reduced, at least. The Countess was soon beloved by her people, despite their religious differences.
In 932, Basileus Drakontios had enough of Cixila's pleads and had her imprisoned. The slight that caused her imprisonment has been lost to history, but it is likely that Drakontios thought her involved in a plot against his life, likely in exchange for a pretender's support. Perhaps he also thought that she was involved in the great revolt against his rule, which had come to an end a few months ago and whose perpetrators he had executed.
The Basileus' fears at the time were perhaps not entirely unfounded – if not self-made –, as he was a hated monarch with a challenged intellect. He ended up being assassinated in 936.
Cixila didn't grow accustomed to her cell, as she died not long after. A beacon of justice and beloved leader of her people, put in chains by the tyrannical Drakontios, became a favourite motif for Gothic painters of the renaissance to represent the injustice of the Gothic people's treatment at the hands of the Greeks, although the truth is likely somewhere in between.
Theudis I, the Dove
(*908 - † 16th March, 944) Duke of Azov since 939
Theudis' epithet dates back to his days at his mother' court. The young man was beloved at court, peaceful, happy. His marriage to the nomad princess Peksen also seemed to be harmonic enough. None would have thought that the Dove would later become a man bathed in blood - more than once, and not just due to “circumstances”.
Theudis' transformation from dove to bird of prey began in the late days of Cixila's life. Ashina raiding parties, left entirely unimpressed by one of their own living behind Cherson's walls, often adventured into the county, pillaging indiscriminately. In Theudis' mind, diplomacy had failed.
When his mother was imprisoned by Drakontios, he also knew that he would have to expect no help from Constantinople. So after he took the reins of the county, he turned towards Rome. Pope Ansatasius III had declared his intention to launch a crusade for the glory of God – and the Dove managed to convince him to send the crusaders against Khazaria.
A crusade against a nomadic realm was clearly not going to be easy. Theudis convinced Anastasius by pointing out the possibility to settle the land with good Christians, both advancing Catholicism's reach to the east and eliminating a major, Jewish, threat. He also pointed out that most nomads probably didn't follow any religion anyway and only lived to raid.
None of them would have fathomed that this crusade, launched in 932, would last longer than they would live, especially not Theudis, a man of merely 24 years. In the end, it lasted 45 years – people lived their whole lives during this crusade, and throw more than Khazaria into turmoil.
The Endless Crusade
The Khazars were ill-prepared for an attack of entire crusading armies, and they definitely didn't expect the Chersonians to actually attack them instead of the other way around, so Theudis managed to surprisingly drive off a far larger force in Theodosia. With the arrival of more crusaders, more initial victories followed – but soon, the Khazar clans were organized and united against the invaders, who hardly managed to achieve any other victory against the nomadic army.
This caused a lot of dispute amongst the crusaders, who split up and mostly erected forts in empty territory – only to find them razed a week, month or even years later, when the Khazars came. As time went on, the war only brought forward the worst in man, one excessive cruelty followed by the other.
The dispute reached its height already in the third year of the crusade, when it culminated in a duel between Pope Anastasius, who had taken to the crusade's cruelties like a fish to water, and the Captain of his Guard, during which the latter slew the Vicar of Christ.
With Anastasius' death, morale of most crusaders reached an absolute low. The united Khazar horde was too strong for any remaining crusading army to oppose, and they went from victory to victory.
Theudis of Cherson avoided the big nomadic host as well as he could, and established a sizeable presence of Goths in Azov, killing any nomad he found on the spot. The Gothic presence in Azov was secure enough that in 939, Pope Urbanus III confirmed him as new Duke of Azov, the fortifications deemed strong enough to not be razed by the horde immediately.
Theudis was named Patrikios, then Anthypathos by Drakontios' successor Eugenios, who recognized his successes in the north, though without sending any aid. The newly-forged Duke didn't give that much thought, as he kept leading his army through nomadic land, often enough marching through the ruins of forts built by either his own men or the other crusaders.
Theudis' army no longer numbered a few hundred Goths from Cherson. With his county's people settling in Azov and the man himself proclaimed a leading crusader, his army was more like a band of adventurers from all over Europe, held together by a sizeable presence of order knights. Most other crusader armies were similarly composed, with the nobles withdrawing from the empty land after ten years of mostly senseless wandering.
Those left were either true zealots, Papal mercenaries, order knights or people hoping for a better life – mostly only to find death.
The Khazars had subjugated a few tribes to the northwest, and as Theudis found himself unable to hold on to Crimean lands, he tried to occupy these already existing tribal fortifications as 944 began. In Turov, Theudis fell gravely ill, and died not much later, a victim of the harsh winter.
His son and heir Kyrillos was less than three years old. This boy would leave a mark on history – but the Endless Crusade still raged on, as it would for over three decades more.
With Theudis I, the Thaticos dynasty began to leave a real mark on history. As the initiator of the Khazar crusade – later known as the Endless Crusade – it is with him that the expansion into the steppe began. While some later generations honoured him as a warrior, leading his people from the front against the threat of the nomad raiders, some modern views of the man picture him as a ruthless, genocidal conqueror, far more cruel than all but the most vicious of his contemporaries. Be it as it may – the Endless Crusade changed the course of Eastern European history more than anything else, its effects felt throughout the entirety of the Catholic world.
Kyrillos I, the Young
the Lionheart
the Castellan
Saint Kyrillos the Myrrh-Streaming
(*10th May, 941 - † 1st July, 994) Duke of Crimea since 973
King of Gothia since 978
Kyrillos never saw his father, and his mother was viewed with nothing but suspicion back in Cherson. But with the Endless Crusade raging on, his upbringing was – some might say paradoxically – safer than his predecessors', for no raiding nomads marched against the town's walls. His tutors took good care of the boy, while his army marched on under the Dove's banner.
Under the leadership of the Knights Hospitaller, the men were less inclined to avoid the Khazar host, and attempted to come to other crusaders' aid more than once, only to take severe defeats in return. No new settlements could be established in that time, and sometimes it looked like the crusade would come to an end soon, only for the Catholics to establish new forts in nomad territory.
When Kyrillos came of age, not many people placed much faith into the Young. The experienced knights leading the Azovian army had very little to show for in terms of success – surely he wouldn't do much better.
Naturally, they were proven right. Things didn't suddenly change.
The young Duke took charge of his army, and continued just as before at first. With royal armies rarely venturing into the steppe – mostly overconfident heirs, soon returning to their kingdoms with a bloody nose – he learned from the Hospitallers, who mostly followed Theudis the Dove's lead.
Kyrillos quite often met with the most tenacious crusaders – minor Irish lords, lowly Karlings, the Bonifazi, minor Polish lords - often lamenting that they no longer knew what their homeland even looked like. Going through the motions, saying that any day they didn't take a Khazar arrow was a good day.
The Miracle of Aqmescit
This went on for a few years, until a fateful day when Kyrillos' men came upon another nomad camp in Crimea, a few days' march from Cherson. As his men readied themselves to slaughter the Khazars just as they have done for decades, Kyrillos had a vision. When his men looked at the camp, they saw tents. The Young saw houses, walls, a church. A nomad testing his bow looked to him like a priest at mass. He heard a voice, telling him to bring them the word of God.
And so he did. No longer would any Khazar be senselessly massacred. Ordering his men to stay back, and calling upon his knowledge of their language learned from his mother, Kyrillos extended his offer, but most nomads tried to flee. Save for two – one warrior readied his bow on the Duke, and one blind, old woman fell to the ground.
The bowman loosened his arrow, straight at Kyrillos' face. The arrow hit its mark – only to harmlessly fall off the Duke's nose. He entered the church of his vision, and helped the old woman off the ground, mumbling a prayer – and the woman saw another arrow bouncing off his skin.
At the place of the miracle now stands Aqmescit's cathedral. Kyrillos went on to treat the Khazars like fellow humans, no longer the monsters of the past. The Duke became a true paragon of virtue.
While this compassion helped him to gain settlers for his cause, convincing nomads to become sedentary, his martial leadership was fuelled by a crusaders' zeal. In 973, the horde suffered its first defeat for ages on the banks of the Dnieper, and Kyrillos was named Duke of Crimea.
Five years later, the Khazar Khagan Yilig, Duke Kyrillos and Pope Victor II signed a peace treaty. The Endless Crusade had finally come to an end, and the Kingdom of Gothia was born, independent of the Byzantine Empire.
The Lionhearted Castellan
The church supported the efforts of the victorious crusaders to settle the land, and soon the endless plains were interrupted by stone walls. For three years, the new land was tamed; then, the Pechenegs attacked.
Kyrillos rallied his people, and would not yield that land to the savages again, but conserve it. This is where their future lied, no matter where they came from. Once adventuring crusaders, they were now all united under a single crown, all Gothians, all fighting for the glory of God.
The Pechenegs met Gothia's army in Saqsin. Kyrillos gave an eye in the defence of his crown, but prevailed. The young kingdom had managed to stand against a great nomad horde, and their king thanked the Lord with a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Upon his return, he claimed to be tasked with expanding the reach of civilization, and thus waged war against lesser Khanates. While victorious and filled with the experience of the Endless Crusade, the conflicts showed Kyrillos that Gothia, with its mostly virgin land, would not be able to stand on its own for too long.
The Sarkelian Inheritance
The new kingdom of Gothia consisted of the crown's land in Azov and Crimea, as well as the duchies of Sarkel and Itil.
Sarkel was initially attributed to Kyrillos' cousin Cixila. She died of depression, childless, in 989. Her heir was not the king, but a cousin on her father's side – Strategos Konstantinos of Sicily.
With Sarkel, nearly half of the crusade's gains were absorbed into Byzantium. The Lionheart was both outraged at his cousin's betrayal and confirmed in his belief that Gothia's steppe land would likely slip away from his crown.
He thus pledged his loyalty to Basilissa Parthena. Under the condition that she would not meddle into Gothia's internal affairs.
That pledge was soon tested, as the Khazars attempted to reclaim their land. With Byzantine assistance, Kyrillos managed to repel the Khazars in Zachlumia in 993.
That threat overcome, he directed his army against the wrongful heir, Konstantinos.
The Sicilian army arrived in 994. The Lionheart faced them – and despite achieving a victory, he was mortally wounded. It would be up to his son to reclaim the lost lands of Sarkel.
Kyrillos' body was brought to Cherson, and as he was laid to rest in his tomb, his wound healed. The great king remained in such a pristine condition, even years later, seemingly asleep and ready to awake at any moment. Clearly favoured by the Lord, and with word of these miracles reaching Rome, he was canonized.
Saint Kyrillos, founder of the kingdom of Gothia, is shrouded in legend. While scholars debate the nature of the Miracle of Aqmescit, it is clear that the experience of the Endless Crusade forged the young Duke into a leader of rare ability and wisdom. The Goths say that in their darkest hour, Saint Kyrillos shall awake from his slumber, ready to lead his people to a new dawn. So far, he hasn't; which leads some to claim that despite tough times falling on Gothia, its darkest hour hasn't yet come.
In more practical terms, Kyrillos' “Codex Thaticos” has been a well-guarded secret weapon of the Thaticos dynasty throughout the middle ages, giving his successors an edge in most battles waged against the hordes, rarely changing their general strategy, even over the course of centuries.
His longsword, the Veil of Veronica and a dragon amulet from the far east became the regalia of Gothia, without which no coronation of a Gothic king could take place.
With the death of Saint Kyrillos, an experienced mercenary took the crown. Based on his own experiences, the legendary king had begun the Thaticos' tradition to send their firstborn away as a mercenary to learn their way around war and find their own way of leadership.
Theudis was thus well-suited to avenge his father. The Sicilian advance fended off, Sarkel was soon nearly entirely restored to Gothia – only the county itself remained Sicilian.
This victory coincided with Khazaria breaking apart, as the powerful clans each went their own way.
Thus, after the restoration of the kingdom's lands, the king turned towards expanding his realm. The formerly Khazarian Kabar and Kizlyarid clans, as well as the Spanhem-Ortenburg Magyars, were all defeated, allowing Theudis to add the duchies of Etelköz and Cherson to Gothia.
People, mostly foreigners, began to celebrate him as “the Great”, for he managed to bring all of Crimea under Gothic rule, thus finally bringing Cherson proper into safety from the hordes. Or at least people thought so. As the town grew into a flourishing city, it became a favoured target for raiding adventurers, their armies a constant thorn in the side of Gothic kings.
The Second Crusade
The Endless Crusade did finally end in a victory, but at a very high cost. And while Saint Kyrillos' reign surely brought Catholicism to at least parts of the steppe, the Papacy's goal of reclaiming the Holy Land from the Muslims persisted. In 1009, Pope Gregorius VI thus announced to launch a Crusade for Jerusalem.
The King of Gothia pledged his men as well, though likely more to honour his saintly father and claim his share of loot than out of religious conviction.
In the end, nothing went as Gregorius planned it. When the crusade was launched in 1010, the crusaders' ships didn't land in the Holy Land – but in Thrace. Under the guise of restoring a rightful claimant, the crusaders targeted Constantinople.
For Theudis, there was no reason to attempt to reach Jerusalem alone, only to be overwhelmed. But he was a vassal of Byzantium, and issued a call to arms against the Catholic invaders, having led Greek armies before.
Theudis refused. The Basileus was well-aware that Gothia consisted mostly of unsettled land, and needed any funds to attract settlers and build their towns. Yet still they had raised the taxes imposed on the crusader kingdom, and left the defence against any adventuring hosts to the Goths themselves.
Two years after the crusade launched, Theudis, considering his vassalage void due to a failure of Byzantium to fulfil their duties, proclaimed Gothia's independence.
He hoped that the Second Crusade would occupy Byzantium's forces enough for Petros not to care any more for his defecting vassal than he did in peacetime. But he was mistaken. Caught between raiding Pechenegs and Petros – soon called “Ironside” for his unflinching defence – diverting his army to Gothia as soon as he had fended off the next crusaders' assault, Theudis' army suffered.
When Khagan Vakrim of the Kizlyarids saw Gothia's weakness and attempted to take back his lost land, Theudis' situation was bleak. The Goths managed to fend off the nomads by taking their main camp by surprise before the king went grovelling to Constantinople.
Some crusader lords saw this as a betrayal, and Count Clotaire of Sharukan led a revolt against Theudis while Petros confirmed him in his titles in 1016. Two years later, both Clotaire's revolt and the Crusade ended in defeat.
The Broken King
His loss in the Second Crusade ended Theudis' life as warrior-king. As the assassination of Petros Ironside sparked a period of Byzantine instability in 1021, he was holed up in Cherson, thinking of his own safety.
When his heir Kyrillos died of dysentery in 1027, he sought solace in the arms of his second wife.
When news of an Aztec horde landing in Connachta in the year 1030 reached the king, he reportedly merely shrugged, saying that the West shall learn to know his struggle too.
Since his defeat, he always seemed like he was just waiting for death to come. Shortly after the return of his second son from his mercenary journey, Theudis the Broken thought his time had come.
His successor ready, Theudis took his sword one last time, turned towards the sea towards Byzantium, and jumped off the castle wall the 24th October 1031.
Theudis II is another tragic figure in Gothic history. His rise as a young king victorious against the nomads, then his fall during the Second Crusade and the slow decline afterwards leading up to his suicide have unsurprisingly inspired a few poets to dramatize his life.
While dramatic for the king himself, well earning his new moniker of “the Broken”, Gothia itself came out of his reign stronger than before. The peacetime after the Broken put his weapons to rest was much needed to increase the kingdom's presence in the vast expanse it called its own. Without the king's men looking to replenish his army's ranks, settlers could safely bring in their crops and erect their towns. The so-called Broken Age of Gothia, continuing into Theudis III's reign, was a critical time for the kingdom's development.
******************************
So apparently, I had sunset invasion enabled - I'm sure we'll hear of the Aztecs again at some point.
Theudis III's youth as a mercenary took him to western Europe, and he forged some lasting connections there before returning to Cherson. These connections allowed him to marry Béatrice, princess of Burgundy. By all accounts, it was a very happy marriage, with the Queen dying mere months after the death of her beloved husband.
They also made the young king bring the lifestyle of the Karling courts to Gothia, and as the Broken Age continued, he spent his time mostly hunting, earning himself his epithet.
While all that hunting seemed like a mere pastime, it turned out to be a powerful political tool. Theudis' cousin of the saint's name, Duke of Cherson, was the biggest internal threat to his rule, openly advocating for his own right to the throne. But before he could bring his plans to fruition, Theudis invited him to a hunt in 1035.
Kyrillos didn't want to offer Theudis any opening to move against him, but one of his famed hunts was not something he could afford to miss. During the hunt, the two cousins got separated from the other hunters, and the Duke loosened an arrow in the King's direction – or at least, that's what the official records say. The pretender was put into chains, and Theudis' reign was secure.
The Pecheneg Campaigns
With the crown safely resting on his head, Theudis III ended the Broken Age in 1036, in what was later dubbed the Hunter's First Pecheneg Campaign. Pecheneg raids, unlike the Khazars, had only grown more frequent in the Broken Age, and the Hunter sought payback.
While the conflict lasted five years, both armies rarely fought. In the end, the Pechenegs were decisively beaten, and the border region was much safer.
Only in 1046 did Theudis wage war again, in the so-called Second Pecheneg Campaign. These names sometimes cause some confusion, as Theudis fought a different Pecheneg clan, Temir the Butcher of Beçenek. Temir had caused a lot of grief in his region, which forced the Hunter to pacify him. Unlike the greater Pecheneg Khanate, Temir's clan controlled no vast space to retreat from the Gothic army, and he was forced to move far from Gothia's new borders within months.
The Pecheneg Campaigns strengthened Theudis' confidence in his kingdom's strength, and in 1049, he openly revolted against Basileus David, proclaiming that he shall finish what his father had started, succeed at what had broken him.
His father's opportunity was the Second Crusade – the Hunter's opportunity was another period of Byzantine instability, leading back to Petros Ironside's assassination.
Byzantine Troubles
Petros Ironside, the sole Radelchis Basileus, had fended off the Second Crusade, but he was more warrior than politician. In peacetime, he made himself enemies he couldn't defeat on the battlefield, and was assassinated the 11th April 1021.
But his successor were hardly more popular. Pelagios the Frail was named Basileus as a return to House Makedon, but murdered the 4th September of the same year. His son Symeon fell to a concealed blade the 15th February 1027.
Symeon's son Pamphilios, a scholar of merely 16, became the new Basileus. His reign saw missionary success in Russia, but also plentiful revolts. One of these, led by Strategos Nikephoros of Calabria, deposed him in 1040.
Nikephoros was a military man and thought himself well-suited to finally restore order to the Empire. But he underestimated the influence of the Makedons. No sooner did he try to rule from Constantinople that the Makedonian faction rose up, installing Pamphilios' brother David as Basileus in 1044.
David was the agreeable option, so as not to return to Pamphilios – but he turned out to be an immense wastrel, preferring to compose poems about them rather then tackle the Empire's plentiful problems.
The Empire erupted into civil war again soon enough, to install David's aunt – and Pamphilios' wife (yes, that made Valeria Pamphilios' aunt as well, with a different mother than Symeon) – as Basilissa.
Observing those troubles from across the Black Sea, the Hunter saw his prey in his trap. While Valeria succeeded David, Theudis marched against the Empire's Russian conquests. Armies sent north to deal with the seceding Goths were no match for the Hunter's host and thus returned to the Empire, awaiting reinforcements which never arrived.
In 1051, Valeria recognized Gothia's independence. Byzantium was both unable to enforce its suzerainty over the Goths and had to focus on a new enemy coming from the east.
Valeria fell in battle against said enemy in 1058, leading to her husband Pamphilios' second reign – which was cut short three years later, when he was assassinated like his father and grandfather before him.
each one of the white skulls is “suspicious circumstances” - as it was an Ironman, I sadly couldn't check their murderers
The Third Crusade
Theudis had secured Gothia's independence, and then answered Pope Eugenius IV's call for an Italian Crusade in the same year.
Perhaps as one of the consequences of the Endless Crusade, the Umayyad Hispanian Empire had expanded along the Mediterranean coast – all the way to the gates of Rome itself. This threat was far too great to ignore.
The Hunter's target was clear, and he joined other crusaders in Liguria. But unlike during the Endless Crusade, the lack of unity proved to be a weakness for the Catholics against the united Muslims, and the Umayyad army was too strong to fight directly.
After two years in Italy, Theudis thus led his men to secure a different target for Christendom – the Baleares. Save for an interruption to come to Rome's aid in 1055, the Hunter spent four years securing the islands.
When he raised his daughter Ioanna to Lady of the Baleares, the Pope called off the crusade. In exchange, the Badshah of Hispania should accept the loss of the islands, thus creating a Catholic state that would stay independent of Hispania until 1138.
Change in the Steppe
The Hunter's lifetime is overshadowed by the invaders from the east – the Mongols. Steadily advancing westwards, Basilissa Valeria of Byzantium fell against them in 1058, and it was likely only a matter of time until they turned their eyes on Gothia.
Theudis took an active stance against that threat and sent out emissaries to Khagan Barghujin. A great warrior, he took a lesson from Saint Kyrillos in this case, working towards a diplomatic solution. It was found in 1060 – the king's son and heir Kyrillos would marry Khugurchin, daughter of the Great Khan.
Emboldened by his diplomatic success – and likely also aiming to expand Gothia as much as possible before the arrival of his new ally – in his later life Theudis the Hunter would continuously wage war against his neighbours, both nomads and foreign heirs who thought that they could hold on to counties far, far away from their homeland.
King Hrane of Könugarðr was likely impressed by the warrior-king's conquests – and requested Theudis' help to convert his people to Catholicism. In 1066, Könugarðr officially became Catholic – it wouldn't last long, but Theudis would not experience that change.
His court physician diagnosed the king with the Great Pox, and the latter was desperate to avoid that disease eating away his life. The physician's solution was “to remove the root of the disease”, which the man had identified as Theudis' face.
Needless to say, whatever disease really befell the king, it didn't originate in his face. What did originate there was the ensuing infection, which truly caused his death.
Theudis the Hunter is rightfully seen as a great kings of Gothia, for some second only to Saint Kyrillos, and not just due to the kingdom's ensuing change of fortune. He restored Gothia's independence of Byzantium and was finally undefeated, even though the Third Crusade was overall a defeat for Christendom. The kingdom itself developed, and Theudis ensured the safety of his people from raiders, both defensively and proactively.
While he died aged 56, speculation about Gothia's fate should he have survived is quite widespread, as are the theories concerning the physician – whose name Kyrillos II had forbidden anyone to mention ever again. The most widespread conclusion is that he was simply unable to treat the king, but others go so far as to frame it as a successful assassination, ordered either by vengeful Byzantines – or by Kyrillos II, impatient to succeed to the crown.
(*9th October, 1036 - † 1st September, 1096) King of Crimea (Gothia) and Khazaria since 1070
Amongst those who believe that Kyrillos II is responsible for the Hunter's death, it is hard to find a historian. Just as these people do not engage in wild speculation concerning Gothia's fate if Theudis III would have lived. They agree that his epithet isn't simply idle flattery, but well-deserved – only that Kyrillos II faced insurmountable problems.
He faced those problems since the beginning of his reign.
Gothia and the Mongols
The Hunter's diplomatic solution with the emerging threat from the east was achieved mostly due to the groom himself. The Prince was extremely well-wandered, his mercenary days taking him westward, his diplomatic mission as far east as the court of China, conquered by the Mongols. His military insight was welcomed by the Great Khan, and Gothia was quickly found an insignificant land – if even their crown prince ventured out as a mercenary, their land had to be harsh indeed.
But while the marriage with Khugurchin was a diplomatic success, it was difficult to accept for the nobility. Convinced that the days of reaching out to vagrant warlords from the steppe was over, many opposed the marriage vehemently. When she was crowned queen alongside her husband in Aqmescit's cathedral, none could miss the tension.
The hate against his wife was the least of Kyrillos' problems soon enough. The 16th July 1071, the Black Death, little more than a year after it broke out in India, reached Cherson.
The King isolated his court while the plague devastated his kingdom, and with the courtiers confined to the castle, Khugurchin became a victim of her enemies in October, Kyrillos' insurance against Mongol aggression gone with her.
Theudis petitioned the Great Khan again. But the situation had changed. With Gothia ravaged by the plague, Theudis' bargaining position was weak. On the Mongol side, the horde was still strong with no signs of weakening. And in September, Barghujin's 30-year-long reign had ended. His son Godan the Despoiler was 27 and eager to prove himself as leader.
Godan had no children, nor was he willing to offer any of his sisters to a worthless ally. Kyrillos quickly gained the impression that he would be all too willing to despoil the Gothic lands, an easy conquest to show that he was the right man at the head of the horde. Thus he made a decision which would secure his crown and his (remaining) people's safety – with a cost mostly his successors would bear.
Gothia became a vassal of the Mongol Empire.
The Shrewd
Unsurprisingly, the King didn't make himself many friends amongst the already hostile nobility with this decision. But there was nothing they could do. Their lands were not only far poorer than the crown's – even in good times – but the plague made any thought of revolt useless. They could only think of moving against the man himself.
But he was away for quite some time. Some claimed he wanted to escape the plague – but in fact, he sought another bride. He returned with a daughter of the Emperor of China – and 2.000 men completely loyal to her, and thus him. With the toll claimed by the Black Death, none could hope to stand against Kyrillos now.
The King wise leadership through these hard times soon brought him his moniker, as the nobility came to understand and accept his reasons. Not without difficulty, as exemplified by the Duke of Itil – the Shrewd convinced him by attacking a minor clan under the Great Khan, expanding the duchy's borders to their full extent.
Otherwise, he managed to keep the tribute to the Khan at a low level, using all his resources and the peace within Gothia to recover from the Black Death stronger than before, a goal he certainly achieved.
By 1090, Gothia was strong enough that its royal family was an enticing marriage option for the Byzantine Empire. From vassal to enemy to ally, Cherson's relation with Constantinople had changed rapidly within a lifetime, as Prince Theudis married Princess Nikarete, Basilissa Basilike the Nun's sole child.
The Short Crusade
The invaders from across the sea were not satisfied with Ireland, and by 1096, Hispania had been severely weakened by the Aztecs. Pope Marinus II saw the opportunity to finally push them out of Italy, and launched a crusade.
Kyrillos embarked with his men as well, but until he arrived, the Muslims were nearly defeated. The Fourth Crusade met with overwhelming support from the Catholic lords, and the Gothic army met friendly faces after making landfall, only a few towns still holding out.
The Shrewd had been drained by the long voyage by ship, and settling in for exhausting sieges didn't help his morale. When he died during one of those sieges, mere months before the crusade's foregone conclusion, rumours claim it was of boredom.
Kyrillos II's legacy is a conflicted one, as manifested by the conspiracy theories surrounding his succession. Many Goths resent that he led them into Mongol vassalage; but in view of the unenviable situation he found himself in, this did seem like the wisest choice.
That one decision is held up by his critics as the one decisive proof for why the Shrewd should never have been crowned, instead be called the False. Those critics have a long tradition reaching back to Kyrillos' opponents at court, who were jealous of his favourites' treatment, claiming that “he treated them like a lovestruck boy his crush”. Suspicions of homosexuality made him even more of a hate sink, in some circles that persists even today.
But that's discounting all of his hard work restoring a plague-ridden kingdom, and overlooking the fact that Gothia recovered from the Black Death far faster than any other medieval kingdom, not because of the density of population, but due to excellent leadership. And while Great Khan Godan the Despoiler was assassinated within three years, it does seem likely that a nearly defenceless Gothia would have been attacked and either razed to the ground or forced into vassalization anyway.
One lasting legacy is also the introduction of a system of primogeniture, allowing the Gothic king to add a second crown to his name – and further solidifying the Crown's dominance within the realm, ruling from well-developed Crimea.
Gothia itself was likely stronger than before Kyrillos II's reign – but it was now under Mongol rule. And it would not always be as harmonic and mutually beneficial as under the Shrewd.
The Shrewd had spent much of his reign bringing his opponents over to his side. His son Theudis did the opposite. While it is responsible for the king's early demise, his behaviour had consequences even beyond the borders of Gothia.
During his mercenary days, Theudis IV had earned himself a reputation for being a man who didn't give a second thought to how people thought about him. A man who did whatever he felt like at the time. Before crucial battles, he was known to threaten his employers – either they would have to pay a substantial bonus, or he'd see how much their enemy pays. With or without the bonus, he'd then go to their enemy anyway and see who paid more.
Soon enough, the only ones willing to employ him were those who had the misfortune not to know his reputation. That the Quarrelsome was crowned by the Pope in Rome was only due to the Short Crusade – Theudis was there when his father died, and the Italians were quite happy that the Muslims were already nearly driven out.
The Byzantine Succession
Theudis was seen as such a strong counter-argument to any case that he likely cost his wife Nikarete the Byzantine Empire. The only child of Basilissa Basilike the Nun, the Byzantine nobility was united behind a common purpose, a seldom enough occurrence. Said purpose was to not let any spawn of the Quarrelsome inherit any kind of land in the Empire.
When Basilike was killed in battle, her husband Anastasios was named Basileus – Nikarete inherited Basilike's title of Armenia. But she didn't inherit a crown, as one would have expected. She was named Queen – but all the power in Armenia rested with the merchant class. Her capital was far away from Armenia proper, in the Nile delta, and governance of both the town and the “kingdom” was organized following the Venetian example.
Nikarete never even set foot into her “kingdom”, living in Cherson until her untimely death, likely caused by dysentery (though some claim that poison was involved).
Theudis the Quarrelsome was fuming with anger, but powerless to change that. He vented out that anger by attacking the Chupanid clan. Once those were defeated, he moved on to the Otgonbayar clan.
Once he was engaged against these nomads, the situation changed. The Great Khans of the Mongols had vastly different faiths so far – Tengris, Hindus, even a Jain ruled. And despite the formation of a Tengri Church following Abrahamic example, Great Khan Targhutai converted to Sunni in 1103, a horselord more pious than most before and after him.
Perhaps Theudis' consequent fate had something to do with this conversion, perhaps it was merely his legendary ability to make enemies at work. Khan Chanai of the Otgonbayar was perhaps involved as well, after he had to surrender Utva to Theudis.
Whatever the reason, the Quarrelsome ended up as Targhutai's prisoner. He soon fell ill with pneumonia, and that ended up causing his death.
There weren't many who mourned Theudis IV when he died, and his name would likely be forgotten by much of the population, if not for his ability to antagonize people. There's a figure of speech amongst Goths, “diplomatic like Theudis IV”, that survived to the present day.
His legacy goes further than a linguistic oddity. Under Theudis the Quarrelsome, the somewhat good relation between the vassal Gothia and their Mongol liege crumbled away, never to be restored. His successor had a lot of work before him if he wanted to restore the trust in the crown, and due to the Quarrelsome's premature death, he was not forged by mercenary experience.
After the Quarrelsome's reign, trust in Gothia's crown had reached an absolute low. That his successor didn't face an early revolt, despite being in many ways similar to his father, is mostly due to the centralization of power in the crownlands, perpetuated by Kyrillos the Shrewd. The new king was a military man, strong as an ox, dreaming of a newly-empowered Gothia. He would have been the right man at the right time in other circumstances. As it was, he couldn't even manage to win over any powerful prelate for his coronation, having to order his personal chaplain to perform the ceremony.
Theudis' ambition was firstly directed at the man responsible for his father's death, Great Khan Targhutai. To his dismay, the Mongol ruler died a year after the Quarrelsome. But this didn't mean that the Goth abandoned his plan for revenge. Bodonchar succeeded the childless Targhutai, and Theudis provoked the new Khan by attacking the Chupanid clan.
The lack of a reaction from the head of the horde confirmed Theudis in his planning, and he grew ever bolder, earning himself his epithet. It was a fine line he was treading – any defeat with his army, and his opponents at home would strike. Their numbers didn't diminish.
The Wrath of the Khan
The 14th July 1114, after another one of Theudis' provocations led to the Great Khan summoning the Gothic King to explain himself, the balance of power within the Mongol Empire shifted drastically. Bodonchar demanded the Bold's military service to repay his injustices. Theudis set conditions for that – many of them.
The Great Khan was well-known for his temper, and enraged himself at the insolence of the Gothic gnat clinging on to the great Mongol steed. So much did he enrage himself that he keeled over, falling down in front of a smiling Theudis, never to stand again – Bodonchar died that day.
With his son not yet of age, Chidukhul Chagatayid seized the opportunity and let himself be named Genghis Khan of Mongolia, seizing the title from the Borjigin, thus also cleanly breaking with China.
Much has been said about Bodonchar's death. If it was purely his rage killing him, if it was the Bold's doing, or Chidukhul's. Or if it was a cooperative effort from those two. For their contemporaries, only suspicion was the answer. A suspicion directed against two people, who both did their best to ignore the rumours – even if they could, they wouldn't crack down on the other suspect, for fear of appearing guilty themselves and losing the support they had.
Theudis' personal records answer the question quite clearly. The king described this 14th July in great detail, savouring every moment of his precious revenge against the Borjigin who killed his father.
Theudis and Chidukhul were both aware of the situation, and the Goth fulfilled the terms of the agreement he was negotiating with Bodonchar, leading the horde against the Ghaznavids.
In 1121, the two leaders were close enough that Chidukhul's son of the same name married Theudis' sister Margarita. Soon after, Theudis' wife, Orbei of the Injuid clan, was murdered. Childless after 12 years of marriage, many whispered that she was infertile – some whispered that it was the Bold. While his many enemies could have been the murderers, there were more than a few voices pointing towards the Bold himself as mastermind of the assassination.
In any case, Theudis remarried a Dutch countess. As he was called to lead the Genghis Khan's troops in the east, the marriage was concluded by proxy; upon his return, the king would be able to send for his bride, and they would see each other for the first time since their marriage, likely years ago.
Chidukhul died of an infected wound during that campaign the 12th January 1125, and the Bold, his duty to the old man fulfilled, returned to Gothia, using the disarray of the horde after their second Genghis Khan's death to fight the Otgonbayar clan.
Yes, he came with another 60k event troops!
As he entered Cherson to raise his army, Margarita welcomed him, together with his estranged court – and a dagger in each of their hands. Theudis the Bold, neither able to alleviate the suspicions directed at him for being the Quarrelsome's son nor able to win over the hearts of his people as he campaigned for Chidukhul, was assassinated in the open in his own keep.
Dead without issue, his nephew Kyrillos, Margarita's two-year-old son, was the sole male successor to the throne, and the king's sister assumed the regency with the support of the court.
Theudis the Bold's reign seamlessly continues the Quarrelsome's. The enemies made by his father remained enemies, and the young king added even more to the tally. Historians agree that in any kingdom other than Gothia, kings such as Theudis IV and V would have been overthrown or murdered swiftly. Both men proved the worth of their predecessors' centralization for the crown, while the realm arguably suffered their mismanagement.
The Bold's skirmishes with the nomads hindered development of the border regions, and unbeknownst to him, some regions were actually occupied by new Mongol clans upon Chidukhul's death. Gothia was left weakened by these minor losses, but the feud between the Thaticos and Borjigin had reached an early zenith with a great impact on the world as a large.
Chidukhul Chagatayid's proclamation as Genghis Khan mobilized another huge horde to fight for the Mongols Empire, but he didn't have the immeasurable wealth the Borjigin had amassed. And while they had lost the Empire, their clan remained strong. Thus the Bold's main contribution was one where it was vividly discussed in his lifetime if he was the one actually responsible.
As Gothia entered the regency for Kyrillos III, the crown had a lot of lost trust to restore. With the court having proven not to be above regicide, would the young king even reach his maturity?
Kyrillos III, the Crusader
the Mad Regency under Margarita the Fratricide until 1135
(*27th May, 1123 - † 5th April, 1155)
With young Kyrillos III hardly able to speak, the killers of Theudis the Bold seized the regency, led by the king's mother. Ruthless, smart and ambitious, Queen Mother Margarita saw her son mostly as means to the throne.
The boy was mostly neglected while his mother held court like a queen in her own right, even pursuing Gothic expansion at the Chupanids' expense like her predecessors. Kyrillos' heart hardened in that time, and it was his father, Chidukhul Chagatayid, who watched over his education. The Mongol prince was another outcast of the royal court where he could have been an influential figure, and the young king learned much about the inner workings of the Mongol horde, which his predecessors had only treated as barbaric fools before, the alliance of the Bold and Genghis Khan Chidukhul one born more of necessity.
Chidukhul's death, likely due to gout, in 1132 left Kyrillos with little support. He must have heard the rumours at court, people taking bets if Margarita was willing to murder her own son for the throne. The defeated Chupanid Khan had to fall to his knees and beg for the mercy of the “Queen of all Goths”.
While he had grown distant of his mother, Kyrillos III was by all means a highly intelligent man, and it showed in his youth. During his twelfth year, the tenth of Margarita's regency, he had gathered enough influence at court to invite a Chinese delegation with the help of Duchess Alexeia of Sarkel, who disagreed more and more with the Fratricide's policies.
To the Chinese, Kyrillos had to take his place as king – for ceremonial purposes. Or so Margarita thought. Sitting on the throne, the crown on his head, the king declared that he would send a valuable gift to the Son of Heaven – his mother.
Her strong resistance, trying to play it off as merely a boy's folly, was overcome in the end. She had already lost much of the support of her co-conspirators, and losing access to the highly lucrative Chinese trade, main source of income for most present, by offending the Chinese delegation was the nail in her coffin. With the royal guard's and Sarkel's support, Kyrillos III ended his mother's regency and assumed the throne for real the 9th February, 1135.
The Crusader's Plan
His kingdom won, Kyrillos III embarked for the Fifth Crusade to Jerusalem in 1137. The Sunnites were unable to resist for long, and in 1139, Pope Benedictus VIII declared the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the Gothic people rejoiced that their young monarch returned victorious, obviously favoured by god after he had to depose his mother.
Henceforth known as the Crusader, Kyrillos took the lessons of his father to heart for his new goal. Relations between Gothia and their Mongol overlord had recovered shortly during the Bold's reign with the change of dynasties, but else remained very strained. Ever-increasing tax charges from the side of the Khan were answered with attacks on subordinate clans. It would continue like that until Gothia's treasury would be bled dry.
The Crusader concluded that the Bold's methods were – partly – right, even if his predecessor acted for the wrong reasons and overreached. With every Great Khan's death, the horde lost stability and influence, and the Borjigin were surely just waiting for the right time to strike. The most efficient way for a lasting Gothic independence was to shatter the Mongol unity.
This ruthless pragmatism imprinted on him by his mother was soon put into action, though to Kyrillos' dismay, his agents were less stealthy than he would have liked. Unlike the Bold, who remained a mere suspect for the Wrath of the Khan his entire life, all signs of Guchu's murder in September 1040 pointed towards the Crusader.
Guchu's successor Suyiketu was unable to take action against Kyrillos, dying “under suspicious circumstances” the 22nd January 1042. Eljigedei took action – firstly, by banishing anyone with connections to Gothia from coming close to him. Taxes were increased even more, and another Mongol clan claimed parts of western Gothia for themselves, likely with Eljigedei's blessing.
The Crusader spent the next years restoring his kingdom's unity, well aware of the source of his troubles. Once he had subdued the clan that had appeared in his lands uninvited, Gothia weathering a plague outbreak in nearby realms as well, he saw the occasion to deal with Eljigedei.
The Great Khan died the 15th April, 1149. Theories differ on the cause of death. Some say that Kyrillos III had the tax payment poisoned. Others claim that he had poisoned the severed heads of the nomads in his land, which he had sent to the Mongol leader with the taxes. Or that he had booby trapped a chest containing the raider leader's head.
The Mad King
In any case, Eljigedei was the last Khan victim of the Crusader. The poison theory gains some credence with the subsequent change in the king – while the main theory claims that he contracted the great pox. Whatever the reason, Kyrillos III lost all sense of reason in 1150.
Previously coldly calculating, the king had gone completely insane. He banned the usage of clothing at court, went hunting for elephants (in a ship in the Black Sea), had an old man burned for being his mother (escaped from China, willing to claim the throne)...
The court quickly came to the conclusion that the king's state endangered Gothia if those orders were to be followed much longer, and secluded the delusional man within the castle, assuming a more benevolent regency out of respect for the man the Crusader had been for as long as it took for his heir Theudis to come of age.
The Mad would not live to see it, able to recognize it or not. The cause of his madness claimed his life in 1155.
Kyrillos III is a shining example of a man with seemingly limitless potential in his youth falling well-short of it. Overturning the Fratricide's regency at an early age, successfully crusading, only for his well-thought-out plan to fail nearly completely, having to consecrate his efforts to correcting the consequences of these failures. Then going mad as he takes petty revenge.
In that way, he is often seen in comparison to his son. In popular culture, the Crusader is mostly known for his mad eccentricities, which is cutting short a man with a clear, if murderous, plan for an independent Gothia. More nuanced portrayals like to build up his great strength and cunning, before his inevitable descent into madness – which seems so much like fiction that despite the effect it had on Theudis VI, many believe the wily young Kyrillos to just be a myth, always a mad fool merely used by Alexeia of Sarkel.
Others fathom themselves hobby psychologists and play up the dramatic psychic effect of selling his own mother into concubinage, parental neglect or not, leaving a lasting mark on the young king before he fully snapped.
In any case, to many, he was just another nutty monarch, falling well into line after the Quarrelsome and the Bold.
Theudis VI, the Sword of the Lord
the Scourge of the Mongols
(*24th June, 1142 - † 20th October, 1215) Emperor of Gothia since 1173
One legend illustrates Theudis VI's importance to the Gothic people perfectly.
The legend claims that the Archbishop of Crimea thought Gothia's darkest day to have come when Kyrillos III turned insane. After the difficult reigns of the Quarrelsome and the Bold, leading to more losses against the nomads than gains, the old man was sure that Gothia would fall if not for a divine intervention.
Thus he sought out the tomb of Saint Kyrillos beneath his cathedral, seeking to commune with the great king – only to find the tomb empty. The Archbishop kept the disappearance of the Saint secret while Theudis arose to the Gothic throne.
Years after he died, the Archbishop at the time sought to pray to Saint Kyrillos again – to find him resting peacefully, unlike the description from his predecessor.
Theudis VI was crowned as a child, like his father, but he didn't live through an abusive regency with an uncaring mother. Instead, he had witnessed how his father went insane. But instead of being broken by that, he only emerged stronger, knowing that the fate of Gothia was lying on his shoulders from a very young age.
A brilliant boy like the young Crusader, he was involved in directing the kingdom from the start. Enjoying an excellent education as well, many claimed he was destined for greatness – but the elders of Gothia had thought the same of his father, and that had led nowhere.
The boy became a man when his mother set out to China on Gothia's behalf – unlike Margarita, by her own will. Perhaps on Theudis' initiative, as he himself never went to China, instead supporting the Teutons' Northern Crusade against Novgorod.
The King was, by all accounts, a very pious man. Pagan Novgorod was not at all in Gothia's interest, but he saw it as his duty to spread the word of the Lord. All that while providing high taxes to a heathen nomad. He didn't seem to have a plan as to how to end the Mongol rule...
Instead, after his victorious return from the north, he campaigned against Doux Tiberios of Pereyaslavl, recently independent of Constantinople, to restore the duchy of Etelköz to Gothic rule, which had passed to Byzantium via inheritance nearly a century ago.
Theudis VI's Plan
When two Great Khans died in quick succession in 1166, the blame only fell on the Gothic king for the second death – with no reaction from the horde.
Nogai Chagatayid, the new leader of the Mongols, was not the sharpest arrow in the horde's quiver. He likely couldn't agree with his advisors on any course of action. Nogai's brothers were Great Khans, but without children of their own – his son was nearing maturity.
Theudis likely waited to strike until Targhutai was 16. No danger emanated from Nogai, so he had time. In 1069, the plan was put into motion. Nogai died when the year was young, with more suspects amongst the Mongols themselves than in Cherson, even if the actual order came from there.
Theudis VI sent his most elite cataphracts to pay homage to his new lord – or so, Targhutai thought. When he met the Gothic emissaries, he was too late to actually recognize their true intentions. The Great Khan was openly murdered by the Gothic king's men the 11th October 1069, a clear provocation.
But the Mongols couldn't react. With Targhutai's death, there was no Chagatayid successor available to take the mantle of the Empire, and after much deliberation, Oronartai Lkhagvasüren was named the successor – only to be struck down immediately, the 23rd December 1069.
Gothia had already fully broken with the Mongol Empire by that point, and with the assassination of Oronartai, many clans and other subjugated people followed suit. The Mongols were severely weakened, but still a threat.
It is quite symbolic that the new Great Khan was a Chupanid, the old enemy of the Goths within the empire.
The Sixth Crusade
In 1171, little more than a year later, Theudis VI set the next part of his plan into motion in order to finally defeat the undefeated horde. Having campaigned in Rome for years, the chaos amongst the Mongols finally convinced Pope Nikolaus II to send a crusade against the Mongols instead of the Aztecs, a target preferred by the western Catholics.
Volga Bulgaria was to be the battlefield of this crusade. Even if it was centuries ago, the shadow of the Endless Crusade still hung over this conflict, more so for the Gothic nobility, with most of them proudly retracing their lineage to the men facing hell against the Khazars.
Theudis VI had the charisma and diplomatic ability to claim authority over the crusading armies. He was convinced that, if the Mongols were not decisively beaten in one great battle, then the conflict would drain the crusaders dry.
Placing his faith in his ability and divine support, the king of the Goths led the crusaders into battle in Chortitza – and emerged victorious. The Mongols under Narid the Mutilator never recovered, and in 1173, Nikolaus proclaimed the success of the Sixth Crusade.
The Pope travelled to Cherson in person to crown the victor of the crusade – or rather, to perform two coronations. Theudis' second son, bearing his father's name, was named first king of Volga Bulgaria – and Theudis VI, the Sword of the Lord, first Emperor of Gothia. He was also granted dominion over all lands to the east of his current realm as Christianity's eastern bulwark.
The Greeks scoffed over both claims – the Imperial claim and the religiously-territorial one. But for now, they had no common interests to fight over. Let the Goths have their empty land, the Basileus would have said in response to the proclamation of the empire.
The Wars of Vengeance
The Mongols defeated, the Sword of the Lord seized the occasion to fight the weakened horde solely with Gothia's resources. Adding to that, the Mongol Khans kept falling to “suspicious deaths” – on Theudis' order. In 1176, the Mongol Empire had to accept its defeat at the hands of its previous vassal.
Said previous vassal fully concentrated on eastern expansion. With chaos born from assassinations of Mongol leaders, Theudis VI either attacked Mongol rebels, the current Mongol Khan, or minor Khans broken free from the crumbling empire – until the turn of the century, the Gothic armies fought nearly without a pause in the east. Counting the Sixth Crusade as part of these so-called Wars of Vengeance, declared as payback for nearly a century of Mongol vassalage, Gothia was nearly at war for eastern expansion for thirty years. The Mongols were called Scourge of God before – now Gothia was led by “the Scourge of the Mongols” as the Sword of the Lord.
The Emperor was well-aware that this fighting at the borders of civilization would leave Crimea relatively undefended, and so he began the work of what would become the greatest system of fortifications of the medieval world. That strength was more than a century away, but Theudis VI's defence system was impressive enough in its own right. Whenever someone mentioned the glory of the Theodosian walls to a Goth, he'd get a smile in response, as well as a correction of pronunciation – it's the Theudisian walls, thank you very much.
In 1182-1183, just as Theudis was advancing to the Caspian Steppe, Cherson's defences were put to the test by Duke Stracimir II of Oltenia, who eyed a border county in Etelköz. While he eventually got what he wanted, Cherson's walls were not overcome, and held long enough for the Emperor to send word to surrender that “insignificant border compared to the greatness awaiting in the east”. Safe behind its walls, Cherson's wealth and power could rival any other capital of the time.
The Sword of the Lord's war with the Enkhjargal clan, launched in 1191, was the last of the Wars of Vengeance. It ended after more than seven years of vicious fighting, involving much of the broken-up Mongol Empire.
The experienced Gothic army was wiped out nearly to a man by the Tengri coalition forces led by Khan Bolkhadar of Khotan in the Emba Steppe in 1192. Against the advice of his council, the Sword of the Lord fought on with whatever armies he could raise. In the vast, empty lands between the Caspian Sea and Ural, the nomads defended more than their homeland, they defended their way of life against an obsessed man.
His heir Kyrillos was slain in the fighting in 1193, but this just hardened his determination. Defeat was not an option for Theudis VI. Until his return to Cherson in April, 1199. Until he was informed that his daughter Markia, the betrothed of the Emperor of Francia, had eloped with a mercenary. Not just any mercenary. The Sword of the Lord's third son, Theodat.
Even his family began to desert him. While he didn't believe that they had “eloped”, he knew that he couldn't go on. With a heavy heart, Theudis VI agreed to peace.
The Wars of Renewed Vigor
Peace lasted for six years. Then, Theudis' granddaughter Liuvigoto declared her intention to set out as a mercenary. Since Kyrillos' death, she was the heir apparent. So she claimed that she had to fulfil the Gothic royal tradition.
It took some convincing, but in the end, the Sword of the Lord relented. And was inspired by his brave granddaughter to return to the fight. From 1204 onward, Theudis, unfazed by his age, led Gothic armies east of the Caspian Sea, against the Persian Khan, Mongols, and the Siwistan Sultanate. Until his death in 1215, the first Emperor of Gothia would successfully lead his army.
Mostly in the east, with the exception of 1212-1213 – the Seventh Crusade, against Jerusalem. Not only were the Sunnites outmatched by the crusading forces, it took them by surprise when a battle-hardened Gothic army suddenly appeared from the east. What should have been reinforcements for them were actually reinforcements for the invaders, and who knew how much damage they had caused on their march. The Gothic arrival drained the remaining Muslim morale, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem was proclaimed.
Theudis led his men east again, and crushed Hindu and Tengri rebels in the newly-settled lands, while also fighting the Mongols again. The crumbled empire was hit hard by the constant murders of their leaders and had mostly dissolved. Yokhunan Yokhunan, a minor clan leader – and a practicing Jain, albeit an excellent military leader – suddenly found himself in charge of what was once the Scourge of God.
He thought he could discuss peace with the Sword of the Lord, but the latter's position was clear – the Sword of the Lord had to cut through the Scourge of God. The argument escalated, and the meeting ended with a duel to the death. Despite all advantages on the Great Khan's side, the 73-year-old Emperor soon wiped Yokhunan's blood off his sword.
Two weeks later, he was dead. Perhaps he had pushed himself too much in his old days.
The Emperor's Secret
The first Emperor of Gothia had begun his reign a Mongol vassal – and over the duration of his rule, 19 Great Khans of the Mongols have died an unnatural death. For seven of them, the culprit has been found to wear the Gothic crown. The twelve others have also been marked for death from Cherson.
How could Theudis VI meet this much success assassinating Mongol Khans? Did he and his men have that many contacts amongst the horde, or did he have some kind of assassins' guild answering to him? This was indeed the leading theory for a long time – that the Sword of the Lord had founded an excellent agency for clandestine operations answering solely to himself.
The truth of the matter was only recently discovered. Excavations in the Hashashin fortress of Alamut brought forth a room with plenty of preserved orders from the grandmaster of the society in the mid-12th century, who only signed his orders as “the Goth”.
Now this could have been anyone – but these orders mostly mark the Mongol Khans for death, and Theudis' own chroniclers point out that the great Emperor kept his people safe by causing chaos within the horde. Either “the Goth” was Theudis himself or one of his men. And if the Emperor would have had the Grandmaster of the Assassins as one of his henchmen, then he would surely have had his chroniclers record that fact for his successors...
Thus, few are those who doubt that “the Goth” and Emperor Theudis VI of Gothia are one and the same person.
Well, that's why I knew he was the Grandmaster.
The recent discovery of Theudis being the Grandmaster of the Assassins was a shock for most people caring about this period of Gothic history, but one group in particular was especially dumbfounded – gamers. The legendary ruler has made an appearance in a successful video game series, in the entry set in the dynamic city that was 12th-century Cherson... as the Grandmaster of the Assassins.
Conspiracy theorists immediately seized the occasion, proclaiming that the developers knew more than they let on – even if it is most likely just a coincidence.
Theudis VI is most definitely not Saint Kyrillos' return. Their methods and character were very different. But in terms of achievement, they stand side by side – the Saint founded the kingdom, the Sword of the Lord founded the empire. The legend was likely circulated by one of his successors to increase their hold on the throne.
This remains his greatest legacy, together with the foundations of the Glorious Wall of Cherson. But save for that, Theudis' successes were all aimed against the nomads. He neglected relations with the west as much as courtly life. With the Emperor hardly ever in the capital, the empire's order suffered. The high blood toll of his campaigns in the east saw his recruiters scour the realm, and a high influx of western immigrants supporting his claim for the land attributed to him by the Pope.
Theudis VI's reign marks the transition from kingdom to empire, and with it coincides the transition from mainly settling to expanding. While peace reigned in Gothia during extended periods before, since the Sword of the Lord the border regions were mostly battlefields. His conquests into Asia had a few fortified settlements that looked more like military camps – the daredevils who dared live in this land were more soldiers than settlers, fighting periodical small-scale revolts, nomadic raiders and war parties as well as the land. New lords were raised, but the power remained in the Gothic corelands.
These problems were now there to be fixed by Empress Liuvigoto, the first woman to lead the Gothic people since Cixila the Builder, and not by king Theudis of Volga Bulgaria...
The death of Gothia's first emperor was bound to cause an upheaval. He had worn Gothia's crown for 60 years. He was the everlasting rock of the empire. With his death, Liuvigoto thus didn't succeed him unchallenged – King Theudis of Volga Bulgaria proclaimed himself Emperor of Gothia as well.
How did the Empress react to her uncle's declaration? She didn't force the issue. Her grandfather's army was still fighting against the Mongols, and a simple declaration from the northern kingdom wasn't enough to undermine her rule. While Gothia was now an empire, the Crimean heartland – staunchly in the hands of the Imperial Crown – remained stronger than basically the entire rest.
Liuvigoto patiently awaited for Theudis to recognize the futility of his declaration, easily able to miss the few taxes from his kingdom. Soon enough, he swore fealty to his niece – as long as the imperial retinue was intact and the levies available, imperial power was absolutely secure. In that way, Gothia was quite different from notoriously revolt-stricken Byzantium and the empire of Francia in the west, starting to make gains against the Aztecs.
This savvy political manoeuvring from the empress perfectly reflected the reputation she had gained during her time as a mercenary. While most nobles were unwilling to employ a woman in the beginning, once she managed to convince an employer, her band quickly became known as those you wanted to hire when you wanted to win with efficiency and honour both.
Thus she came to be universally recognized as a true noble amongst nobles. The whole remainder of her long reign reflected that title as well, as the empress – very much unlike her predecessors – didn't have a single drop of blood shed on her order outside of battle or the administration of justice.
Pushing the Borders of Land and Mind
Liuvigoto quickly proved to be more than just an apt successor of the Sword of the Lord. She led Gothic armies with great efficiency against the Nomads, vastly increasing Cherson's reach. Naturally, this was not always without difficulty.
Like her grandfather before her, the Tengris proved to be the most resilient of the nomads opposing the Gothic settlers. Like her grandfather before her, Liuvigoto attacked the Tengri Enkhjargal clan in order to push deeper into Cumania in 1233. After overcoming smaller Hindu, Jain and Sunni clans, Gothia had the strength to do what her grandfather failed to.
Or so she thought. In the battle of Tobol, the Gothic army suffered a devastating defeat in 1235.
Liuvigoto analysed the causes of that defeat as she assembled a new force. And she also came to institute a drastic measure that was quite unheard of – the empress, previously a leader of a mercenary band, decreed that able women were to serve in Gothia's army. That women would be given same rights as men.
It would have been a radical change – anywhere but in Gothia. The brave pioneers weren't all men, and with the many raids on their settlements, most Gothic women outside of the Crimean heartlands were well-trained in the use of weaponry. With the still fairly sparsely populated empire, Liuvigoto had identified manpower as a problem, and with the changes in the west, fewer hopeful adventurers sought new homes in the east.
Fortuitously for her, the heads of the nobility at the time were all female as well – the duchesses of Sarkel, Etelköz and Itil all supported her move. While the Volga Bulgarian crusaders groaned, all they could do was delay the change, as did the Crimeans. But as beloved as Liuvigoto was, the change in society was accepted quite rapidly.
The Noble could count on the support of the hermetic society. A great scientific mind, the empress had risen swiftly to the highest ranks, and it is said that she wielded a quite efficient early gun in battle which some describe as “at least two centuries ahead of her time”.
Is it a shame that such a person spent most of her time not in her laboratory, but in the great plains of central Asia, trying to avoid being pierced by a nomad's arrow? Most likely not. Said laboratory was, like many similar hermetic laboratories of the time, consecrated to pursuits of alchemy.
In the steppe, the Noble couldn't attempt to synthesize the Philosopher's Stone. When not preoccupied with her army, her mind was free to wander at will. Inspired quite often in the many years of campaigning, the empress left her mark in scientific history, with a few highly notable achievements in astronomy and engineering in her name – something she obviously had her talents in.
The war against the Tengri coalition dragged on until 1244, when the Goths could finally claim their victory.
The Decline of the Aztecs
Gothia's push east was interrupted by a Saxon attack. The Aztec presence in Europe had reached its zenith in the second half of the 12th century, controlling much of Britain, western France and Iberia, as well as most of Africa west of a line from Cyrenaica to Khartoum.
But the Aztecs' rule was not unchallenged in any of these regions. Muslim holdouts remained in Iberia. The Catholic empire of Francia, formed by Emperor Renaud Karling in 1169, stood strong and thirsted for reconquest.
And in Britain, the Aztecs faced a lot of opposition from the Orthodox Anglo-Saxon populace. Offa's revolt of 1147 had restored a short-lived kingdom of England, lasting nearly twenty-five years. The Aztecs tried to appease the English, but without success. Swithræd of Chesterfield led the next revolt, and in 1183 the kingdom of England was proclaimed anew – this time to last.
The loss of England was a severe blow to the Aztec overseas ambitions. And after the murder of Emperor Jean, Francia under Othon the Great pushed them back on the continent as well. With Othon's death, Francia came under the rule of the van Vlaanderen dynasty in 1207, and the Aztec fortunes dwindled even more.
It is under these circumstances that Beorhtnoth's invasion of Crimea, launched in 1244, has to be seen. England prospered and made gains against the Aztecs, who tried to hold Wales and Scotland, but had apparently given up on forcing England's subjugation again. The ambitious man wanted to search for land he could call his own, and he could now find enough people willing and able to follow him for the immediate threat had abated.
The latest news from the Black Sea must have reported Gothia's struggle against the Tengri coalition. And for the Orthodox Anglo-Saxons, a prosperous target close to their religious brethren was far more tempting than the poor north, Francia, Byzantium, Italy or the Muslims.
Beorhtnoth landed with a sizeable force shortly after Liuvigoto claimed her success in the east, and around the same time as Pope Ioannes IX's call for a crusade against the Aztecs, to push them fully out of Francia, in 1245.
The Anglo-Saxons put Cherson's formidable defences to the test... and despaired.
When Liuvigoto's victorious army returned, she found them both decimated and demoralized. The the imperial forces destroyed this threat to their capital decisively, then embarked for the crusade.
The Noble managed to seize a few cities for Christendom, but the Eighth Crusade was already all but won when she arrived. Francia's power grew, and it seemed only a matter of time before the Aztecs were thrown out of Europe.
A Noble End
Empress Liuvigoto's return could have meant peace for Gothia, but she planned differently. Gothia's destiny was to pacify the east – and this destiny meant that there could be no rest. As long as nomad raiders threatened the borders, as long as raiding hosts roamed the empire, as long as this persisted, there could be no peace.
The Noble's policy of continuous push eastward did pacify the land far from the border though. The old duchies of Sarkel and Itil gained strength, and the crownlands themselves saw another surge of prosperity with the opening of a magnificent harbour in Tana.
The town had long profited from the income of the silk route, and with this new harbour, Chinese goods were shipped all across Europe. The construction of roads in the before empty steppe simplified the passage of wares, and soon Tana found itself amongst the richest cities of the known world.
Liuvigoto's push east saw the creation of the kingdom of Sibir, and her victory in the Second War of the Tengri Coalition seemed to have broken it apart, causing her progress to be less impeded.
Taking another page out of the Sword of the Lord's book, Liuvigoto kept leading her army from the front well into old age. But unlike Theudis VI, her end came not after slaying a Mongol Khan in single combat.
During a charge against the Enkhjargal in Beshbalik, the Noble failed to keep herself on her steed. She may have managed to survive the immediate fall, but it was clear that the injuries would prove fatal.
Liuvigoto summoned her heir Achila, and gave him a final task. When she breathed her last, Gothia collectively fell into sincere mourning. Gothia's line of geniuses had found its end, and with Achila, a man ascended the throne for whom diplomacy was an annoying liability.
Empress Liuvigoto the Noble can easily be mentioned in the same breath as her grandfather. Just as much a genius as he, Liuvigoto's well-deserved epithet made her a beloved and highly successful monarch.
Her discoveries place her amongst the brightest minds of the middle ages. Her progressive thinking – though born out of necessity – makes her an idol amongst feminists, and led to Gothia achieving gender equality ages before it even became an idea elsewhere.
It is said that Theudis VI laid Gothia's foundation, and that Liuvigoto built the house. Gothia was not merely an ephemeral empire – it was here to last, and so it would.
Emperor Achila had inherited one of his ancestors' talents. And it wasn't his mother's or grandfather's genius. It was Theudis the Quarrelsome's talent to make enemies wherever he showed up.
Luckily for Gothia, the Fool died before the people had forgotten his beloved mother. Before the empire's reputation was in complete shambles. Achila could simply be written off as a failure, his passage on the throne quickly thrown into the dustbin of history.
For any Goth, be it of the time or today, Achila's reign never happened. Nobody knows his name.
The Gothic chronicles purged any mention of the man quite effectively. So much so that in Gothic chronicles, Empress Aikaterine is mentioned as being Liuvigoto the Noble's granddaughter... but her father's name is never mentioned. Indeed, the year of the Fool's reign is mentioned simply as transition, of the Noble's army returning with her body followed by a long period of mourning before Aikaterine was crowned.
The attempt to eradicate Achila from history – with him being the only Gothic monarch other than Kyrillos the Saint not to be interred in the Thathicos crypt of Cherson – was doomed to fail due to foreign records. And these records paint an unflattering picture, one that makes the Gothic shame quite understandable.
The most detailed report comes from the Venetian merchant responsible for the Serenissima's operations in the great city. He describes the emperor as “a heap of mad, blasphemous fat”.
Indeed, Achila managed to offend Pope Ioannes IX so much that as he "demanded" the Pope's presence for his coronation – the letter written by none other than the emperor himself mentioning that the “high-hatted crown-giver is surely glad to leave his godforsaken hellhole of Rome to for the centre of the world, glorious Cherson, always besieged by armies of angels and demons, but fending them off with its pure radiance” paired with a few insults, most of them aimed at his virility– he was instantly excommunicated.
The Venetian mentions that upon receiving news of Ioannes' reaction, Achila forsook his saintly ancestry even more by grabbing a simple monk off the street to hand him his crown, not even bothering to claim the Gothic regalia stored at Saint Kyrillos' cathedral.
In that sense, the Goths may be justified in not recognizing Achila's rule, as he was never truly legitimated. In any case, the emperor did honour his mother's wish by leaving for China, suffering a devastating famine. The Noble wished for the Chinese to know that they could count on Gothic support, as the silk route was an important part of the empire's economy.
It is not hard to imagine how that kowtow would have ended if he had actually reached his goal. Gothia might very well have been devastated by Chinese armies. Or completely cut off from trade.
To nobody's chagrin, Achila died as soon as he entered Chinese territory. The mercenary band known as the Treasure Fleet crossed his path begging for food, and the Fool's natural talent caused the situation to escalate swiftly. Upon the mercenaries' introduction, Achila would have made a remark stating that it's weird to meet the “Treasure Fleet” months away from the nearest sea, then stating that he's got no fish to serve, and that they should just pick up their fishing rods. In the middle of a desert.
Now the mercenaries weren't just there for now reason. They were seeking employment in the west, fleeing the Chinese famine, and so they had brought a Goth interpreter. The Fool's “advice” was warmly welcomed... and with the massive Achila hardly able to fight, he had no chance when Captain Shilian drew his weapon. The mercenary captain's records describe the following scene in detail, mostly due to his surprise.
Save for his guard, none of the Goths took part in the ensuing fight. Once the fight ended, they gave the mercenaries what they needed, thanked them, then buried the imperial guardsmen. The Fool was stripped and left in the dirt.
Thus the Fool's reign didn't lead to disaster for Gothia. Thus it found an ignoble end along a dusty road in the middle of nowhere.
Only true history nerds have ever heard of Emperor Achila the Fool. His legacy of being purged from historical records continues to the present day, with zealous Gothic editors removing his entry in the list of monarchs of the Gothic wikipedia as soon as someone restores it, flagging him as “illegitimate” or “disputed” elsewhere.
For the Goths, he didn't exist. Anyone using him as a diverging point in some alt-history – mostly to show how Gothia collapses – is swiftly criticized to oblivion. Had he truly ruled, so the claim, all but the most blindly loyal guard would have stabbed him. The whole metropolis of Cherson, from the lowest beggar to the Crown Princess herself, would likely have gotten a stab in.
A popular theory is that Liuvigoto the Noble saw her eldest's inadequacies, and sent him to China solely in the hope of him not surviving the trip - all for the good of Gothia. For the Noble would never take a life without justification, even less so her son's. Yet she was still watching over Gothia from her grave.
Empress Liuvigoto was succeeded by Empress Aikaterine, let nobody say otherwise.
At the beginning of Aikaterine's reign, Gothia had to realize that there must have been some reason for the starting animosity shown to her from the outside. It is somewhat weird for those who lived after Achila's purge to notice these initial troubles of her reign.
They are left to wonder why Gothia's reputation was that much left in shambles. Why the crown was seen as resting on the wrong head.
For those who know, it is far less surprising that Ioannes IX categorically dismissed taking part in the empress' coronation. While he did acknowledge the Gothic envoys' efforts and treated them respectfully, the Fool's insults kept him in Rome.
Succession Crisis
It is also unsurprising that Aikaterine's cousin, Ioustinos, found much support in the courts of Europe. With the Aztec threat receding and the Mongol threat dealt with, simple politics took over the place of basic survival in importance. If you do not have to worry about thousands of bloodthirsty warriors storming your home solely to sacrifice you to their gods, but instead know that your neighbour may want your land, but needs a reason. And thus it might be good to secure influence in powerful courts.
Gothia, now more than the rich cities of Cherson and Tana and the spiritual centre of Aqmescit, fit the bill. With the walking disaster that was Achila, Ioustinos had no trouble at all in convincing people all across Europe to support him as Gothic emperor.
News of Achila's demise in China naturally took too long to reach them to dissolve the pretender's host. Too high was the investment in the man to drop him now, too little the gain in favour from Aikaterine.
Ioustinos, leaving his host in Poland-Hungary, reached Crimea just in time for the empress' coronation. When the archbishop of Aqmescit was ready to hand Aikaterine the regalia of Gothia, he did something unprecedented and interrupted the coronation.
Claiming that Noble Liuvigoto's heritage cannot pass through the line of an illegitimate emperor, Achila having forfeited all right of his line to bear the crown by neglecting Gothia's traditions, he claimed that he should be crowned instead.
Ioustinos was chased out of Saint Kyrillos' cathedral. Months later, he was back with an army. Knowing that Cherson was likely impregnable, he wanted to win over so much of the empire that the capital would follow suit. The empress didn't consider giving in for a moment and rallied her troops.
Now this could have set the stage for a lasting conflict. The western-backed pretender against the vast, but empty empire. But Ioustinos himself was captured in the sole battle of the succession crisis, and without him, there was no reason left to fight.
The Battle of Suvraga Khairkan
After a short period of ensuring that everyone knew that Gothia was back in the safe hands of a capable ruler, the empress went east. To do what her father failed to, and then continue the work of her predecessors.
An uneventful journey to China passed, increasing relations between the two peoples closely connected by trade, and Aikaterine then accumulated victories against the khans of the steppe, pushing the borders of civilization further east.
In 1274, she faced her second campaign against the remnant of the Mongol Empire. Able to count on a hardened force of cataphracts, she was confident of yet another victory against an inferior foe who always employed the same, easily countered tactics. Named the Holy for her virtuous being and many victories against the pagan, Aikaterine wanted to keep building a legend that might well see her canonized one day.
Or so she thought. But the Mongols, despite their many defeats against the Goths, were still a formidable foe, and their Great Khan Yokhunan had earned himself the moniker of “the Wise”. The site of the battle was not the open field where the Mongols had begun their reign of terror. But a mountainous place. Uneven terrain, not suited for their preferred raid and ambush tactic.
This also limited the Gothic cataphracts' efficiency, but without unduly worrying them. The battle swiftly turned into the empress' favour.
But then, Aikaterine was caught off-guard. Unnoticed, the Mongols had managed to send a contingent of footsoldiers - that in itself utterly surprising - into her range, and these unexpected men loosened a volley of arrows towards the empress' right side. Most of them found their mark. Badly struck in both arm and leg, Aikaterine fell back, and another arrow hit her as she fell, perforating her right jaw before ending stuck in her brow.
The Imperial Guard was decimated in that volley, and with the gilded figure's fall off her horse, the battle could have swerved definitely into the nomads' favour. But the Goths had the clear upper hand and instead led an enraged charge against the horsemen, aiming to avenge their fallen monarch.
Once the day was won, the embittered victors wished to recover their empress' body – and found that she was still alive. Badly wounded, definitely. With hardly a chance for survival, yes. But alive. And the empress' physicians somehow managed to save her. Too stubborn to die, they said.
At a high cost. Her right leg and arm, resembling more a pincushion than a human extremity, had to be amputated. The removal of the arrow which had embedded itself in her face left her partly paralysed and blinded her right eye, which led to her wearing a mask over half her face.
Her days on the battlefield were over. For the rest of her reign, Aikaterine would sit on her throne, appearing to be half-woman, half-metal.
As anyone who waged that many holy wars could be called the Holy, people soon took to calling her the Halved.
The Second Half
Upon her return, it seemed like she didn't trust anyone else with the command of the armies. Or that her martial ambitions had suffered under her severe maiming. In any case, Aikaterine consecrated the next years to a peaceful administration.
It was time well-spent in preparation for her next attacks against the nomads, attacking five different hordes at the same time in 1283. For the next two decades, Princess Agathe and Thorismod Charax would be the nightmares of the hordes, leading the Gothic armies from victory to victory.
When Pope Alexander III called the Ninth Crusade – for Ireland – in 1284, for the first time the Gothic monarch didn't take part. The Halved told the papal envoy that her armies were far in the east, in part venturing into Mongolia proper like she did ten years earlier. By the time of their return, the crusaders would already have landed in Ireland.
She didn't intend to send the troops she used on her holy endeavour in the east on a fruitless and dangerous voyage. Instead, she made a generous donation, “for Gothia shall always support the valiant warriors of Christ”.
Aikaterine reorganized her empire as well. The nobility entrusted with the conquered lands had a lot of work to build up their lands. Sparsely populated, this left them weak and susceptible to either raids or revolts by former nomads forced to settle down. Tengri, Hindu, Jain revolts were commonplace in zealously Catholic Gothia. These mobs of a few dozen, at most two hundred disgruntled people were often too much for the local nobles.
The Halved thus instituted exarchates in Gothia – under her rule, the exarchates of Khazaria, Sibir, Cumania and Turkestan. One noble from these territories would be designated by the monarch to bundle the exarchate's power in their person. The exarchs would be able to call upon armies big enough to deal with the rebel mobs, allowing the imperial armies to focus on the border while a strong contingent of professional troops and levies defended the crownland.
This also served as an additional incentive for her generals, as both her sister Agathe and Thorismod became the first exarchs of Turkestan and Cumania respectively.
Aikaterine survived her horrific wounds by 26 years. Then, it was a cancer which felled her. In reverence, her son Theudis VII never sat on her throne himself. He said he could never reach her level of regal presence. It felt empty without the presence of the monarch, for her golden right side still remained.
Though some say he feared her vengeful ghost.
The lasting memory from the reign of Aikaterine the Halved is her epithet. The circumstances of how she attained it, the consequences of her battle wounds. As Theudis VII safely stowed her throne away, the imperial palace in Cherson still exhibits Aikaterine's throne with her original golden protheses, a replica of the empress completing the impressive sight which humbled anyone who had an audience with the empress.
The Gothic people has since seemingly developed quite a fascination with asymmetric persons, as it is quite often reflected in all forms of art, be it in body, like the empress herself, or in spirit, with duelling personalities.
Her successors, starting with Theudis VII – the Strange – imprinted that fascination even more, as he sometimes appeared to be one of that latter kind of men.
In terms of her historical footprint, Aikaterine continued the eastwards expansion of her predecessors without any extraordinary success or defeat. Thus her lasting impact in that regard was the institution of the exarchates. Thanks to the power of the crownlands, even Khazaria was hardly in a position to challenge the imperial throne, and so the innovation seemed bound to succeed.
There's not much known about Theudis VII. During his mother's reign, he was nowhere to be seen. Not leading a mercenary band as tradition would demand, the Crown Prince had somewhat vanished from courtly life.
His whereabouts during that time would surely be wildly discussed if his reign had any long-term importance. But as it lasted for less than three years, he simply remains known as he was during his life – the Strange.
While the oddity of him removing the Halved's throne has already been mentioned, the Strange himself didn't replace it with anything. Leaving the throne room empty, he departed for the east once his mother had been laid to rest alongside her ancestors.
That would suggest that he took command of the Gothic armies fighting the nomads. But the records clearly state the commanders at the time:
Kyriakos Cembalo, fighting the Bailjar
Countess Sibylla of Aylik and Ioannes Lusta, leading the effort against Syr Darya
Exarchessa Agathe of Turkestan, fighting Enkhjargal and their Khotan allies
Despite being Emperor, there is not a single mention of Theudis VII in the chronicles. In fact, Crown Princess Sergia's mercenary band appears, but not a single letter is consecrated to her father.
Perhaps he aspired to follow in Liuvigoto's scientific footsteps, but if he did he discovered nothing of importance. Perhaps he spent his days with alchemy. During Sergia's reign, some suggested that her apparent possession was a result of dark magic employed by her late father.
Or some debt due to a deal with a devil, taken in order to keep his mother alive despite her injuries.
The question marks remain. Theudis does finally take command of an army as the year 1303 begins... and promptly dies in the ensuing battle, at the hands of Chief Chanai of Khilok.
The Strange then vanishes from history again, this time for good.
Theudis VII is the great unknown of Gothia's emperors. He wasn't there during his mother's reign. He wasn't there during his own reign, really.
Theudis VII is just... the Strange. There's not much more to say about him, really.
But for anyone who needs a Gothic emperor dabbling in the supernatural for his works of fiction, the Strange is there. Nobody can say that he didn't...
The emperor's legend had begun on the battlefield, with the Tenth Crusade. But it isn't solely built on his martial efforts. He consecrated the first years of his reign to the well-being of his people and not the death of his enemies, even if the Gothic armies continued to advance against the nomads.
The fate of his eldest sister was still present in his mind, and so one of Theudis' first actions as monarch was to crack down on any cults within Gothia, any false Catholics. While open heathens were widely discriminated, they still had rights, such as life and property. Some, such as the Jews, played important parts in the rich cities, others, such as the recently forcefully settled Mongols, were very much second-class citizens until they converted.
Theudis condemned betrayal, most of all. And declared that anyone falsely pretending to be Catholic lost their rights. That meant that as soon as a representative of the emperor felled the judgement of “false believer”, the false Catholic could be robbed, tortured, killed without any consequences. His inquisition roamed Gothia zealously, and pyres soon burned all over, those escaping either forced into exile or out of civilization.
The Gothic Inquisition brought Theudis VIII his erstwhile epithet, the Cleansing Flame. But its consequences are often exaggerated. The inquisitors were instructed to be thorough, perfect strangers in the region they would cover so they would not be privy to favouritism. Any false accusation was to be severely punished, most commonly by a loss of the lying tongue. Inquisitors were well-paid and always came by three to prevent bribes.
The emperor, so virtuous that he has been called saintly – and not just by his subjects, also by foreign observers –, wished to ensure that only the true “snakes amongst their midst” were smoked out. And with the scandal surrounding the former Crown Princess, only small covens remained. In Cherson itself, with a population estimated between 600.000 and 800.000 at the time, official records name 2.374 false believers.
Later on, the Cleansing Flame continued to improve the lives of his people. Under his reign, the great university of Itil was founded. His immense success in foreign affairs led to lower taxes, and the people brought in record harvests. Banditry and piracy reached an all-time low, the mere mention of the emperor's name leading to most such raiders fleeing in terror. Partly due to that, the profits from the Silk Road soared, and Cherson truly established itself as not only the Jewel of Gothia, but clearly surpassing Constantinople as the City of the World's Desire – the centre of the “Old World”.
With no raiders to disturb the borders, the emperor's law reached even the farthest corners of Gothia, and its inhabitants celebrated a truly golden age.
The Legend's Family
For most people, there's one reason why Theudis VIII has not been canonized, as the church didn't care much for his treatment of heathens. That reason being his first wife, Dorothea Kourkouas, daughter of Basileus Witiges the Usurper.
This marriage was anything but harmonic. Courtiers described her as a “lying wench in the Byzantine tradition”, zealously adhering to her Orthodox beliefs and always wanting to get her way. The Cleansing Flame was having none of that. While previous spouses of the monarchs had often represented their will while on campaign, Theudis didn't trust Dorothea any more than a stranger and had her removed both from power and from their children.
The toxic relationship was so embittered that the Cleansing Flame took a lover during his Nepalese campaign, one of his commanders known as One-Eyed Euphrosyne. It is said that Dorothea was amongst those of Theudis' enemies who sent assassins after him...
Not the first nor the last of those assassins. Their fate was mostly the same – caught by Theudis' guards, then executed by the emperor himself. With a few exceptions slipping past them – only for their nerves to fail them when faced with the Cleansing Flame.
Rumour had it that he could shoot flames from his hands. Could materialize spears out of the ground, throw lightning. Petrify his opponents with a single gaze. Tear an enemy in two with his mere hands. This reputation was too much for even the hardiest assassin, and so he lived through countless murder attempts, for even those who managed not to be paralysed by his legend then faced an athletic man who never had no weapon within reach...
But he at least suspected his wife to be amongst the employers of these killers. And the 4th June, 1377, he turned the tables on her, with support of basically the entire court. Dorothea's lifeless body was fished out of Cherson's harbour.
It was an open secret that Theudis wanted to be rid of her. His second marriage to Petronia Neapol, daughter of the late Mongol exarch Saurus the Blessed, lasted less than a year. She had contracted syphilis in an extra-marital affair, and Pope Ioannes XI confirmed the marriage's annulment.
Theudis was left disillusioned with marriage. While he remarried, a woman without much influence from a very distant branch of the family named Adriane, he had a few more or less official lovers in his later life.
When he died, he had eleven children, of six different mothers – and a loving father to each of them.
The War Saint
The nomads were almost vanquished when the Cleansing Flame inherited the throne, and with the creation of the Exarchate of Transoxania, it now formed the last nomad border. The Goths had all but achieved their goal. Theudis, without the nomad threat to deal with, turned his thoughts of conquest elsewhere.
Tibet and India
Theudis' two campaigns against Indian realms had a deep effect on the subcontinent's balance of power.
To the situation in India, one has to look at the history of the Bengal Empire – from the Pala kingdom, subjugated by the Mongols, freed after their downfall by Bhavesh the Great in 1109, they spread their influence across nearly the entire north of the Indian subcontinent, pushing back the Ghaznavids. Until the empire was shattered in 1279, China having grown wary of such a powerful neighbour.
Some of the remnant kingdoms were powerful in their own right, such as the kingdom of Nepal, encompassing nearly the entirety of Tibet, Khotan, and the starting point of the silk road as well. And the Somavamsi – actually, only Nepal was not absorbed by the Somavamsi, who fairly quickly resurrected the fallen empire, in 1318. During Theudis' lifetime, they also formed Rajasthan and were pushing into Afghanistan.
Theudis claimed sovereignty over Maharaja Mahendrasingha of Nepal in 1367. Intending to enforce tribute, he took the armies who fought the nomads, around 17.500 cataphracts, and crossed the border. Mahendrasingha raised his levy in response – at least 60.000 men.
The Cleansing Flame took apart Mahendrasingha's armies with ease. A third of them in Khotan, the rest in Xia. The Nepalese Maharaja is quoted as having wondered if his opponent is a man or a demon, as while nearly his entire army had vanished, the Gothic veterans still had at least two thirds of their initial strength. Nepalese tribute began to flow along the Silk Road.
Theudis' second campaign in India was launched in 1390, against the Somavamsi Empire. It was on the height of its strength, encompassing nearly all of northern India. With the distance to Crimea, the War Saint again led only his elite cataphracts against the vast empire. Like the Chinese did to the Somavamsi's predecessors, his aim was to bring the empire to ruin. But whatever motive he had for doing so is unclear. And he only had around 20.000 men.
Samrajni Bishwas Devi, the Frog, knew how Nepal had been made to bow to Gothia. She had added Rajasthan to the Somavamsi's imperial titles - a capable monarch, despite her appearance. She assembled all of her empire's resources in the fight against the Gothic invader.
But no numerical superiority could stop Theudis' advance. It's also suggested that the Frog's subservient Maharajas saw their chance to be freed from the Somavamsi and thus weren't interested in fighting the battles to the end. In any case, the Goth managed to bring down the empire, finding its end in 1392. Nothing seemed able to stop him.
Inheritance Wars
During Theudis' reign, Gothia made perfectly clear that it would not tolerate any of its lands passing outside of the empire due to whatever reason.
When the Shah of Gilan and the Queen of Denmark inherited land in Mongolia and Sarkel respectively, Gothic troops were quickly there to remind them to abandon their claims. But both times, a war with certain outcome followed, with no Danish or Gilanese troops even coming close to the land they claimed as their own.
More surprisingly, even the emperor's nephew, Ioannikos of Egypt, who held his entire kingdom because of his uncle, also refused to return great parts of Khazaria which would have passed to Egypt by inheritance.
Ioannikos even sailed to Cherson in 1380, personally attempting to stop his uncle's legend – only to suffer a crushing defeat. The king of Egypt, humiliated, was dragged to the city's palace and had to profess, on his knees, to always follow the emperor's orders to the letter henceforth.
Ioannikos' saving grace was his close relation to the emperor, who despised betrayal more than anything else. Had he not been kin, then he would likely have died a dozen deaths before finally going up in flames...
Byzantium
The balance of power in Byzantium had shifted in the 14th century. As the Mongol Empire fell apart, the Despotate of Georgia began pushing into Persia.
Since 1088, the despotate was ruled by a branch of the Thathicos dynasty, and always held on to their Gothic roots. By 1338, the Georgian Thathicos were highly powerful, holding the crowns of Georgia, Trebizond and Jerusalem as well as much of Persia.
Their influence had to be represented in Constantinople at some point. And the instability following the death of Basileus Matthaios in 1338, who had just gotten the throne through a revolt a year ago, was the turning point for the Georgian Goths. Ignored in the election of Gerasimos II, the Georgians made themselves heard – and forced his abdication, placing Witiges on the throne, the first Gothic Basileus of Byzantium.
Witiges ruled for 25 years, then was succeeded by Matthaios' daughter Gurli in 1363. Under the Goth, who was an Orthodox himself, Catholicism spread within Byzantium, perhaps thanks to the influence of Gothia. Gurli's brother Gregoras was one of these Catholics, and the Catholic faction forced Gurli to abdicate in her brother's favour in 1364.
Once again, the Georgians thought themselves ignored. A civil war erupted, and in 1370, the next Goth took the crown, Saurus. Relations with Gothia were deteriorating visibly with Theudis' marriage to Saurus' sister, and reached a new low with her murder. As Saurus died two months later in1377, upholding his honour in personal combat, Arsenios Pyrrogenes, a man reputed for underhanded schemes, was elected.
It seems that Basileus Arsenios had also attempted to snuff out the Cleansing Flame of Gothia. In 1381, after the Egyptian war, Emperor Theudis retaliated. Winning the support of Despot Tiberius of Georgia, promising to stay out of the conflict, he proclaimed his son with Dorothea, Gregoras, as the true Basileus, and crossed the border.
Shortly after crossing the Danube, he faced the Byzantine army, and kept building his legend. The Goths were advancing towards Constantinople.
The Greeks panicked. The remainder of Arsenios' army was getting ready to defend the capital, but the battle preparations were interrupted by both sides' leaders meeting in the middle of the battlefield. It is said that when Theudis rode forward to meet the Greek emissaries, the entire army took a few steps backward in respect.
The Greeks handed over a castrated Arsenios, and hailed Basileus Gregoras III. With his entry into Constantinople, the next period of Byzantine history began – the period of domination by the Gothic House Thathicos.
The Twelfth Crusade
Upon Theudis' return to Crimea from India, Pope Caelestinus III aimed to deal a devastating blow to the Muslims. He had waited for the return of Christianity's most powerful weapon, and then called a crusade of Arabia against the Jamalids. True to Gothic tradition, the Cleansing Flame embarked his troops – and within a year, the crusade had ended in success, with King Bosporios, grandson of the Gothic emperor and son of the Byzantine one, becoming the first Christian ruler of Arabia in 1394.
China
Theudis the War Saint had secured all his borders. Byzantium, Egypt, Arabia and Nepal answered to his orders. He had shattered the Somavamsi Empire in India. He had no reason to fight Francia, not only a fellow Catholic empire but also without a shared sphere of interest.
Thus only one realm could stand in his way. Isolationist China. The Jurchen had taken over China eighty years before, and the Emperor was well sinofied by now. At the time of the Twelfth Crusade, a new Emperor ascended. And his opinion was that Cathay didn't have to care about the world at large. Western merchants, and anyone else really, were denied access.
Thus began the War Saint's greatest campaign. He could have tried to force the Jurchen to rethink their approach, but instead settled for nothing less than a full-scale invasion of a China which was arguably at the peak of its strength.
Chinese armies were unimaginably large for Gothia alone to take on – but under Theudis VIII, Gothia was not alone. He prepared for three years after the end of the twelfth crusade. Mercenaries from all-across Europe jumped at the chance to fight for a legend like him, especially as both pay and loot promised to be very high. His dependent rulers all sent their support as well, both willingly and under pressure.
The Gothic invasion of China began 1397. Theudis had split his army in two – his daughter Cixila was to lead the bulk of the troops, an army of 300.000 freshly resupplied in Nepal, while he led the forces consisting of his elite cataphracts and mercenaries, around 100.000 men, to be reinforced from Crimea with 50.000 more, from Gothia's border with China proper, the duchy of Jiuquan.
The War Saint's reputation had naturally reached the Heavenly Emperor, as so he was seen as the main threat, although Cixila has thrice his numbers and very much followed in her father's footsteps. Soon, he faced an enormous army, bigger than his daughter's, in a region that could hardly support that many men. But a war of attrition was never Theudis' intention.
Over a series of battles, sometimes with 20.000 men against 120.000, Theudis whittled down the Chinese numbers. Even if he didn't always carry the day, his retreats still marked him as the tactical victor, with far higher casualties on the Jurchens' side. Within a year, the emperor led his troops into China itself.
Overcoming more hard battles along the way, Theudis finally reached Nanjing. All of China's military might, their immense reserve of soldiers, had been unable to stop the War Saint. Nor his daughter. Cixila's army reached the Chinese capital a month after her father.
Yet another people would only speak of Theudis VIII of Gothia with the utmost respect. Staying another month in the capital, the War Saint oversaw the ascension of the new dynasty in China – the Thathicos dynasty, led by his daughter, now Empress Taizu of China.
The End of a Titan
Upon his return at the turn of the century, Theudis was forced to notice that the Indians sought to take advantage of his invasion of China. Either he wouldn't return or his army would be too weak to fend them off.
Or so Maharaja Laxminath Singh Dev of Nepal thought, seeking to free himself. Or so Maharaja Pusyamitra of the Pala Kingdom, former subject of the Somavamsi, thought.
But Theudis returned. With a still-powerful army. And with what he perceived as a betrayal, the word “mercy” disappeared from the Cleansing Flame's vocabulary in regard to the Nepalese. After the passage of the old man and his army, there was nothing left where it belonged. Not stone, not wood, not bone.
The maharaja had entrusted his closest friend with the command of his army. Some time after the army's encounter with the Goths, a one-eyed eunuch brought news of the army's fate, presenting himself in front of Laxminath Singh Dev, accompanied by four blinded, muted men carrying a chest.
The chest was filled with ash, with fragments of bone within. The eunuch had to explain that it was a “gift” from Emperor Theudis – the ashes of the maharaja's soldiers, and the remains of his friend. He and his companions were the sole survivors, as the Goth relentlessly pursued the fleeing Nepalese, then had all survivors of the battle burned at the stake. Save for the five of them, who still had a task to fulfil - without the body parts they wouldn't need for said task.
The effect on the monarch's court was immediate and devastating. Laxminath was so shell-shocked that he was never again seen sober. The Goth was called either the Angel of Death or the Blazing Demon – for there was only death left in his wake, preferably brought by fire.
But Theudis' rage also took its toll on the man himself as well, as he came down with a severe fever. Before the maharaja's surrender reached him, the greatest ruler Gothia had ever seen drew his last breath.
Under Theudis VIII, Gothia itself was amongst the largest empires of the world, but if you count everyone answering to the War Saint – then his empire was the largest the world had ever seen, reaching from Italy to the Yellow Sea, encompassing Byzantium, Egypt, Arabia, Nepal, China and of course Gothia.
With the limited strength of his empire, he conquered everything he faced. He was such a successful general that preachers of the apocalypse thought themselves vindicated – after all, the first of the four horsemen, Conquest/War, had already descended on earth...
...and he had shown glimpses of being Death, as well.
The Thathicos dynasty now dominated the east of the “Old World”, from Byzantium to China. The Golden Age of Gothia had dawned. The deceased monarch's road to his final resting place became a vast procession along the Silk Road, with everyone able willing to pay their respects to the legendary ruler.
But back in Cherson, the new empress was just playing with her friends. Six-years-old Sergia was soon to follow in a man's footsteps nobody could ever hope to fill.
Theudis' eleven children almost all reached lofty positions: Four emperors, one pope, two dukes, one grandmaster, a mayor and two consorts to monarchs.
The Goths revere Theudis VIII, even more so than Saint Kyrillos. Running out of superlatives to describe him. His personal weapon, a spear named the Conqueror's Cross, became a legend in itself, with the one holding it said to be able to channel the War Saint himself. Theudis' regalia replaced Saint Kyrillos', save for the ancient sword.
Despite never having been canonized, he remains on people's lips swearing by his name and praying for his support in whatever they wish to accomplish.
But not everyone sees the heroic emperor. The effect and methods of his inquisition are often exaggerated and questioned, but even if seen correctly it remains an injustice in modern views.
In Nepal and Tibet, Theudis' revenge is lamented as a great tragedy. For decades, in parts centuries after his passage, people avoided the affected regions. Places cursed by the Angel of Death. The so-called Chest of Theudis traumatized a whole people, and to this day it remains in use as a saying for delivering the worst possible news.
In India, people question the fall of the Somavamsi Empire. What interest did Theudis have in toppling it? Simple bloodthirst? The pure thrill of the fight? It is not like he had much of an interest in the region. Theudis' motives remain highly debated amongst historians to this day, especially as Gothia was highly wealthy. Did the Cleansing Flame seek a specific artefact, a specific stone? He did end up having both a new crown and a new sceptre made with the gemstones brought home from this campaign, but it could hardly have been his main goal. Was he already planning an invasion of China and securing his southern border, despite there having been no sign of China's isolationism yet? Some claim he sought the Fountain of Youth, and that he had to take a monumental challenge in order to obtain it. Some of the adherents of that theory suggest that he passed the test with flying colours and ascended to a higher plane of existence – they feel vindicated by the War Saint's name still present on people's lips.
Likely just lunatics, but there's no limit to the speculation.
In the internet generation, history memers gave Theudis even more popularity under the following description:
invades a flourishing empire highly outnumbered
dispatches any who face him with ease
dismantles the empire
refuses to elaborate
leaves
… in any case, the Indians view Theudis mostly as some kind of demonic figure. He didn't come, see and conquer. He came, saw, and annihilated. The wounds left by the Cleansing Flame on the subcontinent still haven't healed. And with the next Gothic invasion, they never would.
But outside of India – even in China – the War Saint is the epitome of monarchy. A wise ruler, undefeated in war, he's become a favourite subject of art ever since – portraits and statues of him are nearly omnipresent in Gothic palaces and adorn many others as well, while for later generations he became the go-to-ruler for a medieval monarch in works of fiction as a man whose qualities are easily recognizable for any public.
However you look at it, Theudis VIII is seen as the legendary ruler of the Middle Ages.
***************
AuthAAR's note: Actually, the Somavamsi empire was disbanded in 1403, likely because I sent China's wrath against them in retaliation for their subject's attack. But it does fit the story far better to have Theudis dismantle the empire rather than a recently conquered China. Especially as I do know that he waged a war against the Somavamsi at the given dates, but without a clue as to what he fought them for.
Also, the Bengal Empire had a quite particular ruler at some point: Kumarapala the Whisperer, bastard son of a count and a rosebush. An attractive and fat drunken ethnic Celt, reigning the strongest empire in India...
Sergia I may have ascended the throne only 17 years old, but she still did so as an accomplished mercenary, having been responsible for quite a few victories of her employers. She seemed set to continue writing the successes of the Gothic army and push the sedentary lifestyle further east.
And so she did. Together with Gothia's highly successful commander against the nomads, Exarchessa Agathe, the empress led the Gothic armies from victory to victory. But while her reign marks Gothic entry into Mongolia proper, with that conquest began a seemingly ceaseless number of Mongol uprisings.
These uprisings were well-organized, and took out a few Gothic hosts under minor commanders. In 1317, Sergia thus turned her mind towards crushing the Mongol thoughts of independence once and for all.
The Tenth Crusade
She petitioned Pope Victor IV for a crusade. It seemed like a crazy idea, sending a crusade so far east. But Victor was surprisingly amenable. Or not so surprisingly – in Francia, the excommunicated century had just ended. Throughout the entire 13th century, the Francian emperor was excommunicated, from Folbert of the Empty Pockets to Adrien the Lion. Victor's predecessor had crowned Jourdain I – but that stemmed mostly from the Francian emperor's docility.
Jourdain, born by a commoner mother, had a reputation for being easy to scare and then hide, fearing for his life. Also for a kind heart and an aversion to priests. But mostly, for being dominated by his first wife, Princess Pulcheria of Gothia – Sergia's sister. Pulcheria was Adrien the Lion's widow, but the two empires were set on carrying on their marital alliance after the young emperor's sudden death of scurvy.
Knowing their future relationship, persistent gossip at the time claimed that the Gothic witch had already put Jourdain, Adrien's cousin, under her spell, using the dark arts learned from her father. By all accounts, Pulcheria was a smart woman well-versed in intrigue. The fearful Jourdain was easily controlled by her, and she supported her sister's interests.
In the last century, the emperor's opinion wouldn't have mattered to the Pope. But now, things were different. With Francia thus supporting an eastern crusade, Victor had to answer the pressure of both Catholic empires, and by now Gothia's power was to be reckoned with, no longer a simple backwater. The lands west of the Ural were quite developed by now. The kingdom of Poland was the only other constant Catholic power, but was far minor to the two empires, Scandinavia a hotbed for war and repeated Lollard heresy, and other minor powers hardly exerting any influence on Rome, the crusade was approved.
Sergia's armies, led by the empress herself, ravaged Mongolia before the majority of the crusader hosts had even reached Gothia. When they finally did arrive, the resistance of the Jain nomads broke. In 1320, Mongolia became an exarchate of the Gothic empire, and the revolts clamouring for a free Mongol kingdom ended.
The Daughter of Satan's Daughter
The tenth crusade's approval by Pope Victor IV proved that Sergia's popular epithet didn't hold much sway amongst the powerful. “The Daughter of Satan”.
How did it come to that for a woman who has always been described as virtuous and zealous? It might have something to do with the empress' legendary changes of heart and impulsivity. As mentioned before, rumour had it that Theudis the Strange had cursed her somehow. Perhaps dealt a part of Sergia's soul for extending his mother's life, allowing him to remain in darkness.
Either way, Sergia was seen as possessed. As an example, sometimes, when holding court, she was passing judgement on some matter, and after explaining her reasoning, made a complete 180 and decided the opposite of what that reasoning would dictate. People swore that her eyes changed colour whenever that happened, as if an evil spirit seized her. Murderers were let loose, seemingly random petitioners hanged for “lack of respect”, including a distant relative, some minor noble.
Quickly, the spirit possessing her earned the title of Daughter of Satan, for it must have taken a truly powerful demon to haunt the mighty empress, who otherwise built on her mercenary renown to become hailed as the Fearless.
Some part of that must have rubbed off on Liuvigoto, Sergia's firstborn. Or so people claimed. But beautiful Liuvigoto was a magnet for trouble. Appearing friendly enough, she preferred not to lift a finger if anyone else could do it for her. And as Crown Princess, many were willing to, or had to. Her marriage to Evrard, a Francian Karling, in 1322 seemed a good match.
What people didn't know is that Liuvigoto carried thoughts of heresy. Her close circle was made of people who had broken with the church. Oppressed minorities who couldn't hope for a better life under firmly Catholic Gothia turned to the heiress for a possible change of fortune. It is telling for Liuvigoto's character that they managed to turn her away from her faith despite the Thathicos dynasty's history – Saint Kyrillos comes to mind –, their papally supported claim on the eastern lands, and their current influence within the church, with three of the four main holy orders being led by Thathicos men at the time – Liuvigoto's brother Nikolaos even having joined the Knights of Santiago as a prospective successor to current grandmaster Ioustinianos.
This secret coven remained undetected for a long time. The continuous expansion against the nomads preoccupied the imperial court, as the remains of the Mongol Empire were pushed to the foot of the Altai mountain range. The Exarchate of Zhetysu, founded in 1333, was to keep an eye on the Mongols until the truce's end would signal their ultimate demise. Gothia's eyes would soon have to turn towards the southern nomads in central Asia, for the east was almost wholly tamed.
In 1336, Liuivigoto's secret came to light. But not immediately. First, her husband Evrard was seen in prayer. The chroniclers refuse to mention which kind of prayer it was, and with Sergia's court being what it was, there is no record of Evrard's trial to determine his crime. The man was burned at the stake the 6th April.
The Princess' circle must have panicked. Their careful work to earn recognition was being undone. Liuvigoto herself escaped suspicion for a while, as she married Prince Dmitriy of Novgorod not much later. But by November, the inquisition closed in on her trail. Her friends went up in smoke, and the Crown Princess herself brought before Sergia – who send her daughter into exile.
The inquisition was enraged. The exile would mean that Liuvigoto could return as rightful empress one day! But their fears were soon appeased. The empress detailed the advantages of Gothia's succession laws – and then proclaimed that no longer would the eldest, but instead the youngest child take the throne.
Suddenly, the young Prince Theudis was heir apparent.
As for Princess Liuvigoto, she found refuge in her first husband's lands, until the 10th July 1345. King Landolf of East Francia then condemned her to death on behalf of Emperor Jourdain, for the same reason that had led to her exile nine years before.
The End of the Great Conquerors' Realms
The Fearless seemingly shook off her eldest daughter's fate easily, but it had left a lasting impact on the empress. It is likely she, renowned for her strength, didn't want to show any weakness in front of her subjects, so she buried her feelings deeply, where they gnawed at her – remainder or whole – soul. Gothia as a whole went on as before.
On the world's stage, the decade of 1340 is the end of the decline of the empires that suddenly arose in the middle ages. The Aztecs on the other side of the Atlantic, the Turkish Ghaznavids in Asia, and the Mongols in Asia and Europe.
The Ghaznavids were both the first and last to fall. Before the Mongols came, these men from steppes carved themselves a great empire between Persia, Rajasthan and Tibet. The Mongols may have pushed them out of Persia, but they remained a strong Persian presence in India. But the Indians steadily made gains against their empire, and in 1343, their last Shah came to rule. Mehrzad III still held six kingdoms, but his predecessor Farhad left him in control of a sole barony as crown demesne. Mehrzad proclaimed himself as “the Great” and declared that he would restore the Ghaznavids' glory. His vassals – if any remained swearing loyalty to the Shahdom in more than name – surely laughed at the claim. The former empire descended into obscurity despite their monarch's grandiose desires, and by 1362, the last Ghaznavid Shah was chased from his last land.
The Mongol Empire completely vanished during that decade. Surprisingly, the last part of the empire that answered to the Great Khan without doing so directly was located in Chernigov, led by the Velid clan. After the Tenth Crusade, even the Velids had abandoned their distant liege, and were swiftly turned into the Gothic kingdom of Chernigov, ruled by the Crown Prince's twin sister, Riccilo, in her mother's name. The Gothic empress ensured that the Mongols' end came with irony.
Genghis Khan Temujin had arrived out of nowhere with the Mongol horde. Sergia entrusted another man from nowhere to finish off the remnant – Exarch Hektorios of Mongolia, a commoner whose martial prowess made him exarch of the crusade kingdom. With Bughu Bailjar, the last Great Khan of the Mongol Empire disappears from history the 17th May 1346.
The last of these invaders were the Aztecs. And their decline in Europe had already found its end. Unable to face the Francian onslaught, the emperor overseas sent no reinforcements. The Aztecs, abandoned by their homeland, were driven out of Iberia and the Maghreb, but still reigned the Kanem Empire, from Africa's westernmost point to Abyssinia. But nobody north of the Sahara feared them any more. Fallen into tribal structures, Aztec armies would not be able to challenge any feudal army.
There was also a progressive faction within the Aztec realm. They clashed with the emperor, and Huetlatoani Mahchimaleh was slain in the fighting the 13th December 1347. The progressive Tlacalel, a man with clear African origin, succeeded him. And abandoned the last transatlantic vestige. Soon after his ascension, the Aztecs were mass-baptised into Orthodoxy by Byzantine emissaries of Basileus Witiges. No longer were there Aztecs in Africa – rather Nahuafricans.
(For those who think it's a weird name for a Greek - yes, that's a Gothic name for the Basileus – we'll get back to that later)
The Fearless' Fear
Empress Sergia, the Goths' morale bolstered by having dealt the death blow to the Mongol Empire, continued her onslaught against the nomadic realms, as well against the formerly nomadic one in Khotan.
In 1353, Pope Stephanus called the Eleventh Crusade. Now with neither an immediate threat to Christendom nor a powerful monarch's desires in the way, the Pope directed this invasion against a place of actual importance to the faith. With Jerusalem in Christian hands, this meant the Shamirid Sultanate – Egypt.
As ever, Gothia fought at the forefront of that crusade – despite the absence of both Sergia herself and her elite cataphracts, fighting nomads. Crown Prince Theudis was entrusted with the Imperial levies from Crimea and the troops of the Khazarian exarch.
And he led that army admirably. When the western European armies arrived, Theudis had already annihilated the Shamirid forces, comparable in number to his own, with minimal losses. The young Prince showed truly exceptional martial skill and earned the respect of all Christianity, tales of his victory in al-Ihmimiya spreading far and wide.
Egypt became a Catholic kingdom under a Thathicos monarch, Sergia's grandson Ioannikos, in 1355.
The Fearless regaled in the tale of her heir's success – officially. Apparently, his military genius opened the wounds left by her eldest, and the failure of that time was now salted with a feeling of uselessness. Observers remarked that since the Eleventh Crusade, Sergia's drive forward had mostly disappeared. She went through the motions, but the energy of her youth had fully evaporated, replaced by a nagging self-doubt.
Her second-in-command during her late campaigns, Philippos Caffa, kept a diary, and notes that he found the empress often staring into the distance before a battle, saying “What would Theudis do now?” to herself. Once, he found her slumped to the ground, remarking that she “just stands in the way of his greatness”.
The Fearless feared her son. Or rather, herself. With all that talk of a possession, the wounds of her daughter's betrayal, exile and execution, and now the Prince's accomplishments, she was a mental wreck. Still, she insisted on leading from the front.
For her 76 years of age, she was still a formidable fighter and felled more than one nomad herself, but she did take a wound in her last fight.
Was that the last straw? If she wasn't fit enough to fight unharmed, did she deem herself unable to live on? In any case, Sergia the Fearless never awoke the 8th March 1362.
If the Gothic fascination for asymmetric persons hadn't stuck yet, it certainly did after Sergia I's nearly long reign, nearly sixty years. While there have been many solutions proposed for her apparent possession, no single theory has won out. It remains a mystery despite claims to the contrary.
Nowadays, Goths by far prefer to use the “Fearless” epithet when talking about Sergia I. For she was truly a successful monarch, highly influential over the Papacy as evidenced by the Tenth Crusade, overseeing the end of the Mongol Empire, and generally expanding Gothia strongly against the nomadic clans – always leading by example from the front.
Still, her impact on Gothic culture is not nearly as important as one would imagine from such a successful, long-reigning ruler. What she is most well-known for is not even her apparent possession, but her institution of ultimogeniture in Gothia. Why?
Because she was overshadowed by a man who became a living legend in his time, and who wouldn't have become emperor if not for that change. Thus every circumstance of that change is well-known amongst Goths, and Princess Liuvigoto might well be the reason why there never was an Empress Liuvigoto II. The benefactor of that change is still revered today as the closest the middle ages had to a perfect monarch, as well as one of the universally acknowledged greatest, if not the greatest, general of all times – Theudis VIII, also known as the War Saint, or as the Angel of Death, the Horseman of Conquest.
With the change to ultimogeniture under Sergia the Fearless, it was likely an unavoidable consequence that not just when a ruler died early, but also if a male monarch like Theudis remarried in his late life, then there would be a child ruler.
One likely facing envious elder siblings, too. Sergia II was the War Saint's youngest child – at least the youngest recognized at the time – of his third wife, Adriane. She had seven older legitimate siblings, and the throne of the legendary would likely have been a prize tempting enough to consider foul play against the girl...
But, perhaps surprisingly, Theudis VIII's family was not inclined to launch a succession drama at court. Save for her three-years-elder half-sister Valeria, any pretender already held positions that satisfied them.
Dorothea's three children were landholders in Byzantium, under the youngest of them, Basileus Gregoras III.
One-Eyed Euphrosyne's official imperial son Athanaricos had been made archbishop of Crimea.
Sergia's only full-blooded sister Cixila was now known as Taizu, and Chintila married to the queen of Crusader Italy. Valeria was too young to pine for the throne.
Theudis' other children were not considered for the throne – perhaps they were unknown at the time. (In other words, they only came into existence as Chinese princes – Valeria and Chintila too, but they were older than Sergia.)
Archbishop Athanaricos took over the regency. The future Pope Silvester II was a shrewd politician and the eldest prince within Gothia itself.
Focusing on the administration of the realm, he did leave military matters in the hands of the War Saint's trusted commanders. Witteric Doros was entrusted with the army after Theudis VIII had been laid to rest, and sent east to deal with the Pala attack.
What the capital did not yet know was that the terrified maharaja Pusyamitra had taken the Nepalese's experiences to heart and called back his troops. None of his men should enter Gothic soil – even if they had lost their emperor, Witteric had proven himself capable as well.
Pusyamitra's surrender didn't satisfy the Gothic leadership though, and they claimed the duchy of Kabul in order to have the Hindu Kush form a natural border.
Now under attack themselves, the Palas were joined with multiple other Indian kingdoms, and without Theudis' leadership, the war, fought between Samarkand and the Afghan highlands, became a protracted affair for the Gothic army against overwhelming Indian numbers.
Witteric was forced to make more than one tactical retreat, as well as a few less-tactical ones. The legendary emperor's presence was dearly missed, and Doros' ambition to establish himself as some kind of successor died in the crib.
As things turned dire for the Goths, someone else took the reins of the army, another one of Theudis VIII's generals. A most unexpected one, for it was Cixila Thathicos who turned the tables – none other than the Empress of China. Unable to spare any troops, needed to establish the dynasty's heavenly mandate, the princess of Gothia proved herself a worthy successor of her father.
If someone was capable to establish a Gothic dynasty in China, then it was her. But she was both nostalgic for her father's campaigns and unwilling to let Gothia suffer a defeat. Back to being Princess Cixila instead of Empress Taizu, she pushed back the Indians to the other side of the mountains.
It took Sergia II's entire reign to claim victory – but without the War Saint's leadership, Gothia's nimbus of invincibility was shattered. Cixila returned to her empire in China, Witteric Doros was disgraced. Theudis VIII's main commanders were no longer in Gothia's service.
She's been leading my army a while longer. And with Karling blood... one doesn't exactly lack good commanders. But despite his 34 martial and commander traits, Taizu was still likely a better leader than Innokentios! I'd stacked three saintly bloodlines with boni against religious enemies at that point...
Under Athanaricos' wise guidance, the empire as a whole kept prospering, especially with the Silk Road now fully under Thathicos control. Sergia II seemed to become a capable, diplomatic monarch – but then, she fell gravely ill, and died soon after.
Her elder half-sister Valeria – whose mother is a historical mystery – succeeded the poor girl.
Young Sergia couldn't leave much of an impact on history due to her early death. What her “reign” stands for is the Afghan war against the Indians, which truly showed Gothia that they had lost the War Saint and couldn't replace him. His worthy successor was not the little girl on the Gothic throne, but the hardened veteran on the Chinese one. Indeed, Empress Taizu managed to establish a firm Gothic hold on the Chinese throne, and the stubbornly proud Goths didn't sinofy, even long after her death.
Still, that war didn't start the Gothic decline – it was a victory in the end, and the empire had made too many gains to lose their strength. Instead, Athanaricos' guidance of Gothia during the regency helped him in his case to claim the Papacy in 1420.
Unlike what one may think, nobody suspected foul play involved in Sergia's death. It was a case of slow fever – the disease spread through the court and touched her successor Valeria as well.
Valeria survived the slow fever which was responsible for her half-sister's death, and suddenly found herself being empress of Gothia.
The young woman was clearly Theudis VIII's daughter – as she was universally acknowledged as the next monarch – but nothing is known about her mother. This time, it was likely not an overzealous chronicler's purge of the historical records. There is no sign left of her.
Was it due to the War Saint's marriage? One-Eyed Euphrosyne is the only known lover of the emperor, and even if his marital life was anything but harmonic, his pious nature would not have driven him into the arms of other women.
As Valeria grew up to become an embodiment of virtue, some claim that the Thathicos' saintly bloodline was blessed by divine gifts, leading to the legendary emperor not even needing a woman to carry his offspring.
Nonsense, of course. It is likely that the campaigning emperor took a liking to some of his lesser-known officers, and that he didn't want to replicate Euphrosyne's case. When he presented his children at court, nobody asked questions.
The new empress was deeply saddened by her half-sister's death. She vowed to live a rightful life, the one Sergia could never experience.
Unlike many of her predecessors, especially her two direct adult ones, this drove her to matters of learning. Valeria was the generous patron of the great Itil university, and spent much time in her scientific pursuits. If the people could understand what caused disease, then they would be able to avoid it, so her thinking.
She was married to Alexios, prince of Egypt, a hard, cruel man. When King Ioannikos died in 1410, the crusader kingdom was in turmoil. His heir, who was named Achila, proved to be just as incompetent as his namesake eradicated from the empire's records.
Egypt had gone up in flames, with pretenders carrying Princess Anastasia's banner. The revolt began with little more than a dozen people, but had grown to pose a dangerous threat to the misguided king's rule, earning Anastasia the name of the Bold.
Alexios saw the opportunity, and he had more than just a dozen men – he had Gothia's might backing his ambition. And even if the Gothic army was no longer the Theudisian one, it was by far enough to deal with a kingdom split by civil war.
Alexios claimed the throne, landed in 1412, and restored order by 1414. Anyone opposing his rule was brutally suppressed, any revolts nipped in the bud – he was soon only known as the Accursed, leading a rule of terror that could hardly be any more different than Gothia.
The king's rule was so oppressive and brutal that after his death in 1425, Egypt entered a state of nearly twenty years of civil war that ended only with the coronation of a non-Thathicos – Queen Alexia stood for the exact opposite of Alexios, not just in her name.
The Thathicos Papacy
Upon her husband's coronation in Cairo, Valeria didn't return to Cherson immediately, but went to Rome, just in time for the first Thathicos to be elected as Pope.
With the death of Caelestinus III in 1414, the second son of Theudis VIII's twin sister Riccilo became Marinus IV. But Valeria's cousin was too drunk to invite the empress, who visited the Eternal City as a simple pilgrim.
Marinus IV is a historical footnote, especially compared to his successor Silvester II. The conclave apparently desired a malleable pope, someone who wouldn't take sides between the western – Francian – and eastern – Gothic – influence, even if they knew they had to pick someone from these great empires.
Marinus filled that role admirably enough. When he wasn't lying under some table, he was quite adept at dodging anything that could be seen as politically relevant. But his excessive drinking also led to his death after three years as the vicar of Christ.
By then, his cousin, Archbishop Athanaricos of Crimea, had won enough influence to win the election, and he had his eyes east. The former regent of Gothia knew everything about the empire and its enemies. He encouraged Valeria to continue claiming what the Holy See had designated as their land, and the zealous empress obliged.
The Khanate of Khotan, the last sedentary remnant of the Mongol Empire, found its end in 1420.
1420 was also the year in which Maharaja Laxminath Singh Dev of Nepal finally died. Never having recovered from Theudis' Chest, the broken monarch had not entertained any other thoughts of freeing himself from Gothic influence.
His son Rudranarayan was different. While they all knew that Theudis was long dead, the new maharaja didn't carry the latent fear of Gothic retribution with him and attempted to win back Nepalese freedom again.
Valeria wisely decided that the kingdom encompassing most of the Tibetan highland was too unruly for it to remain a tributary, and that Gothia's resources had to be used differently. But the Gothic army, still present in the region, would still see action. Nepal's price for its freedom would be their lands in the Tarim Basin, so that the entirety of the former Khanate became Gothic.
For Rudranarayan, the question remains if he truly won his kingdom's freedom, or if he traded tribute for future conquest, a question that would not be answered in Valeria's lifetime.
For the empress, without the Pope's encouragement, was very much a monarch of her people. Her great law reform, the Codex Valeriae, remained the holy grail of Gothic law for centuries.
Silvester, on the other hand, had great plans. And spent his time gathering support for his plans, until he launched the Thirteenth Crusade in 1430.
His aim was “to drive a spear deep into India's guts”. Spreading Catholicism apparently was merely a pleasant side effect for the Pope's motivation. Silvester the Purifier wished to establish another Gothic state and fully ensure his kin's domination.
The crusade for Karnata was long and bloody. Crusaders either came over land through Byzantine Persia or Gothic Afghanistan or over the sea, using Arab Gothic ships. They faced nearly all of India, banded together in defence of “the Goth”. Just as the Muslims referred to the early crusaders as “the Franks”, for the Indians the Goths were the face of the crusaders, no matter where they actually came from.
Too present was the struggle of the northern Indians against Gothia, too important the impact of the War Saint's campaign against the Somavamsi.
The crusade officially lasted four years, cutting a bloody swath throughout much of India. Valeria's daughter Maria was named Queen of Karnata – and for the whole remainder of her reign, the crusade basically continued.
Under Maria's zealous rule and inspiring leadership on the battlefield, the young crusader state shattered Indian opposition and soon came to dominate the south of the subcontinent.
The Saintly Empress
Far from the bloodbaths of India, Empress Valeria became a beloved leader of her people. The roads and cities were safe. The borders were safe. Taxes were low. The Codex Valeriae increased the commoners' rights. There were no scandals at court, and the faithful empress the very picture of a virtuous person.
The people hailed her as the Saintly.
Others saw her as weak. Pretenders rose up, Eugenios and Athanaricos, grandsons of Sergia the Fearless. Gothia needed strong leadership, and it would be able to make the world bow just like it did under the War Saint.
The pretenders didn't win over as much support as they would have liked. Eugenios was fended off in 1434, Athanaricos in 1443.
But it left a mark on the empress, who couldn't understand their way of thinking. Couldn't fathom their ambition, their thirst for power. At the same time, she realized that her research into the causes of slow fever had not led her anywhere.
To her dismay, her heir Sergia started to agree with the pretenders, at least insofar as the crown's strength was concerned.
The Saintly could not take it. She fell into a deep depression. In the end, she challenged her daughter for her beliefs – in a duel.
It caused quite an outrage at the time, but the empress' word was still law. Courtiers and the common people all had their own opinions on the challenge, their own theories about the motive. For many, it was the Crown Princess siding with the pretenders that drove Valeria over the edge. Nothing could be clearer to prove Gothic strength. Either she would succeed, making her clearly a strong monarch, to be succeeded by a powerful crusader queen in the future – or she would fail, in which case Sergia's point of view was proven right.
Valeria would have exclaimed that she preferred to deal with such matters in broad daylight rather than with daggers in the night.
Nowadays, it is commonly seen as Valeria's way to commit suicide. She was both unwilling to commit such a grave sin and unwilling to continue to live. Sergia desired to rule in her stead. Then she would have to prove it. Prove her strength, a strength that would not leave her open to the same criticism she had faced.
The challenge was accepted, and Crown Princess Sergia became empress in one of the more barbaric ways possible – by slaying her own mother. Perhaps Valeria had explained her motives before – for the new empress didn't seem to deal with the transition of power any differently than those who have come before, with the traditional period of mourning followed by her coronation, without an apparent second thought given to what placed her there.
Valeria's rule is generally seen as Gothia turning inwards – and this loss of external influence, while probably beneficial to the Gothic people as a whole, was not welcomed by the established elites, whose lineage reached back to the Endless Crusaders and was defined first by resistance, then conquest of the steppes, reaching their high point mere decades ago.
With the little presence of the clergy in Gothia, their counterpart were the merchants, grown incredibly rich thanks to full Gothic control of the silk road. Without tolls to pay, the Goths' prices were unbeatable in that regard. With the Thirteenth Crusade, not even the military merchants, their wares renowned across the entire world, suffered under Valeria.
Her rule was thus also a clash of those two influences, the nobility and the merchants. The nobility lost during the Saintly's reign, but her death might mean their return to power. Sergia would have to deal with this struggle of influence, one way or the other.
This clash also remains visible in how fondly the Saintly is remembered. Those dreaming of absolute Gothic supremacy bemoan her reign as the definite loss of the War Saint's Gothia, turning towards Silvester the Purifier as the true leader of the Goths at the time, while those looking at social progress see her like most of her contemporaries.
Her death remains a key point of discussion. The circumstances of the challenge, and the consequences of a different outcome.
As the Middle Ages ended, Sergia III took the reins of the Empire of Gothia, and her task would not be easy.
The new empress stood at the cusp of a new age, and so it might be a good time to look at the state of the “Old World” at the time.
It was dominated mostly by four empires, ruled by two dynasties: the van Vlaanderen in Francia, the Thathicos in Gothia, Byzantium and China.
In western Europe, Francia drove out the Aztecs. While the British Isles were mainly the territory of the Orthodox Anglo-Saxons of England, overlords of the former Irish crusader kingdom which has claimed the mantle of the Aztec Empire, Francia's power was unchallenged on the continent. But Emperor Clotaire had been placed on the throne by the nobility at his cousin's expense. He seemed a more malleable ruler... but uninvolved in that rebellion was king Roubaud the Pious of West Francia. The head of the Karlings controlled around half the empire, and despite his epithet, he was accused of apostasy. Clotaire was at least savvy enough not to openly move against Roubaud, but any spark could trigger a truly devastating civil war.
Byzantium had stabilized under Thathicos rule, but their Russian lands were disconnected from the Greek Empire. The Goths controlling the waterways made great profits at any Byzantine traveller's expense, be it an Imperial messenger or anyone else. The last show of unity was the Thirteenth Crusade – but India was far away, and back at home tensions were rising. Basileus Fereedun was a smart man, but with many enemies. Targeted by a Jihad, excommunicated, his treasury empty, he relied on the power of his enormous army. And directed envious gazes across the Black Sea – prospering Gothia could solve many of his problems. It seemed like a conflict between the foremost powers of eastern Europe was inevitable.
Between the three European hegemons, Poland had established itself as a long-lasting kingdom. This kingdom also entered a difficult time: Since the death of Snowid the Pious in 1427, the Bulgarian Bogoris dynasty reigned the kingdom – Orthodox foreigners. And now, a girl sat on the throne... An internal conflict might not only devastate the kingdom itself, but also cause the Teutonic State, the King-Bishopric of Lithuania, Francia or its vassals to take notice.
The other Orthodox powers would not be able to support Poland, for king Wulfhelm of England had little interest in the region – and was imprisoned by a French bishop. Sviþjoð and the kingdom of Finland struggled for dominance in Scandinavia, and it seemed like king Gandalfr of Sviþjoð had overestimated his power and support. Dealing with revolts, king Arvo of Finland seemed to have the upper hand.
In Africa, the Nahuafricans had safely established themselves south of the Sahara. Huetlatoani Opochtli reigned a stable empire – though also a backwater compared to the rest of the so-called civilized world. The remaining Muslim powers, mostly in Abyssinia and the Horn of Africa, had seen the turmoil in Egypt with pleasure, but with the rise of Queen Alexia, the Gothic advance seemed poised to continue.
The Jamalid Sultan Muhammad of Syria also held Abyssinia, and ruled the strongest remaining Muslim realm. Against the advance of Byzantium and the Georgian despotate, they still had significant power. But they would have to wait for a moment of weakness in the crusader kingdom of Arabia, now led by the promising Queen Stephania, if they could ever dream of seizing Islam's holiest places. Increasing the difficulty of this task was that the Jamalids' lands were spread out and thus difficult to defend.
The rivalling kingdoms in north India were dreaming of forming an empire to challenge the Goths. In that dream, the local maharaja was of course leading that empire. So the dream remained one. Nepal was arguably the most powerful of the Indian realm, and the Nepalese had a severe collective Gothic trauma to overcome, avoiding to challenge Cherson's interests. Only in the turmoil of the Thirteenth Crusade, they were all united for a moment. The loss in the crusade left them weakened, allowing the rise of a republic – tellingly, at the western, Gothic edge of the subcontinent, Gandhara stood for a different approach of government and a different stance to the Gothic enemy.
Said enemy had made great inroads in Karnata. Queen Maria had been given an absolutely enormous warchest by Pope Silvester, and she rapidly expanded Catholic presence. The southern Indians had neither formed a great empire of their own nor did they come under Bengal influence, and the crusader's invasion shattered their realms, each ruler entering an ill-fated attempt to fend off Maria's seemingly endless power on their own. Already, many people had converted, unwilling to anger their new monarch. It seemed like only a matter of time until she would proclaim another Gothic empire in India.
Gothia itself had stable borders. The Imperial armies had nearly solely waged war against nomadic territory, but under Sergia it seemed likely that they would reinforce the efforts of the exarchates of Transoxania and Turkestan to end the scattered Hindu realms in eastern Persia – if there was no greater conflict on the horizon.
The eastern lands remained sparsely settled, still with Mongol majorities in many counties. Otherwise, Gothia was still a wide land, but no longer empty. The Gothic people was one of the cultures with the highest population of that time, something which was hardly to be expected five centuries ago.
Gothia was also a supremely Catholic land, ever since its inception. Not only due to the scandal surrounding Princess Liuvigoto and the Gothic Inquisition, the imperial steppe was firm in their beliefs. It is no surprise that two Thathicos popes rose in succession in the 15th century, and there would clearly be more Gothic popes in the future.
The Gothic capital of Cherson was truly the world's greatest city of the time. Flourishing in every possible way, the metropolis eclipsed the two other European empires' capitals by far. Even without the significant unrest in Constantinople, Cherson was richer than both the heart of Byzantium and Paris together, and far more radiant as well. While the capital of Francia still remained a dirty medieval city, the Goths had installed a functioning sewage system, an absolute rarity at the time. Behind its mighty walls, the city was impregnable, clean and immeasurably rich.
The Eternal City and the City of the World's Desire – both couldn't compare to the Jewel of Gothia, which stood as an example of the Gothic rise throughout the centuries. From an insignificant, foreign county at the border to a respected crusader kingdom, from a Mongol vassal to the greatest Emperor the world had ever seen. Anyone walking the streets of Cherson in the mid-15th century could think that they stood in the centre of the world.
At the time, the Goths' wealth and splendour was also reflected in a cultural and technological lead. With Cherson as the heart of innovation, along the entire Silk Road people had a living standard decades, if not a century ahead of western Europe and India, two ahead of troubled Scandinavia and three ahead of the Nahuafricans.
Not only in Gothia – outside of the empire, the most advanced city was Tiflis, heart of the Georgian despotate.
If not already earlier, with the ascension of Theudis VIII, the Gothic Golden Age had begun. How long would it last?
