Crusader Kings 2 and the Gritty Past

I've taken a deep dive into Crusader Kings 2 for an article that I'm working on, and I've been way into trying to unite the Kingdom of Wales into a powerhouse of violence and prosperity during the earliest parts of the Middle Ages. It's really hard, and I've failed every single time over my six or seven playthroughs, but I feel like I'm getting closer.

What's struck me about these games is that how they play with history. The characters that exist in the time period where the player begins their game exist their; some of them have the same capacities for success as their historical analogues, and some of them will fade from existence as the simulation takes over for historical contingency. Then there are events that are set in stone: invasions, the start dates of certain Crusades, and a whole host of cataclysms that send shocks through the entirety of the the geography on which CK2 takes place.

But Crusader Kings 2 is weird because those giant events aren't really what it's about. It's about the micro stuff: interactions between people. The macro events give these characters something to react to, but the game really drives home that the big stuff is always about the slow movement of the small stuff. Everyone who refuses to break with Papal demand, for instance, creates a tidal wave of people who funnel into the meat grinder of the Crusades. And it feels like, to me, that CK2 really drives home that atomization. Lots of small agents moving toward some horizon line.

What's really struck me is that the person-to-person events rarely encourage me to be a nice person. In the wake of crushing medieval horror (death by random disease; political poisionings; peasants killing tax officers), I have a really strong desire to interact with the world in a way that doesn't fall to that level. CK2 encourages you to scheme, kill, and steal your way to power, and I get it. The biggest stories of medieval history are those of craven violence and horror. It's locking kids up in towers until they disappear and elevating your brother to the papacy so that your family has free reign to do whatever they want across the entirety of Europe.

But in my experience of the game, which is admittedly limited, it seems like you have to play the mover and shaker of history or risk being wiped out by would-be movers and shakers. The atomization of power down to individual characters is the programmatic embodiment of the Great Man theory of history (and the idea that how much you are liked by vassals or other rulers governs how easy your way in the world is is as much a part of this; there's no possibility of Historical Materialism here).

The world that Crusader Kings 2 sets up is only moved and shaken by violence. I can imagine the path toward the goals that the game sets up for the player in a pacifist way: You embrace the long game. You marry well and tactically. You invite dispossessed heirs into your court to generate claims to thrones near and far. And, eventually, you make your kingdom a little bit bigger, but not that much bigger. You wouldn't be able to conquer Europe with this method.

But this way of existing doesn't seem possible because it doesn't seem survivable. If you're not eating other countries, then you're left to be eaten by your rivals. There doesn't seem to be a way of repairing rivals, either, except through the base mechanism of giving money to people who don't like you. And getting that money is difficult since your income is flat without expansion.

So we've all gotta become the same person. We have to grow larger via conquest, via violence, and with that we fulfill the promise of the medieval period. We become cruel on a macro level, even if we're neutral or sort-of kind on the micro and interpersonal level. And I don't know what to do about that.