Grading The New Fourth Crusade Coming to Crusader Kings III
By John Giebfried, Ph.D.
Last week, Paradox Interactive released Dev Diary 155 for Crusader Kings III, talking about the additions to their latest expansion pack “Roads to Power,” specifically their implementation of features like “Restoring the Roman Empire” as Byzantium and the Fourth Crusade.
You can read the Dev Diary here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/dev-diary-155-the-shattered-empire.1701999/?fbclid=IwY2xjawFKkc1leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHe_of6oUyO5R0RprD2rnGtSj4MUcWyQh7DjZJF1x8x4yv_omLusr8Gjj0A_aem_KhLLiAyBBZ1SexvNWFdMeg
Normally people don’t get worked up about Dev Diaries, and they especially don’t write long public responses, but I am not your average Paradox gamer. I teach Medieval History and Digital Humanities at the University of Vienna. I’ve been studying the Fourth Crusade and its aftermath for almost two decades. My PhD was all about the Latin Empire, and I’ve co-written a book gamifying the Fourth Crusade for university classrooms.
You can check it out here: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469664118/the-remaking-of-the-medieval-world-1204/
And on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Remaking-Medieval-World-1204-Crusade/dp/1469664119
I also love Paradox games, which I have played since discovering Europa Universalis 1 in the early 00s. In fact, as a thrifty gamer, who always bought everything on sale, the first game I ever bought for full price on release day was Crusade Kings II. Unlike everyone else who started in 1066 on Tutorial Island, a.k.a. Ireland, I set the start date for 1204 and loaded up Baldwin I of the Latin Empire.
With the restricted start dates, I’ve not gotten to play my beloved Latin Empire in Crusader Kings 3, but now with the upcoming release of the game’s third full expansion pack, Roads to Power, my dreams are about to come true. I’m overjoyed, but as a historian, I had some concerns. So, I felt the need to chime in, what is the use of a PhD in Medieval History if you can’t use it to give feedback to the community and maybe even developers of your favorite game? So, I will recap the post, and like the good professor, I am giving some grades on the content so far!
Part 1 — Game Idea: A+
So, let’s talk about general game mechanics. In a DLC expansion aimed toward Byzantium, I like the idea of a specific mid-game crisis for them, like the Mongols are for anyone east of Poland. If the Byzantines get a powerful new administrative government, they should get an extra challenge to deal with. I also think this is the perfect one to pick, but I am biased since I did a PhD on this topic…
Part 2 — Crusade History: C-
So, I can nit-pick a lot here. There are lots of things wrong and poorly explained in the section labeled “Historical Brief” — things like the crusade being called in 1199, not 1202, or the misspelling of Dalmatian, as Dalmation.
But, what I will focus on, which this history brief ignores, is how Prince Alexios enters the story and how Prince Alexios violently leaves the story.
In 1195, Emperor Isaac II Angelos was overthrown by his brother Alexios, who became Alexios III Angelos. Isaac was blinded and sent to a monastery.
Side note: There is a famous critique of Byzantium by the Victorian historian W.E.H. Lecky who wrote: “Of the Byzantine Empire the universal verdict of history is that it constitutes, without a single exception, the most thoroughly base and despicable form that civilisation has yet assumed…The history of the Empire is a monotonous story of the intrigues of priests, eunuchs, and women, of poisonings, of conspiracies, of uniform ingratitude, of perpetual fratricides.” Honestly, his description is more of an advertisement for Byzantine Studies than a critique… but on that last line, about perpetual fratricide, this is the only case in Byzantine history of one brother deposing another… and there is no killing involved — so zero cases of imperial fratricide in Byzantium.
After the usurpation, Isaac II’s teenage son (also named Alexios) managed to escape from Byzantium thanks to a pair of Pisan merchants who smuggled him away to the court of Philip of Swabia, the oldest surviving son of Frederick I Barbarossa, who was married to Alexios’s sister, Irene. At court, Prince Alexios was introduced to Boniface of Montferrat, who when the crusade ran into money problems, likely suggested taking Alexios’ offer to help the crusade.
This important Byzantine context is left out of the post, but the biggest thing ignored is that Prince Alexios offered to end the schism and return the Byzantine church to papal authority, if the crusaders returned him to his father’s throne. That is the reason the clerical crusade leaders said yes, alongside their lay counterparts to the diversion to Constantinople. It will also be a leading reason Alexios will not be liked in Byzantium. (Small note, also left out here is the fact that he also pledged to pay for a garrison of elite knights in Jerusalem to defend the kingdom after the main crusade departed)
The other thing the dev diary left out is that the trip was not a replacement for their crusade to Jerusalem, but a pit stop on the way there. For the participants of the Fourth Crusade outside Constantinople, they were still Crusaders headed for Jerusalem.
So, in 1203, the Crusaders arrived in Constantinople, expecting to be greeted as liberators bringing home a beloved rightful emperor. The people did not rise up against the usurper Alexios III, so the Crusaders attacked the city, and during the night Alexios III fled to build a new army, he did not, as the Dev Diary says, abdicate. The diary also leaves out that the blind Isaac II was taken out of his monastery and returned to the throne, to serve as co-emperor to Prince Alexios, now Emperor Alexios IV.
As the game text gets right — Alexios IV returned to discover Alexios III had squandered Byzantium’s treasury, so he didn’t have the money he promised the Crusaders. But he didn’t try to get rid of them, instead he asked them to stay until he was secure on his throne and could thus secure their money.
Things went bad when bored crusaders decided to set fire to Constantinople’s only mosque, and that fire spread out of control and burnt down a third of the city. Anger at the Crusaders boiled over and Alexios IV was overthrown and murdered (along with his blinded father) by the nobleman Alexios Doukas, who became Alexios V. This Alexios gave the Crusaders a choice to leave with nothing peacefully, or face his wrath, and sent a fleet of fire ships to destroy the Venetian fleet. It is he who the crusaders made the choice to overthrow, and who was removed as they stormed the city in April of 1204.
Part 3 — Crusade Mechanics: C+
Well, it’s a conversation within the community that does not need to be rehashed here, but Crusader Kings 3’s crusading mechanics need a huge overhaul. That is the job for another expansion pack and another exceptionally long post by me. (My short diagnosis: no proper leadership mechanics leads to giant swarms of troops doing nothing and always losing)
But let’s talk specifically about the mechanics of the Fourth Crusade — or as it’s called a “Crusader War for Imperial Claim.”
So, the trigger seems to be that you need a courtier with an imperial claim when a crusade starts to begin the chain. I worry that there may be too many of these out there. Maybe it should be only ones with a strong claim, or since “Roads to Power” is introducing adventurers, it could be replaced by any realm that has an adventurer with a legitimist camp type (i.e. it is someone who is already a roving exile trying to return). That last choice is the most realistic, but the hardest to pull off. If you want to have this chain go off, maybe you want to make it as easy as possible; for fan service that makes sense. I will go through the effort to get the event no matter what, but there is something to say for allowing easier access to the event chain.
Also, the Dev Diary does not say if this casus belli is a one-time thing or something that could happen multiple times in one playthrough. While there was only one successful historical “Crusader War for Imperial Claim,” there are other similar historical ventures that failed, like Bohemond’s ‘crusade’ against Alexius I in 1108, and Charles of Anjou’s attempts to conquer Byzantium.
On the list of “I don’t like it, but I understand why it has to be done this way” — is that anyone joining the “Crusader War for Imperial Claim” leaves the crusade. This makes it easy for the AI to send those other troops to Constantinople, and not Jerusalem (or other crusade destination). But it’s not how the Fourth Crusaders saw themselves. They saw themselves as crusaders, and if all went perfectly, they planned to still go to Jerusalem, even after conquering Constantinople. So, I would design it so that the people who joined the “Crusader War for Imperial Claim” also joined the Crusade too and could go on to Jerusalem when they finished the war in Byzantium. That is the historical option. Crusade AI is terrible, and I expect this would mean that the Fourth Crusade would never work if both wars were ongoing together, but that would be what I would do as a historian, because that’s how these people saw their mission — a supplement, and not a replacement for the crusade.
One function I like is the plan to ask for papal approval, and how the Pope is likely to refuse, and then you lose a level of devotion and have others less likely to join, but for the war to still go on anyway. This has a good historical realism and my seal of approval.
As for Venice (or related power) joining the venture, it should be noted that the diversion to Constantinople was not their idea, and they signed up for the Crusade long before Prince Alexios entered the picture. But wrapping them in is key to the story, and the mechanics do that reasonably well.
The part I like the least is the “All the Riches of the Empire” decision. It compresses the whole picture of what is going on in 1203 and early 1204. It makes Alexios IV the bad guy who the Crusaders need to remove.
If I were writing the event chain, I would have the choice be something like this, I would divide this link in the event chain and make two events instead of one. In the first, the Crusaders would get a message from Alexios IV (or whoever their imposed emperor is) and have the choice of leaving immediately with less money (with a bad outcome like here) or being asked to stay a while longer to help raise the funds.
If they stay and wait, then a second pop-up hits, and this one says what happened, the Greek people are angry at financial exactions and forced conversions, the city burned down, and then a new emperor killed their imposed emperor, and that one delivers a final ultimatum — leave with nothing, or attack the city.
I might also add the attack with the fire ships as another one, which pops for the Venetians who need to avoid the ships or lose serious attack strength.
You could have a whole tree with Greek characters getting a chance to overthrow the crusader-imposed emperor and gain power, very temporarily, until the Latin takeover, but that is a bit harder to do.
Also, the amount of gold each crusader gets seems high to me, but that will scale, I suspect with the riches of Byzantium before.
In conclusion, this has some good points as an implementation of the Fourth Crusade, but it has two major, but easily fixable flaws. The easiest is to add a second event to the chain after the city’s capture to better reflect the transitions between Alexios III, IV, and V. The second harder one is to keep these men in the crusade while they also attack Byzantium too.
Part 4 - The Sack of Constantinople: F
Now we get to the event about the sack of Constantinople, and now it’s time to put on my angry historian’s hat: EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE IS HISTORICALLY INCORRECT!
If you want to hear me go on at length about the sack, listen to the History of Byzantium Podcast, Episode 293 — Governing Constantinople with John Giebfried. Find it here: (https://shows.acast.com/thehistoryofbyzantium/episodes/episode-293-governing-constantinople-with-john-giebfried)
or on your favorite podcast player, and on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RexXL0d7ai8&t=36s
Here is what the event says:
No, the first person onto the city walls was André d’Ureboise, a knight in the service of the Bishop of Soissons.
The line about “The our knights howl through the city gates” — is a reference, I think, to a great story told by Villehardouin, Niketas Choniates, and especially Robert de Clari (who was one of the soldiers involved) — where troops under Pierre de Amiens, noticed a postern gate along the sea walls which was sealed — but which crusaders bashed open with pickaxes until it was large enough for one man to squeeze through, and after a few made it through, they opened a neighboring gate to let in the rest of their company. All three sources then relate the bravery of Pierre, and the cowardice of the Greeks too afraid to fight him. Here is the version in Choniates:
“a knight by the name of Peter entered through the gate situated there. He was deemed most capable of driving in rout all the battalions, for he was nearly nine fathoms tall and wore on his head a helmet fashioned in the shape of a towered city. The noblemen about the emperor and the rest of the troops were unable to gaze upon the front of the helm of a single knight so terrible in form and spectacular in size and took to their customary flight as the efficacious medicine of salvation. Thus, by uniting and fusing into one craven soul, the cowardly thousands, who had the advantage of a high hill, were chased by one man from the fortifications they were meant to defend.”
(Apparently, all you need is one tall guy with a fancy helmet to conquer Constantinople)
So, the Crusaders once into the city, took it without a bloody fight and set up on the hill where Alexios V had been camped during the battle, virtually unopposed.
The event text says the Greeks set a fire; no, it was a German knight who used it to defend the camp at night from a feared Greek counterattack. However, in the night, most of the Greek aristocracy fled, and the remaining leaders surrendered the city without a fight.
Contrary to the popular image of the sack, there is almost no recorded killing of civilians. Even in Greek sources, like Niketas Choniates and Nicholas Mesarites there is no reference to indiscriminate killing.
This is because it was not just the devout calling for restraint, it was the entire leadership of the crusade, who made everyone swear on holy relics before the final battle that they would not harm non-combatants.
As for the destruction and looting of the Hagia Sophia and Pantocrator Monastery, the latter was made the center of Venetian administration in Constantinople, so they kept it intact. As for the Hagia Sophia, most people are familiar with the story in Choniates about the Latins smashing the altar and the prostitute on the patriarch’s throne. However, this is a rhetorical lament more inspired by the Old Testament than actual history. Choniates spent the sack hiding with a Venetian friend and then left the city. He never saw what he describes, however, we do have a description of the Hagia Sophia only a week or so after the sack by Robert de Clari, who visited all the major sites of the city after the conquest, and he reports it all very much intact. The looting that befell the Hagia Sophia appears to be the work of its first Latin Patriarch of Constantinople who needed money in the aftermath of the defeat of Adrianople (this is also when the famous Hippodrome statues are melted down — not during the sack itself).
So yes, all completely wrong and in need of a full re-write.
Part 5 — Latin Empire Implementation: A
So just as the term “Byzantine Empire” is a later invention from the outside, so too is the term “Latin Empire of Constantinople”, which as far as I can tell didn’t exist until the 18th century. Latin Emperors called themselves Roman emperors, just like their Byzantine counterparts. But treating it as something different from Byzantium feels authentic to the game.
The choice to make only lands they historically conquered early on (i.e. the kingdoms of Thessaloniki and Hellas) I could quibble with — as they had a big chunk of Asia Minor too in the early years. But, it is a decision geared to make for a historical showdown between the Latin Empire, Bulgaria, Epirus, and Nicaea, which works for me. The issue I see is that it’s more likely a Greek princeling creates an administrative realm in Bulgaria, instead of creating a resurgent feudal Bulgarian empire.
I also like the “Seize Imperial Duchy” casus belli invention as a mechanic to encourage the endemic warfare that pervaded the Aegean during the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade.
While I think it’s gamey to imagine an administrative Latin Empire, as a player, I’d be really mad if I didn’t get the chance to play that way. What I would say is the ‘one or two habits I admire option’ has the wrong traits. You gain the ability to castrate and blind prisoners — but no Latin emperor ever did that.
(The closest we come to that is when angry Latin nobles cut off the nose of the secret wife of the Latin Emperor Robert, when he married for love, instead of listening to them and marrying a Greek princess instead — it's a wild story you should look it up!)
One thing we can show they did was adopt the tradition of having kids born in the purple room of the great palace, Latin Emperor Baldwin II called himself Porphrgenitos on his seal, so getting the ‘Born in the Purple’ trait would be a nice historical thing. Also, the Latin Empire’s succession should be set in game as either elective or acclamation.
Each Latin Emperor was chosen by a council of nobles (and in the first instance bishops). Interestingly, their choice never followed the rules of primogeniture. Baldwin I’s daughters and oldest living brother back in Flanders were passed over for a younger brother on the spot: Henry. The nobles chose Henry’s older sister Yolanda (not his brother Eustace, who was on the spot), and her husband, Peter of Courtenay. The throne then passed to their second son, Robert, skipping the eldest son, and then to John of Brienne, a completely unrelated former king of Jerusalem, and then finally to Baldwin II who was not a child of John or even the eldest living son of the Yolanda and Peter!
As for what else they could get instead, I’m not sure, I’d love for the ability to keep recruiting the Varangian Guard since 1204 was their more or less point of dissolution.
Conclusion
I’m excited to have the Fourth Crusade as a regular recurring feature of Crusader Kings 3. I think, for the most part, the developers have done a good job — except for the period between when Alexius IV (or whoever your imperial claimant is in-game) is installed on the throne, through the sack of Constantinople. There are factual errors in the event text and the game mechanics seriously diverge from the history. I know there is not a long time until release, but I hope they can make some of these changes either before launch or in the first patch that inevitably will come after launch. If the developers need pro-bono historical consulting help, I am more than happy to give feedback.