You think you can get away with the Karlings being irrelevant in a 1066 start? Wrong.

This is an...interesting take.

First of all basically no one is "tolerant" in the premodern world. even the best case scenario involves low level boundary policing and low level violence to keep minority populations in line. In the premodern world most of what we decide to code as "tolerance" is just

Almoravids

there's a lot of bad history floating around that calls all Christian state wars against muslim ones "not religious violence" except for the few explicitly named crusades and all muslim attacks on christian nations instances of holy war...but the almoravid invasion was actually a holy war.

The almoravid invasion which brought the end of the Taifa states as well as the pushback of the northern spanish states was explicitly called a jihad and critiqued Taifa laxity in regards to Islam and interactions with Christians ( it would, again, be wrong but it's something you could frame as "attacked the taifas for being too tolerant). it's more complicated than that but the almoravids were in part a puritanical reaction (a fuller explination needs to account for multiple, competing taifas, Castillian pressure the almoravids multiple incentives beyond the personal opinions of the ruler, said opinions, and how all of these and more changed over relatively short time periods).

I'd argue that spanish history is very poorly understood by pop history given constant attempts to parachute in and claim a very simple and clear narrative to help serve modern political ends.

the almohads were religious extremists who ruined everything up is pretty much true.

might as well tag /u/rasputine in (also anund Graenhjalm isn't really right either and untangling that is a mess)

basically

Far worse to be Jewish in Christian Spain post-reconquista than to be Christian in Muslim territory.

is a defensible historical statement

taxed heavily but otherwise generally left alone.

is a very common extremely wrong piece of badhistory. the basic facts of co exstence involve formal and informal communal regulations. thinking of minorities in the middle ages as basically free floating individuals who occassionally get hit with an extra tax is the wrong way to think about this.


to bring this back to CK i'd love a game that attempted to seriously grapple with and model life as a powerful minority in the middle ages. it will not happen for multiple reasons but its fascinating.

/r/CrusaderKings Thread Parent Link - i.redd.it