Plantagenet Dynasty vs Kingdom of Jerusalem
 

Location: Iceland

Weapons: Anything from Duke Nukem

Rulers:

King Henry the 2nd

Baldwin the 3rd

Notes: King Henry abstains from sex and Richard is never born.

Damasacus doesn't bother with Jerusalem.

Re: Plantagenet Dynasty vs Kingdom of Jerusalem
 

haha Duke nukem?

Baldwin..was tactically very impressive I don't recall much of what Henry was capable of, his son on the other hand

edit- rather I always got the impression his mother was more of the brains of his ascension to the throne during the anarchy than Henry..am I wrong?

Re: Plantagenet Dynasty vs Kingdom of Jerusalem
 

Honestly I know diddly squat about either side

Hell I didn't know Planetagenet was even a thing until now.

Though isn't King John the villain in Robin Hood?

Re: Plantagenet Dynasty vs Kingdom of Jerusalem
 

Really? The dynasty was one of the major players of that era caused some of the nastiest civil wars in english history (the anarchy was caused by Johns grandmother and her son his dad) The war of the Roses was fought by two cadet branches of the family..and the hundred year war was a result of them trash talking the youngest heir of the French king- nationalism and the formation of "modern" powers came about largely because of all the noise the House of Plantagene and Valois made (well that Spain)

John was a villain in Robin Hood because a lot of his antics led to the collapse of the Angevid empire which was like an early prototype to the awesomeness that was the British Empire that emerged in the sixteen hundreds. His beefing with the pope led him to being excommunicated and he pissed the barons that ruled England's lands so much that they revolted

but on the other hand the guy modernized the British legal system, did a lot of amazing work in handling the finances of a country left in debt up to its eyeballs by king Richard and he more or less is behind the Magna Carta..and honestly most modern constitutions owe as much to that document as they do to the Greeks and Romans

TlDr Johns pretty complicated..like his much more bad ass grandson who was vilified due to Braveheart and well a lot of the romanticism behind the Scottish fight for Freedom he's not as much of a "villain" as stories make him out to be.. both were not kind men and John was petty and kind of a twit but he also did a lot of good or rather blundered into it.

as to the fight at hand..how much of Henry's success was his mothers and Stephan growing tired of the war and wanting peace..is debatable Henry entered into the party late and people were by that point by and large exhausted

Baldwin on the other hand won an amazing victory against an incredibly brilliant general when he was a mere boy..on his own

Re: Plantagenet Dynasty vs Kingdom of Jerusalem
 

Yeah, I don't think I really ever learned about it in school
or at least if I did I wasn't paying enough attention then.

I never really cared about history until recently when
it was no longer something I was being forced to learn.
I don't mean just school but also living with my Aunt
and Uncle who were American History buffs had a
way of making history and "vacations" a chore.

Baldwin sounds like a bad ass. I think he should be the victor.

Re: Plantagenet Dynasty vs Kingdom of Jerusalem
 

that particular period of history is a nightmare of war, intrigue and all around brutality as well as the rise of the nations that would one day become the greatest civilizations and empires on earth- the warfare and intrigue and manipulation and politics make it pretty awesome. if you fancy such stuff its like living through a four hundred year thriller/war style epic (in the literary meaning as well as awesome) novel

Baldwin was a bad ass the men who were the power players in Jerusalem were pretty much bad asses in and of themselves though a lot of them were scum bags

Reynold De Chatillon for example was kept hostage for seventeen years by the Muslims as soon as he got loose he recovers whats left of his estate and becomes a Templar and becomes this bad ass field commander and the scourge of every Saracen caravan in the middle east..prior to that he was in his teens or twenties and saw an opportunity to inflict some damage on the Islamic empires but nobody would listen to him so he went out and assembled his own pirate fleet and raided their coasts and generally kicked ungodly amounts of ass.

You had Balian who was a psychotic blood knight..

and then Baldwin who like I said at sixteen defeated Saladin in battle routed him and then was diagnosed with Leprosy

for the rest of his life as he slowly rotted away he held the crusader kingdoms together and kept the peace with Saladin through sheer force of personality and a truly immense spirit

the guy was a really remarkable man surrounded by remarkable men

then again so was Henry who grew up during civil war, had to deal with the French using his mothers faction as pawns to destabilize England in a cold war style attempt to keep England from becoming unified enough to rival them - all the while he was being supported by them..made deals with the Scots and all in all was pretty hardy himself

my only issue with him is, a lot of his acclaim came at a time when both sides were exhausted and the current king more or less wanted peace - Henry wore down an exhausted enemy..his mother had been doing the lions share

while Baldwin held the realm together while dealing with treachery in his own house, and jerk asses like Reynold who were constantly causing trouble and political pressure from the pope and Europe to make war