I have been playing Crusader Kings 2, and when I finished that time line I exported my game to Europa Universalis 4. I am having a blast.
I started as the King of Castille-Leon. I don't remember the name (I think it was Enrique). Both him and his son (who I think was Enrique II) managed to conquer Aragon and Navarra by ~1210. Alfonso I Alfonsez D'Ivrea became the first emperor of Hispania. This begun the great Castillan dynasty D'Ivrea. Emperors Alfonso I, II, Fernando I, II, and III continued to unify Spain, but could not do it totally as the Muslim force was too great, and the Portuguese were too resistant. Fernando III had two sons and a daughter. His second son died of consumption as a young child, and his older son was assassinated shortly after being named duke of a small pocket of Spain. Due to this, his daughter, HRH Saint Berenguela I "the Great" (yes all of these epitaphs actually apply) was destined to rule Hispania. Her fifty year rule has been argued by historians as one of the greatest in Spanish history. During her reign, the Muslims were expelled from Andalusia and that kingdom was claimed by Berenguela, and then bestowed upon the fiercest duke that fought against them, King Rodrigo I of Andalusia. She also managed to take certain critical duchies from the Portuguese that would set up the eventual conquer of Portugal. During her reign, Pope Sixtus IV (who in this history was a pope in the 1300s.) called for a conquest of Lithuania, which at the time had been occupied by pagan heathens. Filled with religious zeal, Berenguela agreed to assist the Holy Father in ridding loyal Lithuanian catholics of their pagan disease. For her vital contributions, Pope Sixtus crowned Berenguela as Queen of Lithuania. ten years later, Berenguela passed through this realm into the kingdom of heaven. She was an incredible Empress, loved by her people and feared by her enemies. She held incredible power, and some historians have called her the most powerful woman in world history.
She married a member of the wealthy Orsini family, and her son Enrique I Bassez D'Ivrea became Emperor. He was known as Enrique the Merry, yet incidentally died of extreme depression in his late fifties. Similarly incidentally, his son Enrique II also died of depression in his thirties. After both of these unfortunate and untimely deaths, a new hero of Hispania came forth. Emperor Oveco I "Ironsides." He followed in his great grandmother's footsteps. He led numerous defenses against the Muslims attempting to come over the Strait of Gibraltar to retake Andalusia and Aragon. Using the few counties and duchies that Berenguela herself conquered from Portugal, Oveco Ironside expoited the weakness of Portugal after an attack by the Moors. After a long and arduous campaign, he had done it. He had fulfilled the destiny of his house, he had unified Iberia under the crown of Hispania. During the rest of Oveco's reign, he quelled more than four major rebellions, one of which required him personally to trek across France, Germany, and Poland to Lithuania to stop the Lithuanian Pagans from rebelling. It is during this that he received the epitaph Ironside. Oveco's son was Henrique III. Due to the shifting geopolitical powers, France, England, and Poland swiftly equivocated power with Spain, so Spain was not the forefront of power in Europe anymore. Oveco's grandson, Sanç I inherited both the Scottish and the Spanish thrones, as the house D'Ivrea in fact controlled, in different branches, the thrones of Scotland, Spain, and Norway. Sanç allied himself with Poland, Sicily, and Norway. Sanç was a successful warrior-king, and managed to expand Spain's territory in Lithuania, not without the help of Poland. Upon the death of Sanç, Oveco II became Emperor of Spain. Spain's presence in Lithuania continued to expand, and Spain was called in on the winning side of wars with France and England, asserting Spain's dominance over the rest of the civilized world. During Oveco II's reign, Empress Berenguela was 200 years posthumously declared a Saint of the Holy Mother Church by Pope Alain I. Berenguela's memory lived on in Oveco II's daughter, Berenguela II.
