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HWS: Medieval Revisited - Crusades Introduction

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The Overall Theme of the Subject - And the Lord Said by Andreas Waldetoft

The upcoming small series of Sketches/Drawing as a part of Historically Wrong Sketch - Medieval Revisited exploring one of the most important events in the history of the world, the Crusades.

When i first started my Historically Wrong sketch Series set in the Middle-Ages, i opted our religion as a means of generalization (and to avoid any controversies, should there be any). This is one of the reason why so far, i have not touched the topic of Crusades, which is something not be missed when working on the History of the Middle Ages. But somewhere along the way, i felt that i am being ignorant for leaving the crusades out :(

So i've asked on my recent poll, whether i should include crusades in the historically wrong sketch series in my recent poll , I actually got a lot of positive response, hence the creation of this small sub-series :D

Project Crusades is aimed to explore the historical events that are generally included in the topic of Crusades, drawn with a "what if" tradition of including women warriors in the crusades (although, historically they did exists). While there is a lot of crusades recorded in the history, I have identified and condensed it into 3 major event, the Reconquista, The Crusades to Holy Land, and the Baltic Crusades, all with their anachronism and inaccurate representations as part of Historically Wrong Sketch tradition (which you may already be aware of =P)

Since this will include many religions as well as personal beliefs, My aim is to portray it in the objective and unbiased way in good faith. Although religion was the main driving factor in the crusades, it is a pretty complex enterprise that involves many parties, and what i want to share with all of you is not who is right or who is wrong, but the cause and effect of the Crusades as a whole (at least in general).

Of course, any support, suggestions and event feedback will be much appreciated, as they helped me to learn correct my err and improve my knowledge :)

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List of Crusading Events to be portrayed and their brief history:


1.The Crusade for the Holy Land


One of the most well-known and important event in the human history, the Crusades for Jerusalem have shaped many aspects of the 3 major Abrahamic Faith, Christians, Muslims and Jews. What started as a simple letter of request sent by the Emperor of Byzantium to the Pope for aid in fending of the Turks who invaded Anatolia, became a radical movement of penitential War with the objective of liberating Jerusalem from the hands of the "Infidels". It had a tremendous effect such as the the creation of Kingdom Jerusalem, the first of "European Frontiers" in foreign world, bringing many knowledge and trades which have otherwise remained a rarity before the crusade. The Event also helped to inspire the creations many of the Holy Military Orders, such as the Knight Templar and Knight Hospitallers. But the greater impact was that it helped the Muslims, who were originally busy fighting amongst themselves (and against the Turks), into a united single zealous military force to eliminate the European Invaders from their land, bringing Islamic Fanaticism into shape, just like the Christian Fanaticism that came along with the crusade. The Crusade also helped to weaken the Byzantine Empire, who would later became easy target for the Turks to conquer, paving the way to the creation of an Ambitious Empire we refer today as the Ottomans.

2.The Reconquest of Iberia

Or better known as Reconquista in spanish, it is also one of the major Crusade event on Iberian Peninsula in the history of Europe that lead to the birth of a one of the world's largest Empire. It actually had started much earlier that the "Crusade to Jerusalem" when Hispania who was ruled by the Visigoths (who converted to Christianity) after the fall of Rome, was invaded by the Moors and Arabs, who had just recently converted to Islam. The Muslims successfully established their dominion in Iberian Peninsula, calling it Al-Andalus, after gaining more territories by taking advantage of the disunity amongst the Christian Visigoths rulers. But then, the disunity came to the muslim Al-andalus themselves that disintegrate the Caliphate of Al-Andalus into rival emirs feuding for powers. By then, the Iberian Christian Kingdoms became united and were determined to drive off the disunited Muslims, removing the Infidels from the land, calling it the Reconquista. After a series of conflicts, The reconquista was a success, and the Muslims were driven out, leading to the creation of the Spanish Empire, one of Europe most powerful nation. It was this Empire, that would later discover the new world, spreading their faith and subjecting the local pagan populace under their rule, while eliminating significant numbers of great pre-columbian civilizations along the way.....something that would make Reconquista pale in comparison.

3.The Baltic Crusades

In the Middle Ages, in the Baltic Region lived many tribes of people who worship the Old Gods, and remained the last bastion of Pagans while the rest of their neighbors embraced Christianity. The Baltic people had never been united into a single entity, and were mostly busy with their own business, raiding their neighbors (or the other way around) and were sandwhiched between 2 great christian powers, the Roman Catholics to the West and the Orthodox to the East. The earlier crusades did took place roughly at the same time as the 2nd Crusade in Levantine, but major campaign against many of the Baltic tribes started when the recently conquered Livonians (by German Crusaders) were converted into Christianity and were enlisted by the crusaders to help in their campaign against the pagan tribes. When the Polish came into the scene, they enlisted the aid from the Teutonic Order to launch a crusade against the prussians, who succeeded and converted the region to Christianity, while the order is building their powerhouse at the same time. The powerful Teutonic Order then came in conflict with the Lithuanians, who by this time, grew into power after absorbing many of the surviving pagan tribes not yet eliminated from the Crusades. From this conflict, the Lithuanians (who would later convert to Christianity) became united with Poland, to fight the threat posed by the Teutonic Order.

The Crusade came to an end when the region was successfully converted to Christianity after a long bloody crusades, but the effect was much more than that. The now United Poland and Lithuania eventually formed into the powerful Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the early modern era, while the Prussians that had been germanized earlier by the Teutonic Order, carved their own power house to become a Kingdom of their own, and later on, the force that united Germany into a single nation.

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Characters that may be Featured:

The Baltic Pagans Kunigas Svajone of Baltai Didzioji Kunigaikstyste by Gambargin

The Byzantines Basilissa Sotirisa Angelina of Basileia Rhiomaion by Gambargin

The Saracens Ahu Durquba of Sultanat Misr Al-Sarraviyah by Gambargin

The Iberians
Women Warriors of the Kingdom of Iberia by Gambargin

The Franks Comtesse lodie de Clotaire of Royaume de Franconie by Gambargin

and many more...


A Part of the Historically Wrong Sketch Series: Medieval Revisited - You can find more on the various faction on the map here:

HWS Medieval Revisited - Faction Map v.1.0 by Gambargin
Image size
877x1195px 2.15 MB
Comments20
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AntonioFL's avatar
Something is wrong here, Iberia was a region of many lands and sometimes was used as  an extension of larger foreign empires like the Romans and the Visights, it was never a unified country ruled  by its people's.
 And Spain is only a part of Iberia, not an all and it never was.