When England Dies...

[Morgan Frydman]

Usually when I play the game in Late or High period the French always eventually conquer England. And the English are no more. Being English, this is unacceptable and I've tried assassinations and dirty tircks to somehow get the English to "reappear", but they rarely do. In the time preiod that the French are ruling England (ehich is most of the game) I see the Almohads come and go about 5 times, the Danes come and go several times. But my poor England just lies down and lets the French rule her.

Does anyone know an effective way to get factions to reappear fast?

[Kagetora]

I'm not suer about reapearing faster but you can go to the Dungeon section (This section is not in the entrance hall) and learn how to mod the game so that the English have a better starting advantage with their buildings, also there is a cheat code in which you type something in at the beggining of the game, again somewhere in this forum there is a place that will explain how to do it, and the code will allow you to play as other factions and switch around from one faction to another.

[katank]

if catholic, use inquisitor or use assassin otherwise to eliminate the French king and all heirs.

they all turn rebel and the Brits may very well reappear.

[Chimpyang]

How about playing as the Aragonese and taking on France early on in the game and weaken it by Taking toulouse and maybe Campagne whilst you're at it. That'll mean the Frnehc will be too weak monetary wise to beat the English.

[AssasinsShadow]

Yea, I feel the same way. I hate it when the English or Byzantines get taken over. I sometimes go out of my way to save one or the other. What annoys me even more is when; for instance; the Byz reappeared on the Island of Cyprus with 6,000 men, all Byz inf, Kats, and Pav Arbs. Yet they went into debt the first year and couldn't even get a boat to make it to the mainland. They just sat there the whole game. Really annoying.

[munrock]

Don't forget: England in MTW is Norman England. The Posh and Becks and Tony Blair of the day spoke French. The England in MTW is a conquered one, and the Reds vs. Blues is more of a civil war, the Frenchmen fighting for the Duke of Normandy/English King were probably more loyal to him than the Englishmen.

If you were to play as the Holy Roman Empire, encompassing the people of Saxony, you could conquer the British Isles and it would be fair to say that you had liberated it (the Saxons in Germany have noble families, while in England their estates were confiscated). Then if the Welsh were to attack you and kick you out of Britain it would be fair to say they had liberated it.

So first thing is to find out whether you're Celt, Pict, Saxon, Norman... probably a mix... chances are if England is conquered by France in the game, it technically makes no difference to you.

When I get RTW, if any faction tries to wipe the Iceni out I will give the Iceni a city in the corner of my territory. Then I'll wipe them out myself, later, if that's how I unlock them.

[Nerouin]

That is actually quite a good point, especially with the example about the Almohads- in several of my games, I've seen them come back in Portugal MANY times, only to be smashed every time! Perhaps this is because of the rebelliousness of Portugal, who knows.

[PseRamesses]

@Morgan Frydman,
Take away the landbridge between Wessex and Flanders then the English will always survive and she will also produce ships and go naval. I recommend you to try Vikinghordes XL-mod where all landbridges are removed, except in Constantinopel, have the Scots, Irish and around 10 more playable factions, even with GA-goals.

[maestro]

And where does one get this MOD?

[EatYerGreens]

Don't forget: England in MTW is Norman England. The Posh and Becks and Tony Blair of the day spoke French. The England in MTW is a conquered one, and the Reds vs. Blues is more of a civil war, the Frenchmen fighting for the Duke of Normandy/English King were probably more loyal to him than the Englishmen.

I've often wondered about how 'French' the Normans actually were, as well as what language they spoke at the time. Is it solidly laid down in the historical record that they were French-speaking?

I've come across one theory (admittedly through TV, instead of proper stuff, like books) which suggested that the word 'Norman' is a contraction of 'Northman'. Not north as in north of France, either. North as in Scandinavian. In other words, they were descendents of Vikings, so who knows whether or not they maintained the language and culture from that part of the world? They certainly hadn't lost the invasion instinct

Somewhere along the line, I've got the impression that French became the language of the English court thanks to (?? Henry II, was it??) who spent most of his life in France and to whom England was a mere land posession. Whether the gentry also spoke French outside court is somewhat moot. Either way, the rest of the population continued to speak (what became) English and, eventually, French fell out of fashion even for the ruling classes so, at least in the linguistic sense, the English were not 'conquered'.

This begs the question about whether the Normans were French-speaking at all. They took possession of the land, sure but they failed to impose their language and culture on the population afterwards. Either that or maybe they spoke the same language as the Brits - some variety of Anglo-Saxon?

[DisruptorX]

If it answers your question, yes the Norman nobility and kings spoke french.

[EatYerGreens]

If it answers your question, yes the Norman nobility and kings spoke french.

Thanks for the reply.

It answers half the question, which was really where in the historical record does it say this?

[McGowan]

To the best of my knowledge Normandy was settled by treaty by the "Northmen" under Count Rollo who was enticed by the French throne to give up 'viking' in exchange for land, title, and a duty to guard the coast against others of his kind. I don't recall the year this agreement was reached, perhaps some other kind person can fill in that gap.

By 1066, yes they spoke French (ish). It was Old French, we wouldn't recognize it today, and it was undoubtedly a dialect. From the first day of the Conquest, French was the language of the Court and Nobility in England. Since MTW begins only a short time after the Invasion, I've always wondered why England didn't have more Loyalty problems. The general populace is still Anglo-Saxon, and resentful of the invaders but this doesn't seem to be portrayed in the game.

Also worth noting is that Sicily in the game is also a Norman Kingdom, only recently founded, and that at the time the game begins, has just come within a hair's breadth of destroying the Byzantine Empire. Both Siciliy and England are nominally subject to the French crown at this time, though this fact is convienently ignored in most situations.

As a further note, having spent some time in the Norman countryside, I can say that at least some Norman's today don't like being too closely associated with France and are very proud of their seperate heritage.

[DisruptorX]

Thanks for the reply.

It answers half the question, which was really where in the historical record does it say this?

I can't give you any, as I simply can't think of any referances besides from books I have read.

In the White Company, one of the peasants is talking about how the king asked him for "mercy" when he opened the castle gate for him. (I don't think I really need to point out the play on words there )

And in Ivanhoe, the Normans have names like Brian Bois de Gilbert. Sounds pretty French to me ~:p

[Duke of Gloucester]

That the Normans spoke French is certainly true, and although they did nor replace the language, they certainly modified it. Sometimes it is difficult to say whether English words that sound French come directly from the Normans, or whether both the words have a common route in Latin, but a pretty conclusive example it the fact that English is unusual in having different words for animals and the meat that comes from them. (Pig/pork, cattle/beef, sheep/mutton) Its pretty obvious that the animals' names come from the original English, and that these are the names given by the peasant who tended the animals. The meat was named by the French speaking nobles who consumed most of the meat. Just to emphasie the "French connection": pork, porc; beef/beouf; mutton/mouton.

However, just because they spoke French, doesn't mean that their culture was French.

[McGowan]

Off the top of my head I can think of three counter-examples to the animal/meat hypothesis.

English animal/English meat/French meat (sorry in advance for spelling or gender errors, it's been a few years)

Fish/fish/poisson
Chicken/chicken/poulet
Pig/ham/jambon (of course, you used pork/porc, another option)

I'm not saying that the hypothesis has no merit, just that we shouldn't take it as an absolute rule.

You have to be careful with names as well, because if you read history texts written more than just a few years ago, you will find that the names have been Anglicanized. Only the old records and some of the new texts actually try to write about people with the names they went by. For example, Richard the Lionhearted was really named Richard Coeur de Lyon, William the Bastard was Guilliame le Batard, even Robert the Bruce in Scotland was Robert de Brus.

Culturally, it's hard to say they were or were not French, since French culture as we would recognize it comes out of the Rennaissance and the Enlightenment. At the time of MTW there aren't all that many cultural differences between France and Germany or France and the Norman English or Norman Sicilians, all are the inheritors of Merovignian culture and heritage.

[Ludens]

Also worth noting is that Sicily in the game is also a Norman Kingdom, only recently founded, and that at the time the game begins, has just come within a hair's breadth of destroying the Byzantine Empire. Both Siciliy and England are nominally subject to the French crown at this time, though this fact is convienently ignored in most situations.

Yes, and due to a quirk in the .txt files the Sicilian kings get Scottish names in stead of Norman ones. However, this is easily modified (thanks to Tricky Lady):

When playing a campaign with the Byzantines, I found out that the Sicilian kings (who I was constantly in war with) all had some very strange names (Adam, Aed, Aodh and Angus). Checked the internet on Sicilian history and found out that Sicilian kings were mostly named Roger, William or Charles.

Then I checked the Default_heroes.txt to find the problem, and I saw this thread:
SET_FORENAMES:: FN_SICILIAN 14 13

Forenames list 14 = Scottish names. This explained those weird names.
14 should be replaced by 4, as this seems to be the Sicilian forenames list.

A small change for a historically more accurate MTW

I find it nicer battling with (or against) a Norman King William, rather than with a Aed III...

[Duke of Gloucester]

McGowan

It doesn't work with all meat (lamb/lamb is another example you could have quoted). The point is that, as far as I know, in most languages there are very few examples of meat and animal having different names.