Thanks Kamilkhan (and others), however, the bigger question (beyond how have they such massive but useless armies) is how they are still standing. If the situation was reserved and I was in a situation where I was in a war with the major power, lost some top generals and three royal members, with no family guarding my 'homeland' in this case, Spain and my King was on a distant island, I would almost be guaranteed a civil war.

In this case a civil war would be disastorous as it would almost guarantee 1 or more emergences, (the Portugese, Aragonese and/or the Spanish) yet it hasn't. Have I misread what causes civil wars or is this a CPU 'cheat'?

Also, i'm liking some of the scenarios people have posted. I've only once had the Turks be any sort of power and that was on the third re-emergence. It's amazing to uncover a portion of the map and find something ridiculous has happened without you knowing about it!