Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War

In short, the situation can be summed up in one sentence: the situation is stronger than the person, or the person has to bow his head under the eaves. These captured nobles do not have many choices.

After Orwell expressed his intention, some of the nobles hesitated and finally chose to stand on Orwell's side to help the Romans. The number of these people is about a quarter, and it is estimated that there are many who are pretending to be cooperative. In fact, the number of people who are really willing to cooperate with the Romans is about half of them, or even less.

In fact, Orwell is quite satisfied with the current number of people. Changing camps is not a simple matter. The price and sacrifice required are great. For Orwell, a little help is a little. Anyway, these people are unexpected gains. Even if they don't surrender to him, it's harmless and has no major impact on Orwell's own plans.

If he emphasized Judith's identity as a descendant of the Merovingian royal family, he might be able to attract some supporters, because in the minds of these people, the agreement between the feudal lord and the vassal should be sacred and cannot be abandoned by anyone. Although Judith is not the orthodox heir to the throne now, it can only be said that there is a certain legal basis, but there is no more authoritative person to jump out and claim the throne. People who are more orthodox than her are either cleared out or have to remain silent. At this time, if Judith is pushed out as a puppet, it may have unexpected results and make King Charles very uncomfortable for a while.

However, Orville did not do so considering Belisarius's thoughts and the current actual situation. Instead, he deliberately downplayed the matter when negotiating with these nobles. Belisarius and Judith's marriage was arranged by him, and now the relationship between the two seems to be pretty good. If he uses his new wife as a political bargaining chip at this time, it would be too unkind.

So he would not take the initiative to use Judith's identity to promote anything. It was their own business to think too much. His current plan did not involve the Frankish Kingdom itself. It was more of a habit to make some plans in advance.

He had already spread the news that some of the captured nobles had defected to the Romans. Based on Orwell's understanding of King Charles's straightforwardness, the other party would definitely move the fiefdoms of the families behind these nobles after they had an excuse. Those with smaller forces might be directly deprived of their territories, and those with larger forces would probably be stripped of their skin. This had nothing to do with Orwell. In essence, these actions of the Franks were internal consumption, and for him, the more internal consumption, the better.

Unless these people could bring him other benefits, such as a generous ransom, Orwell was not going to release them at the moment. He would lock them up for half a year or a year before talking about other things.

——

While Orwell was dealing with these captives, a funeral was held in the harbor of Dublin.

A long ship of about 15 meters was being buried by the soil that was continuously transported. Under the gaze of a group of Viking leaders, the ship gradually turned into a tomb made of soil.

The northerners do have the habit of ship burials, but they do not burn the ship at sea or send it into the deep sea. They just use the ship as a coffin and bury the deceased deep in the earth.

Now everyone is burying Ragnar Lothbrok, the father of many Viking leaders and a hero of the Vikings.

Ivar looked at the boat calmly, but he was already a little dazed.

This was a funeral for his father. His father died in a shipwreck and his body was gone. He could only bury the empty ship as a formality to express the respect and mourning of Ragnar by future generations.

Originally, the funeral should have been held long ago, but in order to have an excuse to invade England, Ivar linked Ragnar's shipwreck with England and tried his best to quickly gather a large army to invade the kingdoms of England. He had no time to hold a funeral for his father.

Later, the war with the Romans also involved his energy to a great extent. At first, he wanted to return to his hometown to hold a funeral for Ragnar, but now looking at the situation, he is afraid that he will not be able to return to his hometown normally in the next ten or twenty years, so he had to hold a funeral in this foreign land first.

In addition to his mother and elder brother, the main members of the family were actually present. This was a more formal funeral. In addition to the family members, all the Vikings who could attend the funeral attended the funeral. A large group of people stood on the dock, and there were dozens or hundreds of longships parked on the sea. It can be said that everyone who could attend the funeral had already arrived.

According to their cultural tradition, the more powerful and heroic the person is, the more worthy of a good ship to be buried with him. With Ragnar's identity, he was completely worthy of the most powerful dragon-headed warship to be buried with him. Even if Ivar did not send out a ship, there were still many Viking pirates willing to bury Ragnar with a dragon-headed warship. Even the Danish king who had always disliked Ragnar would not mind donating a dragon-headed warship for the sake of face.

However, Ivar not only rejected the other party's proposal to provide a dragon-headed warship, but also did not use a dragon-headed warship to bury his father. The ship tomb he chose was an ordinary Viking longship, more than ten meters long, with ordinary decorations and materials as long as the length.

This ship has a special commemorative significance for his family. Ragnar made his first pot of gold on this ship. He rode this long ship to travel between Denmark, Frank and the Baltic Sea, and earned his first pot of gold through trade, looting and slave trading. Then in the following years, his business became bigger and bigger, and he became more and more famous. Thousands of Vikings united under his flag, and he became a hero in the Viking world.

Ivar thought that if Ragnar was watching him in Valhalla, Ragnar would definitely want to use this long ship as his coffin. He had a deep affection for this ship, and Ivar did think that this ship was more worthy of commemoration than those magnificent dragon-headed warships.

The significance of a large ship that supports the facade is to show off manpower and material resources. In fact, it is applicable to very narrow occasions. For the Vikings, this ship can almost be said to symbolize an era.

Ragnar never considered himself a lord or a king. He had always been very clear about his position - he was a robber, a merchant, and a Viking who made a living by the sea. For a man like Ragnar, dying in the sea was probably the most suitable fate.

Ragnar's death may not mean the end of an era, but it does foreshadow some changes. Ivar watched the soldiers fill the ship shovel by shovel, and his thoughts gradually turned to the present.

He patted his youngest brother Ubbe on the shoulder: "How are the preparations going? Have you taken all your belongings with you?"