Okay considering it's been nearly a month since last chapter I might make a map after this given what I said as well about the political changes. Also sorry about the shortness and the lack of anything Vinland/New world and Rus related as there is not a whole lot going on. I'm hoping the extreme changes will be able to sate peoples desires.
Also hooray for the TL being close to it's first birthday (my account has already experienced this).
1153-1157
In Britain, Gruffydd ap Hywel had died with his immediate heirs dying only days after. Immediately crisis plagued the Isles with Scotland regaining independence at least to a small extent with having only a fraction of Scotland proper centered around the North of the country and on Orkney and the Hebrides. it is speculated that only forty three percent of the pre-Welsh domination Anglo-Saxon population were still alive with the majority of them being either being women, the old and the young with only a very little group of men of fighting age leaving Britain with many numerous Celtic kingdoms popping up around the country with the kings being the generals tasked with overseeing the Genocide and Oppression of the English people who then declared independence. The new Kingdoms had been reminiscent of the Celtic Kingdoms that sprung up after the retreat of the Western Roman Empire.
On the Island of Ireland however, a new superpower would arise. Cecil ap Merfyn, the man who had taken control of Ireland through a campaign of blood, betrayal, and trickery was now one of the most powerful men in the British Isles with only the King of Great Ebrauc being more powerful taking control of most of Scotland and all of what was formerly Northumberland, Lancashire and Cumberland. Another Kingdom to rise up in power was the Kingdom of Dumnonia with their west border being the River Severn and the Western border being the Thames, with the city of Londinium being split in two with no crossing the river allowed meant entire families were separated by one river.
In Byzantium, things had been going fairly well for the Empire; Anatolia was slowly being reconquered, the western border with the Bulgars were secure enough, the people were well-fed and the city of Nova Roma was a greater hot bed for trade then it had ever been in hundreds of years. However things in the Italian territory were looking problematic, building of relations with the west and the pope that had been building up for decades were slowly fumbling down. The native Catholic population were unhappy with the Orthodox rulers, so in the Court of Constantinople a decision was made that would change the political demographics of the Mediterranean sea for years to come.
The Isle of Sicily was sold to the Iberian Empire provided the Byzantine merchants would not have to undergo tariffs, would allow people of the Orthodox faith to go unmolested, would enforce a extremely large tariff on all Venetian merchants wanting to trade in Sicily, on certain weeks of the year which would be in the time of perfect sailing all Venetian Merchants would be banned from entering Sicily,and that these terms would have to be uphold for seven years.
The Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire was very reluctant to give up perfectly good land but was convinced by his advisers to do this with Sicily as an experiment and then sell the rest of the Italian territory to the Iberians. However the Emperor had believed that Sicily would be all that was necessary and that he could win over the Natives in Italy in due time.
In the Iberian Empire, the purchase of Sicily was a great boon. One would think that it would be uneconomical to not be able to trade with Venice, however it had been very profitable as the Venetians would make contacts in Africa who would buy Sicilian goods for them and then sell them again at a slightly higher price. The Iberians were also making a fortune off of the Salt trade by mining salt from the Chotts in African Territory. With all this income coming in from the territory all along Iberia and North Africa that had once been many years before hard to trade with given the Heathens controlling it but now that Christians were inhabiting the land it was ready for trade with Europe at large.
When an Empire such as this had money it was usually used for a certain purpose: Conquest.
The Islands of the Runnieyjar had been inhabited by Primitives like the Skraelings of Liefrvalde, and for decades have been in trade with the Empire on the Mainland. However when a Christian missionary had gotten killed by one of these savages in gave Emperor Olaf Ragnarsson (who at around this time changed his name to Charles to appease the more conservative of the native Iberian hierarchy, the exact date when he did this is unknown but many during and after his reign still called him Olaf) a perfect excuse to invade. Sending his son Conrad to conquer the Isles
With Sailors used to the open Atlantic he had easily conquered the Northernmost Island and immediately began building a base of operations. These included the building of farms, smithies, wells, rudimentary roads, docks, and varying things. After five months of overseeing the development of the North Island he then gathered reinforcement from the mainland and even mercenaries from the Norse world and began the conquest of the other Islands. The Natives had heard of this and formed a sort of coalition and each island contributed an amount of soldiers to the Island closest to the North one; Conrad was in fact glad for this as it allowed him to annihilate their largest force and garner fear among the other Islands. When he fought the coalition force he was able to defeat them with crossbows that gave the Iberians an advantage in range over the people who had not even used bows; however he sustained much more casualties than he had expected but kept the exact number of deaths secret and then gave the other Islands an ultimatum: Surrender and accept Jesus Christ or be annihilated. The threat was successful with the Islands laying down their arms and then Conrad began colonizing the islands with Iberians.
Around the same time as the Iberian conquest of the Runnieyjar the Iberians had gotten a hold of a certain plant from the east, Cannabis.
The plant had been initially used as a form of recreation and as a medicine to calm down hysterical women. It grew in popularity among the cities of the Empire and many had thought of the plant as a stress reliever, however the Church disliked the crop as it was supposedly observed those who used it had shown hedonistic tendencies such as extreme Gluttony and Lust.