Livonian Crusade

So, MF sloooooowly works on finishing Rozzer’s color scheme meme.

Other Pieces on dA: Greens and Yellows, Blues and Browns

Anyway, moments from history and bad helmet hair. The Northern Crusades! The King of Denmark, plus all vassals and various confederations of monk-knights went on Crusade in Livonia around 1200 CE. Burning pagans, having God drop your battle standard on your head, quite literally, it was good times for the Danes. The Danes are kind of inclined towards these kinds of parties, if history is anything to go by. Get into bloody battles, light helpless people on fire, and find signs from God, or Gods, in unlikely places is a regular Friday night.

The confederations were all kind of a disorganized mess, being the remnants of a lot of orders who had found Palestine too hot for them. They became known as the Livonian Brothers, and were pretty messed up and corrupt. The Teutonic Order of Knights stepped in to slap them into shape, and they grumblingly reformed into the lone wolf “we don’t have to listen to you, Grand Master, we just are, okay?” branch of the Teutonic Knights.

The Livonian Order was not actually incorporated as a cadet branch of the Teutonic Order until 50 years after the Danish flag falling on the head of the Danes incident, but I just wanted to draw teen!Teutonic Order trying his darnest to be one of the cool kids. It doesn't make much sense if you interpret the event as part of the broader section of the Teutonic Order's History to view him as a teen. It works if you take the time period as a singular event to imagine it as a teen, but not if you take the rest of history into context. However sometimes you just have to enjoy drawing teen!Teutonic Order and Older Cool Kid!Denmark. Here is the way history according to my head canon ages go:

Teutonic Order:

1220 — “Born” (5 yrs old)
1339 — Moves headquarters to Marienburg, a castle and fortified town in the recently ceded region of Pomerania* (8-10 years old)
1410 — Tannenberg, (canonically he’s 14-15-ish according to Hima’s later strips. I actually prefer interpreting him as much younger, but canon rules)
1629 — Decides to invite Sweden to help him get rid of his Polish problem read: Worst Plan Ever (17)
1648 — End of Thirty Years’ War (18 years old)
1657 — The two parts of Prussia are united with Brandenberg, and tentatively considered a sovereign state, (has reached the age of majority 21)

Denmark:

793 — The famous raid on Lindisfarne, (12-13 years old, not strictly a Danish event but a good bookmark event)
925 — King of the Danes crowned, Danes sort of united, (16 years old)
965 — Christianity introduced to the Danes, ends up uniting people even more tightly, (18 years old)
1015 — Danelaw established in England and Denmark’s power begins to expand, (19-20 years old)
1397 — First Kalmar Union begins, (has reached the age of majority 21 years old)

So kids might be growing up faster in this modern age. Anyway, this picture originally had Estonia and Latvia getting the typical “You’re not repenting your paganism, witch!” treatment, which is why there’s a red backlight. I decided that I didn’t want to draw that, however. The composition is a little unbalanced as a result, but fewer people being burned to death always better?

*Thanks to ~margushka for pointing out that the Teutonic Order couldn't possibly have moved into a commonwealth that didn't exist for 50+ years.

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