It's been a long while since I've played EU of any stripe, and longer since I've posted one of these.
Needless to say, it's my fault Western Europe currently looks like a pile of vomit. I started as Leinster in the mid-late 800s and went about the usual business of forming Ireland and conquering the British Isles -- it's much easier when they're a smattering of one and two province minors. The orange-peach whatsit with the vaguely germanic name, the one stuck between East and West Francia, it tried to make a land grab on some minors in England before I finished, which is what ended up drawing me onto the continent. A few decades after unifying I managed to pull off a diplomatic coup which is largely responsible for the current situation: I got alliances and royal marriages with East Francia and Italy, the blobs on my south and east borders respectively.
We've been at constant near-perfect relations for close to two hundred years; they get into wars in Eastern Europe and the Med that I can join without having to do anything, and they kept West Francia, wossname, Burgundy (for the decade or so it existed), and Brittany from getting help against me. Italy and I split western France about down the middle, now they're busy with the muslims in Iberia. Eastern Francia absolutely tore through Eastern Europe, and founded
Germany in
1071.
The other major players are the Byzantines (maroon), Bulgaria (lavender), and Svealand (purple). Oh, and Western Francia technically still exists (at least until the truce is over, heh); it's the blue OPM sandwiched between our unholy triple alliance. I figure I'll provoke Germany into war at some point before it gets too strong and chop all this up to see what happens, 'cause as cool as it is having Germany founded 800 years ahead of schedule is, I miss the chaos of HRE-era Europe full of OPMs. So I won't annex much, just force a bunch of releases.
Only had one really close spot in the buildup, it was back in the 1050s when my monarch was in his 80s and heirless and I only had ~2-3 provinces on the continent. Thankfully the legitimize-daughter event triggered and she had a pretty obscene military score, so I could afford to pop a couple of policies on and reroll generals until I got a pair of monsters to stomp Western Francia's shit in with.