My current Ironman vanilla game is very interesting. I started as Passau, a small county in Bavaria, and within a lifetime became the Duke of Austria (This was pretty much totally luck, no scheming or anything
) as well as briefly the DUCHESS of Austria because at that point I made my whole huge family into cathars because female rulers are awesome.
I REALLY wish that one woulda stuck, as she had the ATTRACTIVE trait. I was trying to spec her into a master seductress to get away with ALL THE SHIT. But of course she died in childbirth when she was like 20 something and crushed my dreams. (Though my current heir is a female homosexual, which ALSO has a attraction bonus, so maybe hope isn't lost...)
Currently I am playing as Manfred "THE USURPER" who is only a usurper because some priest pressed his claim when the whole universe hated the female child heir of Duchess SlutbagMcDieslikeabitch. He was an infant when all this happened, and now he has that moniker forever.
Whats really great though is that my heir is matrilineally married, with kids of our dynasty, to some bozo with a claim on Bavaria (the kingdom we are in) that I can start a faction over. I even have over 50% of my lieges forces too, so I'm building up cash to hire the mercs to make that possibru. I'm currently somewhere in the 400s...
But, the stuff in my dynasty is fairly basic stuff compared to whats going on elsewhere. I'm loving the crap that has happened here, this is the first game I saw the HRE form for example (and they did it in 810!) as well as the first where the Umayyads have done more then just lay where they started in spain, they actually took most of Aquitaine, and recently totally fucked over Asturias (who now have...the county of Leon. In the middle of the Deep Green Sea)
Rus has formed and despite a recent revolt hiccup, is basically poised to expand into being Russia. Khazaria doesn't seem to exist anymore, nor do the Magyars, so that whole tengri region is ripe for whoever wants to murderblob it. EXCEPT Pannonia. Which is currently spread almost wide enough to become Carpathia. Though I suppose Pannonia isn't actually Tengri. But it IS squishing my Bavaria between itself and the HRE, which is composed of everything from France to Germany to Italy.
Oh yes, and Svipjod is all of Norway now. And it has expanded itself into England. On English neck a Norman yoke indeed. Seriously, those whole islands are screwed. Svipjod is the most powerful force of Pagans in the world right now.