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Manic's Northern Portraits

Welcome to Manic's Northern Portraits, a personal modification I have made for the Anglo-Saxon, Norse, Celtic and East Slavic portraits that I've decided to make available to anybody who might be interested in giving them a fresher look.

Apologies for the inconsistencies in the Norse portrait previews. For some reason, Portrait Builder doesn't seem to like the modded Norse portraits and their facial features are glitched out and all over the place. As such, unlike all the others, the modded Norse faces were taken from in-game screenshots which have been cropped.

• Anglo-Saxons (including Frisians and Old/Continental Saxons) now correctly use the English portraits in the early-game and now use German hairstyles. Because I thought the German beards looked a bit low res in comparison, Anglo-Saxon men still use English beards.
  
  
• Men of the North Germanic cultures now use modified German portraits, as well as noses from the English portraits, with vanilla Norse hairstyles in the early game, West Slavic hairstyles in the mid/late-game and Finno-Ugric beards in all eras (I tried using their vanilla beards in the early game but they just didn't look right).
  
  
• Women of the North Germanic cultures now use a combination of German and English portraits. Their vanilla hairstyles are retained for the early game, with West Slavic and Frankish hairstyles being used in the later eras.
  
  
• Celts now use Frankish portraits for their genetics, with Western Slavic eyes, while retaining their vanilla outfits and hairstyles for all eras.
  
  
• East Slavic cultures now use a combination and slightly modified version of the West Slavic and South Slavic portraits for their genetics, while retaining their vanilla outfits and hairstyles for all eras.
  
  
• Mid-game Anglo-Saxons and Norse (including offshoot cultures) now use a modified version of the English outfits for when they reach the mid-game. All royal outfits, crowns and armour have been replaced with more culture-appropriate ones, while the vanilla English outfits have had their saturation reduced to make the colours look less garish and more realistic.
  
  
• New child portraits have been added for all affected cultures, made from newer DLC assets to make them fit better with the updated faces. Anglo-Saxons and Normans now separate sets of child portraits, unique to the English ones, that look more genetically/culturally appropriate.

The unique, square imperial crown[i.redd.it] of the early-game Anglo-Saxons now carries over to the mid/late-game instead of defaulting to the English/Norman one.

The unsightly bald spots on many of the Norse hairstyles have been fixed.


This should be compatible with most other mods. The only potential issues that could arise would be if you attempt to use it with something like The Winter King or other mods that alter the portraits of the affected cultures. However, since this mod doesn't alter the vanilla game files, it shouldn't cause crashing and definitely won't corrupt your saves. Likely, the only thing you'll notice is bugged-out faces/clothing.

This mod works with with saves made before installation but, since it edits graphical cultures, you will not be able to earn achievements while in Ironman mode so long as this mod is active.

If you want to make the mod compatible with achievements, then all you'll need to do is delete the 'common folder in your installation (located in Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II\mods\manics_northern_portraits.zip] by default). The Anglo-Saxons will revert to using their vanilla outfits and hairstyles, but you should now be able to use this in Ironman with achievements enabled.

Here's a shameless plug list of some of my other mods that I'd recommend to anyone wanting to give the northern European cultures a little more flavour:

• Manic's Anglo-Saxon Units - Adds new unit designs for the Anglo-Saxons (including Frisians and Old Saxons) for the early, mid and late-game. Designs are inspired by real-life artistic depictions of historical armour and weaponry.
  
  
• Manic's Scandinavian Units - Adds new unit designs for the Norse (including its various offshoot cultures) for the early, mid and late-game. Designs are inspired by real-life artistic depictions of historical armour and weaponry.
  
  
• Manic's Celtic Units - Adds new unit designs for the Celtic cultures for the early, mid and late-game. Designs are inspired by real-life artistic depictions of historical armour and weaponry.
  
  
• Celts & Saxons Use Wooden Buildings - Gives the Anglo-Saxons (including Frisians and Old Saxons) and the Celtic cultures (excluding Breton) the Norse/northern wooden building graphics along with new unique church buildings.

For those who experience issues with the Steam Workshop and want some alternate download options, a .zip version of this mod can be downloaded HERE[www.dropbox.com].

To install, simply remove the two items from the .zip folder and place them in your CK2 mod folder.

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If you want to use all of my portrait mods but hate all the clutter in your launcher, I recommend using Manic's Portraits instead.