A small progress update, I am currently focused on the following themata, Peloponnese, Hellas and Krete because starting from late 10th century administration of Peloponnese and Hellas were often combined and starting from late 11th century this became permanant and they were put under megas doux along with Krete. I'll probably give the megas doux title of K_hellas and make Krete a vassal of it as well though in the future I may add a kingdom level title and put all three as de jure vassals of it after 11th century.

I'll try to wrap it up today though if I can't, it may be another day or two as I'll be busy tomorrow.

@Symmachus do you have anything on a certain sebastokrator Isaakios Doukas? A theory makes Alexios Doukas Mourtzouphlos a son of a sebastrokrator Isaakios Doukas and a second cousin to Emperor Alexios IV Angelos. Another theory makes him son of Eirene, daughter of Anna Komnene and Nikephoros Bryennios. Eirene is thought to be married c.1119 and her husband has by 1120/2 when her brothers are married to two caucasian princesses.

Ardúnadan MPE is more provinces expanded right? It probably would make it incompatible.
I don't know if it adds new characters or not, if it doesn't you may try loading it after my mod. If it doesn't have anything else that is incompatible and works instead of crashing you wouldn't have the title history changes I had added but keep the characters.

I will remove the title history changes I added at one point and either add them as a seperate submod or keep two versions of the mod, one for All Under heaven that doesn't have the changes and one for the current version of CK3 that has title history changes and eventually some new bookmarks but it will be sometime before I get there

Does that make it incompatible with MPE?

Warning for anyone using this mod with other mods, I have now started making serios changes to title histories so any mod that changes title histories (such as those adding more bookmarks) should now be considered incompatible with this.

I forgot to add, you may also be interested in a certain Konstantinos Dalassenos Doukas, who is considered to be possibly the son of Konstantinos Doukas and his wife, the daughter of Konstantinos Dalassenos although there is no evidence for it. Another suggestion put forward is that he is identical to the Thalassokrator Konstantinos Dalassenos who is mentioned in Alexiad as the relative of emperor Alexios I, though it also has no evidence for it either.

@ Symmachus, I don't have anything specific on Anna but I recall reading of Adrianos possibly being the nephew of all three brothers, Konstantinos, Theophylaktos and Romanos and thus the son of a fourth, otherwise unmentioned brother, instead of being the son of Theophylaktos.

My main sources for the Dalassenoi were PBW, Cheynet's Dalassenoi which I think you may have sent to me, DOAKS and PMBZ, I could've read it in one of these but it may also be some other place I've only visited once while searching for more on Dalassenoi.


There is also this Adrianos Dalassenos who I think I haven't added to my mod. He has a commentary on him saying he is otherwise unknown from written sources so perhaps Anna is indeed the granddaughter of an Adrianos, just not the one that is commonly thought.

https://www.doaks.org/resources/seals/byzantine-seals/BZS.1958.106.1849/view

As you can see, Bryennios and Komnene are pretty vague in their descriptions of Anna's ancestry and interestingly they both write names of the Dalassenoi in plural. From their testimony, Adrianos Dalassenos appears to be a very important man, but we only know that he was exiled along with rest of his family and later became of doux of Antioch theme. Thus, I suspect that Bryennios and Komnene instead referred to patrikios Adrianos, father-in-law of Constantine Lekapenos, who was possibly the ancestor of the Dalassenoi. Although this Adrianos is also a pretty obscure individual, he was prominent enough for emperor to seek marital alliance with his family.

The assumption of Anna's direct descent from Adrianos is based on comments by Nikephoros Bryennios and Anna Komnene. Here is what they actually say about the issue:

"John took to wife his (Alexis Charon's) daughter, Anna who, on her mother's side, descended from the Adrianoses and Theophylactes." - Bryennios

"Another person might yield here to the claims of and extol the native land of this remarkable woman; he might trace her descent from the Adriani Dalasseni and Charon, while he embarked on the ocean of their achievements." - Komnene

Do you have any thoughts regarding the ancestry of Anna Dalassene? According to every scholarly source I've read, her maternal grandfather was Adrianos Dalassenos, himself a son of Theophylaktos Dalassenos. However, because of serious issues with chronology it don't feel right to me and IMHO Adrianos is more likely to be Anna's uncle and not grandfather. Theophylaktos is estimated to be born c. 970 (and active as late as 1039), Adrianos c. 990 (and active as late as 1059) and Anna c. 1025/30 - the hiatus between generations is way too short for my liking.

@Abaçı Unfortunately, I don't have anything on this family. The only thing I've been aware of is that Polys who supported Leo Tornikes is possibly identical to Stephen Polys (according to I. Jordanov, Corpus of Byzantine seals from Bulgaria).

@Symmachus, have you ever seen anything about Polys family? One member is mentioned as a relative of Leon Tornikes, relative of Emperor Konstantinos Monomachos who rebelled against him but degree of relation is not given and I could only find 2-3 members despite Leon’s kinsman is said to be descended from an illustrious family.

A small progress update, only 3-4 families with 10 or more entries from PBW remain and unless I'm missing some from my notes and I'm almost finished with 2 of these. I expect progress to be much faster with families with fewer entries so if all goes well, I may be finished with adding families with 2 or more entries by the end of this month.

Some more progress update: Good news and ba news. Over the past days I've been working to fix the errors (that I've made while adding characters) that would prevent the game from starting with any start date I'd add after 1178 and I've finished fixing those (not all errors, only those that would prevent a game to start) all the way to 1453 should I so choose to add that as a new start date (which I don't consider) so good news. However, I had assumed since CK2 had start dates all the way up to 1337, CK3 would've carried it over, it is not the case. Even in 1204, a date not so far off from the last existing start date, the files are incomplete and as a result map looks messed up. So new start dates, at least those after 1178, won't be coming anytime soon but I do intend to add at least one 10th century start date and one date that has Latin Empire established and around.

Some progress update: As I'm getting close to finishing PBW additions, I've started experimenting a bit with the idea of adding new start dates. I do not consider properly implementing new bookmarks (with wars at start, characters promoted at beginning etc) until after AUH arrives or at least until I've made some good progress on tanother major goal, adding families from post conquest England, but I may add some extremely barebones start dates before those just to allow a start date or two to be playable. I have a few ideas at mind already, but would like to hear some more under Start Date Suggestions.

@Symmachus, thanks. It doesn't provide whose son he can be but at least says it does not seem possible to identify them so gives some freedom.

@Abaçı https://books.openedition.org/psorbonne/1939#anchor-toc-1-20

@Symmachus, thanks, I'll take a look at them in the next update.

Do you have by any chance have anything on a certain Ioannes charitonymos who died young, husband to a Palaiologina? He is said to be a Bryennios on his father's side and a Komnenos on his mother's and said to be related to Katakalon(not certain if family or person).

I've added him as the son of Iosephos, sebastos from early 12th century because Christian Settipani gives him a brother named Katakalon and also an uncle Katakalon Tarchaneiotes but not sure if there is a better placement that can be done and also couldn't give him a mother.

A small progress update: I have fewer than 10 families with 10 or more entries in PBW left. I have already added so many of the families with fewer than 10 members as well, so I'm really close to achieving this major goal for the mod.

After that I think I'll primarily focus on adding missing Norman/English families in existing start dates that Medlands has information on.

Here are two issues with vanilla Western European families that I spotted.

Uta of Passau (31526), wife of Engelbert of Carinthia (212997), is already present in the game, but she is not linked to her husband or children. However, connecting them together still wouldn't be enough. Some birth dates should be tweaked as well - for example, in the game, Uta is born in 1085, her eldest daughter Mathilde in 1094 and eldest granddaughter Marie in 1109.

In addition, Arnulf of Bavaria (10097) was made a husband of Judith of Friuli (7816). Although this marriage was indeed proposed by some historians, it is chronologically impossible - With PDX dates, Judith would be 86 when she gave birth to her youngest child. Apparently, Arnulf was actually married to her grandniece, Judith of Sülichgau (167794).

@Symmachus thanks, I'll connect Syrgiannis to his mother in next update.

I'll get to Chrysoberges family soon as well, in fact I only have a few more families in my list before them.

Also, you might want to take a look at the Chrysobergai. There are two patriarchs who came from that family, Nicholas II and Luke, although PDX gave them different dynasties.

Syrgiannes' mother Eugenia Palaiologina Kantakouzene already exists in vanilla, her ID is 34421.

It opens now, thanks!

@Abaçı Hmm, both links open for me without the any issues. I've re-uploaded problematic one: https://pomf2.lain.la/f/4opde83w.png

Thanks, though he does name them relatives indeed. He also seems to name Thomas the Slav a Son-in-Law as well, which was something I didn't know of. Other link doesn't open for me though

Here are Settipani's stemmata depicting the family of emperor Maurice:

https://pomf2.lain.la/f/nlhaojqf.png

https://pomf2.lain.la/f/bkfexpnk.png

As you can see, Settipani doesn't name any generations between Christodoros/Theoktiste and Domnika.

Important notice: I have a bit of a bad news, apparently I had made an error in the update of May 23, which caused vast majority of the characters I've added to not appear in game. It took me this long to notice because I was running an old version to play another mod. The problem is fixed now but I'd suggest anyone who started a game after May 23rd to start a new game to play this mod in all its glory of over 9000 missing historical charaters added. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Having mentioned All Under Heaven, I was thinking of stopping making additions to this mod altogether after the release and olny update it with each major dlc to keep it playable since CK3 will very likely be unplayable for me after that. A recent idea is keeping two versions, one always up to date and one for the last version before AUH, with this second one getting some other additions like territorial changes and improved title histories. But it is early to speak about these things, only thing I can say for certain for now is that I intend to keep the mod alive and playable even after AUH, even if I stop adding new characters after its release.

Some more progress update: It is now apparent that I'll be busy until mid july but as said, still slowly working on this, with 4-5 more Byzantine families each with 10+ members (some even around 20 or more) are mostly ready, though I can't exactly tell when they'll be added, hopefully within a few days. Main factor delaying these families are website of PBW is frequently down so I can't exactly work on them every time I have some time to spend.

Apart from that, another major goal I mentioned a few months ago was adding missing families/family members in England post conquest, with medlands as a source. I had already added some but haven't been adding for a while. I'll probably be done with my Elder Kings 2 campaign and update my game to the newest version in a couple of weeks and return to adding more of those as well. I can't give a timeline with this one but I hope to have accomplished these 2 major goals before AUH dlc.

Some progress update: I've been a bit busy the last few weeks and will be so until end of June or early July but nevertheless been working on this, as I've previously mentioned some months ago, I have several major goals for this mod, one of them is adding every Byzantine family that PBW offers as a source. I am close to accomplishing this goal and estimate that with my progress so far that only 1-2 months of work remain on this, so I hope to accomplish it by the end of July or end of August at latest (because I don't know how much work I can put on this until end of June).

This means several dozen new Byzantine families and several hundred more historical characters for Byzantine Empire.

@Patton yes, I decided on removing them in the next update. Will probably update in a few days with a new family or two.

I believe at this point that some of those files are outdated and causing crashes (at least it does for me), so removing/updating the event files you need would make a lot of sense

Or... maybe not. Since I don't remember any other such thing, I should just go ahead and remove all and just keep the single file that is about killing Michael and Æthelred

@Cris_Ly Thanks for the praise, checking the event folder, I don't recall now why I copied all the files present back then, all I needed was the ones that I changed. I altered those events once and didn't touch the events folder again so I kinda forgot about it. It will probably take me some time to clear out the folder though because I'm unsure if there were any other events I altered for history reasons besides the two I mentioned.

Anyway, i love this mod! Truly amazing work!

I see! You should add the event files modified by this mod in your compability list, or maybe take those files and make another mod that focuses on making events outcomes more historical? So to leave this mod as just additional characters, to not affect compability with other mods i mean

@Cris_Ly it is to overwrite some events in base game that I do not want to happen due to their ahistorical outcomes such as Basil Macedon killing Michael Amorian at game start when he should be around for near a year more or Alfred of Wessex' elder brother dying before his time.

Thanks for reminding though, I haven't compared them to the files from the main game in a while so perhaps there are a few more such things that need change.

i suppose it was a experiment with the vanilla event folder and you forgot to delete it before updating the mod?

why does the mod files have a event folder filled with unrelated stuff?

It took me a while but the Pecheneg update is finally here. This covers everything up to 1066 start. There are a few other things from after 1066 but well before 1178 so I haven't touched them (except a couple of things that I've added long ago) but will probably get to them later on.

@Irrelevant_Coin I haven't tried it anytime recently but unless EPE changed greatly, and started changing historical characters, this should still be compatible. Just follow their instructions.
I used to keep a seperate version for EPE to make use of the culture it adds but with vanilla adding most of the ones it used I've stopped updating and it's exremely outdated now. If it doesn't work I'll probably eventualy get another seperate version for EPE.

is this compatible with EPE?

A small progress update, I'm mostly done reading the sources I've found for the Pechenegs in Byzantine Empire and taken notes, so in a few days I'll be adding all I've found. Before the new dlc released I was hoping to add some of them as nomads and tributaries of the Byzantine Empire because they have retained their nomadic ways, but sadly the few areas they settled would not even be entire counties in game, so PDX nomad mechanics which was done with the whole Khazar Steppes Desht-i Qipchaq in mind would not work in such a small area. I will add all of them as noble houses but in the future I may give them a single county and make them tribal (not nomad) and tributary.

In the mean time I may add a couple or more Byzantine families or continue adding missing members to families from HRE

IT'S OVER 9000!!! I've just noticed, with the last few updates, this mod has reached over 9000 historical characters, not counting the fictional people added to represent various tribes and fill the missing generations of families to conenct members to eachother, including those the number of characters added so far exceeds 9800

Done updating the character history files, title history files and legend files with changes and additions from the new dlc, it should now be playable with no problems

New update is just around the corner, I'll be continuing to add missing members to families from HRE until release and perhaps Byzantine families as I did in the past few days. As I've mentioned in the past, my preferred mod for CK3 is Elder Kings 2 and I've just started a new playthrough a few days ago, so in order not to switch between versions every update, I'll mainly focus on adding new Byzantine families for a while again( a week or so, perhaps a bit more), which may mean less frequent updates for the time. On the plus side, not being able to update as frequently, on the plus side, I'll also focus a bit on something that is somewhat relevant to the upcoming dlc,addition of more historical people of nomadic origins(but not necessarily nomads at the time), mainly Pechenegs and perhaps Cumans, there were a few sources I've previously skimmed through but didn't take notes off of, I'll return to them.

I just saw the Chapter IV news, seems like there won't be any new start date, I still intend to gradually add what I have gathered so far. I don't plan to work on newly added areas, though I've been considering for a while on adding a few dynasties from China with only a few members due to the marriages of Ashina clan so I may add those. Also the new dlc may very well mean the end of this mod as I doubt my laptop can handle the %30 map increase with all the added characters etc. and I certainly don't want to pay each month to GeForce NOW, Boosteroid etc. just for updating the mod.

@Symmachus, do you have anything on Domnika, Bardanes Tourkos' wife? I've seen her claimed to be a descendant of Theoktiste, sister of Emperor Maurikios, but couldn't find any actual source on it.

Important notice: I'm moving this weekend and will not have internet connection for a few days so any serious problems you may encounter, now is the time to report.

Other than that, after adding another Byzantine family or two (already added two of the three I've been working for a while) I'll probably update less frequently for a good while because I'll start playing STALKER 2 and after that may also return to playing Baldur's Gate 3 which I've last played while it was still in early access. At best I'll keep my current pace for the past few weeks in which I've spent an hour a day at most and continue adding characters without any research using medlands as a source. I really wanted to keep adding more Byzantine families as soon as I moved but they take a good deal of time because of the research involved with them and most of them not having any family tree to work on and I've been eagerly waiting for years for STALKER 2 to release.