Where it all begins

While I've discussed the origins of Andalusada in outline before, I haven't actually typed it out explicitly, and certainly not here. Now that it's hyperlinked, I have no excuse. So let's take this from the top. Andalusada starts in the year 1081.

In 1081, some politics comes up. We're not totally sure about what it was; there's some legends and such but it's not nearly as well-documented as we'd like. What matters is that Alfonso VI has been remarried to one Constance of Burgundy, who brings with her a lot of Cluniac ties, papal opposition, and personal drama. A fair number of people apparently got exiled because of them this, including one Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, who leaves with no money and a fair number of retainers to feed.

With no loyalties owed to Alfonso, Díaz has to find a new employer. The first place he turns to is Barcelona, where he winters with the Counts. They hate each other. Passionately. Still unemployed at the end of the winter, Rodrigo is forced to look elsewhere to feed his cohorts.

This is the point of divergence. This is the point of departure. This is where Andalusada stops being IRL.

In the world we call reality, Díaz was hired on as the warlord in a city called Saraqusta. There he foiled an Aragonese invasion attempt and a succession crisis; his presence was directly and indirectly responsible for keeping the city autonomous for 30 years until its conquest by the Almoravids, and 20 years further than that before the Aragonese finally took it over in 1134.

For whatever reason, though, that doesn't happen in the world we call Andalusada. Failing in the Iberian east, our exile and his compatriots have to turn further south, and eventually get hired on in a city called Ishbiliyya. Left to its own devices, Saraqusta falls to Aragon that first time around, establishing Aragon as a big player (and eventually the dominant Spain) much earlier.

More importantly, though, Rodrigo's actions in the south foils a Castillan expansion attempt, the repercussions of which plunge northern Iberia into a good long period of instability that it never fully recovers from. And by the time it has fully recovered from that instability, Andalusada has diverged so far from IRL that it's not really meaningful to call it "recovery" any more.

But what that means is for the rest of the blog to illustrate.
This post is just to show where it all begins.