It's the first Saturday of the month, so it's time to dive into recent developments.
The royal library
The biggest feature built last month was the royal library.
Building up a royal library is a long-term project which the king can complete. Your predecessor, William II, was in our timeline known as a competent soldier and ruthless king, but one who paid scant attention to scholarship and even religion. In DGR's timeline, one can imagine the effects on the royal library due to his much longer rule! This gives us the ability to build it up almost from nothing.
Mechanically, the library allows our king to study and learn. During the early part of the game, stats and skills are quite malleable. However during the bulk of the game it is much harder to change. Harder doesn't mean impossible though. There are many events that present situations which can influence the king's personality depending on choices made. On the other hand, singular events that teach expert skills are less plausible. This is the main function of the library: to allow an avenue to increase skills in a way that makes sense.
Building the library is also a way to spend excess money. Books, being unique, hand-crafted items, were quite expensive in those days. Wars tend to absorb most of the surplus money to be sure, but I absolutely want to support more peaceful avenues.
Interview
I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to do an interview with the Austrian medieval webportal Mittelalter Digital. You can read that here (Es gibt auch eine deutsche Übersetzung hier). Thanks again to Vlad for setting this up!
You might notice a few details in those screenshots which haven't been shown elsewhere.
What's next
In a similar fashion to the library — though definitely not as long-running a project — hunting and tournaments! Where the library can teach things like medieval medicine and other scholarship, hunting and tournaments can teach horsemanship and personal combat skills. There are other benefits (and other risks!) besides this of course, but hunting is well-underway now. Details to come next month!