1372

## **World Events**

### **Date unknown**

* Encounter of Sintra: twenty Portuguese knights rout four hundred Castilian infantrymen of the country.
* Peace is declared between the Kingdom of Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples.
* The Kingdom of Chūzan (now in southern Japan) enters tributary relations with Ming Dynasty China.
* Four-year-old Muhammad as-Said succeeds his father, Abu l-Fariz Abdul Aziz I, as Marinid Sultan of Morocco.
* Newaya Maryam succeeds his father, Newaya Krestos, as ruler of Ethiopia.
* The city of Aachen, Germany, begins adding a Roman numeral Anno Domini date to a few of its coins, the first city in the world to do so.

## **The Sphere of Magic**

### **May:** Localized Welsh rebellion, part two.

* May – Owain Lawgoch makes a second attempt to take the throne of Wales. Whilst attacking the island of Guernsey, he abandons the invasion in order to fight for France at La Rochelle.

### **June:** the Battle of La Rochelle results in loss of English control of the Channel

* June 22 – Battle of La Rochelle: The French enlist the Castilians to defeat the English. The victory gives control of the English Channel to France for the first time since 1340.
* It marked the first regional use of handguns in a naval battle, as well as the use of incendiaries (spraying oil on the decks and rigging of English ships and lighting them with flaming arrows).

### **July:** Richard's Arcane Interest begins with veneration of Merlin...

* Having been tutored by a pair o' docs from Oxford and Cambridge, occasionally tutored in Theology from an increasingly iconoclastic socio-theologist John Wycliffe, and having a now-*All-Star* nanny, the boys presence in court was a regular feature. That youth would be in a royal court so regularly was suspect, but word spread to the point that Jean Froissart circled back through England to record impressions of the boys for his *Chronicles.*
* It was an absolute necessity at the time: Edward III was fading into the sunset and Alice Perrers was a divisive force of personality behind him. Prince Edward of Woodstock was increasingly isolating himself due to dysentery deterioration, and Joan of Kent was distraught in roughly the same disappearing act as the original timeline. The Welsh were fomenting revolution, Scotland was allying with France, Ireland was being Ireland and the French took back the Channel. The English Royal Court would've been collapsing except for the promise of the boys. In the long-view, the future was looking up.
* As young Edward professed interest in the history and myth of King Arthur, especially given the turbulence with a torn Wales, younger brother Richard professed a complementary interest in *Merlin*. At the tender age of 5, young Rick announced he was going to figure out magic and re-build *Excalibur* from scratch...
	+ This was significant, as there was already pervasive belief in magic: enough that there was credence given to a 1324 assassination plot against Prince Edward (the future III) and Hugh Despenser by famous magician John of Nottingham. Nottingham's abilities were *not valid*, though he had a good public relations game.
* REFEREE EYES ONLY: ***Spoilers***, of course...