Good update. Wondering how long before Christian Europa start catching up on seatravel, or are they distracted on other fronts?
Christendom is at a controversial period: The Bataids are a major threat that's swallowing much of the Haemus, while in the west, there's a lot of grumbling that the Church is becoming too powerful.
France, meanwhile, is grappling with fallout from the War of Five Flowers: King Bernard was elevated to the throne around 1330 but had no direct male-line heir, and all the other male-line options were quite distant. He managed to hold on until 1341 but could not father a boy-child before his death. An attempt to revert to elective succession deadlocked when five dukes were nominated and none could win over a majority. This led to a three-year interregnum while every duke in Francia launched a bloody civil war over who would be king. The conflict was resolved in an unusual way: The Pope stepped in and supported Richard I's daughter, firstborn and sole surviving child - 18-year-old Princess Clarimonde - as a compromise candidate. This proved to be controversial and deeply precedent-setting. While the Salic Law has been used in property law for generations, there was no precedent as to whether agnatic succession also applies to the crown. (OTL, this was decided in 1316 in favour of Philip V; the Salic Law is not actually mentioned until this time.) Her biggest supporter was Aimeric, Abbot of Cluny, a former Richard supporter who wrote a long legal and theological opinion supporting the position that agnatic primogeniture did not apply to the crown, as it was not land. With the support of the Pope and the Church Knights, Clarimonde came to the throne with little real land in hand, with her holdings concentrated mainly in the Ile de France. A few nobles also supported her, partly because she was weak and would be unable to keep them from doing whatever they wanted, but mostly because they thought they could get the young queen married off to one of their sons and thereby gain control of France. By contrast, the Grand Duke of Provencia (already a French vassal in name only) refused to acknowledge her and has taken to calling himself the King of Provencia, and many viewed the entire scheme as a plot by the Pope to weaken France and benefit Provence, which has long been a source of bishops prominent in the "Strong Pope" cabal which currently calls the shots at the Lateran. One of the malcontent French dukes promptly ordered a hit on the Pope, which failed when the would-be assassins were spotted and captured by the Church Knights.
Complicating matters was that Clarimonde turned out to be shockingly competent and extremely cunning. She played her dukes against each other for years in an elaborate game of courtship as various highborn dandies vied to win her hand in marriage. The period is endlessly romanticized in later literature as the golden age of courtly love, with Clarimonde herself idealized as a paragon of beauty and wits. Both have some basis in fact, but in reality her biggest skill is being able to navigate interpersonal politics and take the blood out of the internecine wars for the throne, reducing them to a bunch of terrible flirting. Her biggest play was teasing a marriage to a son of the Holy Roman Emperor, which infuriated all her dukes, as it would've led to France passing into German hands - but she eventually made a big show of acceding to their concerns. She turned around and married Jocelyn de Rouen, son of Arnaut II, the Duke of Normandy. Arnaut is the most powerful duke in France, and Normandy is extremely rich due to its prominence in the sea trade. This - and the fact that she pulled back from a foreign marriage - allayed the concerns of neutral nobles and bought her an alliance with her strongest duke and his own network of allies, while infuriating the Dukes of Anjou and Burgundy. Jocelyn had to dodge assassins at his and Clarimonde's wedding and for four years afterwards before he was able to sire a child with her, a baby boy also named Jocelyn... who promptly died after mysteriously somehow smothering himself with a pillow. Two years later, Clarimonde had twins - a boy and a girl, Jocelyn and Ermessentz respectively - and ensured they were placed under heavy guard at all times.
The year 1360 finds Anjou at war with Normandy, while France herself remains under a co-monarchical situation. While Clarimonde is the queen regnant, she has declared King Consort Jocelyn her co-ruler, and he exercises many of her powers due to jure uxoris - but she's the mind behind him. France looks likely to pass to the De Rouen dynasty once she dies and little Jocelyn II inherits, giving him control of both the Ile de France and - once his dad dies - his family's significant and wealthy holdings in Normandy. He'll be the first French monarch in generations with real power in his hands, but it's still up in the air what kind of man he'll be.