After the assassination of his father, the young boy Esteban had to take over the responsibilities of the county at the age of six. Now, in Crusader Kings world, putting a child in power is like putting the easiest killable bait in front of a bunch of hungry hyenas. Easiest to kill, easiest to capture and the most easiest to plot against.
And so, I had to be extra vigilant, finding the right people for the right job while trying to keep the child alive. But because the playable character is a child, there was not much I could do. Luckily the mother came in handy as she possessed the legendary skills of deceiving people.
Now with a skillful intelligent and cunning mother as guardian, the adolescence of Count Esteban went quite smoothly, no life threatening events, no major fractions to look out for. Although, the young child did manage to take back some of the neighboring counties during the ruling period under his mother.
At sixteen years old, Count Esteban formed an alliance with the neighboring Duke by marrying his younger daughter while maintaining a friendly relationship with his uncle. Even though he still had a legit claim on the thorns, he knew it was best for him to wait while trying to increase the army and forming an alliance with France.
While his political affairs were rapidly getting better, his personal life was far from it. He had one son and three daughters with his wife whom he didn’t love. You see, our boy here didn’t fall under heterosexual category, thus it was not possible for him to fall in love with the woman he married (trust me, I didn’t choose to make things harder for him, but that’s how the game dices rolled out for Esteban). But he never acted on it, even when life chose to give him a couple of ways out, he didn’t. The reason was simple, he was extremely religious and loyal. He would never betray his wife or his belief to satisfy his desire (Again trust me, I did try to give him the green light, but that only increased his stress level.)
Apart from this little sad tragedy of life, Count Estaban did manage to rule quite peacefully for seven years, investing on the development of his domain, keeping diplomatic relationships with foreign rulers, taking over necessary counties and at the age of 37, uniting the duchy of Leon. Thus becoming a Duke.
Now that he had a respectable title under his belt, it was easier to form an alliance with the king of France by marrying his one and only son and heir with the princess and when the betrothed finally happened, he had enough army to declare war against his current ruler and cousin.
But when he finally focused his attention towards the target, the sad reality came into view. The current ruler of Castile was drowning in multiple civil wars, disputes with neighboring rulers and was going through a holy war. A very stressful and tragic situation and no way in hell he was going to leave the peaceful life and chase after a throne that would give him nothing but stress, wars and an early death.
So he told himself, not now, wait a little more and that’s what he did, waiting while keep investing on his domain developments and by doing so, making his treasury more and more wealthy.
But when he turned 46, the biggest civil war of the kingdom of Castile finally came to an end. Duke Albert won the war against the liege and successfully achieved independence and created the kingdom of Galicia. This victory, in which our boy Esteban had no role to play, instead chose to sit back and enjoy, crumbled the united kingdoms. And because Duke Esteban already held the majority of lands and titles of Leon, he was automatically named the King of the newly formed Kingdom.
And Just like that, the life long dream of King Esteban got fulfilled without doing anything on his part but just being simply patient and smart.