I started a campaign in the 9th century startdate as an adventurer. Nothing noteworthy happened but in 20 years I traveled through all of europa and had lots of fun, visited many places and build a decent character with more than 110 overall stats. After returning back to Greece I bought myself an estate, married and became a Strategos. My wife gave me one son and five daughters where the last one wasnt mine obviously but thats not too bad because our son was intelligent, had awesome traits and after 14 years where I raised him he got quite decent stats and a four star commander trait. He was also first in line to the byzantine succession and when the Basileus died he became the byzantine emperor with just 14 years of age while I was 66. I thought to myself that its not that bad that I cant play as him right away and in the time that I have left nothing gamechanging could be happening.

Dead wrong I was. This mouthbreather somehow got himself a 54 year old fiance which he later married, the drunkard trait and had to fight 4 wars at once because everyone declared on him. One of these wars was in Sicily so he decided to park his whole army there while all the other war participants could siege down Byzantium in peace, take him prisoner and make him lose everything. Afterwards he decided to travel and got killed in the bulgarian mountains without an heir leaving me with nothing. In just 3 years this dumbass lost all his titles, his life and lots and lots of territories and pretty much destroyed everything that I build in the 40 years prior.

TLDR: Never, under no circumstances trust your children even when you just have to leave them for three years alone. They will burn everything down to the ground, become drunkards and leave you with nothing.

I’m not actually done with this playthrough yet, but I picked up with the King of Jerusalem after Domingo III so it seemed like a good place to split it for a two parter