Finally! I joined yet another civil war to lower the crown authority. It succeeded perfectly, and once the king became practically powerless, I was allowed to declare war on that idiot duke and claim my precious county of Powys. Then I still had to fabricate claim on Cornwall and take it too to have enough provinces for a kingdom. And then, finally, after over 100 years of vassalage under the cursed Godwyn dynasty, I managed to claim independence after another bloody war. Hooray!
My crowning ceremony for kingdom of Brythain could have gone better. It went something like this, I imagine...
Me: "And now, by the power of God almighty, I crown myself..."
[From the outside]: "TOO-TO-TO-TOOOO!"
Me: "Oh, how nice, you arranged a horn orchestra to celebrate me!"
Courtier: "Uh, sire, we did not."
Me: "Really? Then who is playing those..."
[From the outside, with heavy French accent]: "Sinner! Prepare to meet your devil lord and be cleansed by ze righteous fire!!"
Me: "Huh?"
Yeah, turns out some random French duchess had figured that since I had been excommunicated (on the request of some random Italian bishop I hadn't ever heard of), it was a good idea to declare war on me just for fun. So we went on this short little trip to tell her that a minor duchess starting a war against a man who had just made the king of England humbly bow before him twice now is
not a good idea.
Just to be sure that it wouldn't happen again, I appointed an anti-pope. That should take care of that. The random French duchess was also nice enough to apologize for her silliness by paying me lots of money for all that wasted time. So after the little delay I continued the ceremony and happily became a king.
A screenshot of my kingdom (a moment before I formally became a king, but the provinces are all there).
Once I became a king, the English king realized he still had some claims on my counties and insisted that I'd drive him back to Thames for the third time. He has since admitted that having his dog's niece's best friend's owner's namesake be a distant relative to one of my drinking buddies was a silly reason to start a war for. He has promised not to attack me again for the next 10 or so years.
Funny thing is, that truces in the game seem to be one sided: I never made such promise, and my last truce with him is expiring quickly. So my next plan is to usurp the duchy of Oxford from him (we keep usurping it from each other every few years) and then conquer the province to stop that game.
I echo what has been said in this thread earlier: this game is marvelous!