Lives of AoE2 Campaign Heroes (Chart)

Hey guys, I posted this on Reddit but thought it would be great to share here. It is a chart of when each campaign hero lived – a cool guide to place campaign heroes in history and see who lived at the same time!

Note, Yodit’s lifespan is unknown but she lived circa 960 based on contemporary Arab accounts while Ivaylo was certainly killed by 1281 but his birthyear is unknown. I have also not included any heroes from the Battles scenarios and there’s one campaign (Bari) that is about a city, not a hero, so it’s excluded.

Some cool facts:

1427-28 was an eventful two years
Le Loi won independence for Vietnam in 1427, the same year that Sforza fought for Milan against the Venetians (depicted in Sforza scenario 2), and the year before Joan of Arc really made a name for herself at the Siege of Orleans.

A bunch of contemporaries
Saladin, Barbarossa, Genghis Khan, and Prithviraj all were contemporaries. Sundjata just missed this period, being born late in Genghis Khan’s reign.

Time Periods with Few Campaigns
The 1300s were a period of immense change in Europe and the height of the Black Death, but the period is largely untouched by campaigns. Likewise, Attila and Alaric are far outliers, and there are only four campaigns set in the 600-year period of 400 to 1000!

Shortest and Longest Lived Heroes
Also, some died very young: Joan (19), Prithviraj (26), and William Wallace (35). The longest lived was Gajah Mada who lived out his last days in tropical exile to the age of 74. Others who lived long lives were Pachacuti (71), Tamerlane (69), Barbarossa (68), and Sforza, Bayinnaung, Sundjata, and Genghis Khan all died around age 65.

Did Any Heroes Actually Meet?
As for if any of the heroes actually met – probably not, though Barbarossa and Saladin came very close. Barbarossa died in 1190 en route to the Third Crusade that started in response to Saladin’s capture of Jerusalem in 1187. Saladin would die in 1193 but it is very conceivable that had Barbarossa not drowned, the two men might have fought in those 3 years that separated their deaths.

If we include Battles heroes and secondary characters, there are some direct connections. Richard the Lionheart (from the Battles scenario Cyprus) of course interacted with Barbarossa and Saladin, but he does not have his own campaign. Some secondary characters in campaigns also interacted with characters from other campaigns. For example, Subotai appears in both the Genghis Khan and Kotyan campaigns and Flavius Aetius, the commander of the Roman forces in the Attila scenario The Catalaunian Fields, was a hostage of Alaric as a boy many years earlier.

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Interesting stuff, thank you for sharing. I really hope to see some more official campaigns in the future.
My highlights would be:

Vytenis:
A Campaign about the Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War.

Ottokar II. Přemysl
There is actually a really nice campaign about Ottokar and I would love to see it being officially added to the game:

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Nice! Thanks for posting here!

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I HOPE YOU CAN MAKE THE CAMPAIGN FOR RICHARD THE LIONHEART,BRITAIN NEEDS HIS OWN LONG CAMPAIGN!