And right before the war I checked around in the world for good generals, just in case. This left me at equal fottings with the HRE, counting some mercenaries, give or take. I did that by personally holding all of the florence and modena duchies. But you still need to consolidate your holdings in central italy. Until you get to the second rank in one of the christian societies, which let's you go celibate, then marry him when the game is paused and go celibate right after, now you got an ally to fight HRE while not stacking up a whole family of 'unwanted' kids. In the beginning of the 1066 start the french monarch is still a kid, so you can hitch yourself to him in a non-matrilieally marriage, and when he gets to adulthood just push him forward a couple of years and don't accept when he wants to seal the deal. I won an excommunication was against HRE which I declared on him after someone else deposed his anti-pope and I was succesful in asking the pope to excommunicate him, this war you can just declare on him when you are his vassal, which I thought was pretty neat. I succeeded my fifth try or something like that, honestly lost count. I did this in my first try, which did not work for me, took to long a time, I was 39 when I got the bloodline, and I could not get any kids then, so it was basically game over for me. So either as you stated, you have to win an independence war and then win another was, depose pope war, against HRE.

No idea if you're still wanting an answer to this but I recently set out to achive the true matilda bloodline too, and I was succesful after a nights work.

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