A Crusader Kings 3 player shared a story typical of this strategy game about the biggest war of the Roman Empire, which started because of the emperor's wife's infidelity

Grand strategy games promise epics – crusades, holy wars, standing against the Mongol horde sweeping in from the east. Then it turns out the biggest bloodbath of an entire campaign had nothing to do with faith or land. It happened because someone slept with someone else.

That's exactly how one campaign in Crusader Kings 3 wrapped up, with a player ruling a revived Roman Empire. A vassal had an affair with the ruler's wife, then refused to go to prison when the emperor demanded it. What followed was a war familiar to any series veteran. Roughly 390,000 soldiers rallied to the crown's side.

The mechanics behind this are pretty mundane, even though it plays out like something from an actual chronicle. Refusing an arrest automatically triggers an independence war or faction revolt, and allies can jump into the fight on their own if relations are good enough and there's a whiff of easy prestige to be had.

The ending followed series tradition too. One battle, capture, blinding, a dungeon cell, and shortly after that a record appeared noting death from "too many broken bones" after a fall.

Totally normal prison accident.

Where an army of that size even comes from deserves its own mention. The player spent several generations running a eugenics program of sorts: polygamy, equal inheritance rights for women, and strict partner selection based on stats produced a dynasty where genius-level characters show up more often than literate barons did in the actual Middle Ages. Combined with the administrative government system from the Roads to Power expansion, this results in governors running at roughly 50 percent efficiency, with income constantly funneled back into provincial development and buildings.

What makes this funnier is how closely it mirrors an actual episode from Roman history. Emperor Marcus Aurelius Carinus, according to later sources, seduced the wives of his own officers, and in 285 AD he was killed mid-battle at the Margus by one of those very officers, clearing the way for Diocletian to take power. In the Crusader Kings 3 version the roles got flipped, but the body count ended up about the same.