Crusader Kings II official cover art with a knight on horseback and the game logo

Crusader Kings Ii

2012video game / community memesclassic

Published August 17, 2026

Crusader Kings II is a grand strategy game from Paradox Development Studio released in February 2012, whose dynasty simulator gameplay spawned a cult community and meme staples like Deus Vult, Remove Kebab and Glitterhoof the horse chancellor. Playing medieval nobles through cousin marriages, murder plots and inherited traits made the game a fixture of PC gaming meme culture.

gaming catchphrase memes subreddit origin memes fandom discourse memes early 2010s memes

Overview

Crusader Kings II (CK2) is a grand strategy game from Paradox Development Studio set in medieval Europe, released for PC on February 14, 2012, with an OS X port on May 24, 2012 and Linux support arriving on January 14, 20133. Players run a noble house rather than a single character, so when your ruler dies the game keeps going through their heir until the clock hits 1453, the year Constantinople fell to the Ottomans5.

The game's identity is built on emergent storytelling. Characters carry defining personality traits that shape opinions, marriages, plots and inheritance, and Paradox pushed this angle hard with the pre-launch "Seven Deadly Sins" YouTube spots2. Sales stayed strong long after launch, passing one million copies by September 2014 on the back of word of mouth and constant patching1. Reviewers gave the game an 82 Metascore, singling out how accessible it was for a genre known for spreadsheets3.

Ongoing support kept the base game alive well past release, with more than 60 patches shipped by early 2017 alongside a stack of major expansions and cheaper cosmetic portrait or music packs4.

Origin & Background

Platform
PC (Paradox Development Studio) / Reddit and Paradox forums (community meme spread)
Creator
Paradox Development Studio
Date
2012

Paradox Development Studio launched Crusader Kings II on February 14, 2012 as the follow-up to the 2004 original, and it quickly turned into the studio's biggest strategy release to date1. The base game only let you play Catholic, Orthodox or Miaphysite Christian rulers, and each successive expansion widened the pool: Sword of Islam added Muslims, The Old Gods opened up pagans and shifted the earliest start to 867, and Rajas of India brought in the Dharmic faiths3.

The meme layer grew out of that expansion cycle and the Paradox community forum, where players traded screenshots of absurd dynastic outcomes, ugly maps and event text that read like true crime out of context5.

How It Spread

The subreddit r/CrusaderKings became the main hangout outside Paradox's official forum, and its spinoff r/ShitCrusaderKingsSay collected in-game lines that sound unhinged when yanked out of gameplay context, everything from casual fratricide to Zoroastrian sacred incest marriages5. That tone, medieval politics filtered through tooltips and murder plots, is what most CK2 memes trade on.

"Deus Vult," the actual First Crusade battle cry Pope Urban II used at the Council of Clermont in 1095, was already Paradox slang from earlier titles and locked in as the default community rallying yell for the game5. "Remove Kebab," aimed at the Umayyad and Seljuk blobs that press on Iberia and Anatolia in most starts, spread far enough that Paradox banned it from their official forums, and the variant "Remove Karlings" popped up after The Old Gods start put the powerful Carolingian dynasty on the map5. Cartographers, meanwhile, coined "Border Gore" for realms that end up non-convex and discontiguous after enough inheritance wars.

The Sunset Invasion DLC, released November 15, 2012, dropped an Aztec fleet on the Atlantic coast as a late-game answer to the Mongols and drew a tepid reception, with the community flagging both the ahistorical setup and the Aztec army's near invincibility6. A later Paradox community survey confirmed it as the most divisive add-on the game had shipped, and PDS avoided fantasy scenarios afterward7. Around the Conclave expansion, event ZE.15000 let a lunatic ruler appoint their horse Glitterhoof as chancellor, a nod to Caligula's horse Incitatus, and the equine courtier became a fan favorite spawning fan mods and a "Horse" culture unlock.

How to Use This Meme

The catchphrases work outside the game too. "Deus Vult" gets deployed as an exaggerated pro-crusade punchline in strategy communities, though the phrase has picked up real-world extremist baggage that CK2 players are often quick to distance themselves from. "Remove Kebab" carries similar warnings and is typically kept to in-game context about pushing back Muslim neighbors on the map. "Border Gore" is common shorthand for any map screenshot with genuinely ugly territory. Screenshot posts typically pair CK2's dry event text with an absurd family tree outcome, an inherited "Double Chin" trait chain spreading through generations, or a suspiciously convenient assassination that just cleared the succession5.

Frequently Asked Questions