12-04-2021, 01:18 PM
If you have the stick, you can't be killed (or at least, you won't stay dead). You can heal your allies' wounds and diseases (disease was a much larger killer than war in the 1200s). A king who can promise his subjects and their families freedom from disease and death in battle could marshal the forces necessary to rule Europe, which in the 1200s was probably pretty much all the world the royals really cared about.