Preventing title loss due to gavelkind succession

[WebGremlin]

I'm playing as Léon and my second ruler holds a title to a couple of kingdoms. However I was presented with a warning that some of my kingdom titles would be lost on succession as I have more than one child. And Gavelkind succession dictates that my titles would be split among all my children.

Changing to primogeniture (where the eldest always inherits everything) was unavailable to me as it requires a high Crown Authority law, and I had only set it to medium. I couldn't increase it to high either as I had already changed it once with my current ruler.

So I created the title of King of Portugal, which started off at medium authority (I'm guessing because that's where my other kingdoms where at). But probably because I hadn't changed the law for that kingdom before, I could actually increase it to high. So that's what I did, then I made Portugal my primary title, and changed the succession law to primogeniture. Then I switched my primary title back to Léon and changed the succession law back to Gavelkind (gives me an extra demesne). Then I noticed that my crown authority in Léon had changed to high as well, and even though I am on Gavelkind, all my titles are still being inherited by my eldest son. So, albeit some vassals don't really like my as much anymore because I've been switching laws around, in the general sense it's all still exactly as it was but now my oldest kid inherits everything :)

I don't think it's really meant to happen this way, but wanted to share it anyway.

Also, if I stay on gavelkind, and form the empire of Hispaña, will I not have to worry about title loss anymore as the kingdoms are part of Hispaña and that empire title will be inherited by my heir anyway?

[Corrupted Sanity (Vex)]

You'll want to get rid of Gavelkind ASAP in my opinion. Much easier to remove it before you create the empire.

Any created kingdoms/empires will take on the laws of your current primary title.


Portugal is probably still on Primogeniture, giving it to your oldest son. I'm not sure what's happening with the other titles... I feel like Leon having high CA is a glitch of some sort though.
When I have/am stuck with Gavelkind, I try to only keep 1 top level title so my realm doesn't split. Although, upon succession it should be fairly easy to claim the other kingdoms again - You'll get claims and your primary heir will inherit all your money, retinue, ect.


If you only have 1 top level title (Empire of Hispania in this case) typically you won't have any territory break out of your realm.

EDIT: Looked it up and it looks like it can happen, but only if you have "elective gavelkind" instead of "gavelkind"
One warning with that though - I'm not certain of this (Can you tell I avoid Gavelkind like the plague? :P), but I could swear I've seen it happen - if you have enough land for another title to be created, it will be and be granted to the second son, splitting your realm anyways.
It's possible the guy created the second kingdom before dying, I didn't think to look at the title history at the time unfortunately.

On the other hand, that's not going to happen for a while with an empire.

[WebGremlin]

Why does it become harder to change after I've formed the empire?

Yes, Portugal is still on Primogeniture whereas all my other kingdoms, including my primary one (León), are on Gavelkind. But when I hover over the kingdom shields in the Law view, the tooltip for each of the kingdoms tells me that my oldest son is 1st in line of succession.

Now here's the odd part... when I switch the law from Gavelkind to Primogeniture in León, I DO get the title loss on succession warning... And suddenly out of 5 kingdoms only 3 will go to my eldest son and the other 2 his younger brother. This is why I switched back to Gavelkind in the first place, to prevent that from happening...

So if Portugal and León are on primogeniture, and Aragon, Castille, and Galicia on Gavelkind, the latter two will by inherited by my younger son. Do I need to change the law to Primogeniture for all individual kingdoms for them to all be inherited by my eldest?

But when León is on Gavelkind (still keeping it as my primary title), all 5 kingdoms will be inherited by the same heir... That seems a lot easier than switching to high CA and primogeniture on all 5 kingdoms... It makes no sense to me :D

To me it would be logical to stay on Gavelkind to make sure all my kingdoms are inherited by my eldest son (I know that's contradictory but it is what the game tells me what will happen). Then form the empire asap so I don't have to worry about title losses, and meanwhile enjoying the extra demesne limit and opinion bonus that Gavelkind gives?

[Corrupted Sanity (Vex)]

For switching laws - Each vassal has to have positive opinion, there can't be any wars, and so on... I suppose if they're all already your vassals that might not matter. I can't remember if it counts de jure vassals only or not - If it does, definitely easier to switch the kingdom since there are fewer to worry about.
No matter what though, it's one less title to switch over since you'd have to change the laws of each kingdom/empire individually. If you have your primary title set up before creating the empire it's ready to go.



Yeah, that's a weird situation. Gavelkind does some odd stuff depending on the titles to split up and the number of sons - Really hard to tell without actually being in the game. How many sons do you have, only 2?
As I understood it you should always have 3 kingdoms going to 1 and 2 to the other as long as at least two are on Gavelkind - If one son is set to inherit a certain title for other reasons (Primo) I was under the impression that Gavelkind takes that into account.


I wonder if it's something to do with county inheritance in each situation - If your older son is set to inherit all your counties, then the younger son can't get anything since he'd be unlanded.



If you keep the kingdoms and have them on Gavelkind there will always be succession issues. On the other hand, once you have an empire they won't break off and you can give the extra kingdoms to other sons/characters without any issue. Your top title will always go to your heir.

If each kingdom is Primo, then yes, they'll all be inherited by your oldest son.

In your current situation, if it says your oldest will inherit everything (and I'm guessing you're worried succession will happen soon?) then it might be best to stay with the laws that cause that for now.

Not sure how close you are to actually creating the empire or how soon you expect succession, but personally: I would either aim to switch everything to Primo (and create the empire at any time) or create the empire (Best case as a Primo succession) and hand off the extra titles, probably to secondary sons anyways, but this way I chose who gets what, and only keep Primo titles. Always found Gavelkind succession issues aren't worth keeping it around longer than I have to, but some people do play with it. It can make for interesting games.