What is the point of lovers / bastard children?

[ZenRaider]

CK3 is my first Ck game, but I've played it a ton since release. But even now, I have to wonder.... What is the point of seducing anyone? If you are a king and seduce a foreign queen, if she has kids, the kids will be born into her house, be controlled by her liege and so on. If your a queen and seduce a foreign king, you get the kid, but does it have any claims on the foreign land? I don't think so.. This just all seems pointless to me, aside for role playing purposes, or am I missing something?

[KingCobra]

u could seduce foreign genius female and invite her to ur court. i think this is only way(except kidnapping) for getting hostile religion in ur court.
also lovers have better pregnancy chance.
btw u get prestige every time u romance someone(750/1500 if any side is king/emperor). so romancing byz emperor wife provide 1500 prestige

[ZenRaider]

Prestige is pretty easy to get, but I guess more is never bad... So aside from that it's largely pointless.

[Dragon Master]

Well, if you have a amorous ruler that you're playing as, choosing the seduction lifestyle in intrigue is practically guaranteed to keep your stress down.

You may be known as a hedonistic ruler who pays more attention to women than ruling, but you can live awhile and if something bad happens there may be plenty of potential heirs to be found if a legitimate one does not exist for some reason.

[Machiavelli]

i do it for memes. fathered like 4-5 bastards on a rival kingdom's queen. declared war. lul.

yea but other than rp it doesn't do much. you could legitimise them if you want more childeren or skilled councilours. it doesn't make sense bastards dont get a weak claim. William the Conqeror was a bastard. He claimed the English throne...

[The Boominator]

I've had issues with fertility or impending succession troubles before, so sometimes I seduce my own wife in hopes of getting a male heir. In many playthroughs of the game, I have found myself with numerous children, all of which were girls. This leads to an unsavory problem because in Christian countries, women rulers are just objectively inferior to male rulers because of penalties to various groups' opinions, the inability to command armies, etc.
Of course, it is also ideal to have only one heir. A realm with four daughters gets split four ways, but a realm with four daughters and one son gets inherited by the son.
A bit of a tangent, since I'm not addressing the matter of bastards, but it is one practical use of the seduction scheme. It basically guarantees you children (assuming fertility) and can secure your succession.

Edit: I suppose if fertility is an issue in your marriage, you can also go outside of your marriage to gain heirs, too. Say you marry someone and they just don't end up giving you children. If your next heir is a crappy relative or you have no heir at all, it's a way to potentially save your dynasty. It's worth noting that not every religion frowns upon bastards, either.

[Roadman Yoda]

Origineel geplaatst door Fellington:

i do it for memes. fathered like 4-5 bastards on a rival kingdom's queen. declared war. lul.

yea but other than rp it doesn't do much. you could legitimise them if you want more childeren or skilled councilours. it doesn't make sense bastards dont get a weak claim. William the Conqeror was a bastard. He claimed the English throne...

That's not how that works. William the Conqueror was the only male child of Robert, Duke of Normandy and even then his inheritence of Normandy was in question due to his Illegitimacy.

The only reason he had any claim to England was because he was chosen by King Edward who was childless and a distant relative of William. If William hadn't been Legitimized by his inheritance, it's very doubtful that Edward would have even considered him as his successor. So no Bastard's wouldn't usually get claims, even weak ones unless there were extenuating circumstances.

However i would like to see ways of handling these extenuating circumstances better represented in the game with more diverse inheritance rules and more events focused around the succession of a leader. Something i think both this CK and CK2 needed desperately instead of someone absolutely random taking over a county.

[ZenRaider]

I agree, more succession rules or things that allow bastard children to have claims if you can manage to keep it a secret before their time comes to inherit titles would be cool. Maybe someday!

[dwarfpcfan]

I found it a useful tool to control vassal inheritance in my last play through.

See I always choose the wives/husbands of those on my council. Choosing commoners with useful inheritable traits.

If one of my vassals I've granted titles isn't having kids (which is something I noticed happens a lot more often then you'd expect), then seduce his wife and keep it a secret.

Kid will be his heir, and assuming you raise him as your ward and have pedagogy from learning tree, you can raise a vassal with awesome stats who will likely be your friend as well.

Then you can arrange a marriage for him/her and go from there.

[Juicy Beefcake]

Origineel geplaatst door dwarfpcfan:

I found it a useful tool to control vassal inheritance in my last play through.

See I always choose the wives/husbands of those on my council. Choosing commoners with useful inheritable traits.

If one of my vassals I've granted titles isn't having kids (which is something I noticed happens a lot more often then you'd expect), then seduce his wife and keep it a secret.

Kid will be his heir, and assuming you raise him as your ward and have pedagogy from learning tree, you can raise a vassal with awesome stats who will likely be your friend as well.

Then you can arrange a marriage for him/her and go from there.

That is an interesting idea.

I've found that bastards are usually more detrimental than anything else. Not the children themselves but the scandal, crimes, and reputation penalties from the act of adultery. Your emperor (if playing as a vassal) will not hesitate to throw you in jail. I pretty often inherit a son that has a ton of adultery secrets and completely useless bastards because the ai is incapable of keeping its ♥♥♥♥ in its pants.

Adultery schemes can be useful if you are struggling for legitimate heirs. Maybe you inherit a spouse that is barren, or chaste, or celibate and the pope refuses to divorce you (the ai makes really bad marriage decisions for your heirs, I think on purpose). Maybe you have 6 daughters and no sons and your wife is over 40. In these situations you need a son, any son. You can adulterize your way to one or several lovers and then cherry pick the best heir to legitimize.

[TacoBell1157]

Getting a bunch of bastards can be useful to bypass partition succession, since bastards can't inherit titles unless you legitimize them.

[OftheTarRealm]

to make other chiefs have to raise your babies lol

[Sid1701d]

It may be harder to do, but one major thing you can do if your Queen is having a Kid with the Pope, you know have your kid as a hair to replace the pope when he Dies, this will give you lots more chances of getting money out of the pope if your cathlic, I don't know much about other religions, but I believe if your kid was Insurlar and replaced the pope, it would increase the relationship between your religion and the cathic religion, but I haven't tried it yet because I can't seem to get a female heir.

Edit: What is really funny though since the pope can't get married and needs an heir for his line, he is always a good one to look for secrets.

[JC]

You seduce people to sway them to your side. Find a high intrigue person in a court you want to start a plot, seduce them and now you have another on your side.

There are lots of other uses, babies are just a very small part and honestly almost never the reason i've used it.

[ZenRaider]

Origineel geplaatst door Sid1701d:

It may be harder to do, but one major thing you can do if your Queen is having a Kid with the Pope, you know have your kid as a hair to replace the pope when he Dies, this will give you lots more chances of getting money out of the pope if your cathlic, I don't know much about other religions, but I believe if your kid was Insurlar and replaced the pope, it would increase the relationship between your religion and the cathic religion, but I haven't tried it yet because I can't seem to get a female heir.

Edit: What is really funny though since the pope can't get married and needs an heir for his line, he is always a good one to look for secrets.

Ha, now that is an interesting idea! I'll have to play around with that sometime!

[ShadowRFox]

They make good blackmail material. Father a child with a foreign people of a neighboring kingdom (on within your own realm). Blackmail the mother about the parentage of their children. Then use the hooks in murder plots. I've topple a couple of leaders/rivals/claims by getting my harem of lovers to help in the murder plot.