How to prevent title loss upon death

[Deathstalker]

Hey I am new to the game and my charakter is getting old. I play Dublin and inherited the province to the south from my father. But now I have the problem that I can only have one of the provinces, while I will lose the other one when I die. What can I do against that? Do I give someone the province? And if yes, who should I choose? I cant choose my heir, so should I give it to a relative of mine?

[Black_Rat]

Succession can be tricky in this game. IIRC dublin starts with gavelkind (and depending on your start day may even be tribal). Gabelkind means when you die all you lands will be split up between all of your children. So if you have 1 male child, he will get everything, however if you have 2 or 3 things start getting split up between them. There are a couple of ways to make succession a little easier.

One way many people use is by marrying someone really old, but with great stats. This way you will get the bonuses of having a good stat wife, but not have any legitamite children. Then you go around horn dogging until you have a bastard you like, legitamize him, acknowledge a couple others just to be safe (in case the heir you choose dies early).

Another way is to remove you sons from the line of succession before your ruler dies. This can be done in a couple ways. The easiest being giving them a temple (which disqualifies them from normal inheritance), but you can also try having them killed (send them to a plague area, leave them on a boat until they get scervy etc).

The last way i normally use would be if you king is getting old and you know he will die soon, arrest all of your children you do not want to get land, and execute them. Its a bloody solution, but it works. (Make sure u do this when you either can kill urself (suicide, death event etc) or are about to die anyway, the negative modifiers for doing this can add up quickly if you have a large family)

[gregoryk64]

What is your title rank? You can only vassalize title holders that are of lower rank than yourself, so if you are only a chief you are going to lose the holding regardless of who you give it to.

You only hope to keep it is if your ruler can gain a high chiefdom title before he dies. Since you are chief of Dublin, I believe you can make that happen by gaining the chiefdom of Cill Dara. That and Dublinn compose the de Jure high chiefdom, so once you control both and have the required gold and piety you can create the title.

[Deathstalker]

ok, i changed my succession laws so that only the oldest child inherits, afterwards I conquered Cill Dara (I needed my whole life time for that claim...) and now i formed this small kingdom of Mide, but i can still only controll one province. how do I create a vassal?

[gregoryk64]

Originally posted by Deathstalker:

ok, i changed my succession laws so that only the oldest child inherits, afterwards I conquered Cill Dara (I needed my whole life time for that claim...) and now i formed this small kingdom of Mide, but i can still only controll one province. how do I create a vassal?

Why can you only control one province? Is your stewardship skill so low that you can only have a demesne size of 1? If so, increase your centralization law if possible and that will increase your demesne size.

But to answer your question, all you have to do is grant Cill Dara to one of your courtiers. It can be anybody including your sons. Since the chiefdom of Cill Dara is a lower title than the petty kingdom of Mide, the character you granted the title to will become your vassal and the county will stay in your realm.

[Valentine Michael Smith]

losing titles happens. you just have to get used to it till you can get primogeniture.

[Black_Rat]

Correct me if im wrong, but at this point you are now a ruler with 2 provinces (Dublin and Cill Dara) and a duchy (Mide), with the primogeniture succession law. You succession is now safe, even if its a bit limited (if your first born son isnt great you may need to get creative and get rid of him somehow if you want a better stat ruler).

As far as vassals go, you get them the same way as you get land. As a matter of fact, if you wanted (i would not suggest it at this point) but you could give cill dara to anyone who doesnt already have land, and they will become your vassal.

However i would not suggest making any vassals until you hit your personaly demesne limit (this is the number of barony level titles you can hold personally; castles, cities, churches). If you can hold the land yourself it will be MUCH more valuable.

Once you reach your limit you can start handing out newly couquered land to people you like by right clicking on them and granting them the title.

[Deathstalker]

Originally posted by gregoryk64:

Originally posted by Deathstalker:

ok, i changed my succession laws so that only the oldest child inherits, afterwards I conquered Cill Dara (I needed my whole life time for that claim...) and now i formed this small kingdom of Mide, but i can still only controll one province. how do I create a vassal?

Why can you only control one province? Is your stewardship skill so low that you can only have a demesne size of 1? If so, increase your centralization law if possible and that will increase your demesne size.

But to answer your question, all you have to do is grant Cill Dara to one of your courtiers. It can be anybody including your sons. Since the chiefdom of Cill Dara is a lower title than the petty kingdom of Mide, the character you granted the title to will become your vassal and the county will stay in your realm.

Thank you now it worked! After I gave my first-born son the inherited province and I lost it to him, I was worried that it would happen again, but now it worked. My son will still inherit everything, but now I also stop losing all of that presitge and the notifications went away again. Thank you. I like the game. My skills are 8/5/5/3/8 , so yes they are pretty low. together with all the help it´s 19/23/22/12/27 so at least technology (which I heard is the most useless thing) is alright.

Originally posted by Valentine Michael Smith:

losing titles happens. you just have to get used to it till you can get primogeniture.

yes, but I would like to not lose them if possible^^

[Myrmuz [IRL]]

The best way to get around gavelkind if you can't change the law is to have only 1 higher-tier title. If you have more than 1 duke-tier title they will be split amongst your sons and the realm will fragment, but if you only have 1 your heir will get it and the other sons will become his vassals. Same with kingdom and empire titles.
Pagans for example need to reform their religion and switch to feudalism before they can change succession law and I think Ireland starts with tribal which requires you to build a stone hillfort before you can go feudal.