My son not my heir under agnatic primogeniture. Why?

[Th3K1ndr3d]

My son was replaced as heir by random dynasty member. I play as custom Kingdom (East Anglia) and my succession law is Agnatic Primogeniture. My son is a courtier in a foreign court (a barony in the Kingdom of England) and married matrilineally to a member of my dynasty to get some of those cool bloodlines I've been collecting and breeding into the dynasty for a few generations now. He recently reached adulthood and married (the succession didn't flip immediately after either of the two though so him reaching adulthood and marrying might not be relevant). Any idea what is going on and what can I do to make my son my heir again? He's currently not even listed among the pretenders, no idea how that makes sense.

Screenshot

[haidunia]

Seems strange, maybe double check your inheritence laws.
Oh and one more thing... he's the heir of a bishopric, that should worry you if you really want him to take over after dad.

[Th3K1ndr3d]

Thank you I completely missed that he became a heir to a bishopric. How would that happen? Was he appointed heir to a bishopric by his liege? Is there anything I can do about it? As far as I know inheriting a bishopric would disqualify him from succession. Is it the same with being a heir to one?

[haidunia]

Seems the Kingdom of England has free investiture and his liege probably nominated him to be heir to the bishopric (or the king... I rarely play Catholic and I'm a little fuzzy about the exact rules about who can nominate). This shouldn't disqualify him from succession though, it's only after he inherits/becomes bishop that that should kick in. So that's still a mystery...

Who's his wife? Is she landed? Doesn't look like it from the screenshot, but she could maybe be the heiress of something? If not landed, try and invite her to your court so you get your son back under your control! If she doesn't want to (because she stands to inherit or something) - bribe, sway, seduce, buy a favour from her... anything you can think of to get her opinion of you to be high enough to accept an invitation to your court. You can try to ask your son as well, but since he's matri-married it might not be possible (but he'll follow her wherever she goes).

Provided you manage to get him back to your court:
I think this will make his (former) liege nominate someone else BUT, to make doubly sure that bishopric succession doesn't happen - LAND HIM! Find a nice cozy county or even barony for him, preferably directly under you (for more control). That will get him out from the bishopric succession for sure AND keep him in your realm even if she inherits something.

[Th3K1ndr3d]

Great, I'll try that. Thank you! I love your profile background btw. :)

[haidunia]

Hope it works out for you! And thanks, I'm kind of fond of it myself! :D

[Karlington]

Originally posted by Th3K1ndr3d:

As far as I know inheriting a bishopric would disqualify him from succession. Is it the same with being a heir to one?

Yeah, being heir to a bishopric also disqualifies you from succession. :(

[Th3K1ndr3d]

haidunia's advice worked perfectly. I sent a gift to my son's wife to make her like me enough to move to my court. I then landed him. Strangely he was still the heir to the bishopric after this. The bishopric was in the county of Zeeland in de jure Frisia and luckily ruled by a female character so it was easy to get a claim from the pope. My intention was to conquer the county at the first opportunity and then nominate someone else as heir to the bishopric. In the meantime I changed my succession to agnatic-cognatic and somehow this flipped the succession to my kingdom back to my son. I think me changing the succession law might have forced the game to reevaluate current standings because technically nothing has changed. He was my only child under agnatic primogeniture before I changed the law and my only child under agnatic-cognatic primogeniture after I changed the law. I don't understand this game sometimes. :) Anyway, all good now. My character died a year later of severe slow fever + botched court physician treatment and now I play as the son and King. Thank you for the help!

[haidunia]

Yea, sometimes it takes something big (or a re-load of the save) to reset some of the info in the game. But even if he stayed heir to the bishopric it wouldn't matter after you already landed him. The same as for you suddenly inheriting a city or bishopric, he'd get the "wrong type of holding" malus and even the AI quickly gets rid of titles like that.

Happy to hear my advice worked btw :)

[Sir Sparhawk]

Originally posted by haidunia:

Yea, sometimes it takes something big (or a re-load of the save) to reset some of the info in the game. But even if he stayed heir to the bishopric it wouldn't matter after you already landed him. The same as for you suddenly inheriting a city or bishopric, he'd get the "wrong type of holding" malus and even the AI quickly gets rid of titles like that.

Happy to hear my advice worked btw :)

I've also noticed that each time I create a vassal merchant republic it upsets the line of succession pushing my primary heir out of succession and the easy fix is to reload the save game.

[Malus]

I think that being the heir in investiture succession also diainherits people, not sure even if they are of religion that allows priest inheritance.

There is common misconception that rulers of temple holdings cannot inherit. But that is not true as we can see with many Muslims, Buddhists and pagans. It actually works by that religion disallowing priest inheritance and priests seem to be all chars with theocratic government or monk traits (not sure if lord spiritual counts as priest). I am not sure how this misconception came to be, but i think it was created by some people having poor understanding of the game and then they propagated their beliefs to others when giving tips etc. Or a lot of people oftentimes assume that temple = theocracy, castle = feudal, city = Republic, even if that doesn't make much sense as we can see other governments in the game as well, and chars of various governments being able to hold holding with the wrong government penalty.