Ideal wife traits?

[Jurras]

I am brand new to the game and trying to get over the entry cliff of knowledge, so easy question but what are the best traits to look for in a wife? Also can you make family members your council members? for example I am currently playing with, what I think at least, is a bad steward at rank 9. Could I get a queen that is good at stewardship and then have her as council member? Also what is the lastest age wise you would go to in a new wife?

[galadon3]

You can make anybody who is your direct vassal or your courtier a councilor, so a family member is possible if they are in one of those two groups, but with female characters it actually depends on the "status of women"-laws

https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Realm_laws#Status_of_Women

(those are part of the conclave-DLCs law changes)

In general, if you don't marry for possible inheritance, alliances or claims there are some traits you might want to look for in a wife (or well spouse in general, its the same if your character is female and you're looking for a husband).

- genius, quick, strong: those are genetic traits with a nice bonus wich have a chance to be passed on to kids
- lustful, if you don't have kids yet and your own character has a reduced fertility (chaste-trait, homosexual-trait, several illnesses), has ofc also a good chance to produce kids wich aren't yours.

- High Stewardship, Diplomacy and Intrigue are pretty desireable, all the spouses stats go into the state-attribute and those two are especially nice to have, since state-stewardship influences your tax-income, the spouses stewardship and yours determines the bonus to demesne-limit and state-diplomacy influences the opinion modifier with everybody who isnt at your court (court is only personal diplomacy). State Intrigue influences your plot and arrest-chances.
(little warning: if you have a high Intrigue-wife, don't piss her off since she could be a pretty strong backer for any murder-plot against you).

for more:
https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Attributes

[Jurras]

ok thanks, ill look into the law stuff since the one I found has 20 stewardship.

[Chikuwu]

Originally posted by Tanks608:

ok thanks, ill look into the law stuff since the one I found has 20 stewardship.

It still helps to have a high skill wife since it counts towards the TOTAL state stewardship.

[SkiRich]

Originally posted by Tanks608:

I am brand new to the game and trying to get over the entry cliff of knowledge, so easy question but what are the best traits to look for in a wife? Also can you make family members your council members? for example I am currently playing with, what I think at least, is a bad steward at rank 9. Could I get a queen that is good at stewardship and then have her as council member? Also what is the lastest age wise you would go to in a new wife?

36-24-34, Red hair, blue eyes.

Oh wait you meant in game?

galadon3 pretty much nailed it, but along those lines, I havent noticed yet if doing what you suggest with making your queen stewart is a good or bad thing.
While you can do it, you in effect miss out on adding a third party into the formula for calculation of realm stewardship.
You, your wife and your stewart make up the realm stewardship.

Maybe someone can say definitely what happens when two parts of that formula is the same person.
Also, what happens when you go on a pilgramage and a regent takes over, and that regent is also your queen. Now all three parts are the same person. How does that formula work?

[BatavianJonkheer]

marry for alliance and claim is priority, the trait and stewardship is bonus

[galadon3]

Originally posted by BatavianJonkheer:

marry for alliance and claim is priority, the trait and stewardship is bonus

marrying your character for an alliance actually is a waste, thats what you have a bunch of non-inheriting children for.
Claims are what you invite claimants for, or marry off relatives whos kids then get the claims wich you can press.

Possible direct inheritance of a nice chunk of land and getting bloodlines is pretty much the only reason to marry somebody with bad stats.

[Merkatz]

Most important trait is homosexual paired with lustful. No bastards

[al_x_ator2411]

You shouldn't make your spouse a councilor unless they have killer stats. The formula is your attributes + the coresponding councilors + half the spouses attributes. So unless a spouse has an attribute above 20 it's usually best to have someone else do that job.
https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Attributes#State_attributes

[CrUsHeR]

High attributes for the state bonus, but preferrably NOT ambitious.

Ambitious spouses keep asking to become councillor, or make her (incompetent) friend councillor.

Also having a wife with 20+ intrigue, and make her your spymaster, can be great if she also is your friend and lover. But if that breaks, you might have a rival in your bed who will most likely kill you. And divorces are near impossible for catholics at least.

[Сааребас]

Originally posted by SkiRich:

Red hair, blue eyes.

Blasphemy

[mr_bman]

Try to avoid opposite traits.
Proud and greedy are good for wives to be. It doesn't take much to make them happy with gifts.
High learning is good to help your tech spread faster. Basically you're better off looking at their overall numbers instead - does you not much good to have wife with a zero for stewardship or some other categories that are down in the incompetent bracket.
Women can't have children after the age of 45. So if you want to have just one or two children marry a 44 or 43 year old lustful wench. Ones up around that age usually have better traits and stats. Lustful is good if you want a large number of children but they may cheat on you.
If your wife is a real dud, you'll be seeing a lot of murder plots against her as your court knows she's a terrible wife and thus a rotten Queen.

[Azunai]

my usual method of finding the next wife (or husband) is to open the screen with the candidates, sort by stewardship and pick either the topmost or one of the next few if the topmost has some obvious bad traits (lunatic, syphillis etc.).

the women with the highest stewardship also usually have level 4 stewartdship educattion (midas touched) which comes with increased fertility as an added bonus.

[JD]

Originally posted by Azunai:

my usual method of finding the next wife (or husband) is to open the screen with the candidates, sort by stewardship and pick either the topmost or one of the next few if the topmost has some obvious bad traits (lunatic, syphillis etc.).

the women with the highest stewardship also usually have level 4 stewartdship educattion (midas touched) which comes with increased fertility as an added bonus.

This.

[Jurras]

thanks for the replies all, is there a "max" age cut off you guys use? I imagine 30s and 40s is getting on the old side.

[galadon3]

usually 45 is were a woman stops getting kids (there are reports of later but not even sure if that isn't due to some bug).

In general it really depends if you still need kids. If so the younger the better, since she has more time to get kids and the fertility seems to go down over time.

If you have enough children and you don't need a kid out of the marriage to inherit something, age really doesn't matter (besides the fact that you might need another new wife quickly if you marry an 80 years old). I did have 60+ year olds as second or third wifes just went for a good stewardship-skill.