How to stop my kingdom fragmenting upon rulers death

[Joe]

Hi guys,

I've just noticed a little bit of a situation I'm in. I'm currently playing as the King of Castille, at about 1078. I have two sons and two daughters. I just noticed however that my second son will inherit the Kingdom of Leon when my current ruler dies, I don't want my kingdom to fall apart to a bunch of small warring kingdoms. How can I stop my second son from becoming the King of Leon and completely seperate from my heir? I don't really want to go about killing him or any of my other sons to come. Is there any way to make him still be King of Leon but a vassal of me? Or is the only option to destroy the title of the Kingdom of Leon?

[DizzyNikkie]

Change your succession laws.

[Tobinius]

Because you are at the start of the game, you don't have many options. I think your only option at the moment (if you just want to keep you growing empire intact), is to change the inheritance laws for your kingdom - but you need to be the ruler for 10 yrs before you can change it.

Later, if you manage to creat the empire version of Spain, then you can have several sons inherit kingdoms in your empire without losing them. However, once a succession has occured, you are likely to find your sons, daughters, uncles, aunts and anyone else closely relaited to you, who also have land titles, will begin to rebel. Good luck.

[Joe]

I can't change my succession laws because I don't have high enough crown authority. Is it possible to kick my second son out of the succession line by making him a Bishop? That's what I'm trying to do right now.

[Malthersare]

You could kill him...

[Hat8]

Gavelkind means the kingdom is divided up. You can only change succession laws once per ruler. In a spanish game your kingdom will have to fall apart once just to establish primogenture(one son gets it all).

[Aga]

jesus people, or you could change it to elective and have whoever you want on the throne...if you're liked well enough, couple of successions later change it to primo

[Joe]

Ok then, note to self, don't take over any kingdoms until I have primo succession. Thanks guys.

[Nameis5]

just grant the kingdom to your heir before your ruler dies

[awesomepossum]

yea, its also good to grant ur heir ur other kingdoms or allot of ur holdings a while before you die so he gets +opinion from those vassals before he becomes ur playing charector.. helps allot.. dont be afraid to imprison and kill of a heir if he has really bad diplomacy or becomes a cynacil sloth tyrant with +1 point in diplo! same gos for his wives :D another good tip is if u take over a kingdom that had elective type, u will want to put your kin into all of its vassal/dutch holdings so they dont just vote in a new king out of your house, just imprison/execute awhile before u die.

[Hat8]

Agatetepe původně napsal:

jesus people, or you could change it to elective and have whoever you want on the throne...if you're liked well enough, couple of successions later change it to primo

I've tried working with that but it really just creates a system where you have to obsess over making sure you get all the votes. I also, personally have a problem with foreign rulers sometimes having a say on my crown and have trouble understanding voting rules. As a spanish kingdom you can probably get Prim pretty fast without needing elective but as a giant Poland or France(commonly forced gavelkind early) will need time.

[Andersen]

In my opinion Elective is the "best" option for succession. I am currently running a game as the andalusian emperor of Espana, and have 10 kings that has bent their knee for me, either by conquest or been given the rulership by me. (year 1239)

Whats important is to setup vassals to be of your own dynasty. Then you can choose from alot of possible heirs and select the best one, and even if your choice dont get support it doesnt really matter as all the other competitors are of the same dynasty anyway.

I have'nt had succesion wars at all this time, also rebels never get much more support then 20 % +- (much due to my own standing 70k army)

[Cruce]

If I was you I would destroy the kingdom of Leon. In that way gavelkind will not split your kingdom apart. Instead they take your secondary duchies/counties and become your vassals. Because you have a claim you can revoke them one by one.

[varmounth]

I have a similar situation happen to me in Spain before however, in my case i had one son and one daugther and the queen died pregnant and shortly afterwards so did the king. So the only son gained the throne and began a very long regency that had at least 3 different regents getting sacked by the government. As soon as he came of age I made the law primo, and then he had a daughter O.o.

[Imperial Tom]

There are a couple of solutions to this problem, most of them listed above already:

1) Change succession laws. You will need the appropriate crown authority ofcourse, so this might take a generation or 2.

2) Kill the sons/daughters that will inherit. Be careful, this might give you Kinslayer trait (-3 to diplomacy, -25 to dynasty member relations) and -10 per attempt to relation of everyone of the same faith if you get caught.

3) Revoke a bishopric and give it to a son. When someone is given a bishopric it disqualifies him from succession, even in gavelkind.

4) Under free investiture you can appoint your sons as successors to bishoprics. This works the same as under 3. This can only be done if the son in question is of age.

Notes for 3 and 4: If your son is a bishop, he cant get married anymore, thus eliminating the chance for him to get children. I have come across dificulties here where my dynasty ran out of elligible heirs under agnatic gavelkind. To counter this you could give them bishoprics or appoint them after they came of ages and got married. This will also secure alliances if you marry them to the proper women. The problem is this though: if they get sons and they die before you, your grandson will get counted into the gavelkind succession. When that happened I usually ended up killing those grandsons by plot to prevent splitting.

Hope this helped.

[Sanada]

RangerGxi původně napsal:

Gavelkind means the kingdom is divided up. You can only change succession laws once per ruler. In a spanish game your kingdom will have to fall apart once just to establish primogenture(one son gets it all).

or daughter, if there's no son born to your ruler and if daughters can inherit..