[2.3] Ruler of a Petty Kingdom referred to as a duke.

[nhgrif]

I've seen this happening when you control multiple duchies and change your primary title, but in this instance I owned just a single duchy of Cornwall and its two de jure counties:

Steps to recreate:

Start in 769 as the Petty King of Cornwall.
Change succession law to Tanistry (not sure if this matters, but it's what I did).
Choose great-grandson as heir (not sure if this matters, but it's what I did).
Die.

The original king was always referred to as a king. The great grandson heir became known as a duke despite the realm continuing to be known as a petty kingdom.

 

[Jonathan Palfrey]

I have yet to understand this petty kingdom thing. It seems to be functionally the same as a duchy, so that a petty king is just a duke with delusions of grandeur. Is there any point to it?

 

[roundhound]

Petty king is literally just a duke with a fancy name.

 

[nhgrif]

I have yet to understand this petty kingdom thing. It seems to be functionally the same as a duchy, so that a petty king is just a duke with delusions of grandeur. Is there any point to it?

Petty king is literally just a duke with a fancy name.

A petty king is an independent duke.
A duke is a vassal to a king or emperor.

Historically, was there anyone who was referred to "Duke Whatshisname" who didn't have a liege?

 

[Jonathan Palfrey]

Historically, was there anyone who was referred to "Duke Whatshisname" who didn't have a liege?

Apparently yes. For example, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchy_of_Brittany.

I see that petty kingdoms did exist historically; but whether someone was called a petty king or a duke seems to have been a fairly arbitrary choice.

 

[Onisuzume]

Petty King title is tied to culture, afaik.
So is he of a culture that does that?

 

[nhgrif]

Yes. As I explained, his father was called a King, and he is of the same culture. It switched to "Duke" when his father died.

 

[Jonathan Palfrey]

I think I've seen this happen myself in the past, with an earlier version of the game, though it didn't particularly bother me and I didn't post about it at the time.

 

[MrNibbles]

The issue is known to us and is already in our internal database but cheers for taking your time to reporting it!

 

[NewbieOne]

The problem is that there are a lot of references to control, so when fancy localized or otherwise tweaked (non-standard) titles come into play, then there's a heckload of places in the game where a reference pops up to that title, which like I said, is hard to control. Same as with patrician titles, like when they're count once and lord mayor the other time (which I suspect might even be an intentional case of showing that the lines are blurred for them, but I'm not sure).

Anyways, normally an independent duchy held by someone from the Keltic, Anglo-Saxon or North Germanic culture is called a 'Petty Kingdom'. In some cases the ruler's title is given in fully as 'petty king', to differentiate him from real kings, and in some other cases it's just 'king', in order to blur the lines. And I'm pretty sure there must be some places where such rulers are intentionally referred to as dukes. This is because blurred lines is basically what this is about, but also another factor that makes it difficult to control all of the references and avoid occasional inappropriateness.

For the record, I do recall seeing an Anglo-Saxon independent 'duchess' in East Anglia, while the duchy was referred to as a petty kingdom. Shall I try and dig up a save?

 

[GoukaRyuu]

This happened to me a bit when I was playing the Petty Kingdom of Mumu. I'd have Tanistry Succession and when my character died and the new one became ruler he was referred to as duke on the main display but in his character page referred to as King of the Petty Kingdom of Mumu. After a certain length of time, usually a decent bit into the reign, it would have changed to just say King.