Dealing with gavelkind among the vassals

[Harassercat]

So I have a fairly stable and thriving feudal kingdom going in my game, dominated by my own dynasty and with feudal elective succession. I prefer to manage my kingdom by consolidating the vassal duchies under a handful of good men who make up my council and should ideally be good in one stat (to contribute as councillors) and very importantly to be content or at least trusting (so they stay happy and become loyalists in the council). I often choose one of those vassals as the successor to the throne, so that the new king will inherit lots of land and have an opportunity to grant all his previous territory to some new vassal of my choice.

What prevents this from working as smoothly as I'd like is gavelkind succession among the vassals. For one thing a lot of their sons turn out to be useless wankers, but I should just be making more effort to educate their heirs and try to weed out the bad ones by whatever means. But the one problem I can't deal with is gavelkind distributing their two duchies (my kingdom is large enough that the powerful vassals have two) to two different heirs, and then it gets too hard to make sure those heirs are decent or to predict which of them if any will be considered powerful vassals for council purposes.

Is there any way to get the vassal duchies to switch to feudal elective? Does the AI ever adopt that for duchies? Or seniority or something else - anything other than gavelkind?

 

[SerDinadan]

Have you raised your crown laws? It needs to be at a higher level for your vassals to be able to switch to seniority or primogeniture. I doubt they'll switch to elective without being forced to by a faction. Pretty sure your vassals would prefer gavelkind over elective in order to ensure their titles go to their children, and thus aren't likely to voluntarily switch to elective.

 

[StarSword]

I've actually used gavelkind offensively against my vassals on occasion. The territorial splits it causes are a good way to make them hate each other and therefore be less likely to faction. One time I gave the duchies of York and Lancaster to a guy who controlled all of York and a bit of Lancaster. When he died, one son ended up single county Duke of York while the other got the southern county in York and the Duchy of Lancaster. That plus the claimant malus each had on the other meant neither one was a problem.

You can then get REALLY evil and unlock primogeniture, which locks them that way permanently.

 

[mrinku]

Don't forget that Gavelkind does give a bonus to the demesne number and doesn't penalise prestige for unlanded sons. From the AI's point of view it may be a better option than what YOU want them to have.

Elective can bite you in the butt, too, since they can lose control of their own electors. At least with Gavelkind you can clearly track how the titles will pass and plan accordingly.

 

[Harassercat]

I suppose it's unlikely to happen as the vassal counts are generally too weak to force elective on my dukes. And as you say the dukes themselves are unlikely to adopt it voluntarily.

Intentionally causing conflicts between the vassals by having them hold titles inside each others' de jure territory is a strategy that I understand but I don't use it. I prefer to stop factions through either the council (until I go for absolute rule) or ideally NAP's.

Once I start an empire this won't be as much of an issue. My vassal kings will then always be my most powerful allies ahead of any dukes in my own kingdom, and I won't care about gavelkind succession in the vassal kingdoms. Also I'll likely form some duchy-level theocracies inside my own kingdom at that point which means even fewer feudal dukes to care about.