It would be a mistake because if you receive gold for beeing married and you get divorced you will gain gold continually, maybe you should be able each 5 years or more
Divorce in CKII
- Thread starter Don_giorgio
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
.png){kind=avatar}
I think that you have to give the dowry back. That would be the proper thing to do. Unless you want to be dishonorable, like John I of England was with his first wife.
Infidelity on the part of the wife probably wouldn't be prima facie cause for divorce, but if the king used the queen's infidelity as a pretext to execute her, he probably would have gotten away with it. Doing that should cause him to get a trait like Vengeful, but not Kinslayer (which is so severe that it should only be awarded for entirely unwarranted kinslaying). Henry VIII had Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard executed for that, and got away with it, despite him living during the Renaissance (which was relatively liberal compared to the Middle Ages), and despite the blatant hypocrisy of it due to having had mistresses of his own from time to time (which was publicly known, as he had acknowledged one bastard).
As for infertility, though, I can't think of any single case where it would have been upheld as a legitimate reason for divorce (or annulment). Real reason, yes, but another pretext would have been needed. And, gamistically speaking, it shouldn't be too easy to replace an old infertile hag with a young breeding mare. Mayhem ensuing from lack of heirs is very much a part of the game.
But speaking of Henry VIII, his case brings forth another idea, of spymasters and succession. A king wanting to get rid of an infertile wife could order his spymaster to frame the queen for adultery, giving the king a pretext to execute her and remarry. Depending on the circumstances, that might work better than arranging for an unfortunate accident, which people may not believe was quite so unfortunate at all. Or, an entrepreneurial spymaster may frame the queen for adultery on his own accord and fool the king, accepting a large contribution of gold from Count Social Climber who wants to clear the way for his own daughter (currently only royal mistress) to become queen...
As for infertility, though, I can't think of any single case where it would have been upheld as a legitimate reason for divorce (or annulment). Real reason, yes, but another pretext would have been needed. And, gamistically speaking, it shouldn't be too easy to replace an old infertile hag with a young breeding mare. Mayhem ensuing from lack of heirs is very much a part of the game.
But speaking of Henry VIII, his case brings forth another idea, of spymasters and succession. A king wanting to get rid of an infertile wife could order his spymaster to frame the queen for adultery, giving the king a pretext to execute her and remarry. Depending on the circumstances, that might work better than arranging for an unfortunate accident, which people may not believe was quite so unfortunate at all. Or, an entrepreneurial spymaster may frame the queen for adultery on his own accord and fool the king, accepting a large contribution of gold from Count Social Climber who wants to clear the way for his own daughter (currently only royal mistress) to become queen...
Executing spouses was certainly not common. Regarding Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, they didn't have a powerful ruling family, which could take revenge on the monarch and the kingdom, like Catherine of Aragon (her nephews were Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, king of the Spanish kingdoms (Castille-Leon, Aragon (including Sicily, Naples and Sardinia) etc.) and Ferdinand I, king of Bohemia and Hungary).
In short there will be response of the now former in laws, executing a foreign king's (favourite or not) sister/aunt/cousin/niece/grandchild would be a casus belli. Domestic families won't be happy either, but will have less means to take their revenge.
Trying to get an annulment in my opinion should be the first option.
Surely annulment would be the first option, but it's good to have a range of options, some more severe and consequential than the others. Allowing a player to do nasty things and suffer consequences is usually better game design than arbitrarily forbidding it. Executing spouses was certainly not common, but neither were philandering queens (compared to philandering kings, at least), in large part probably due to sexual double standards and disparity in power between a feudal lord and his wife.
Getting a close relative executed should probably give a casus belli, but what kind of claim should it give? I think we can assume quite easily that there'll be some kind of wargoal mechanism similar to Victoria 2, as (if it is like in CK1) it's not even possible to declare war without a claim (unlike other Paradox games where you can go to war without a CB by paying a political price).
Getting a close relative executed should probably give a casus belli, but what kind of claim should it give? I think we can assume quite easily that there'll be some kind of wargoal mechanism similar to Victoria 2, as (if it is like in CK1) it's not even possible to declare war without a claim (unlike other Paradox games where you can go to war without a CB by paying a political price).
Well, let me give you an example from one of my CK1 games as Castilla. It's clichéd now, but Sancho II of Castilla (that's me) married Agnes of Aquitaine; ten years into the marriage, Agnes was found in the royal bedchambers with an Italian expatriate who had just fled to my court (event fires: execute her, send her to a convent [I guess that means annulment], or forgive her). I chose execute (Sancho was a pretty passionate guy). Now realistically, the young Crown Prince Alfonso (who had the vengeful and suspicious traits IIRC) might choose to flee to Bordeaux to his maternal grandfather William VIII, Duke of Aquitaine, etc.
(then the plot starts brewing) William writes immediately to his liege Philippe I, King of the Franks, as well as Sancho's two brothers, both of whom were already plotting their elder brother's downfall. (as in Henry VIII's case,) Sancho has trouble finding a replacement queen. He courts Gerberge of Provence and Matilda of Canossa, the two most eligible bachelorettes in the Holy Roman Empire, and for some reason
eek his letters were never answered, his emissaries were sent away. There are a lot of ways that this parable could play out. Excommunication perhaps? In CK1, Prince Alfonso carried on like nothing had happened, and William and Sancho remained friends and hunting buddies.
I know it's nitpicking, but you cannot "become a heathen". A heathen is, if I remember right, someone who has never followed Christianity. Heathens were despised and pretty ignored by the law (ergo: little lawful retaliation in case of abuse/murder)
As opposed to what you were saying: someone who was a christian and renege this faith for a non-christian one (Muslim, Jewish, Eastern) becomes an Apostate, which was considered to be one of the worst crime that there is. (Still is by muslims).
Someone who still follow Christianity, but derogue from the doctrine of the Church is an Heretic. I think this was considered to be as bad as an apostate initially, but the Church eventually came around on that one when they realised there was little they could do anymore to prevent that.
Anyway, back to topic! I'd think Divorce should be something very specific that can be achieved only through special means. First of all, maybe only husbands with a piety of 7 or less could divorce their wife (as someone with Piety of 8+ would be too much of a believer into the sanctity of marriage). I guess prestige penalty should apply, and you'd have to find a Casu Belli for marriage, as stated earlier.
Or kill her. That also solves matters.
A decision for divorce that sparks an even that chain where if there is just cause and both partners want it, annulment is a possibility.
But Cikomyr's comment 'Or Kill her. That also solves matters.' is exactly why annulment or divorce is needed.
It is insufferable that the game drives the player to see murdering a spouse as a viable option, much less a necessary one. there has to be a way out of a marriage to give the player an option which isnt evil.
The game is about a dynasty and children and all that, and rightly rape is not an option. If a line can be drawn there it should be here as well. By CKs demand for the systematic and continual murder of wives and mothers is disgusting and one of the worst things about the first, especially if you take a glance at the forums as see the vast recommendations for it.
Annulments were very common, Henry VIII is not an example, he is an exception. If you were going to show an example of how successions work, you would choose william and mary or william the conquerer as the typical example. So why site Henry VIII who is famous for not being typical as an example of how annulments worked.
If both parties consent to the annulment, then its more or less strait forward, unless yourve made a rival of your court bishop [or leiges court bishop if you dont have one/pope if you have no leige or bishop.]. So a simple decision and three step event chain would work fine.
And as marriages are immediate, with no getting dispensation for closely related marriages or second wives etc then all CK marriages are legally in question, so all CK marriages have grounds for annulment as long as both parties want it.
So a decision to request annulment of marriage sparks three events, the wife gets the chance to say no, the bishop gets the chance to say no and then if neither do you get an event separating you and taking a prestige hit.
But Cikomyr's comment 'Or Kill her. That also solves matters.' is exactly why annulment or divorce is needed.
It is insufferable that the game drives the player to see murdering a spouse as a viable option, much less a necessary one. there has to be a way out of a marriage to give the player an option which isnt evil.
The game is about a dynasty and children and all that, and rightly rape is not an option. If a line can be drawn there it should be here as well. By CKs demand for the systematic and continual murder of wives and mothers is disgusting and one of the worst things about the first, especially if you take a glance at the forums as see the vast recommendations for it.
Annulments were very common, Henry VIII is not an example, he is an exception. If you were going to show an example of how successions work, you would choose william and mary or william the conquerer as the typical example. So why site Henry VIII who is famous for not being typical as an example of how annulments worked.
If both parties consent to the annulment, then its more or less strait forward, unless yourve made a rival of your court bishop [or leiges court bishop if you dont have one/pope if you have no leige or bishop.]. So a simple decision and three step event chain would work fine.
And as marriages are immediate, with no getting dispensation for closely related marriages or second wives etc then all CK marriages are legally in question, so all CK marriages have grounds for annulment as long as both parties want it.
So a decision to request annulment of marriage sparks three events, the wife gets the chance to say no, the bishop gets the chance to say no and then if neither do you get an event separating you and taking a prestige hit.
Orinsul, I think that you offer the best solution to the problem. Henry VIII is very much in the historical imagination these days more so than more typical cases of divorces like that of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Divorce is not something to be taken lightly to be sure, and I find it a more balanced gameplay experience to face the reality that some couples can not have children. There are other solutions to this problem, but a straight-laced sort of person would not want to go that route, and a dutiful one would have to choose between honoring his marriage vows and his duty to produce a legitimate heir for the stability of the realm and his house. (Ironically, it might be your character who has a fertility of 1, and your spouse has an average fertility.--But I favor having events to raise fertility if no disease is present.) Not every generation will end in a dynastic union; that is just reality. And there are times when the throne must pass to a cadet line.
If both spouses agree, there should be a mechanism there, even if one partner is pressured into it. The relations between the two should therefore be a consideration as well as if there are any children, and finally what political connections either spouse has. So expect some fallout: at the least, relations with your former in-laws should be a bit strained, all things considered.
One possible turn that this sort of thing could follow is for the illegitimate children of the king to be legitimized. Under the Roman legal tradition (followed later in Spain, Portugal, and France), a natural child (that is a child born out of wedlock to two single laypeople) could be legitimized if his parents married (under English common law, once a bastard, always a bastard though I don't know when that idea developed). This would be available if the mother is known and recognizes the child as hers. I'm not saying that it would be necessarily popular, but if the king had an illegitimate son before he married (and this is an important distinction) this could be an expedient way to have him recognized. All this seems plausible to me, though it should not be an easy road to follow. For me, historical precedent is less important than setting what legally could be done and what might be acceptable to those whose opinion you should care about when you are lord or lady of the realm.
Divorce is not something to be taken lightly to be sure, and I find it a more balanced gameplay experience to face the reality that some couples can not have children. There are other solutions to this problem, but a straight-laced sort of person would not want to go that route, and a dutiful one would have to choose between honoring his marriage vows and his duty to produce a legitimate heir for the stability of the realm and his house. (Ironically, it might be your character who has a fertility of 1, and your spouse has an average fertility.--But I favor having events to raise fertility if no disease is present.) Not every generation will end in a dynastic union; that is just reality. And there are times when the throne must pass to a cadet line.
If both spouses agree, there should be a mechanism there, even if one partner is pressured into it. The relations between the two should therefore be a consideration as well as if there are any children, and finally what political connections either spouse has. So expect some fallout: at the least, relations with your former in-laws should be a bit strained, all things considered.
One possible turn that this sort of thing could follow is for the illegitimate children of the king to be legitimized. Under the Roman legal tradition (followed later in Spain, Portugal, and France), a natural child (that is a child born out of wedlock to two single laypeople) could be legitimized if his parents married (under English common law, once a bastard, always a bastard though I don't know when that idea developed). This would be available if the mother is known and recognizes the child as hers. I'm not saying that it would be necessarily popular, but if the king had an illegitimate son before he married (and this is an important distinction) this could be an expedient way to have him recognized. All this seems plausible to me, though it should not be an easy road to follow. For me, historical precedent is less important than setting what legally could be done and what might be acceptable to those whose opinion you should care about when you are lord or lady of the realm.
I had an idea for a chain event... Lets say that King X marries princess Y and have issue... After some time they divorce (for whatever reason)... So the children are declared bastards following the divorce... then the former Queen Y remarries to another King or powerful Duke and the new husband plots against her former husband in order to secure the throne for Queen's Y children... (or perhaps to himself with a new plot after he had put his stepchild tho the throne)
Well as seen in the case of Catherine of Aragon and her daughter Mary for example which you mention "legitimacy" was mostly a question of view and politics in a time when the roman church didnt have absolute power over questions of religion anymore.
Well i thought of playing with the idea of divorce and how events can be created from that...
It certainly was an important reason in the eyes of Edward VI, however, because he excluded Elizabeth nonetheless, even if she was Protestant like him, from the succession on the grounds that she was a bastard.
Yes but that was because Elizabeth didnt come from a legitimiate marrige even in protestant or lets view secular view after Henry VIII. it wasnt one. . So it was rather easy for Edward to dismiss her. The problem is how you define legtimicacy in a world that has differing opinions on that like in Marys case. But i guess this can easily be solved with a title holder and claims for "bastard" childs.
Oh really? That logic would make Edward VI illegitimate himself, since if Catherine of Aragon, being Henry's only legitimate wife, was still alive thus Henry VIII is a bigamist with Jeanne Seymour as much as with Anne Bolyen. How are their marriage different in status? Both were crowned Queen.
If Jeanne Seymour's marriage was legitimate, logically so was his' with Anne Boleyn. Both had the same status in regard to Henry's divorce with Catherine. The reason why Elizabeth was declared a bastard is because her mother's marriage was declared null and void, while Seymour's got dissolved by the fact that she had died of childbirth.
That being said, the main argument that contemporaries used against Edward's "device for his succession" is that it went counter to Henry VIII's own Act of Succession, in which both half-sisters were reinstituted as heirs after Edward when it became clear that he wouldn't beget anymore children. Edward VI did as if these provisions had never existed to bypass them in favour of the Greys, so Mary could make a reasonable argument that she was spoiled of her inheritance. Northemburland's main mistake was his failure to secure Mary's person before it was too late, letting her roam around London and East Anglia to rally her support.
Last edited:
How about an event in which children (from different marriages) of the King fight for the crown when the old King is in his deathbed or dead? Wouldnt this be interesting? Also u could have various neighbouring countries supporting one or the other for their own reasons...
Divorce and annulment should be available in CK II, in my opinion. Welsh law of the period clearly allowed for divorce, and did not recognize bastards in the Catholic context. Additionally, I do not think that because a player actually has his character’s divorce that it should cause the children to become bastards.
The Haute Cour of Jerusalem had asked that Baldwin II divorce Morphia of Melitene so that he may make a more advantageous marriage with a European heiress, yet he refused. The Haute Cour of Jerusalem demanded of Almeric I to annul his marriage with Agnes de Courtney, yet their children Baldwin and Sibylla were considered legal heirs of their father, and indeed both became rulers in succession. In order for Sibylla to become queen, the Haute Cour demanded that she divorce her husband the odious Guy de Lusignan, to which she agreed so long as she was free to choose for herself her husband thereafter. Yet her daughters, the princesses Alys (Alix) and Maria were not disinherited as heirs to their mother.
And Eleanor of Aquitaine was granted an annulment of her marriage with Louis VII of France, her daughters Marie, Countess of Champagne and Alix, Countess of Blois were not bastardized as a result.
Perhaps there should be a cost in terms of money to “grease the wheels” in order to affect the annulment, it could be a money sink. But I am unsure this should result in the illegitimating of the children. But any children that may become bastards in such an event should definetly get a claim on the title as a result.
The Haute Cour of Jerusalem had asked that Baldwin II divorce Morphia of Melitene so that he may make a more advantageous marriage with a European heiress, yet he refused. The Haute Cour of Jerusalem demanded of Almeric I to annul his marriage with Agnes de Courtney, yet their children Baldwin and Sibylla were considered legal heirs of their father, and indeed both became rulers in succession. In order for Sibylla to become queen, the Haute Cour demanded that she divorce her husband the odious Guy de Lusignan, to which she agreed so long as she was free to choose for herself her husband thereafter. Yet her daughters, the princesses Alys (Alix) and Maria were not disinherited as heirs to their mother.
And Eleanor of Aquitaine was granted an annulment of her marriage with Louis VII of France, her daughters Marie, Countess of Champagne and Alix, Countess of Blois were not bastardized as a result.
Perhaps there should be a cost in terms of money to “grease the wheels” in order to affect the annulment, it could be a money sink. But I am unsure this should result in the illegitimating of the children. But any children that may become bastards in such an event should definetly get a claim on the title as a result.
There has been some debate on this forum as to whether divorce (or rather annulment) should make the children bastards. This is the route taken in CK1, where Robert Guiscard's children by Alberada were considered bastards (that is, Bohemond, Prince of Antioch, and his sister Emma, whose son became a Prince of Galilee). I have not seen any historical commentary on this specific case, but I would lean towards not automatically making the children of divorced parents bastards. This is the position of modern canon law, though I am at a loss to determine with some accuracy whether this was the norm in the XI or XII century.
I read your post with a lot of interest, Drachenfire. I was not up on the examples you cite from the Kingdom of Jerusalem as well as the status of the daughters of Louis VII. Part of me also thinks that it might have something to do with different legal traditions. The bastardy laws of England and later the other dominions that adopted Anglo-Saxon common law were much tougher, whereas on the continent, where Roman law had more sway, it was easier to legitimize illegitimates and legitimacy was done automatically when a father married the mother of his natural children (though this was a rarity among the nobility).
I read your post with a lot of interest, Drachenfire. I was not up on the examples you cite from the Kingdom of Jerusalem as well as the status of the daughters of Louis VII. Part of me also thinks that it might have something to do with different legal traditions. The bastardy laws of England and later the other dominions that adopted Anglo-Saxon common law were much tougher, whereas on the continent, where Roman law had more sway, it was easier to legitimize illegitimates and legitimacy was done automatically when a father married the mother of his natural children (though this was a rarity among the nobility).
Actually if the marriage is annuled then this marriage never existed in the eyes of the church and any potential offspring is viewed as illegitimate (at least in middle ages). So if there is an annulment i would support the idea of proclaiming the childrens as bastards... After the annulment they gain the same status as any other child sired outside of wedlock since their parents marriage never existed technically.
I accept your proposal, but a couple of things: (1) this should be a pretty contentious process unless both parties agree; that is, there needs to be a procedure for determining whether the marriage really existed or not, taking into account both facts in the case and the relations of characters with both the husband and the wife; and (2) there should be stipulations, such that any children (should they exist) could be allowed to inherit, depending on the laws of the realm or the specific terms surrounding the annulment.
That is, you need to satisfy your now disinherited heirs (and your now-former in-laws) or face some bad consequences. If nothing else, they should receive claims on your titles, much as heir would in case succession laws change. In some historical cases of annulment, the children who suffered bastardization went to war to press their claims nonetheless. Fernando III of Castile did so against his father Alfonso IX of Leon's daughters, who were the recognized heirs of the Crown of Castile; and in Norman Sicily, Bohemond and Roger Borsa fought over their father Robert Guiscard's domain after his death, even though Bohemond was the issue of a marriage officially recognized as illegitimate.