Dukes or Earls

[Rhyus]

Need some advice here guys, I am playing as England 1066 start as the Godwins and i am about 100 years into my game. I have only 4 dukes with 2 counties each and the rest are all earls in my country and i did this as to make controlling my realm easier and more stable plus its easier to put down rebellions. I was thinking about either destroying all duke titles and having only earls or crate all the duke titles and have all dukes as vassals but i have a few questions,

1. Is it realistic to have only earls as my vassals or only dukes or a mix of both

2. Would I loose some tax income if i create all the de jure duchies and gave each title to 1 earl

I had more questions regarding dukes and vassals but i cant remember them atm so these two will have to do for now.

 

[Ols]

It's more realistic to have a mix of both, at least in the later game. I don't believe there were Dukes in 1066, but giving multi province earls a duke title lets them have vassals of their own, which is good for them. I don't believe creating all the duchies would lose you tax income, but having more than 3 personally would anger your vassals and make them demand duchies.

 

[Rhyus]

Sorry i meant if i created all the duke titles and gave them to earls

 

[JonStryker]

1.
You can't have no Duchies at all. Two county duchies like Cornwall will be recreated by one of the county holders. If someone gains control over two counties he will eventually create the duchy if it has 3 or 4 counties in total and so on.

I usually destroy all the duchies I hold counties in personally. For the others it depends on the situation. I mostly don't create them and get rid of them. If there is some pesky count that hates me I occasionally create the duchy and give it to someone else.

Choosing only counts or only dukes at game start and sticking to it is imho a bad idea.

2.
I think so. But as most of the money comes from the demesne it doesn't matter muc.

 

[Rhyus]

Well I am 100 years into my game so i am just wondering where to go for the future as at game start i was aiming to have only earls but now i am leaning to having dukes instead

 

[Kaiser Ludwig]

Actually most money comes from Doges or Lord Mayors, and maybe Archbishops. At least later on.

 

[Thure]

Lesser Dukes with big land are better to manage then many counts with small land. You don't have to make 10 Counts happy, you must only make 2 Dukes happy.

And the Anglo-Saxon Earls are defacto more dukes then earls... Ot's like the Norse Jarls (You see that they sound similar?). Only the Normans make them lower to counts.

 

[gornard]

Feudal vassals give you very little money so don't worry too much about that. I prefer to have weak dukes (or kings if i'm an empire), i'll try and keep them at one county demesne and make sure they only have their de jure territory in their duchy. If i'm given the choice i'll try to make the weakest de jure count/earl the duke. Having a lower number of direct vassals makes intrigue and relations a bit easier IMO, the counts within the duchies will be distracted by their direct liege. If all the duchies are ruled by members of your culture and religion than you don't have to worry about their vassals.

 

[Rhyus]

That's what I was thinking about doing. Since I will have nothing but earls soon I thought that I would give 1 earl in each de jure duchy the duke title for that de jure duchy. That way all I will have is dukes with 1 county demese with a few earls as vassals. So if I do this is it realistic and a good for idea