you don't believe in true love?
:laugh:
Did a mediaeval count and up?
A knight's daughter would, with some social pain, be not totally unacceptable, perhaps with some previous uplifting of her father in the feudal ranks. Maybe a baron would marry someone without a perfectly valid noble pedigree (e.g. the daughter of a squire's daughter and a free non-noble husband) but that would be rare, I think. A non-attractive, several years older Lowborn with poor stats is definitely unrealistic (unless maybe Intrigue is high while the rest are low).
The game still has limitations. Most of the 'lowborns' that turn up would be minor nobility - its just that Paradox either does not have the sources to give them family names, or does not want the complications (ok so there are a dozen members of this family wandering around, shouldn't some of them be related?).
True but generic "of" courtiers (nobles without a baron in the family, essentially courtier families) are already low enough. Lowborns would be petty nobility at best.
Also there is a general shortage of women at the start of the game (eg there are none in Scotland or Ireland), and I suspect there are a few people who should be married but are not (particularly ones with legitimate children, but no wife). Again, lack of data.
Happens in my games all the time everywhere, including plenty of dukes who are heirs of my kings. No matter if I play Poland or France, they choose to marry all sorts of awful lowborns despite every generic courtier being able to marry a female Salian or Doukas patrilineally, including those with the formal Princess or Queen Mother rank. Sometimes I can't find decent men for my female courtiers and the landed nobles still pick random lowborns.
Also, the tendency of landed females marrying random lowborns matrilineally is too high as well, I think. There'd be plenty of even very prestigious males of great houses available for the purpose.
On the other hand, mayors could (should) be lowborns more frequently, at least outside Italy and certain cities in the HRE.
You know, I hear about this problem a lot, but since 1.08 it seems to have all but disappeared in my games. in 1.07b the lowborn spam kept my realm stable for me, but my recent game in Spain has seen me having to work really hard to stop my dukes from blobbing under me because they've all gone back to marrying exclusively to each others daughters...
Edit: The biggest issue is with dukes marrying their daughters off normally. There should be a script so that first-born daughters are never, ever, married off in a regular marriage unless it is to a person of equal or greater rank than they're heir to. This won't stop the occasional blobbing but it will stop your duke with only 2 daughters marrying the eldest normally to your other duke's 3rd son who's 6th in line to the throne and hence ending a great dynasty for effectively no gain.
IMHO in this case realism should come first. People weren't as obsessed with preserving their surname as CK2 players. Marrying the firstborn daughter one rank below would be fine, I think, especially if there already were a son or two, only if it's like the sole child of an otherwise childless couple, then yeah. Especially there should be no precautionary rule of marrying some daughters matrilineally: this should be done only in the most extreme situations, not like human players who spawn entire levies with the same surname. If anything, I believe matrilineal marriages are too frequent in the game (while inheritances by generic courtiers do happen).
Only for emperors though, the 1 step below your rank in the case of counts and dukes is what is messing up the marriages already. Equal to or higher in all cases except emperors.
Nah, IMHO 1 rank below is okay for everybody and even 2 ranks for emperors (with dukes, just like elections go), at least with the younger children. One step below is perfectly normal historically.
In my games, it's the opposite that is happening!
Whenever a women inherits a title under my liege, she gets married (not matrilinearly!!!) to someone holding or going to hold a title not under my liege... and I'm sick of having to kill her husband, her kids, or even her! I prefer they get married to a lowborn, to having to revoke every title they held!
It's possible that unlanded sons of high-ranking people are underused. The game does fail to appraise the real status of courtiers from important families in most cases.
The game is messed up anyway. Sometimes I have foreign kings ask me to allow them to marry a lowborn courtier of mine. At other times, I can't marry a kingdom-tier she-claimant to anybody important among my kinsmen. (In my AAR dukes didn't want to marry the obvious heir of an old doux who was the heir of an incapacitated BYZ emperor.)
