I'm an eight year old Heretic King of Italy, Burgundy, Germany, Bohemia, Poland and Lithuania with Realm Duress. How do I stop becoming a heretic and stop having realm duress? I'm almost nine thousand in debt and my piety is hovering around 0. I spent four years fighting various rebelling vassals and trying to get them back into the fold, but all that left me with was depleted armies and coffers.
How do I get my Kingdom back? If the game takes it into account, I inherited Germany/Italy/Burgundy when I was 1 and Bohemia/Poland/Lithuania when I was 4. (So I'm the union of the two empires). The Kings in each Kingdom already had realm Duress when I inherited.
How do I get out of this mess?
Uhhh ... not for a while I am afraid
First things first ... to get rid of Realm Duress, you will need to be at peace as much as possible. So you have to do everything you can to keep your vassals in check. If any of them leave your realm, you have to consider if it is better to just let them go, and then once the realm settles down, you can go get them back. Realm Duress is just that ... a great realm splitting trait, so do't assume that you can keep your relam intact during one. So basically stay at peace as much as possible ... if someone declares war, then maybe it is better to just settle a white peace immediately, than fighting a prolonged fight over three counties. Besides being at peace, there isn't much more you can do besides wait and hope the event fires that removes the trait.
Now, why on earth would you get ruined with such a big empire?? .. you would have tons of vassals whos troops you can use for free to crush rebellions. Just make sure more than 50% of yours are mobilized if you start mobilizing theirs, or you will get loyalty hits, which you really don't need in your case. You can always disband your own troops once you have enough vassal troops to crush the rebels.
Also be wary of the BadBoy spiral of death ... part of your realm declares independence, you go crush them and take all the titles to be redistributed (gaining you BB points), which then lowers loyalty modifiers for all your vassals, who break free and you crush them gaining more BB point, etc, etc. ... if you go to keep the realm inside your empire, remember to use Force vassalization (0 BB points) and if your rep. is bad, give up the claim to the title (-1 BB) ... don't worry, if he declares independence again, you get the claim back for free. This si a good way to clean up reputation, which hurts your loyalty modifiers ... and that is the last thing you want under Realm Duress ... you have enough problems as it is.
I see no real way out, except try to limit the damage, keep the wealthy parts of country under your control, and hope the kid grows up to be a half-way decent ruler.... or you can cheat and kill off the boy king.
It will be a challenge to get through and much of the realm might be gone by the time the kid turns 30 ... but then you know what you have to do over the coming decades
