Helping your bloodline out

[th3freakie]

Wondering I was. How do my fellow forumites deal with those distant members of your family, who can't inherit or otherwise be directly useful for your current titles, but thanks to good marriages can now become rulers/wifes of rulers somewhere else?

Do you risk going on assassinations to boost their chances? Do you just not marry these guys well at all? Only help men? Some other path?

In the current d'Est game, I took married some of my family members with the daughters/sons of powerful kingdoms/dukedoms, and that meant there were d'Este in the throne of Castille and Scotland before I was even more than a lowly 7-times Duke. It even cost me some land (because they were made counts by their fathers) and some kids in counter-assassinations.

Now that I think of it, is there even any benefit in having these guys are rulers/wifes of rulers? They're all far from the ruler, only sharing a great-grandfather.

 

[unmerged(135995)]

Sometimes I RP my king helping his relatives, by getting them on the throne, other times I just let them be.

I myself have not yet noticed any greater differences between 'normal' dynasties and related dynasties. The King of France, who was a Norman Orthodox fellow (as opposed to my Dutch/German Catholic lineage) went to war against me.

I do like the idea of the Universal Monarchy, though. With the same dynasty ruling everywhere and everything.

 

[Emperor Basil]

I usually marry the women off to neighbours I want to be friendly towards or vassals I want to bring closer into the fold just for the short-term relations boast. The men I attempt to make advantageous marriages for but usually give them a plot of land under my ruler. In the end if their lines die out then you'll often inherit.
If they are talented then I'll keep them within my court and marry them to intelligent people. It's an unfortunate consequence of this system that the thinkies will often get rewarded with titles if they're any spare.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

I once tried to put my family on as many thrones as possible, while keeping only five kingdoms (max) for myself. I ended up (late 1200s) as king of Italy, Burgundy, Aquitaine, Navarre and France while members of my family held thrones of all of Spain, all of Africa, Nicaea, Armenia, and at one point also all of the Levant. A family that was distantly related to mine and had lots of people in my court ended up on the thrones of England, Jerusalem, Syria and Arabia.

It is fun while you are putting them in those positions, but once they are there it gets tedious... in the bride finder I had to scroll down four pages to get past the de Hautevilles, and the Skleropouloses (that related family of Italianized Greeks holding England, Syria and Jerusalem) had another page all for themselves.

You also get a lot less wars when you root out the old dynasties, simply because the new ones don't have 100s of claims all over Europe yet. This can make places like Africa and Spain really boring. It takes them about 50 or so years and some civil wars to get claims on places in other kingdoms again.

If you want to create everlasting peace between the kingdoms, just wipe out the old aristocratic families... truly a peace of God! o