Incomplete management of vassal link: why cannot I be autonomous King and still Duke of some other?

[Mike1984]

Maybe - but that's still going to allow for some awkward problems. Say that the King of France declares war on the King of Asturias. The Holy Roman Emperor holds a duchy in each, and as such is obliged to support his liege in both the offensive and defensive wars. Make it more complex, and say it's a de jure claim by France on a French county held by Asturias. Who is the HRE forced to support? What happens with the (presently automatic) making of all your troops hostile to all enemy troops. Bear in mind that a vassal doesn't get a call to arms, he's just automatically involved with his overlord's wars.

If it was going to be done at all, it would have to be done on the basis of possessing or inheriting a previous vassal contract, not on the basis of which de jure Duchy, Kingdom or Empire the land was part of. The King of England owed fealty to the King of France for Normandy because William was Duke of Normandy (and, thus, a vassal to the French king) before he was King of England, and also IIRC inherited the Duchy of Aquitaine from a parent (and, thus, remained a de jure vassal of France) rather than taking it by force. If the HRE had taken de jure parts of Asturias and France, it would own them in its own right rather than as a vassal, so it wouldn't need to be called-in to either war.

Still, whilst I do agree in principle that the vassal contract should be attached to the title rather than to the individual (and, thus, that it should be possible for someone to have two different lieges or to have a title they hold independently as well as another they owe fealty for), I think that it would be challenging to implement such a feature, and would almost certainly require a significant change to the underlying game engine, meaning that such a change is going to have to wait for CK3. And, given the limitations, I think that what we have currently is a fairly decent approximation because, even if the English King did technically owe fealty to the French King, in practice that meant very little, aside from an excuse for the French King to revoke the title when he felt strong enough to do so (which, really, would be better represented by the ability to fight de jure wars over entire duchies rather than just counties).

 

[klinkvon13]

I'll remake the point you seem to have ignored:



It doesn't matter why you declare war on any of them - **as things stand, and without recoding a lot of the game** you can't declare war on someone who has a liege. Now, that might be resolvable in a future game, but with relatively simple logic checks you risk either having places you can't declare war on, or calls to arms that involve half of Europe because of outlying counties or baronies that call multiple overlords..

I do not think it has actually recoding a lot of the game to remove this restriction.

And I do not think that would implies half of Europe. Because liege vassal relationship implies only for a liege to support his vassal when they are attacked to what relates to their vassaldom: most of the liege/vassals would be completely without interest.

Which brings me to another misconception you have... An overlord is required, by feudal contract, to defend his vassals. Not just against "unjustified" claims, but against any outside threat. It's a little more complex as to whether that obligation extends to land that isn't held from the liege, but since having a vassal weakened weakens you and your land, it's a sensible thing to do. To an extent CK should actually allow lieges to intervene in "internal" wars, but that's another can of worms.

We are getting to the point. An suzerain is required to defend his vassal on what relates to their vassaldom. France had England as vassal for Aquitaine. As such, France was completely irrelevant to any war wage by or against England as long as it did not relate to Aquitaine. Role of France towards Scotts and such is actually quite meaningful in this regard.

Then you assume that "having a vassal weakened weakens you and your land". That is completely circumstancial. Keeping the France/England example, having the English vassal for Aquitaine was not at all weakening France, on the contrary. That would be good if CK2 reflect this.

We are exactly back to what I said: in many case, helping a vassal would be matter of state policy. That should be up to suzerain, unless they are forced otherwise by vassal contract.

The problem with the England/France issue is that whilst France may have considered England to be a vassal for Aquitaine, at various points England certainly didn't have that opinion, holding that it had been inherited free of feudal ties, and later won by right of battle.

King of England still usually paid hommage to King of France for Aquitaine, and not doing so caused wars. That perfectly makes sense that the game would reflect that.

France wasn't exactly a good overlord when it came to it either, as their "protection" to the king of England

Exactly my point. Suzerain vassal relationship is more subtle than was CK2 right now allows. But that could be changed and that would make the game even more interesting in my opinion.

 

[klinkvon13]

You would declare against whoever directly holds the title you want to claim, not against the top liege.

The problems would lie elsewhere, as for example holy wars and great holy wars would need a completely different mechanic from today.

How so?

 

[klinkvon13]

If it was going to be done at all, it would have to be done on the basis of possessing or inheriting a previous vassal contract, not on the basis of which de jure Duchy, Kingdom or Empire the land was part of. The King of England owed fealty to the King of France for Normandy because William was Duke of Normandy (and, thus, a vassal to the French king) before he was King of England, and also IIRC inherited the Duchy of Aquitaine from a parent (and, thus, remained a de jure vassal of France) rather than taking it by force. If the HRE had taken de jure parts of Asturias and France, it would own them in its own right rather than as a vassal, so it wouldn't need to be called-in to either war.

Still, whilst I do agree in principle that the vassal contract should be attached to the title rather than to the individual (and, thus, that it should be possible for someone to have two different lieges or to have a title they hold independently as well as another they owe fealty for), I think that it would be challenging to implement such a feature, and would almost certainly require a significant change to the underlying game engine, meaning that such a change is going to have to wait for CK3. And, given the limitations, I think that what we have currently is a fairly decent approximation because, even if the English King did technically owe fealty to the French King, in practice that meant very little, aside from an excuse for the French King to revoke the title when he felt strong enough to do so (which, really, would be better represented by the ability to fight de jure wars over entire duchies rather than just counties).

I agree: that would be challenging.
Still, I'd really enjoy this change.
And current state of business is sometimes quite puzzling when it comes to laws that applies to a territory because of de jure laws (which takes precedence in questionable ways sometimes)

 

[Gnorrosch]

How so?

Because those war targets whole de jure areas (duchy or kingdom), regardless of the owner. If you have always target the specific owner instead of the top liege, that no longer works. (One could use the same mechanic as for invasions, where the owner keeps his holdings unless the are occupied).

 

[Sammy5IsAlive]

I think the Aquitane example is a bit of a red herring tbh. Feudal relations were not black and white vassal/not vassal.

A general thread that ran through the English/French diplomatic tensions in this period were demands from French kings that their English counterparts perform full homage for their continental holdings and the latter's refusal to do so and insistence on only pledging simple fealty, which essentially preserved their control over the holdings without the full feudal obligations expected of a vassal. Practically Aquitane etc were English holdings and the French rights over them were only given diplomatic lip service.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_(feudal) gives a brief overview up to Edward I

Introducing a distinction between homage and fealty would maybe make the game more realistic in the specific area of Anglo/French relations but would not really add a great deal elsewhere and would over-complicate things massively.

 

[Azarias59]

CK3 would do well to implement a "spheres of influence" concept, as opposed to binary vassal-liege-topliege relationships.

 

[Mike1984]

I agree: that would be challenging.
Still, I'd really enjoy this change.

It's not going to happen for CK2. It's simply far too big and far too fundamental a change to the game mechanics to implement it at this stage in the life cycle. However, I absolutely do agree that it should be a feature in CK3. Having said that, it only "should" be a feature in the same sense that an AI that plays as well as a human "should" be a feature. I.e., yes, it would be great if they can implement it, but I doubt they're going to be able to get something perfect, and it may be that the current system is better than any implementable alternative.

I think the Aquitane example is a bit of a red herring tbh. Feudal relations were not black and white vassal/not vassal.

A general thread that ran through the English/French diplomatic tensions in this period were demands from French kings that their English counterparts perform full homage for their continental holdings and the latter's refusal to do so and insistence on only pledging simple fealty, which essentially preserved their control over the holdings without the full feudal obligations expected of a vassal. Practically Aquitane etc were English holdings and the French rights over them were only given diplomatic lip service.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_(feudal) gives a brief overview up to Edward I

Introducing a distinction between homage and fealty would maybe make the game more realistic in the specific area of Anglo/French relations but would not really add a great deal elsewhere and would over-complicate things massively.

Actually, I disagree entirely that it wouldn't add a great deal elsewhere. The example of English/French relations is the most obvious, but it cannot be the only one. And, the manner in which the game currently handles vassals inheriting land under multiple feudal lords is absurd. Due to a series of "unfortunate accidents", my vassal Duke of South Wales now owns several counties in Norway and one in the middle of Germany. And, I can revoke and reassign all of their titles and still retain control of those lands, despite having absolutely no legal justification for claiming those titles are mine (they've only been under the control of my vassal for a few years). Even worse, the Kings of Germany and Norway don't even care that I've usurped control of a bunch of their land for no justifiable reason.

That sort of situation absolutely should be handled better. There should be some sort of distinction between "the owner of this title owes fealty to me" (i.e., they or their ancestor was granted the title by me or my ancestor, willingly swore fealty for it or swore fealty by right of conquest) and "this individual is paying homage to me" (i.e., they have accepted me personally as their main feudal lord). Revoking titles etc. should be handled according to ownership of the title, except that the lord they have paid homage to would be able to intervene on their behalf (and, if they win the war, then they gain independence from their former lord as usual, and the title becomes part of that ruler's realm), whilst I suspect that feudal duties should be owed mostly to the primary lord they have sworn fealty to, excepting perhaps for absolute minimum requirements. And, obviously, there would be serious diplomatic penalties with anyone whose rightful land your vassals hold, probably with some option to refuse to support your vassal in retaining the land if you'd rather keep them on your side.

 

[witchveil]

I don't see a problem with how the game handles it now with de jure and de facto lands. The King of England owns Duchy of Aquitaine de facto, for example, even though the Duchy is a de jure part of Kingdom of France. This gives England a vote in crown laws which reflects their apparent homage to King of France, but still reflects Frances weak influence over Aquitainre. It also gives King of France a claim on the Duchy of Aquitaine which would reflect France retaliating for England/Aquitaine not fulfilling further feudal duties. And then we have de jure drift which would mean Englands utter abandonment of any kind of feudal links with France.

It may not be as accurate as you'd like it but as others have pointed out; it would be really tricky to implement anything more complex.

 

[iquabakaner]

I'm not very familiar with CK2 modding, but is it possible to do it by making every character independent, and disable vassalization option?

 

[Less2]

It's a nice idea but probably outside the scope of DLC/patches. You're looking at needing to rewrite large parts of the AI code, innumerable events and decisions, along with retrofitting the CK2 mechanics. Maybe in CK3.

I do think its a good improvement worth making though. In particular the CK2 mechanic of "I don't like you so I won't pay realm taxes or help you in any wars" has always seemed completely silly when the character in question is a baron in Paris and you're the king of France, but for the King of France vs. the King of England/Duke of Aquitaine it would be a very real thing and a reason for the King of France NOT to piss off the King of England.

 

[Sammy5IsAlive]

Actually, I disagree entirely that it wouldn't add a great deal elsewhere. The example of English/French relations is the most obvious, but it cannot be the only one. And, the manner in which the game currently handles vassals inheriting land under multiple feudal lords is absurd. Due to a series of "unfortunate accidents", my vassal Duke of South Wales now owns several counties in Norway and one in the middle of Germany. And, I can revoke and reassign all of their titles and still retain control of those lands, despite having absolutely no legal justification for claiming those titles are mine (they've only been under the control of my vassal for a few years). Even worse, the Kings of Germany and Norway don't even care that I've usurped control of a bunch of their land for no justifiable reason.

That sort of situation absolutely should be handled better. There should be some sort of distinction between "the owner of this title owes fealty to me" (i.e., they or their ancestor was granted the title by me or my ancestor, willingly swore fealty for it or swore fealty by right of conquest) and "this individual is paying homage to me" (i.e., they have accepted me personally as their main feudal lord). Revoking titles etc. should be handled according to ownership of the title, except that the lord they have paid homage to would be able to intervene on their behalf (and, if they win the war, then they gain independence from their former lord as usual, and the title becomes part of that ruler's realm), whilst I suspect that feudal duties should be owed mostly to the primary lord they have sworn fealty to, excepting perhaps for absolute minimum requirements. And, obviously, there would be serious diplomatic penalties with anyone whose rightful land your vassals hold, probably with some option to refuse to support your vassal in retaining the land if you'd rather keep them on your side.

Can't those issues be dealt with using the existing mechanics though? Using your example, if one of your vassals inherits a county in Germany then the King of Germany has a CB against you to take it back. The change would need to be to the AI to increase the priority of taking back lands held by others in their de jure realm. In terms of whether they 'care' I think there is already an opinion malus if you control a county in somebody else's de jure realm. If you don't think that is working right you simply increase the malus.

An area where I think the basic mechanics could be improved is by giving vassals the option of pledging fealty to a different liege. At the moment they have to declare independence first (and win the revolt). A better solution would be to enable a vassal to declare fealty to a new liege and give the original one the option of fighting (with the prospective alternative liege) to retain control. If the original liege wins the titles are revoked, if they lose the vassal keeps their titles and switches to the new liege.

None of that requires a change to the basic structure of the current game.

 

[Mike1984]

I don't see a problem with how the game handles it now with de jure and de facto lands. The King of England owns Duchy of Aquitaine de facto, for example, even though the Duchy is a de jure part of Kingdom of France. This gives England a vote in crown laws which reflects their apparent homage to King of France, but still reflects Frances weak influence over Aquitainre. It also gives King of France a claim on the Duchy of Aquitaine which would reflect France retaliating for England/Aquitaine not fulfilling further feudal duties. And then we have de jure drift which would mean Englands utter abandonment of any kind of feudal links with France.

It may not be as accurate as you'd like it but as others have pointed out; it would be really tricky to implement anything more complex.

The de jure drift system is highly simplistic. It works very badly if you have an Empire-rank title (ducal titles stop drifting and even reverse) and it relies on arbitrary designations that don't always match the real situation (e.g., the HRE ending up screwing over France because one of the French duchies is de jure HRE). It's at best a stopgap solution.

It also doesn't give claims on duchies, only counties, and you can only push them one at a time. If England owns multiple duchies in France, it's not worth the effort to fight 9 or 10 separate wars to retake them county-by-county. In fact, it's barely worth doing it if they own one county. You're better off finding a claimant to the appropriate duchy, granting them land and pressing the claim in the normal manner.

Can't those issues be dealt with using the existing mechanics though? Using your example, if one of your vassals inherits a county in Germany then the King of Germany has a CB against you to take it back. The change would need to be to the AI to increase the priority of taking back lands held by others in their de jure realm. In terms of whether they 'care' I think there is already an opinion malus if you control a county in somebody else's de jure realm. If you don't think that is working right you simply increase the malus.

For an individual county, yes, that works OK. But, it relies a lot on the highly-arbitrary "de jure realm" system (there are areas on the border of England and Scotland that changed hands repeatedly, and both sides considered them their "rightful" land when they owned them) and it doesn't work at all well for duchies (since there is no "press de jure claim on duchy" option. Having some more nuanced definition of what is and isn't your land that doesn't rely on the developers defining "de jure" areas would be far better, although I agree it is not plausible for CK2.

An area where I think the basic mechanics could be improved is by giving vassals the option of pledging fealty to a different liege. At the moment they have to declare independence first (and win the revolt). A better solution would be to enable a vassal to declare fealty to a new liege and give the original one the option of fighting (with the prospective alternative liege) to retain control. If the original liege wins the titles are revoked, if they lose the vassal keeps their titles and switches to the new liege.

None of that requires a change to the basic structure of the current game.

That would just be a very good way for small realms to get screwed by bigger ones, I think. It's also possible, I believe, for a vassal to gain allies who could support their independence claim, in the usual manner.

That would, I think, also go very much against the way the feudal system worked. The land belonged to the person who granted it, originally, the vassal was simply granted usage of it (hence why it's possible to revoke a title). It makes no sense at all for someone to be able to change liege with no consequences aside from fighting a war with their former liege, because the land isn't theirs to transfer.

 

[klinkvon13]

I don't see a problem with how the game handles it now with de jure and de facto lands. The King of England owns Duchy of Aquitaine de facto, for example, even though the Duchy is a de jure part of Kingdom of France. This gives England a vote in crown laws which reflects their apparent homage to King of France, but still reflects Frances weak influence over Aquitainre. It also gives King of France a claim on the Duchy of Aquitaine which would reflect France retaliating for England/Aquitaine not fulfilling further feudal duties. And then we have de jure drift which would mean Englands utter abandonment of any kind of feudal links with France.

I do see a problem. The system might try to mimic what it was. It is still incomplete and leads to odd and unplausible result.

For instance, as it is, a norman vassal of France becoming someday King of England get independant from France even on territories he only got as vassal. How come, without a fight, without any legal decision, France get deprived of authority on norman land?
Yes, France can declare war later.
But what if the player would actually avoid this, dealing with his main territory (independant England) and have absolutely no problem over swearing fealty to France for Normandie? Why does the game forbid him?

Right now, the system forbid you to do what was done in history. Sure the system can try to mimic everything with de jure system. Still, it is incomplete and deprives player of a lot of opportunities. It also seriously alter kingdoms historical powers and relationships.

It may not be as accurate as you'd like it but as others have pointed out; it would be really tricky to implement anything more complex.

It would require some planning and thinking. But I think it wont change that much. Clausewitz can surely handle it.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

I do see a problem. The system might try to mimic what it was. It is still incomplete and leads to odd and unplausible result.

For instance, as it is, a norman vassal of France becoming someday King of England get independant from France even on territories he only got as vassal. How come, without a fight, without any legal decision, France get deprived of authority on norman land?
Yes, France can declare war later.
But what if the player would actually avoid this, dealing with his main territory (independant England) and have absolutely no problem over swearing fealty to France for Normandie? Why does the game forbid him?

Right now, the system forbid you to do what was done in history. Sure the system can try to mimic everything with de jure system. Still, it is incomplete and deprives player of a lot of opportunities. It also seriously alter kingdoms historical powers and relationships.





It would require some planning and thinking. But I think it wont change that much. Clausewitz can surely handle it.

Perhaps Clausewitz can handle it, perhaps it can't. The thing is that the game is not written to allow vassalising equal ranks - for several reasons that have been gone into, ad nauseam on these threads and the ones when the game was being announced - and to re-write it to do so would essentially require a complete re-write of how the war system works, how lieges work for war declarations, how de jure drift works (do things drift if a particular king is vassal to another, but just refusing to pay taxes or levies? What about if he's a good vassal? Do things only drift if you're truly independent of the vassal tie, and if so how do you break it - considering that legally you're still a vassal (for example) for Normandy to France, even if you're ignoring this and consider yourself independent?), it'd probably also require some major work on AI, simply because of the new options that would come up and meaning that the AI needs to be taught how to handle them.

 

[Zooboss]

Also, out of curiosity:

Currently if the Duke of Aquitane inherits England or vice versa, it's likely that the duchy of aquitane will be granted to a new Duke. This would make the new file a vassal of England.

Under this proposal, who would the new Duke be vassal to? France? If so, then what on earth do you do to determine who should be the liege of newly conquered territories?

Asturias Holy Wars the Umayyads for Portucale. They give the duchy to someone else. If this guy now a vassal of the Umayyads because the title has historically been that? Is he independent because no one is king of Galicia? Or is he the vassal of the title granter? If it's the last one, why would the aforementioned new Duke of aquitane be vassal to France?

 

[Gnorrosch]

If so, then what on earth do you do to determine who should be the liege of newly conquered territories?[ [...] Or is he the vassal of the title granter? If it's the last one, why would the aforementioned new Duke of aquitane be vassal to France?

Conquering and inheriting a title are two completely different things. If you inherit a title, it stays with the former owner (who granted it). If you conquered a title, you established control over that territory and thus can feoff the title to whoever pleases you.

If your liege conquers territory, it belongs to his realm. If you conquer territory outside your lieges de-jure territory, they will be independent from that top-liege and the former top-liege. Basically: Conquering a territory grants you the ability to grant titles. Inheriting a title does not grant you the right to feoff titles.

In the example of England and Aquitaine: Neither the Duke of Aquitaine nor the King of England have the right to feoff the duchy, only the King of France has this right (as he only feoffed the land to the duke, he did not gift it). If the King of England wants to feoff the duchy as his own lands, he has to first conquer it from its de-jure holder (the King of France). If he already had conquered the Duchy of Aquitaine in a Holy War, he would have already established his right to feoff the title as he pleases.

 

[TheDungen]

The game structures simply canät handle it, and it's the root of many of the problems the game suffers from.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Conquering and inheriting a title are two completely different things. If you inherit a title, it stays with the former owner (who granted it). If you conquered a title, you established control over that territory and thus can feoff the title to whoever pleases you.

If your liege conquers territory, it belongs to his realm. If you conquer territory outside your lieges de-jure territory, they will be independent from that top-liege and the former top-liege. Basically: Conquering a territory grants you the ability to grant titles. Inheriting a title does not grant you the right to feoff titles.

In the example of England and Aquitaine: Neither the Duke of Aquitaine nor the King of England have the right to feoff the duchy, only the King of France has this right (as he only feoffed the land to the duke, he did not gift it). If the King of England wants to feoff the duchy as his own lands, he has to first conquer it from its de-jure holder (the King of France). If he already had conquered the Duchy of Aquitaine in a Holy War, he would have already established his right to feoff the title as he pleases.

A problem that this raises - if you're not independent, you cannot grant (inherited) titles, since true ownership of the land belongs to your overlord. In a similar fashion, conquering within your own realm shouldn't give you the conquered titles, since there is little to no reason for the overlord to acknowledge your deposition of his loyal servant.

There is also no reason why conquering land outside your realm should give you the title, at least not one that is universally accepted - just because you've conquered Essex and claim to be Duke, there's no reason why England (or the legitimate Duke) should accept it, but yet in game you become Duke, the former Duke merely gets a claim - and worse still, everybody but the Duke seems to accept it.

The whole fealty/homage thing just doesn't work in a computer game. I don't really think it's possible to make it work since it's entirely possible for someone to hold the (de jure) title to somewhere that has been lost in a war, provided that their home realm still accepts it. Just because the count of Rouen has been displaced by a Norse invader doesn't mean that France (and the rest of Christian Europe) doesn't still consider him to be the Count, just temporarily displaced. Similarly there are extant claims to titles that are long since lost by the claimant (The Queen of the UK still has "Duke of Normandy" in her full list (albeit only the Channel Islands count...), Spain has King of Jerusalem in the full list, and so on).

 

[Zooboss]

Basically: Conquering a territory grants you the ability to grant titles. Inheriting a title does not grant you the right to feoff titles.

So what does pressing an inherited claim for aquitane do in this example?

It's been conquered, but for reasons related to inheritance. Does aquitane stay part of France, or is it part of England. And, as it was conquered, can the English King grant it, or is it still considered inherited and thus ungrantable?

If pressing claims leads to ungrantable land, then how on earth do you propose same religion people expand without going over the demesne limit? Especially if they are vassals