Italian Culture endangered? :)

[Hamanu]

In my "cheating" game with the duke of Lombardia, I had my grandson turn "German" even though the father is Italian, mother Bulgarian and the child was educated in Italy. I originally wanted to preserve an Italian identity and avoided all marriages with Germans, but now, after 3 generations, there are very few Italians left in Italy. Within a hundred years, everyone became German.

I don't think this was the intention.

BTW, my intention is not to start a race/culture flame war. I would like to know the mechanics behind this. I.e. how one preserves the culture of his realm?

 

[magitsu]

Place own culture guardians to educate children. It's quite common for kids to gain culture and religion from their mentor.
Actually I was quite shocked when I saw this first time. Two out of two Finnish Pagan kids turned into Andalucian Sunni which the guardian had. I only looked at the stats before assigning him.
Luckily the kids were not mine but one of my courtiers... they were quite useless (terrible infidel+foreigner relations modifiers) after that "education". Maybe I should've married them off to Spain.