Legitimacy issue

[DrZom]

First full game with all the game components. Everything was going along very well as Castille, when my heir died. The king sired a child out of wedlock, and soon after died. So I have this four year old bastard and a regency, with constantly eroding legitimacy. The child attains maturity and for the first time there is a boost in legitimacy, then I get sucked into a war defending an ally. The legitimacy starts to go down again, and is approaching zero.

What, if anything, can I do to boost legitimacy? What is going to happen when I hit zero?

 

[Ricox]

Nothing will happen when you hit 0 other than getting the biggest possible penalties for low legitimacy. Check the decisions in culture section, there should be "Introduce Heir" and some other decisions that can incerase your yearly legitimacy. There's also an advisor (bottom right on the list of all advisors, level 5 incerases legitimacy by 5% each month/year/whatever-it-was) to help. Royal marriages also help.

I believe you can also be thrown into a personal union as a jr. partner & other heir issues (others can claim your throne, AFAIK).

 

[unmerged(160565)]

Spam that royal marrage with EVERYONE!

 

[Crink]

Each royal marriage you enter into will increase your legitimacy by 0.5% each year. Also, the advisor will increase it by 1% each year for each star of the advisor. High prestige also increases yearly legitimacy. With a little work you can have it increasing by 10% a year.

 

[unmerged(62860)]

"Introduce Heir", the heir must be 15 years old and will disappear after a few years.

 

[cuendillar]

Spam that royal marrage with EVERYONE!

This does increase legitimacy, but risks backfiring badly. Due to low legitimacy, any country you're married to might claim your throne - so you could risk getting PUed by someone. Not the worst thing to happen as I think human players are immune to getting inherited, but could be a minor inconvenience depending on who the senior partner is.

 

[Ricox]

This does increase legitimacy, but risks backfiring badly. Due to low legitimacy, any country you're married to might claim your throne - so you could risk getting PUed by someone. Not the worst thing to happen as I think human players are immune to getting inherited, but could be a minor inconvenience depending on who the senior partner is.

And to get out of the PU you need to either fight the senior partner (if I recall correctly) or get negative relations and wait for the partner's King to die (then the PU is disbanded, but the relations must be negative at the time of King's death). So yeah, be careful about it, especially with strong nations.

 

[DrZom]

Thanks for the tips. I should have added that I have very good prestige numbers; I am in the top 3 consistently. So I am not too worried about PU. I have been soliciting RMs. But trying to get the good people of Spain to accept a bastard is going to be a challenge.

 

[brifbates]

This does increase legitimacy, but risks backfiring badly. Due to low legitimacy, any country you're married to might claim your throne - so you could risk getting PUed by someone. Not the worst thing to happen as I think human players are immune to getting inherited, but could be a minor inconvenience depending on who the senior partner is.

If you keep high prestige this isn't really an issue. The only risk of PU is getting marriages with nations that have better prestige than you.