Making incompetent sons into Bishops, exploit or fine?

[unmerged(199940)]

I managed to have a genius Brilliant Strategist son. Only problem was he was fourth in line for the throne. Luckily one of his older brothers died. I had two counties to work with, and so I appointed the other two brothers to be my bishops' successors. Only problem was my king was getting rather old, and the bishops seemed like they'd outlast him.

I tried revoking their titles, but the game won't let you grant your sons bishoprics this way. So I had to spend quite a lot of gold assassinating the bishops. This did put my sons in their place, but it felt a bit exploity, considering the game won't let you grant your sons bishoprics directly.

Thoughts?

By the way, I justified this cruelty to my family and vassals by the fact that my character has the trait possessed by demons.

 

[darthcarnate]

Consider this the equivalent of sending your son into the church, and a dastardly scheming kind of thing to do. The eldest son is not always the best candidate for the throne, and so this is one of the methods you might have at your disposal to change things to your liking.
Revoking titles, AFAIK, returns the title to you, for you to either hold onto or issue again. It doesn't pass it on to the next in line, it completely removes the line of succession - you have confiscated the title (remember that all power comes from the monarch).
I'm surprised that the game wouldn't let you grant your sons the bishoprics once revoked, it did for me as King of Navarre, that was how I stopped my son inheriting the Kingdom of Castille, in favour of my daughter who would inherit both Castille and Navarre.
So when you went into diplomacy with your sons and choose to grant a Landed Title, the Bishoprics which you held were not available?

 

[unmerged(199940)]

Well I went to "Grant Title" and selected the bishopric and it said "You cannot disinherit your son by granting him a bishopric!" or something similar. Did you do that in the demo or release version?

 

[Avior]

You can't grant your current heir a bishopric that way. All your other sons you can. At least that's how it worked for me. I had to assassinate my idiot heir and between that and using bishoprics I was able to get the one I wanted in. I don't think this is an exploit, because if the assassination goes wrong, it can open up a rather large can of worms.

 

[Alerias]

Quite obviously fine. Historical also. I dont see how it could be construed as an exploit.

Actually, I'm rather disapointed by the lack of options to send females to convents and such. Theres an option to threaten it when they bug you about marriage but that seems to be it.

It should be possible to send a daughter to a monastery. It should also be an option in cases of divorce. More broadly, it could be an alternative to imprisonment for courtiers and such who are caught plotting.

 

[darthcarnate]

Oh I see, you were trying to disinherit your heir (as in, the next person you'd play as). No, you can only do it to the others as Avior says, I believe. Since my heir was my daughter, I gave my son a bishopric so he couldn't inherit Castille (since I had yet to change the succession law to Absolute Cognatic).

 

[unmerged(199940)]

So disinheriting your heir by assassinating a bishop may be a bit gamey, I've concluded. Especially with all the complaints about assassination. To be fair though, I did have try four times to kill the bishop, and my name came out twice.