You do have to be careful about abdication decisions though. It can be very easy to game them.
Sure, I could put in an abdicate decision, but you still wouldn't be able to control your granddaughter's marriage partner if she isn't in your court.
Even if I do put in an abdication decision (which will probably be saddled with severe restrictions, to prevent its casual use, e.g., to prevent your granddaughter from marrying some imbecile dwarf lowborn), I'm not releasing a new version until patch 1.09 and The Republic are released.
If you want to control every aspect of your realm, this is the wrong game to play, at least, if you want to expand your realm beyond your demesne limit.
I'm also having this problem (I just copied the portraits.fx and other file you mentioned in an earlier post.Which version of BLC did you copy from?