Hi everyone! My little mod is nearly ready for its first release (some point next week! Excited!) and in my big long playthrough/playtest I came across something a bit odd.
In the Roman culture in-game, titles are made suitably latin. So Count becomes Comes, Duke becomes Dux, and King becomes Rex. Only the thing about the Romans is they had a
serious hangup over the idea of kingship, to the point where Augustus and his successors had to bend over backwards to try and avoid being called 'king' or anything like it.
So I thought I'd head into the localization file and change a few names for the Roman culture. Maybe kings can be governors, or somesuch. When I looked at the
culture_titles_l_english,yml
I found, to my surprise, that alongside the feudal Roman titles were a second set under the heading
#viceroyalty
. Here they are for Roman culture:
Code:
# Viceroyalty
baron_viceroyalty_male_roman:0 "Governor"
baron_viceroyalty_female_roman:0 "Governess"
barony_viceroyalty_roman:0 "Province"
count_viceroyalty_male_roman:0 "Governor"
count_viceroyalty_female_roman:0 "Governess"
county_viceroyalty_roman:0 "Province"
duke_viceroyalty_male_roman:0 "Governor"
duke_viceroyalty_female_roman:0 "Governess"
duchy_viceroyalty_roman:0 "Province"
king_viceroyalty_male_roman:1 "Vicar"
king_viceroyalty_female_roman:1 "Vicarissa"
kingdom_viceroyalty_roman:1 "Diocese"
emperor_viceroyalty_male_roman:0 "Princeps"
emperor_viceroyalty_female_roman:1 "Principissa"
empire_viceroyalty_roman:0 "Principate"
...and there's also versions for Greek/Byzantine culture:
Code:
# Viceroyalty
duke_viceroyalty_male_byzantine_group:0 "Strategos"
duke_viceroyalty_female_byzantine_group:0 "Strategitissa"
duchy_viceroyalty_byzantine_group:0 "Theme"
king_viceroyalty_male_byzantine_group:0 "Exarch"
king_viceroyalty_female_byzantine_group:0 "Exarchessa"
king_viceroyalty_byzantine_group:0 "Exarchate"
emperor_viceroyalty_male_byzantine_group:0 "Grand Exarch"
emperor_viceroyalty_female_byzantine_group:0 "Grand Exarchessa"
empire_viceroyalty_byzantine_group:0 "Grand Exarchate"
So what's going on here? I've never seen these used in-game, and presumably they refer to a different government type than Feudal. Is there a secret government type for Roman and Byzantine empires that's so well hidden to be invisible? Or is this a holdover from CK2's Roman expansion from way back and is inactive?
By the name 'viceroyalty' I would assume they're supposed to change depending on being independent or a vassal. So an independent Roman king-tier character would be a Rex, but if they were vassal to the Emperor would become Vicar*.
Can anyone shed any light on this? Is it worth delving further in or should I just start renaming the feudal-government titles?
EDIT: A little further poking around shows that the word 'viceroyalty' only appears outside of localization once, and as a #heading without any actual implementation in that file. So whatever the plan was or is, those titles are currently not in use. I suppose that I could earmark this for v2.0, having titles change depending on whether they're vassals or independent, but for now I think a simple solution of renaming 'Rex' as 'Governor' is a good first step. I also wonder if the inevitable China DLC will bring in a new system of government more suitable for Byzantine and Roman empires as well, and this will all have to change before long. Probably.
*There's further issues created by baron, count and duke-tier titles all coming out as 'governor' but that's by the bye.