Smarter AI or Glitch?

[zhivago6]

I never saw this prior to patch 1.08, but I can't seem to gain big titles by marriage anymore. As emperor of Hispania my wife died. The queen of Ireland was only 17 and newly throned and I married her. A few years later we had a kid and I was happy that my son would be both emperor and king of Ireland, but then I noticed that he was the heir to my empire, but not my wife's kingdom. At some point the sneaky witch changed her succession laws to ELECTIVE! Why did she do that, except to avoid me killing her so my son would get the throne?

Same game, a few years later, I notice the Emperor of ERE has agnatic-cognatic gavelkind succession, a 15 yr old daughter and an infant son. I betroth my 14 yr old heir to his daughter and murder the infant son. When my son is old enough they marry. As soon as they have a son, I murder the emperor. Now my daughter-in-law is Empress and my grandson will someday inherit both empires. Except, a month later my son's wife changes the laws to, wait for it . . . ELECTIVE! WTF?!

Is this a glitch or does this happen all the time now?

 

[Kaiser Ludwig]

Factions Wars, quite likely.

 

[zhivago6]

The queen of Ireland did not fight any wars. The empress fought only one war, to depose her, but I killed the pretender so that it would end.

 

[Talq]

She can however, accept the demand from a faction to become elective.

Ai does accept some factions, thus kings can change without war, and (more rarely) provinces become independent.

 

[Sian]

as said ... sometimes the AI is accepting the blackmail and gives the nod without having a war about it. (most often if they're to busy another place, or they know that it would be good for them ... say someone which can see that the dynasty is going to lose the throne through Prigeniture is more likely to accept Elective with the intention to get a cousin on the throne later)