Strange AI behavior: Loving mother murders own daughter for NO apparent reason.

[Pinstar]

So my current ruler married this awesome German wife. She's got just about every good trait in the book and all of her stats are double digits. The only 'pure negative' trait she has is homosexual...but even then that hasn't stopped her from producing plenty of children.

My current ruler was born of his father's first wife. When his mother died, his father got re-married and picked up this awesome german lesbian, and had 2 more kids with her. Then my ruler's father died and I took over as his first born son. Since there were no other wives in the land with stats as good as her, and since she wasn't his blood mother, I married my ruler to his step mother. They had two children, a boy and a girl.

Then, out of the blue, I get a message that the girl was murdered at the age of 7 on orders of her mother.

I can think of no reason why she did this.
Her daughter was her true blooded daughter (not a bastard)
Her daughter was not set to inherit anything (the younger brother was the primary heir and there were 4 more older daughters ahead of her in case the younger brother died)
Neither of her children were inbred (since she was my ruler's step-mother, not blood mother)
Her daughter was not betrothed to anyone.
She was at +98 relations to my ruler (I couldn't see what her relations were with her daughter, but I know she at least had the +50 mother/child bonus)
My ruler's wife's dynasty did not stand to gain anything at all by this murder. (all the pretenders were members of my dynasty)
She had no traits that would seem to make her behave oddly. (She wasn't a lunatic, wasn't possessed) So unless being a homosexual makes the AI want to murder their own children, I can see NO reason why she did it.
She WAS in love with my ruler's father... but he died of natural causes, so she didn't have any visible negative relations penalties with my ruler. (It's not like my current ruler murdered his father, her lover, to take the throne early)

Since my daughter wasn't a key figure to anything and was too young to have even gotten married, her loss didn't do any real damage to my game. Her younger brother survived to adulthood without issue.

I'm just trying to understand how the character AI behaves and which traits might influence it. If there is a trait or situation that might cause a mother to want to kill her own child, I want to know about it so I can avoid a similar issue in future games.

For the record (and for those who can't see the Screen shot) her traits are:
Midas Touched
Genius
Twin (Her twin brother is some random count in Burgundy and has a +39 opinion to me)
Homosexual
Scholar
Cynical
Wroth
Just
Kind
Diligent

 

[Talq]

'murderered on the orders of...' means she started the killing event, but she didn't necessarily start the plot, she simply joined it.

'cynical' contributes to amorality, if the girl was greek, but shes german, thats foreigner -20, and children being easy to get people to help kill due to low PD is a known 'feature'. Nonetheless, surprised 'my child' didn't kick in to stop her joining the plot.

 

[Pinstar]

Her daughter was Greek...but yeah, it is odd that she'd join a plot to murder that daughter anyway. I could see maybe one of my older daughters wanting to murder so they become the primary heir...but if that were the case, they'd have to target the younger brother... killing the daughter would do nothing in terms of moving them closer to inheriting.

 

[Lwantssugar]

Seems as logical as me having a line of couriers and vassals out the door of my manor just wanting to jump at the chance to kill the infant son of my Basilious

 

[Zireael]

Use Family relations mod, it ups some family relations bonuses so these weird things are rarer.

 

[unmerged(457738)]

I married my ruler to his step mother

I'm guessing that's the problem. The AI probably doesn't track two separate family tree's for such cases and thus didn't recognize it was her own daughter she was helping to kill. Or some other similar interaction of the two roles.

 

[Pinstar]

That still leaves the question of... who started the plot in the first place and more importantly...why? As I said before, the daughter was not in any kind of politically important position in terms of title ownership or inheritance.

 

[Bj0rn]

Sometimes humans are unpredictable that way We never know why they do those horrible horrible acts... Makes you think...

 

[Talq]

That still leaves the question of... who started the plot in the first place and more importantly...why? As I said before, the daughter was not in any kind of politically important position in terms of title ownership or inheritance.

To start? possessed or lunatic (both cause the AI to plot to kill random people). And 'does this have any point?' doesn't enter the calculations for joining an existing plot. You do occasionally see plots with possessed/lunatic people trying to kill people with no relation to them, with 6 followers.

 

[dauncosony]

'murderered on the orders of...' means she started the killing event, but she didn't necessarily start the plot, she simply joined it.

'cynical' contributes to amorality, if the girl was greek, but shes german, thats foreigner -20, and children being easy to get people to help kill due to low PD is a known 'feature'. Nonetheless, surprised 'my child' didn't kick in to stop her joining the plot.

There shouldn't be a foreigner penalty when it comes to mother and child relationship. You don't get a foreigner penalty to your wife if she was of a different culture either.

 

[Veetor]

Clearly she isn't a loving mother as your title thread says... hehe

 

[SRM]

I like to pretend that people blamed for the assassination of people they had little reason to want dead were framed myself. Yes, I know that's not actually a feature, but it makes more sense to me.

 

[Veetor]

I like to pretend that people blamed for the assassination of people they had little reason to want dead were framed myself. Yes, I know that's not actually a feature, but it makes more sense to me.

Hah, nice of way of looking at it. I like

 

[Bj0rn]

It was clearly the butler who did it

 

[Prince Michael]

Another related thing: When you hover the cursor over the skull you see the cause of death. "In suspicious accident" is pretty obvious, successful murder plot or paid assassination in which the plotters were not caught (although the culprits might often be very obvious ones). The other thing is "Murdered by orders of nn" which was discussed already, the name in NN might have not been the main plotter but any plot member, who has got the blame (may have been framed or just the only one who got caught)

What about "Died in an accident"? Are these genuine accidents or very very successful outcomes of murder plots? I mean like suspicious accidents which have been set so well that they don't even rouse any suspects (a paradox, I admit)?

I don't think my character has ever died in a genuine accident. I have got injured in a hunting accident ("Maimed" trait outcome and died shortly after) but haven't got the outright death result. Are there any other genuine accidents in the game or have I just missed them completely? In any case when I see "Died in an accident" I get a little suspicious...

 

[Damorte]

Im pretty sure that when it says "murdered on the orders of X" X is always the one that started the plot.

Also im not 100% sure but i seem to recall that theres a random event where one of the choices got a % chance to kill a child/ward. That might be whats going on here.

 

[unmerged(149861)]

Seems as logical as me having a line of couriers and vassals out the door of my manor just wanting to jump at the chance to kill the infant son of my Basilious

"WHAT? You want to kill the King's heir, that little baby?"
"Yes..."
"I can get you fifty men, and my brother can get another fifty, and his third cousin knows a hundred people who would join that plot. My grandmother will probably want in on this too, and let's not forget the horses, they need to be in on it too."

 

[Haresus]

Wroth!

 

[RaubritterAK]

The answer to this mystery is simple.

Your wife was obviously pissed about this month's cell phone bill. I've felt this urge many times myself.

 

[Djieh]

Im pretty sure that when it says "murdered on the orders of X" X is always the one that started the plot.

Actually it is always the one who ends the plot, so to speak. I have had plots I started myself that succeeded but were uncovered during the actual murder. In these cases the name displayed as "on the orders of" has always been the person who set the murder into motion, meaning the guy who poisons the wine or bribes the maid etc.

On second thought, I suppose you could have meant the same thing, using a slightly different wording ...