What happens when a child that you think is yours and is part of your dynasty inherits?

[Hans Strudel]

I feel like it's hard to explain this in words. Say your character's wife has an affair and gets pregnant. The kid is born and your character thinks it's yours. If the kid inherits does that mean the game ends? There's so many weird quirks in this game that are very difficult to pin down, especially inbreeding (I had a king who married his second cousin accidentally and their first kid was inbred which shouldn't be possible) so I don't know how this works at all.

 

[Dragatus]

As long as the heir is officially a member of your dynasty it's all good. You can even discover that your wife was cheating on you and it still makes no difference. The only thing that matters is the official dynasty.

 

[Will Steel]

This reminds me of that old thread a few years ago, where a user accidentally found out that none of his 8 kids were actually his.

In terms of gameplay, nothing will change. Those kids will inherit and the game will continue. In the eyes of everyone they're your legitimate children, so things will stay as they are. Sure, they may be secretly illegitimate, but no one knows that.

In terms of genetics, however, that's where your line ends. After all in reality, that is someone else's child not biologically related to you. So your character won't be passing on genetical things (like inbred trait, strong trait, genius trait etc.) to that child, and they will share looks from the real father.

 

[Swaggernagger]

As the others have said, it doesn't matter who the real father is as long as the kid's dynasty is the same as yours.

The other quirk you mentioned about the inbreeding mechanics has to do with the way CK2 calculates the inbred chance. The game counts the number of unique ancestors a child has in the last five generations. This number is 62 when all ancestors are unique but it becomes smaller when inbreeding has taken place. In your case, this number is 56 which corresponds with an inbred chance of 2%. So it seems you just got really unlucky.

The above calculation assumes that none of the other ancestors were (slightly) inbred, but it's also possible that you accidentally married some cousins earlier or that there were some bastard children involved.

 

[Hans Strudel]

In terms of genetics, however, that's where your line ends. After all in reality, that is someone else's child not biologically related to you. So your character won't be passing on genetical things (like inbred trait, strong trait, genius trait etc.) to that child, and they will share looks from the real father.

I actually remember something like this which made me glad for the skin packs because one of my kids was Altaic while my wife and I were Celtic. Highly suspicious if you ask me.

 

[guest1749]

@Swaggernagger, sorry for offtop, but can you explain with more details, how does the calculation of the chanse for inbred trait work? Is there a moment, when it reaches 100%? This information will be very helpful in my current game.

 

[Dragatus]

@Swaggernagger, sorry for offtop, but can you explain with more details, how does the calculation of the chanse for inbred trait work? Is there a moment, when it reaches 100%? This information will be very helpful in my current game.

https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Breeding#Inbreeding

 

[Duskwave]

From the wiki (https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Breeding#Inbreeding):

Someone born to two unrelated parents has 62 unique ancestors. Someone born to a pair of siblings whose parents had no shared ancestry themselves, has 31 unique ancestors. Close relatives become dangerous quickly, but whether cousins are is entirely dependent on how much shared ancestry there is. Mixing in a guaranteed no-shared-ancestors character (like a promoted commander or debutante) now and then is important. It used to come up less, but stuff like trying to cross in a 12-bloodline character to a male succession line poses real risks unless you're careful about it.

 

[ArzhurG]

From the wiki (https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Breeding#Inbreeding):
View attachment 494627

Someone born to two unrelated parents has 62 unique ancestors. Someone born to a pair of siblings whose parents had no shared ancestry themselves, has 31 unique ancestors. Close relatives become dangerous quickly, but whether cousins are is entirely dependent on how much shared ancestry there is. Mixing in a guaranteed no-shared-ancestors character (like a promoted commander or debutante) now and then is important. It used to come up less, but stuff like trying to cross in a 12-bloodline character to a male succession line poses real risks unless you're careful about it.

Those numbers are interesting. That means that if a brother and sister marry, with no previous incest, there is only a 10% chance (32 unique) of inbred. However, if their kids marry, the chance jumps up to 88% (18 unique).

Moral of the story: it should be fine to marry you sibling, just make sure that your kids don't do the same.

Edit: added quote to previous post.

 

[Duskwave]

Those numbers are interesting. That means that if a brother and sister marry, with no previous incest, there is only a 10% chance (32 unique) of inbred. However, if their kids marry, the chance jumps up to 88% (18 unique).

Moral of the story: it should be fine to marry you sibling, just make sure that your kids don't do the same.

Edit: added quote to previous post.

It can be a real issue if you had a Master Seducer really active at one point and have a lot of stealth bastards out there, especially if you forget to take notes of them or if other AI relatives had some of their own (which doesn't necessarily even need Seduction focus of course, plenty of builtin lover events) So it's best to still assume a certain % of risk all the time, but yes, even with close relatives, it's more repetition that's the risk.

 

[Evangeline]

Yeah, bastards you think are yours will even get your bloodlines and everything - which is why I almost never question any child's parentage. I would ONLY ever do that if I've been breeding super-rulers very hard, am strong and a genius, and my wife doesn't have any good hereditary traits, stats or bloodlines herself, which is almost never the case. By the way, I also breed genius super-courtiers in order to have better advisors and vassals, so if the wife cheated chances are good that it was with someone who will be a great biological parent. It's only occasionally that you get an annoying hunch-backed master seducer as a powerful neighbor you can't attack - in that case, spies will be hired to expose them and more spies will quietly get rid of them, "known murderer" be damned.

 

[Uncle Lando]

The game could probably use a way to investigate a character’s legitimacy because currently there’s basically no penalty to having your heir be a secret bastard. I think the game of thrones mod has one but it would be nice to see in vanilla.

 

[Duskwave]

The Spy On action from Intrigue focus can reveal if someone is a secret bastard, and if so, allows their liege to revoke their titles.

 

[Karlington]

The Spy On action from Intrigue focus can reveal if someone is a secret bastard, and if so, allows their liege to revoke their titles.

True, but the problem is that it doesn't do anything else. It doesn't correct parentage, it doesn't affect or add Bastard traits, nor bloodlines, claims, dynasty, etc. It basically has no in-game effect beyond giving you a revocation reason, which is silly in my opinion.

 

[Hans Strudel]

I love how basically a side remark I made has turned this into the entire science of inbreeding in CKII.