Who to marry your daughters to

[Jaol]

I basically do 3 things with daughters:

1) Marry them off for alliances. Here I'm looking for a ruler or heir, who's powerful enough to help me (and either we're both independent, or in the same realm, or he's independent, and I'm planning on declaring war on my leige), but not so powerful that the claims will come back to bite me. Never do this with your liege, or anyone who might become your liege or whose son might become your liege. The child will have a free pass to revoke your titles.
2) Marry them off for prestige. Here I look for a prince of high-prestige dynasty and betroth my daughter to him.
3) Keep them around for their traits/skills. If I have a genius or strong daughter, then I find her a non-ruler husband with excellent traits (the ideal son-in-law is a lustful strong genius with a 4-star education). The goal is a matrilinear marriage, but if need be, I'll accept a normal marriage and I invite my daughter back to court. Then I raise their children to become council members/vassals. This obviously works best if the daughter is far enough down in the order of succession that she isn't a pretender. A genius elusive shadow pretender is not someone you want at court.

 

[Madae]

I can never get my daughters to have a matrilineal marriage. Every time I bring that screen up, I don't have anyone to choose from, or if I do it's people with terrible stats and/or old.

In my current game, I was really worried that my King wasn't having any children. He had a son, who was a dwarf and not necessarily the best heir, but he ended up dying from an illness. I divorced several women because they just weren't popping any children out, even though they had no negative fertility stats. Finally, while he was married to someone else, he got an "offer" to "tumble" with the former wife of his dead brother (who he assassinated, but that's beside the point). She ended up getting pregnant after that, so had him divorce his current wife and marry her. She ended up only having 1 daughter with him, and then my king "acquired" the homosexual trait.

So, now I have a female heir (who is actually queen now, but under a regent for the time being). I'm wondering if any marriage she does will have to be matrilineal so she stays queen, or if I can just do regular marriage and she'll still be my leader.

 

[Fishy101]

I can never get my daughters to have a matrilineal marriage. Every time I bring that screen up, I don't have anyone to choose from, or if I do it's people with terrible stats and/or old.

In my current game, I was really worried that my King wasn't having any children. He had a son, who was a dwarf and not necessarily the best heir, but he ended up dying from an illness. I divorced several women because they just weren't popping any children out, even though they had no negative fertility stats. Finally, while he was married to someone else, he got an "offer" to "tumble" with the former wife of his dead brother (who he assassinated, but that's beside the point). She ended up getting pregnant after that, so had him divorce his current wife and marry her. She ended up only having 1 daughter with him, and then my king "acquired" the homosexual trait.

So, now I have a female heir (who is actually queen now, but under a regent for the time being). I'm wondering if any marriage she does will have to be matrilineal so she stays queen, or if I can just do regular marriage and she'll still be my leader.

If you marry normally, your children will belong to the father's dynasty and the game ends when your queen dies. I played a game where both the King and Queen were assassinated leaving a baby daughter as heir. I decided to exact vengeance on my uncle who murdered my parents. So I married the a prince of the HRE normally and proceeded to use that alliance to crush my uncle. When my queen died the game ended.

 

[doubleskulls]

I basically do 3 things with daughters:

1) Marry them off for alliances. Here I'm looking for a ruler or heir, who's powerful enough to help me (and either we're both independent, or in the same realm, or he's independent, and I'm planning on declaring war on my leige), but not so powerful that the claims will come back to bite me. Never do this with your liege, or anyone who might become your liege or whose son might become your liege. The child will have a free pass to revoke your titles.

I've been playing a de Barcelona game recently and keeping up alliances with HRE & France are vital in the early/mid game to the Reconquista. I've had no issues with either France or the HRE trying to use those weak claims on me. Barcelona is Agnatic so there never is a female ruler they could press against, so the only risk is regencies. I think with the strong/weak thing these claims become much less troublesome...

 

[doubleskulls]

I can never get my daughters to have a matrilineal marriage. Every time I bring that screen up, I don't have anyone to choose from, or if I do it's people with terrible stats and/or old.

I generally invite people to court for this. Generally I'll find claimants to neighbouring counties/duchies and find someone who will come. If they are married, after they arrive Plot to kill the current wife - generally you have great % against anyone in your court and will get lots of backers so they die quickly. Then you can marry them.

If you want a stat based marriage you can use the people finder and search for men, who aren't rulers from great houses and your religion. You generally have to trawl through a few to find anyone who'll take the invite - mostly they have claims they think you'll help with.

 

[JonStryker]

I usually matrilineally marry them to lowborns / generated nobles. Then I land the husband and either start a new branch of the family or regain the county when he dies.

I usually don't marry my daughters to foreign claimants as a) I want to give them a county sooner or later (which would be risky in this case) and b) I don't want to always watch my daughter's children and make sure they don't change culture.
I prefer to directly give baronies to such claimants and then push their claim.

 

[Anthropoid]

I agree that the player ability to use the stats window to make optimized decisions is a bit 'immersion breaking.' But I don't think it relies on a fundamentally unrealistic social dynamic.

You have to remember that, these are the people who created most of the major modern dog breeds, and domesticated plants and animals that we have today. While modern biology and genetics and epigenetics in particular were obviously not known, concepts of inheritance, and selective breeding and domestication, i.e., CHANGING the distribution of traits in a lineage through time, very much WERE known.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the verbal communication networks all through Europe wouldn't have been able to yield at least some information on the traits of nearly anyone. The time delay and the availability of seemingly 100% accurate information on every single trait is problematic. But it is difficult to know how it could be changed to be more realistic and still be fun.

 

[Ahaz Flagg]

No set rule here, of course if it is a daughter in line for my demense she stays home, the others I look for council members, if no good ones then for an Allaince.

 

[_krampe_]

Since my aim is always to have any title owned by a dynasty member, i always invite someone to my court so he can't refuse a matrineal marriage and land him.
Of course people with claims are prefered, i only need to educate aka cultureshift his children properly.

It's always fun to see when someone declares an in realm war on one of my kin and half of the map raises levies.
Good for non intended expansions as well, once a duke of mine conquered half of russia on his own because he was allied with everyone in my realm. He died in my prison...

 

[OldRanger]

Is there any effecient way to sort/search for potential spouses who have claims to titles? If so, is there a way to filter for specific dynasties?
Thanks.

 

[Ahaz Flagg]

Fatest way I found was to click county flag, and then click the claiment button. Brings up a really nice list of all claiments.

 

[Deaghaidh]

Interesting problem, as if you marry your daughters to too powerfull neighbors or vassals, you run the risk of giving them claims to press in the next generation.

Typically I go by either rank, or usefullness of alliance. If they run the risk of being heirs, matrilineal to a high ranking/loyal/skilled vassal.

Unless, of course, you're playing the Targaryeans in the GoT mod. Then it's only an issue if you have a lack of sons and nephews to marry them to.

 

[Alyiakal]

Daughters are great for matrilineally marrying a claimant (usually has to be a courtier or otherwise not landed; invite to your court for best results), and then pushing the claim of the claimant (after landing them of course). Voila, you have added a sizable chunk to your realm that will be controlled by your dynasty in a generation.

My best play with this so far has to be matri-marrying my daughter (and heir mind you) to the born-in-the-purple second son of a deposed Byzantine Emperor. A few years later my ruler died of smallpox and with my newly minted queen, I proceed to claim the Byzantine Empire for my husband. I spent that generation with all my retinues deployed in Byzantium, helping him put down rebellions and preserving my dynasty's inheritance.

 

[the kookaburra]

I get too immersed in the game and find marrying my daughters for fun or profit feels wrong.

I make sure they have someone the same age and no really bad traits (inbred, possessed, stupid).
If I can get a good claim that's a bonus but their happiness is the main goal.

 

[Baron Jukaga]

I like to find 2nd or 3rd princes, marry my daughters to them matrilinearly and press their son's claims on the foreign throne. I'm trying to get a Dutchman of my dynasty on every important throne in my current Frisia game.