Will vassals desire single kingdom title after empire creation?

[Basquenoel]

I'm still a bit confused when it comes to de jure drift, empire creation and vassal penalties. I've read through a bunch of threads and the wiki, but what I didn't really get is the following:
If I create an empire and keep my single kingdom title, will my duke-tier vassals desire this kingdom because it is no longer my primary title (which then is the empire title) or not?

In my case, I started with the Duchy of Brittany. Created Kingdom of Breizh. Conquered step by step all of France and Ireland + half of England, only creating duchy titles. All of the duchies are de jure drifting into the Kingdom of Breizh.

The wiki now says: "You may want to delay the creation of an Empire until some Duchies have drifted into the Kingdom title you plan on holding."
Alright, in case I wait until they become de jure part of Breizh before creating the Empire of Francia (or Britannia), what do I get out of it? Increased levies + less independence factions, right? But on the flip side they will now be de jure vassals of the Kingdom of Breizh, therefore potentially desiring it - which they would not if it's not the de jure kingdom they are part of?
Or do I get something wrong and they won't even desire the kingdom title? If so, why - I mean it's no longer my primary title?

 

[jhhowell]

Vassal dukes will desire the kingdom title that their duchy is de jure part of, if it is not the kingdom that contains their liege's (i.e. your) capital.

In your Breizh/Francia example, if the Duchy of Normandy has drifted into Breizh but the Duchy of Toulouse still de jure belongs to the Kingdom of Aquitaine, the Duke of Normandy will have no problem with you but the Duke of Toulouse will want you to give him the King of Aquitaine title (I'm assuming you hold that title).

In practice I don't worry about this. De jure drift takes a long time, and if I'm going for an empire title (and let's face it, one rarely doesn't aim for one... ) I want it ASAP for various reasons. Demesne limit, vassal limit, needing a single top-level title to not get screwed by gavelkind, etc. The opinion penalty for a duke wanting their regional king title is very manageable, and if they rebel a player emperor should easily be able to crush them. If you have some vassal duchies getting close to drifting into Breizh, sure, may as well wait until they do, but if it will take several decades yet just go ahead and create your empire title.

 

[Basquenoel]

if it is not the kingdom that contains their liege's (i.e. your) capital.

Ah, that's the part I was missing somehow, thanks! So as long as I keep the Kingdom of Breizh and my capital within, they will not desire it, even after having created an Empire. My vassals will then only desire any additionally held kingdom title.

In my example, as I actually do not hold the title Kingdom of Aquitaine (no one holds it, I didn't want to create it yet), the Duke of Toulouse won't desire the Kingdom of Breizh either, regardless of Duchy of Toulouse having drifted into it or not (in the first case, he wouldn't desire it because it contains my capital, in the second because it's not de jure Breizh).

But yeah, you are right, other things are probably more important to consider than only looking at opinion penalty.

One follow-up question though. If I can choose between creating the Empire of Francia or Britannia, what would be the smarter choice? For sure depends on my playing style and aims, but maybe there is something important to take into consideration that I overlooked.
For the moment, I mostly thought about the fact that creating Vassal Kingdoms will be easier outside the de jure empire, and about de jure claims. So if I prefer to/need to have a Vassal King of Ireland and England and only dukes in France, I better go with Francia (as my Irish/English king vassals won't desire the Francia empire title). But if I want to get a de jure claim on the Kingdom of Scotland, I better go with Britannia. Something else to consider?

 

[jhhowell]

I'm not the best person to discuss multi-empire setups, since I don't feel the need to grow larger than one empire.

In your e_francia with vassal k_england etc. example, the King of England would want the e_brittania title, so be careful about creating both empire titles. You should just create the empire where your demesne is (I'm guessing Francia in your case).

Depending on your priorities, also think about what vassal kings will or will not be able to launch their own wars of conquest. I hate vassals taking territory - I have my desired borders, I don't want the realm expanding beyond them. Others like to use vassals as a cleanup squad as they paint the map. For my purposes, I'll only create a vassal king if he has no external border, which is usually rather difficult to arrange. In your case the Britannia titles would work pretty well - I've seen Norse characters do successful overseas invasions, but that seems much rarer for non-Norse (10x higher ship costs). Whereas if you want to go from two empire titles to three, four, etc., you'll probably want a King of France, King of Aquitaine, King of Burgundy, etc. to help you out.

One cool trick someone suggested when I was asking about vassal management issues like this - if you can pick up a titular kingdom title, that can be a handy way to put a collection of dukes under one guy, without de jure concerns (until drift makes the kingdom non-titular). I don't think there's anything like that in your part of the world, though.

 

[Basquenoel]

I'm not the best person to discuss multi-empire setups, since I don't feel the need to grow larger than one empire.

In your e_francia with vassal k_england etc. example, the King of England would want the e_brittania title, so be careful about creating both empire titles.

Yes, I also just want to create one empire, so my question was just about which of the two possible empire titles could be the better choice
Thanks for your input and you are right, probably Empire of Francia would make more sense in my case as it would be easier to control Vassal Kings of England, Ireland (and potentially Wales, Scotland) while keeping French duke vassals and not creating the other Francia Kingdom titles (Aquitaine, France, Arles).

You should just create the empire where your demesne is (I'm guessing Francia in your case).

Still I wonder, any particular reason for this (only creating the empire where my demesne is de jure)? You mean because no one desires the title in which my demesne/capital is (as discussed above)? So even if I become Emperor of Francia and decide to create the Kingdom of France for a vassal, they will not desire the Empire, because Francia is the de jure empire of my demesne/capital, right?

So if for whatever other reason I decided to create the Empire of Britannia instead, I should make sure that I only keep English/Irish/Welsh dukes if I don't want opinion penalty. But then I could on the other hand probably create Kingdom of France/Aquitaine and they won't desire my empire title (because Britannia is not de jure empire of their Kingdom).

One cool trick someone suggested when I was asking about vassal management issues like this - if you can pick up a titular kingdom title, that can be a handy way to put a collection of dukes under one guy, without de jure concerns (until drift makes the kingdom non-titular). I don't think there's anything like that in your part of the world, though.

For the moment no, but that could be a reason to still wait a bit before creating the empire, as, in my case, the de jure duchies of Kingdom of Aquitaine will soon become de jure Kingdom of Breizh and then Kingdom of Aquitaine would be such a titular title to hand out.

 

[jhhowell]

Yes, I also just want to create one empire, so my question was just about which of the two possible empire titles could be the better choice
Thanks for your input and you are right, probably Empire of Francia would make more sense in my case as it would be easier to control Vassal Kings of England, Ireland (and potentially Wales, Scotland) while keeping French duke vassals and not creating the other Francia Kingdom titles (Aquitaine, France, Arles).

Still I wonder, any particular reason for this (only creating the empire where my demesne is de jure)? You mean because no one desires the title in which my demesne/capital is (as discussed above)? So even if I become Emperor of Francia and decide to create the Kingdom of France for a vassal, they will not desire the Empire, because Francia is the de jure empire of my demesne/capital, right?

So if for whatever other reason I decided to create the Empire of Britannia instead, I should make sure that I only keep English/Irish/Welsh dukes if I don't want opinion penalty. But then I could on the other hand probably create Kingdom of France/Aquitaine and they won't desire my empire title (because Britannia is not de jure empire of their Kingdom).

For the moment no, but that could be a reason to still wait a bit before creating the empire, as, in my case, the de jure duchies of Kingdom of Aquitaine will soon become de jure Kingdom of Breizh and then Kingdom of Aquitaine would be such a titular title to hand out.

Well, you clearly control the territory of two empires, so that's about twice as big as I ever grow.

Yes, exactly, you'll prefer to hold the titles that contain your capital. If you're inclined to move your capital as part of setting up your empire title the way you want it, of course that could change things... I don't have a good sense of where the truly excellent capital duchies (if there are any) are in that part of the map. You're probably far enough into the game that your current capital has a noticeable edge in tech and building levels anyway.

I'm not sure it's easy to engineer a titular title like that; would you still be able to create the Kingdom of Aquitaine title after it drifts to the point of being titular? I suspect not. And if you're the one who holds it before it's titular, those last duchies won't drift. My only experience with a titular kingdom was picking up the Kingdom of Kabulistan in the mid-900s (too soon after 867 to have drifted, so it must have been titular to start with), which I could create once I controlled Kabul.

 

[DPS]

I'm not sure it's easy to engineer a titular title like that; would you still be able to create the Kingdom of Aquitaine title after it drifts to the point of being titular? I suspect not. And if you're the one who holds it before it's titular, those last duchies won't drift. My only experience with a titular kingdom was picking up the Kingdom of Kabulistan in the mid-900s (too soon after 867 to have drifted, so it must have been titular to start with), which I could create once I controlled Kabul.

FWIW, you can create kingdom titles after they become titular. It may not do you much good, though. For example, suppose that your primary title was the kingdom of Lithuania, and you've also control all of Poland and the rest of the Wendish Empire. If you create the empire, and the duchies within the kingdoms of Poland, Pomerania, and Bohemia each have their own duke, and the duchies haven't drifted into the kingdom of Lithuania, you can create the empire, and then give out the 3 kingdom titles other than Lithuania to one of the dukes in each kingdom, and each of the new kings will have the other dukes within their kingdom as their vassals. But if the duchies have all already drifted into the kingdom of Lithuania, then when you give out the kingdom titles, each of the new kings would only control their own duchy, and the other duchies would still be your direct vassals. This would negate one of the main reasons to give out the kingdom titles (that being that fewer direct vassals are easier to manage).

 

[jhhowell]

Ah, I see the problem now - "Dukes may only be transferred to their de jure liege when that title exists" (wiki link). So to put d_gilan, d_tabaristan, d_khorasan, d_herat, and d_sistan under the titular kingdom I'll also have to destroy the Daylam, Khorasan, and Sistan kingdom titles. That's probably why I hadn't gotten around to doing this already...

Might still be worth doing; the current generation of vassals will hate you for destroying their de jure liege title, but subsequent generations should be OK. Depends whether the benefits of the titular king vassal are enough to outweigh the short term opinion hit.