Marrying a princess with her brother or father...

[Haethurn]

Does this start a civil war or something? Could I do this repeatedly and create a severely mentally and physically retarded royal family with horrible stats? That would be hilarious. I remember accidentally placing my princess on my king or a prince or something and a popup said something bad would happen, I think.

[motorhead]

I can't recall if it was here or over at .com, but someone posted that they played a whole game where they married off their princesses strictly to their princes. Their opinion was it had no increased effect on the offspring, at least no more than the usual 'odd number of toes' that crop up naturally. The downside is your princes/rulers will all get secret incest, and if exposed is -5 piety. The upside is all your princes marry young and good probability when he ascends he'll already have some kids in the pipe.

Also, from a discussion long ago with some dev input, foreign princesses do not impact your heirs. A princess from a high command ruler will not pop out high command sons vis-a-vis her father's bloodline. The dev's asked if this is what people wanted in the upcoming patch, but the consensus opinion was no.

[Don Corleone]

Has anyone ever seen the French movie 'Queen Margot'? It's based on the book by Dumas. It's based on the 1570 timeframe in French history (Hugenots & Catholics engaged in a pretty bloody civil war). Anyway, the reason I bring it up is that there's some pretty thinly veiled references to Margot having gotteng 'jiggy' with all of her brothers. I'm wondering, was that common among medieval and renaissance aristocracy?

[motorhead]

I'm no historian or social scientist, but my understanding of the period was that the aristocracy saw themselves as being inherently superior to commoners. To perpetuate this superiority they felt it best to only breed with other aristocrats - which encouraged inbreeding. Also, to keep the land and wealth within the family, aristocrats frequently married close cousins.

[PseRamesses]

Marrying your princesses into your own family will remove them from the game since this shameful act is prohibited.

[Lord Ovaat]

I believe it's acceptable if the siblings are in the Province of Arkansas, though. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/flat.gif