Princesses and Inheritance

[Sal Dovian]

I have heard and read stories of inheriting land based on marriage alliances. For example, France would have a claim to my land if I was eliminated if I had married one of my princesses to their faction heir. Or vice versa, if a French princess marries my faction heir, I should have a claim to their lands if their family dies out.

To test this, I had a French Princess marry my faction heir, and then proceeded to eliminate all french family members and Generals by Assassination. The result was the French lands becoming Rebel, instead of mine.

How does land inheritance work in M2TW?

[Seabourch]

Does not work at all. Only way to gain in M2TW is invade it, buy it or have someone give it to you in a trade.

[Quintus.JC]

How does land inheritance work in M2TW?

It doesn't.

edit: didn't see the previous post. This comment is essentially useless...

[IncubusDragon]

I may well be wrong with this... I don't know the technical game mechanics, but based upon what I've seen in gameplay, it would appear that inheritance only applies within the characters/units displayed in your family tree card - if they're not on your family tree, then their territories will need to be fought for like any other territory that isn't under your faction's control... and I would venture to say that it is quite right for this to be the case.

Here's a simplification of a complex issue... "Claiming your inheritance" in Medieval times was not a civilised trip to a solicitor's office as it would be nowadays, but required a physical imposition of your power over the territory in question... so if you didn't claim it through force, somebody else would. Many modern laws were invented by the families of antiquity that had gained their prosperity through the use of force, and who wanted to ensure their offspring would be legally protected from others who wanted to obtain their wealth by means of force also... Ok, so it may well be too oversimplified, but it can perhaps give you an indication why inheritance in the game doesn't work as you might have hoped it would.

Coming to think of it, you could think of it this way... Imagine you inherited a house. You're a bit busy, so you don't actually do anything about it - but when you eventually do, you get there to find that squatters have already moved in. The house was inherited by you, but the squatters claim that they only stepped in when you neglected your duties. Both arguments have a degree of merit to them, and if you waited too long before acting, a court could award the ownership of the property to the squatter.

Now apply that reasoning to a region in Total War... the "owner" dies - the settlement shows as rebel i.e. it has become fair game to whoever claims the territory as their own. If you're too slow to lay claim yourself, another faction will move in and "squat" in the territory you believe should be yours... You will then have to remove the "squatter" by force if you want the region for yourself, but by that stage, the "squatter" is now officially recognised as being the rightful governor of the region - it's now only in your head that you are the legitimate heir to that region... so now you gotta choose whether or not to go to war over the region in question.

I suppose that's a very long-winded way of saying that differing perceptions of rightful inheritance was one of the main justifications for "territorial squabbles" throughout the history of mankind.

[O'Hea]

I think the confusion comes from the fact that in STW and MTW, it was possible to acquire your allies' lands if their families died off. Because of the implementation of family trees, this hasn't been possible in Rome or Medieval II.