France and princesses..

I have finally started playing france ( using mod Stainless Steel) after playing M2TW for ages and I have found you can trade Caen in exchange for a marriage alliance of that nice french princess I even got cash too anyone else try this in vanilla? That princess rocks I suppose she has potential of being an uber diplomat for a short while I am guessing marrying her inhouse will get various 'wife is cool' traits. On the subject of marriage I found grabbing a spainish (the barcelona faction) princess was pretty good as they where willing to pay me to marry her which was kinda odd ( perhaps its just the SS mod) or may be the fact she wasn't anything to special (just 3 hearts)?