Good Breeding: A guide to taking care of your family tree.

[Durallan]

Greetings, this is partly in response to the people having trouble getting good generals married, and just as a guide to those who wish to have a well bred family.

First of all, let me show you my family tree from my Denmark campaign.


As you can see, the kings all progress nicely down the left hand side which is what we are aiming for.

NOTE: unfortunately this will not work for Muslim factions or any other faction where you do not get moveable princesses on the campaign map.

Starting a new game

Ok. When starting a game it is very important to train your prince up, not the king, the prince, you can pretty much ignore the king for the most part unless he has alot of command and you have some important battles he needs to be in.
The most important part of a young mans life is princehood.
The first and most urgent thing to do is find him a bride. Remember that traits are done when the kids come of age not when they are born. This gives you several turns to train up your prince.

Training up a prince for good traits

Now we need to organise a couple of battles for him. make sure they are not too easy and are challenging so he gets some kills in, hopefully he will get a couple of traits out of the battle. Next and if you want a chivalrous prince, Crusades.
These give great command bonuses and make sure that your prince is the one that completes it but bring as many generals as you like with armies of their own (until they surround the city) so they also get traits and bonuses if the target is nearby. By now your prince should be very decent with up to 6-10 command stars, loyalty points, chivalry.

IMPORTANT:"It is important that a Princes son comes of age, BEFORE you knock off the current King. Otherwise who knows who will become Prince!"
Hopefully your prince now has a son and some daughters of his own and are nearly ready to come of age. As soon as you find a suitable foreign princess ( with 1.2 it is quite easy for the AI to get decent princesses) on the campaign map to marry your new prince to, knock off the old king in the fastest manner possible. Not only does this have the advantage of not getting incest traits, it also allows you to forge some great alliances and the AI nearly never breaks a marriage alliance, unless its Portugal. As you can see most of my kings have died in battle, this is to make way for the new prince. Now we have a new prince! basically we go back to the start of this guide, find him a bride and give him a ride!
Again with the new prince you need to start training him in battles straight away.

Princesses and how to use them

Ok, by now you should either have some princesses either made by your king (if the starting king and queen are young enough) or hopefully some princesses by your prince. Moveable princesses are the most valuable commodity and ones with high charm are priceless. Cross your fingers that your princesses have 3 or more charm, if not you may need to try some negotiations to increase their charm if it can be increased that way.

There are 3 things you can do with a princess that are worthwhile,
Marry inside the family.
Marry outside the family.
Marry another factions heir or king.

Incest it not always so bad if it means your family can keep going in a regular pattern. Marrying inside the family does sound rather bad, but if there are no suitable foreign princesses for your princes son and the prince has a sister that is not married yet, then it may become necessary to marry them to ensure normal continuation of the family line. Just remember not to go too far with the incest business otherwise you may end up finding out that you have gone so far that your king has ended up being his own grandfather. You also get some really bad traits if you do it more than once or twice.

However if you have no problems there but have a wonderful general that is 40 or under you can marry one of your spare princesses to him to ensure that he may hopefully have a son, and you won't have to wait forever for the marriage proposals.

Marrying another factions heir/king can be great for relations, especially if your princess has high charm, because the ai value a high charm wife just as much as you do you may be able to squeeze some cash from them. However if the bride to be isn't very charming, expect to pay a hefty price to get a marriage going. Also apparently if that factions royal family is all killed off you may inherit their properties if the queen is still alive.

If you see a general that you really like on the campaign map but he isn't yours, you can try and get one of your princesses to marry him. If its successful he will then join your family tree and they will have kiddies of their own. However there is a bug where the children when they come of age will all have different last names. I don't recommend this unless its a 10 star general because the princesses can be used for the more worthwhile causes above and you should have good generals in your king and prince anyway.

The prince that has become a king

What to do with the king? well until it is time to knock him off this mortal coil, you can either get him doing some battles, but it is better to do them with your prince, or get him to be a good governor. You may want to read Kobals guide for governing on that.

What if my new king doesn't have a high authority?
Well unfortunately not too much can be done in the short term, however if your king has stats like full command, full chivalry or full piety, it seems that in the several intervening turns that he may get authoritarian traits automatically. However training him up to a governor will give you better chances.

Once the new princes son comes of age it is time to knock this king off so that the new son becomes the faction heir and then you can troll the map for a suitable foreign princess.

Keeping the family tree pruned and groomed

Sometimes due to tragedies and some unfortunate circumstances you may just lose a family member no matter what you try to do to avoid the unavoidable. In this case just try and train up whoever is going to be the faction heir, get them a bride if they do not already have one and try and keep the family going that way.

As to keeping your family tree tidy, here are some tips:
Never, ever accept an adoption, marriage proposal (one that comes up as an event, not a foreign diplomatic marriage) or man of the hour unless the general has amazing stats or you are in serious trouble.

You have to keep in mind that every single married couple can have up to 4 kids, which means that it can increase exponentially. Also if you flood your family tree you will not get the adoption or marriage proposal events and if you have a really wonderful general you want to marry, you may find you will never be able to.

Make sure you always have a faction heir to marry a girl too, otherwise your kings will no longer always be on the left hand side of the family tree and some of the traits that the adopted people can get will damage the bloodline.

Try to make sure your faction heir always survives any engagement no matter how many ordinary troops that may die as a result of his being able to escape. Without a faction heir and therefore someone to continue your bloodline you get into trouble.

Always take the king and his son on the crusade, I ahve found you can get a crusade every generation but make sure the prince is the one that finishes the crusade, itll also be good for the king even if he just was one of the supporting armies in the siege.

The End

I hope you liked this guide and I hope it helps gives you ideas on how to keep a tidy and well groomed royal family. Any and all questions are welcome.