giving birth

[Spongie]

Could it be that I could crumble their entire faction by cutting off the snakes head in one fell strike or will they get a chance to ransom back their captured princes - one of which will actually be their new leader......that brings up it's own question - Do i get a kings ransom or only a princes?

I had something similar when the Danish monarch, who'd been happily bottled up in Scandinavia, decided to charge across the bridge into Saxony with 200 of his royal knights, including his two heirs. That battle was so much fun (billmen make such a mess of royal knights) that I reloaded and fought it several times... what I found was that if I didn't kill/execute the three of them outright but captured at least one and left them with no uncaptured royalty, they would always ransom back at least the most senior-ranking one (in terms of who's in line to the throne, so the king first, followed by the elder brother); the more junior royal captive(s) were liable to be left to their fate. You don't get a choice whether or not to ransom if you haven't killed the prisoners by the time you end the battle.

Essentially, if you want to wipe out the faction again then kill your prisoners when you assault the khan's last stand.

As to your second point, I suspect it would depend on the order in which the game processes (1) the ransom, and (2) the death & succession; from what I recall, it would tell me that I'd ransomed back a crown prince (who would then be announced as the new king)... but to be honest, by that point in the game I had over a million florins in ye Bank of England so I wasn't paying too much attention