Crusades Alt-His RP (Official)

Bismarck Jr plays the Hohenstaufen, Holy Roman Emperors at this time. I suppose you can marry someone off to whatever Duke or Prince controls that region.

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*rant start*

Honestly, IMO "buying" other nations isn't an effective counter to royal marriages. In fact it's quite the opposite. It's an OP mechanic. Okay, so let's say I have a royal marriage. Great! I've probably just married some woman who's behind the line of inheritance from her brother, her brother's kids, her uncle, her cousin, some bastard, etc. My point simply, women are WAY beyond any line of inheritance. If I marry a woman from my dynasty to a man, their children would inherit his father's dynasty, not mine. Of course, putting a child that's from your union could work, but it takes time and suffers the same problem as women. The males and their children take priority.

So how can I get my woman/child to the throne? Well, I could just kill off the entire male line, but that's a lot of effort to kill some people. I could press her claim in a war too. 

Oh wait.

A war? Killing people? Isn't that the same thing that happens when you try to conquer without royal marriage?

Of course, royal marriages could get you alliances and a dowry, other than a weak claim. The former raises the question, who is worth allying? Well, for starters the stronk nations are already PC. So that isn't possible unless they trust you. You might ally a random duke in the HRE, or a king in a Crusader State. That's an NPC ally though. Some won't appreciate you playing NPC though, and that could lead to bad RP. Dowry? It's money. While significant dowries might provide benefit, it's nowhere near as powerful as instantly buying countries.

TL;DR Royal marriages aren't some sort of magic solution to taking lands. You need to press your claim, which in the end is done in the same way as anything else.

Meanwhile, buying nations are. You don't need a war, you don't need a roll for taking out the guy above you in the line of inheritance the umpteenth time.

(Note: apparently it is a game mechanic, but for reasons of realism I disagree with having magical marriages and buying states. I'll get to talk about that later)

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Onto historical reasons why this system, especially in the way it's implemented, is unrealistic. Looking at the tensions between Genoa and Pisa, I very much doubt the Pisans would accept being under Genovese rule, as I very much doubt a HRE noble would willingly give up his throne. 

With the way royal marriages were conducted back then, IMO it's quite unrealistic to have that as a magical solution.

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Now, I understand the reason being it a HRE-only mechanic. Yes, that rule where HRE states can't attack each other or they'll get attacked by the Emperor. Well, why can't we just replace it with this?

Accept that everywhere, royal marriages work as they did historically and it falls on the HRE Emperor player (in this case Bismarck Jr ) to leave an intra-HRE war alone or not.

One of my (personal) principles in this sort of RP is not to make rules where RP can fill in the gaps. Everyone could get royal marriages and press their claims, and everyone's reaction to it is based on RP (and not a set of rules). Merchant republics can claim wars of conquest, and then it falls on the Emperor to react.

Honestly, filling the gap of intra-HR wars with rules just makes the role of Emperor less important.

It might be intended too as a mechanism to let players in HRE, and I believe that simply letting it all to player interaction is an almost catch-all solution.

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Anyway, Antonio Santa Anna , I ask you as a player to consider this. It adds value to the position of HRE Emperor, and realism too.

Summing up: Let everyone war and conquer however they want, and let the Emperor react when he wants to, raising all of NPC HRE.

Wait Laurent de Gouvion, I need to remind you that a Matrilineal marriage means that the children born would've belong to the dynasty of the mother's. No need to kill the entire male line.

Matrilineal marriages are possible in CKII and DO occur on occasion for RL history as well, just somewhat uncommon.

So would you like to have some delay to simulate the gradual transition? Say... if you're married to this Duchess of Borkkun-de-Layhe-blah-blah, you don't get it right away. You need to wait about 5 years (realistically, you would need a generation, but let's say for sake of playing, time is slightly compressed) before you "inherited it"?

woah woah woah easy with that enthusiasm bro!

But will any of your progeny match MINE? None can best my dear son, Richard (future Richard I). He's an epic warrior king-to-be!

I am Henry the Virile!

In about 6 minutes, actually. But speaking of deadlines, @everyone, should I extend the deadline to 72 hours? It seems like people need that extra time.

I think just first couple of phases, to help people ease into things? Then go back to 48 hours?