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CK2 Dev Diary #103 - Long live the King!

Greetings.

Today we will put Pagans aside, go back to good old Catholics, and explore one of the new features coming for them with Holy Fury: Coronation Ceremonies.

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With this expansion, succeeding to the throne of a Catholic Kingdom or Empire will not be a simple matter of gaining the title itself. The new ruler will need to organize a Coronation Ceremony (via new intrigue decision) and be recognized as legitimate by a notable member of the Catholic Church.
If a Catholic ruler fails to be officially crowned, he will see his popularity slowly fade away each year, as his vassals grow more and more restless under what they perceive as an illegitimate King.

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Coronation is divided into two phases: preparation and ceremony.
During the preparation, the ruler will decide whom he wishes to be crowned by, he will meet the Church’s demands, and invest money to organize the ceremony. In the second phase, the ruler will host the ceremony itself, interacting with guests and ultimately receiving his crown.

When organizing a ceremony, a Catholic King can choose between three possible options when it comes to officiant priests: he can be crowned by a low-status theocratic vassal within his realm, by a powerful theocratic vassal within his realm (such as a Cardinal, Antipope or Prince-Bishop), or by the Pope himself. Catholic Emperors who fail to enact the Free Investiture succession on the other hand will be limited in their selection only to the Pope.
While being crowned by a local Bishop is a lot less prestigious, it is also much cheaper, as higher-ranking members of the Church will be prone to make outlandish requests, especially if they dislike the ruler requesting them to officiate his coronation.

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Requests may vary a lot, especially when it comes to the Pope: the Holy Father might ask you to change your realm’s Investiture laws, wage war against an Excommunicated ruler on behalf of the Papacy, or to restore some of the Central Italian provinces to the Holy See.
Be sure to be in good relations with the Pope before asking for a coronation if you wish to receive a more tolerable offer.

Once the demands of your chosen priest have been met, you will be able to select a budget for your ceremony which will determine the kind of coronation you will receive, the kind of flavor events tied to it and the number of guests participating in it.
An extravagant coronation is a prestigious event to which all your vassals, courtiers and even neighboring Christian rulers are invited, a secluded coronation is a private feast to which only your Council will have access to.

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Once the ceremony has been concluded, your character will receive a specific trait tied to the priest that crowned him, as well as retain any additional perks granted by the flavor events experienced during the feast leading up to the coronation.

You might have noticed from the screenshots that this new mechanic affects character portraits as well: Catholic Kings and Emperors that have not been crowned will no longer wear the high-tier headgear in Holy Fury, defaulting to the Ducal band instead until their rank has been officially recognized by the Church (naturally, if you do not own Holy Fury, Catholic Kings and Emperors will wear the appropriate gear by default as before).

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This is not the only portrait-related addition though: Holy Fury will bring to the game a series of special crown artifacts that will be visible on portraits whenever the characters are wearing them. Most of these artifacts can only be used when the character meets certain requirements and they are often tied to a specific title rather than a character’s dynasty.

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And this should be about it for this week.
 
Yes, there is a cooldown on the decision to prepare a coronation, but any request can be denied, then you can pick the decision again. You can either ask the Pope a second time (though, unless he died or really changed his opinion of you in the meantime, there is a high chance that he will remember his last request and ask it again), or go for a lower level priest.

If you ask the pope to crown you, and he comes with (for you) ridiculous request. So you say no I would rather be crowned by my minor bisshop. I expect the pope is not happy when you do this. Does this have some consequences, like for example (I know it is though) excommunication or something bad.
 
If you ask the pope to crown you, and he comes with (for you) ridiculous request. So you say no I would rather be crowned by my minor bisshop. I expect the pope is not happy when you do this. Does this have some consequences, like for example (I know it is though) excommunication or something bad.

Should / could be the same as when you ask for to buy indulgence from the intrigue menu, and refuse to accept the Pope's offer. "I've changed my mind." or / Declining as it could also be put, then gives the Pope a negative opinion of you.
 
No, it is just one coronation per ruler.
Does this apply to rising through the ranks? Say your a king and you have your coronation, bit then later on in your rule you become an empora would you then have a second coronation because of the rose in rank or just the one when you was a king?
 
The coronation mechanism represents the strong and independent clergy in catholic countries which could refuse to crown kings and emperors. That's not something that happened in the Byzantine Empire.
Byzantine Empire is not the only Orthodox realm though...
And besides, I'd be happy to have just the coronation ceremony.
 
I think asking Pope for coronation should usually only be reserved for Emperors. Mere king of France shouldn't be able to do that unless there are no Emperors around. So for example if HRE is not yet formed, powerful king could ask Pope for the coronation. But after forming the Empire, the privilage of being crowned by Pope should be reserved to the Emperor.

Most countries had traditional crowner like Archbishop of Reims for France. I think choosing traditional crowner could be one of the options if it happen not to be the same as "the most powerful Bishop of the realm".

Can we do a Napoleon though? Out of the time period, but a strong enough conqueror could force the pope hand, that would make for an interesting dynamic.
 
This may be a stupid question, but for the Local bishops for coronation ceremonies, it was said that their requests can scale according to opinion, but do those requests also factor other things like in other areas of vanilla.

An example of what I mean, if a ruler approaches a clergyman for an coronation request, and the clergyman requests gold in exchange, does the ammount requested scale to the ruler's wealth? (I know in EU4 the same thing I am talking about takes a estimated yearly ammount of gold, but I don't know how CK2 does it)

I am asking, because the duke of brittany might not be able to afford 100 gold for a local coronation, while the King of France would be much more likely to afford that.
 
Those French portraits are way too stylised.
 
I'm a little sad the other Christian Faith's don't get coronations. It seems weird to make this Catholic exclusive.
 
What determines a "powerful bishop", just highest title rank? What if there are no country/duchy level bishops? What if there is an empire level bishop, that's sort of even higher than the pope's title; is that acknowledged in some way? Are powerful bishops and/or the pope more likely to do your bidding if you are their ruler (and thus have more direct power over them)?
 
Two-thirds of those presented crowns appear like they may have supernatural events associated with them or may have supernatural modifiers.

Are you taking care to make sure that the added content reflects the sensibilities that motivated the Supernatural Events on/off rule?
 
what about viceroy kings? do they require any coronation? can they have coronations? "here you go, duke snobbington of hereford, you can hold onto england for me. what crowned as rightful king. that's my title, you're just borrowing it."
 
It's the first DD of October, and we've yet to get a release date.

I have therefore decided to withhold my crowning of Holy Fury as the absolute best DLC ever until such a release date is offered.
 
Two-thirds of those presented crowns appear like they may have supernatural events associated with them or may have supernatural modifiers.

Are you taking care to make sure that the added content reflects the sensibilities that motivated the Supernatural Events on/off rule?
I can't speak for the Whispering Crown, but the Cursed Diamond Crown is an item that already exists in the game and, IIRC was introduced with Rajas.

The "cursed" event chain is very much one of those "maybe magical, maybe mundane" sort of things. Nothing's explicitly supernatural. You are not getting visits from a vengeful Kali or something like that. Think things like the sparkle spooking elephants and developing a bit of an obsession with the precious... ahem, I mean the diamond.
 
Can claimants to the title (who are inside the realm) disrupt the crowning ceremony somehow? This may be a bad question, I don't know how coronations go (I don't live in a country with a monarch so my knowledge is limited) but I assume that if your brother is a claimant the coronation will reduce the legitimacy of his claim, so can your brother then try to ruin the ceremony, to reduce the effect of your legitimacy?

I assume all of your subjects come by default to the ceremony, is it possible to turn away certain rulers from the ceremony (presumably costing them prestige and lowering their opinion of you)?
 
One thing I wanna know though, is there going to be any work on letting me choose who gets to join my court? Sort of tired of having lustful peasant rebellion leaders arriving en masse non stop, ending up giving me bastard grandchildren, or just plotting against me as if it was going out of style. Not to mention, whenever an entire family joins and I send the parents away, the kids remain.

When peasant rebellions send us people, they’re not sending their best…