Winter is here and the ice-fear is very cold (now there's an obscure reference for you). For today's diary, I thought that we might immerse ourselves in medieval jurisprudence. In practice, the laws function in much the same way as in Rome: Vae Victis, but in Crusader Kings II there are two different types of law; one that applies to a character's actual demesne (de facto, or demesne laws) and one that applies to everyone within an ancient traditional kingdom (de jure, or kingdom laws.) Demesne laws cover things like succession, tax levels and how the council operates. Any playable character can fiddle around with his own demesne laws. Kingdom laws cover the freedoms, rights and obligations of burghers, nobles, clergy and peasants. Only the holder of a Kingdom title is allowed to change these laws, and they will affect the whole geographical kingdom, regardless of whether a province is actually under its de facto control. (Like in Crusader Kings, de jure duchies and kingdoms are static, geographical entities that never change.)

Therefore, a player who is, for example, king of Norway and Denmark must change de jure laws separately per kingdom. To make things even more interesting, succession at the kingdom level (and only at the kingdom level) is also handled per kingdom, so Norway might be an elective monarchy while Denmark has primogeniture. Thus, the Norwegian dukes might elect another successor to the throne of Norway than the oldest son of the current king, which would split the kingdoms apart...
Speaking of succession laws, they are slightly different from the ones in Crusader Kings. In Crusader Kings II, most succession laws can be either cognatic or agnatic (that choice is a separate law.) These are the succession laws of CKII:

• Seniority (oldest man in the dynasty succeeds)
• Primogeniture (oldest son succeeds)
• Elective (the current king and the dukes each nominate a successor)
• Gavelkind (all titles are divided among the sons of the ruler)
• Turkish (a succession crisis is almost guaranteed, but the vassals are content)
• Republican (a random vassal or courtier succeeds; used for republics, etc)
• Catholic Bishopric (the liege lord can override the Pope's choice by nominating his own successor)

That's all for now. The game is still a very long way from being finished, but I can at least offer you this screenshot of the current Law interface (though bear in mind that it is still very much subject to change.) In the screenshot, the king stands to inherit the duchy, because the young duke has no legal heir. "Pretenders" are the second and third characters in the line of succession.





Until next time, I bid you a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Henrik Fåhraeus, Associate Producer and CKII Project Lead

 

[Calgacus]

As far as I can tell, they've at least confirmed this one... with each demesne being able to have its own laws in addition to the kingdom laws. So it seems like it would be possible to have a duchy with primogeniture in an elective kingdom, or a "gavelkind" under a seniority-based monarchy, etc.

Maybe then there will be room to fiddle around with the settings of each polity to produce effects similar to the rota system ... ?

 

[Vrahn]

Will we be seeing something akin to Regency Councils or "Protectors of the realm" such as one of the dukes being nominated to temporarily hold the inheritance of the rightful heir until he is of age, or something else in this fashion.

Also will there be portraits for children as well or will we have the classic blacked out image?

 

[The Kingmaker]

Maybe then there will be room to fiddle around with the settings of each polity to produce effects similar to the rota system ... ?

I would hope so, though they have specified that there won't be any sub-laws for the main succession laws.

 

[Woody Man]

Will we be seeing something akin to Regency Councils or "Protectors of the realm" such as one of the dukes being nominated to temporarily hold the inheritance of the rightful heir until he is of age, or something else in this fashion.

Also will there be portraits for children as well or will we have the classic blacked out image?

I think there may be regencies, the child portrait is a placeholder..

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

As far as I can tell, they've at least confirmed this one... with each demesne being able to have its own laws in addition to the kingdom laws. So it seems like it would be possible to have a duchy with primogeniture in an elective kingdom, or a "gavelkind" under a seniority-based monarchy, etc.

This has been said in the diary

Therefore, a player who is, for example, king of Norway and Denmark must change de jure laws separately per kingdom. To make things even more interesting, succession at the kingdom level (and only at the kingdom level) is also handled per kingdom, so Norway might be an elective monarchy while Denmark has primogeniture.

 

[The Kingmaker]

This has been said in the diary

Right. So I wonder if it'll be possible to finagle the various succession laws in the game to a point that a reasonable facsimile of the early Russian rota system is at least approximated? What would it take to do that? A senority system in Kiev with some weird combination of different laws in the other princedoms?

 

[Calgacus]

I suppose all the principalities can be kingdoms, but that'd be too many [11]:

Maybe two or three, Rus (Kiev, Galicia, Vladimir-in-Volhynia, Turov, Chernigov, Pereyaslavl), Vladimir-Suzdal (Suzdal, Smolensk, Novgorod, Ryazan/Murom), and Polotsk (maybem like in CK1, part of Lithuania?). Then maybe we could rely on providing for children to bring down the blobbing.

 

[unmerged(196243)]

Are portraits moddable?

 

[Woody Man]

Are portraits moddable?

I would guess at yes, if you're a good artist, but they were moddable in CK and EU:Rome.

 

[Duckett]

I would guess at yes, if you're a good artist, but they were moddable in CK and EU:Rome.

If you don't mind me asking, how moddable were they in Rome? With this game using the same engine, I'd imagine it has the same degree of modifiability.

 

[The Kingmaker]

If you don't mind me asking, how moddable were they in Rome? With this game using the same engine, I'd imagine it has the same degree of modifiability.

They're using the same engine as EU:R? I must have missed that.

 

[Duckett]

They're using the same engine as EU:R? I must have missed that.

Oh, I'm sorry, I could be incorrect. I just assumed that all modern Paradox games used the Clauswitz engine. o

 

[The Kingmaker]

Oh, I'm sorry, I could be incorrect. I just assumed that all modern Paradox games used the Clauswitz engine. o

You could very well be correct. I just hadn't heard anything either way.

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

You could very well be correct. I just hadn't heard anything either way.

All games since EUIII use the Clausewitz Engine.

 

[Woody Man]

If you don't mind me asking, how moddable were they in Rome? With this game using the same engine, I'd imagine it has the same degree of modifiability.

Well, it depends what you want to do with them, it was all done by .tga files IIRC with each face feature having it's own separate row, each culture set had it's own set of faces. But beyond that, I don't know.

 

[xGhost4000x]

Actually I'm still on book 1 so...... "Winter Is Coming"

 

[Johan11]

What is agnatic Primogeniture?

 

[Lord Tywin]

Republics?

Is it really completely random which courtier and vassal becomes the next leader of a republic? Because I think that pity,prestige,skills and friends(If some courtier is has the Holy Roman Emperor as a friend it should increase his chances of getting elected for example.) all should be a factor in who is elected as leader of the republic, since it's not logical that some exile without any titles,skills or prestige get elected while count X who is a vassal to the republic, prestige through the roof, beloved by the pope, a genius in all fields and friend with the mightiest king in all of Europe doesn't get elected.

On a completely other subject I'm very interested to work on a Westeros mod when CK 2 is out.

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

What is agnatic Primogeniture?

See this

Agnatic primogeniture
"Agnatic primogeniture" or "patrilineal primogeniture" is inheritance according to seniority of birth among the sons of a monarch or head of family, with sons and their male issue inheriting before brothers and their issue, and male-line males inheriting before females of the male line.[7] This is the same as semi-Salic primogeniture. Complete exclusion of females from dynastic succession is commonly referred to as application of the Salic law (see Terra salica).

 

[Johan11]

Thank you. The same as semisalic primogeniture. Now I can compare to CK1.
Because i didn't understand that, but I can compare.