Nobles that won't rule
I am playing Norway, and have encountered a rather strange situation. While I was busy conquering the heathens in Prussia, the Duke of Trøndelag was having a spat with his vassals. I didn't pay too much attention, but he revoked, granted, and wared with most of the counties in his duchy. In the end the duke prevailed and retained all of his lands except for the county of Hedemark wich somehow ended up as a part of Champagne.
Some years later I had plenty of prestige and decided to grab a claim to Hedemark but found this impossible. Despite being told that Hedemark is part of Champagne, the province is not listed as part of the demesne of the duke of Champagne, and it isn't available for grabbing in the Grab Title menu.
Digging deeper I found that the actual count of Hedemark was one Lodin posing as a court member in the dukes court. The lazy layabout obviously can't be bothered to run his own lands.
Deciding to look into this later I continued playing and by accident found a way to replicate the problem. Since king Olaf was now well over 60 it was time to think about the succession. Norway has elective law and first in line to the throne was the duke of Orkney followed by the duke of Trøndelag. The king's only living son the duke of Jämtland was only third. Since the Pope bagdered me about going on crusade I decided to kill two birds with one stone by ivading Finland and giving it to my son.
After I had conquered Finland I changed my mind. I had never been that fond of my son Géraud. He was too much like his frankish mother and you could hardly call him a Norwegian at all. Besides he had several landless sons, and could be expeted to divide Finland among them. Instead I decided to give Finland to my favourite grandson Tormod Yngling. Not only is he far more respectful to his Norwegian heritage than his father ever was, he is also a financial genius and well trained in the arts of war, diplomacy, and intrigue. Clearly a young man destined for greatness. So I grant him the five finnish provinces plus the title Duke of Finland.
That's when I notice that Tormod is still a member of his fathes court, and on the map Finland shows up as part of Jämtland.
For further confusion note that Tormod's stat screen shows the king as his liege, but the king's stat screen does not show Tormod as either a vassal or an heir. And while Géraud seems to get the income from Finland (he doesn't get income 15 from Härjedalen alone) it doesn't seem to add to his power as he is still only third in line to the throne.
Further experimentation shows that I can grant titles to anyone in my court or in the courts of my vassals, however things only work correctly for my own court. If I grant titles to anyone in my vassals' courts but the vassals themselves they only receive shaddow titles.
I do hope this can be fixed in the next patch. Now that I know about it I can avoyd most of it by not granting titles to my vassals courtiers, but:
1. Sometimes you have reasons to raise up one of thouse courtiers. Doting on a favoured grandson say
2. There are probably more ways to get shadow titles. The duke of Champagne has certainly never been the vassal of anyone in Norway so Lodin probably got his title another way. Having a foreign province in the middle of my realm that I couldn't pub a claim on was quite sufficiently irritating.
