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Westeros Succession Laws

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dejjoeri

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Sep 30, 2011
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Hi, first of all, big fan of the mod!

I have a couple of questions regarding the mod and lore. Something that has always bugged me about GRRM's books is the fact that houses remain in their respective seats of power for centuries and centuries, hardly ever losing or gaining any land through succession. So is was wondering, is this something you, as reader, should just accept or is it somewhat based on a special succession law? There's not a lot of clarity to be found on this subject in either asoiaf or the world of ice and fire...sometimes even, succession laws change to elective on the whim of a certain ruler...

In my games, it takes 50-100 years and the entire order of power has changed, smaller vassel replacing the Martells, the Baratheons becoming lord paramount of 3 regions... Is this just something GRRM ignored or does the game use incorrect succession laws? In my opinion it's the first option. When Tyrion was going to marry Sansa, the objective was to get a Lannister to rule Winterfell in the future...

My questions can perhaps be summarised in one simple statement: (In Westeros succesion laws) Would having one child, who is female and your only heir, and being married to a person not from your house, mean that she would become ruler after your death and would it mean the future loss of your lands and titles to the husband's line?

And if so, why did this, in hunderds of years of Westeros history, never (probably exceptions, but very rarely) happen?

Lastely, since I feel I know the answers to my own question, a possible solution. When Tywin discussed his inheritance, he mentioned he did not want his successor to be 'one of the lesser Lannisters'. I understand Jaime and Tyrion were cancelled out at the time, but why Cersei (and later the loss of there lands and titles to house Baratheon..)
My solution would be a combination of succession laws. On the wiki of asoiaf is stated:

"In the rest of the Seven Kingdoms, a man's eldest son is his heir, followed by his second son, then his third son, and so on. In theory, the youngest son is followed in the line of succession by the eldest daughter, after whom come her sisters in birth order.[8] In practice it is usually sons, then whoever can manage to convince the local overlord that he ought to inherit."

Translated this would be: (male only) primogeniture, if no males: (similar to muslim inheritance) the most powerfull male dynasty member. Not sure if this is possible in CK II ofcourse...? Edit: with ofcourse (strong) claims given to the female heirs. It just feels weird seeing the North handed over to house Arryn without a single arrow being shot!
 
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GRRM's Westeros history is pretty badly sync'd with how events actually unfold in the ASOIAF books after the first chapter.

According to the history, great houses keep their seats basically forever, as do even minor houses, and all they ever win/lose in wars is a mill here, a village there, maybe even two villages. But what we see in the story, is that great houses fall upon one another like predatory beasts, and lots of them go extinct or are totally dispossessed in just the 2 1/2 years that the WOT5K spans.

Examples: House Stark usurped by the Boltons; House Darry extinct; House Florent dispossessed; the Velaryons executed or dispossessed, etc.

The mod designers AFAIK stated that they saw this discrepancy in GRRM's story vs his history, and decided to base their mod more on the tumultous events that the book covers, as well as the more tumultous episides from Westeros' history, and not so much on the supposed near-stasis of almost everything else in the Westeros history. (Such a stasis would be difficult to model in CK2, and not much fun anyways.)
 
True... It's not that a mind a dynamic world, but I feel (in the mod) things move a bit too fast. Maybe I'll try starting a game and setting all gender laws to male only and see what happens. Though I'm not quite sure how to start modding that in... I'm guessing cultures have their default inheritance laws, I'll start there!

And yes, it is funny how nothing ever happens to houses but when it does... House Hoare, Gardener and Durrandon conveniently lost ALL of their heirs in the war of conquest.

Edit: haven't found the starting succession laws, if anybody has any tips...you're very welcome!
 
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The thing you have to keep in mind though is that prior to the W5K and even to an extent Robert's Rebellion, there weren't all that many major wars amongst the great houses since Aegon's landing. The Dance was largely between House Targaryen and most of the losing sides didn't lose their family seats, just the heads of that family, either to the Wall or were executed. Consider that Tywin and Aerys were directly responsible for the extinction of 4 separate houses in the span of 30 years. Those extinctions were carried out after the capture of the entire family, not just all the men dying in battle as happened to House Gardner or House Hoare. Not to mention all the houses that ruled Harrenhal... I think the standard policy of the kings of Westeros and the various lords was to allow the heads of defeated houses to take the black and turn over rule to their sons. A village or mill might change hands as you mentioned, but the seats of the houses would remain in traditional hands.

This apparently changes with Robert's Rebellion and arguably with Aerys after the Defiance of Duskendale. Houses are now extinguished or dispossessed of their seats. The Starks and Blackwoods come to mind. It appears to be a shift in the policy of the leaders/victors to take these steps. Perhaps influenced by Aerys and Tywin, but also consider the Jofferey is a lunatic and wants half of Westeros dead.

The marriage issue is another thing entirely though. Part of the problem with the mod is that the AI will marry daughters normally even if they are the only heir. This should not happen. Furthermore, the inheritance of certain castles and keeps should pass along the blood lines of the ruling house, not the direct decendents of the current ruler. By that I mean, is for example Sansa is the only surviving Stark, then her children should inherit. However, if for example uncle Brandon had children, then they would inherit upon Sansa's death. Point being that only after the last of the bloodline is dead, including potential bastards, should the lands pass to another house. I am not sure how this would work in game except some sort of agnatic-cognatic "familial primogenture". As you said, Tyrion's marriage to Sansa would be that Sansa would rule Winterfell while alive and her children would inherit. But this discounts the claims of Bran, Rickon, Jon Snow and Arya for that matter, which I think would not be in keeping with the history of Westeros.
 
Hmm yes I guess my main issue with Westeros history is the lack of meaningfull inheritances. But then again, that is what makes it universe intising!

Maybe I'll just change the actual rules of Agnatic-Cognatic to mimic Agnatic only. Might give a less dynamic game, but I always like starting as a count and it would be nice to meet Stark, Baratheon when I'm at the Paramount level instead of...well I've seen everything!

Edit: can anybody tell me in what file the effects for every gender law can be found? I'm pretty sure it's not 'succession_laws' in de decisions folder, since this only alters the effect of firing that actual decision... Second edit: found out they are hardcode, too bad... Last edit: I put and not westerosi_religion to Agnatic-Cognatic which seems to have done the trick, although somehow the ai still switches to agna-cogna sometimes...
 
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What also seems to happen in Westeros is that if there are only daughters left to a noble House, then that daughter's children will inherit their mother's name. So, in theory, as things currently stand, it will either go a) Tommen will inherit Casterly Rock and the Westerlands, and then one of his children will take the name Lannister and become Lord in turn, or b ) Myrcella will become ruling lady, and her children will all be Lannisters. Such has happened before, when the Lannisters where kings.
Or, to use your example- if Sansa, having married cousin Robert Arryn, was the only surviving child of Eddard Stark, then she would inherit, and one son would become Lord Stark after her (or before her- Winterfell seems to operate under Semi-Salic law) while son two would become Lord Arryn, both taking the respective House names, and continuing both lines.
It doesn't make sense from a real world perspective, but the name is just as important as the Bloodline in Westeros.
Although, as said above, that does seem to change in more recent years.
 
I would appreciate if someone knowledgeable on modding made agot submod that changed all inheritances to male only (dorne being only exeption ofc). Thus far I have just changed inheritance laws of paramounties at start of each game to mitigate female inheritance fubar.
 
My guess is that the stability's due to a Pax Draconica. The Pre-Aegon era was pretty tumultuous as well, so logically it's the Targaryens keeping Westeros stable - or rather, it's their Dragons, which are essentially a nuclear deterrent. After they lose their dragons, they manage to maintain peace for a while on the status quo and the myth of Targaryen superiority, but Aerys II screws it up (note that there were no really awful Targ Kings after the Dragonbane, except for the last). And after they're gone, it's back to constant chaos in Westeros, with houses rising and falling at the normal rate.

TL, DR: Overstability of Westeros is COS DRAGONS, and it goes to hell sans dragons.
 
I feel like the simple fact is that in the history, there aren't such strict succession laws in many of the families, but rather just traditions and expectations, which may sometimes be ignored for the good of the family name. Maybe a form of agnatic-cognatic seniority where a trait is given to children born to the current head of the dynasty that increases their succession priority (as per born in the purple), which is then lost when the current head of dynasty dies. That way, the oldest son would inherit, unless they weren't dynastic, in which case the oldest family member would take their place. It still doesn't seem like an ideal fit, but it might help add to the stability of families through succession, if not dispossession.
 
Seve82 said:
I would appreciate if someone knowledgeable on modding made agot submod that changed all inheritances to male only (dorne being only exeption ofc). Thus far I have just changed inheritance laws of paramounties at start of each game to mitigate female inheritance fubar.
Click to expand...

I did this by adding NOT = { religion_group = westerosi_religion } to cognatic in succession laws in the decision folder. For both gender laws and #AI gender law decisions. This made all of them have agnatic at the start date. Problem remains that houses easely die out at the beginning (they need the head of the house to have a male child since houses are very small at the beginning..). In my first game with this file, targaryen inherited both the Riverlands and the Stormlands after 30 years. In the next game I gave all lord paramounts a couple of kids through the console, this solved it.


Not really sure about the dragon point... the Starks, Martells, Lannisters (and Arryns?) had all been ruling their respective lands for centuries before Aegon, right? It just seems in Westeros there is a weird sense of cult of personality... there MUST be a Stark in the north, and a Martell in Dorne or people simply would not accept it... That's the impression I get anyway. The only switches came after houses died out (house Gardener, Hoare, Durrandon).

I agree there seems to always have been a convenient solution to ensure a House retained all its lands/power. However, doesn't that contradict a large part of feudalism? It would certainely make female heirs much less of an issue (while GRRM never showed this).
 
I think that most of the Houses are younger than they claim to be. I mean, if you look at the Great Houses pre- and post-Targaryen, The Arryns and Lannisters and maybe Durrandons all claim mythological Andal figures as their progenitor, the Starks and Gardners (and the Tyrells technically) claim a mythological First Man. Hoare's were elected, Greyjoys have a mythic founder as well, Tully's were minor lords who rose to power, Baratheon's are a Targaryen cadet branch. So for the real old unchanging houses, don't think you can take them at their word.
 
For all we know houses rose and fell just like lots of real world feudal families but we just haven't seen it with the great houses like the Starks but the thing is the futher back you go in the series history the more vague, mythic and fantastic things get so who knows what really went in. The current Starks might not be direct descendants of Bran the Builder for all we know, at any rate the general impression I've gotten is that smaller houses/lesser houses and the knightly houses rise and fall with some regulatirty but it's the bigger older ones that have untill the series start remained stable and even then not all of them.
 
Gwyn ap Nud said:
I think that most of the Houses are younger than they claim to be. I mean, if you look at the Great Houses pre- and post-Targaryen, The Arryns and Lannisters and maybe Durrandons all claim mythological Andal figures as their progenitor, the Starks and Gardners (and the Tyrells technically) claim a mythological First Man. Hoare's were elected, Greyjoys have a mythic founder as well, Tully's were minor lords who rose to power, Baratheon's are a Targaryen cadet branch. So for the real old unchanging houses, don't think you can take them at their word.
Click to expand...

With the Arryns, learned people pretty much know that the ancient legends of Arryns progenitor and the Griffin King is just a tale. The actual House Arryn started during the Andal invasion, when the Andals rallied behind Artys Arryn to fight against the First Men who'd rallied against Robar II Royce. And Lann the Clever (if he existed) was probably one of the First Men, unless you believe the tale that he was an Andal adventurer that had crossed the Narrow Sea. And the Durran Godsgrief was one of the First Men (again, assuming the man existed) not an Andal, even if Storm's End probably reached it's current state post-Andal Invasion. And it's not just the Gardeners and Tyrells that claim descent from Garth Greenhand; it's damn near every major noble house in the Reach.

But I agree, most of the Houses are probably nowhere near as ancient as they claim. But despite that, there's no doubt that the Houses are still ancient.
 
The AI is set to sometimes change to agantic when they have a female heir. They have the usual restrictions on changing succession laws however, reigning for 10 years, no vassal hates them etc. Should we perhaps remove these restricitions so the AI changes to agnatic more often?
 
The AI wont always do it depending on traits. Plus females sometimes inheriting is a good thing, as it is canon, and perhaps if there are no male relatives or the female heir is able/strong.
 
Yea, I also want to see Females inherit, but as it stands now as soon a ruler get female heirs 9/10 the house cease to rule. The problem with the AI is that it always marry off its female heirs normaly. With Dorne it works realy good tho, in that if a female has a chance to inherit they marry her off matrimonially.
 
Matrilineal marriage choice is hardcoded I guess? Or is there a way to modify it?

I have noticed that for Dorne too... So with absolute cognatic, paradox did get the coding right? Seems like such a simple fix then...
 
dejjoeri said:
Matrilineal marriage choice is hardcoded I guess? Or is there a way to modify it?

I have noticed that for Dorne too... So with absolute cognatic, paradox did get the coding right? Seems like such a simple fix then...
Click to expand...

No, even with Absolute Cognatic, AI still marries their daughters non-matrilineally.
I have had this issue in my vanilla Roman Empire game (I wanted to get 'Empressive' achievement) and half of Europe is all fucked up due to females inheriting and passing on their lands to their husbands house instead.
 
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