Marriages of vassals

[X-Roesone/ARR (Robert)]

There's one very important limitation on the "freedoms" of vassals, and that is the right to marry whomever he or she chooses. In this case, all marriages have to be approved by the liege. This is an important tool for a liege to prevent possibly dangerous and threatening marriages of vassals with his adversaries or to prevent a meteoric rise in power of a vassal through marriage to a rich widow in a foreign realm (or even in his own).

This also applied to widows and daughters of powerful, yet perished vassals who needed the permission of their liegelord to acquire a husband and thus steward and/or heir to the fief. Usually, the king would "take care" of the property of an heiress (or a minor son of a vassal), which meant leeching it dry until the heir was of marrying age, and then would either marry one of his sons to the heiress (or a daughter to an heir) or "auction" this right to his other vassals.

Thus, there is a possibility for extra income during the heir's minority, and/or sale of marriage privileges. The latter could work in two ways, either by "selling" the heir in marriage or by selling the right to the heir him/herself. Many a count/ess or duch/ess paid a LOT of money to the king to earn the right to marry on his/her own.

In RoE, apart from interesting random events within a realm (in case of minor nobility) which could earn the ruler some money and privileges, or lead to possible unions of lesser nobility across realm borders (which in turn could lead to a dispute between kings if one wants his loyal vassal to inherit/acquire holdings in his neighbor's realm), there's the added perk that several players will find themselves in liege/vassal relations and will need to acquire or grant "marriage privileges" and this will require money, holdings, blackmail and who knows what

[X-Roesone/ARR (Robert)]

Being a masochist, I'll illustrate this with a fictional example (and give Bjorn and Sheldon the noose to tie around my neck )

Lets say, for example, that Diemed wants to tear Roesone apart slowly, not by war, but by marriage policy. Duke Diem picks one of my more powerful vassals (like the Isilvieres) and arranges a marriage between the Isilviere heir and a powerful vassal of his own, perhaps even the baroness of Ilien.

If I refuse to agree to the marriage, I'm looking at a lifelong enmity of my powerful vassal for robbing their dynasty of a good match with a potential to vastly increase their power. Diemed might also declare war to "protect the honor" of his vassal and so on and so forth.

If I do agree, I get a vassal tied closely to Ilien and Diemed and potentially unreliable in case of war, or even just one who'd feel so good about himself that he'd cause trouble on his own.

Things like that

signed
masochist

[X-Roesone/ARR (Robert)]

Where I'm also going with this is, and what I already liked very much with Bobby's character Bellam, is the possibility of double vassalages springing up, even to the point of a sovereign being vassal to another sovereign like in the case of English kings being vassals to the King of France for their possessions in France (but NOT for England itself). Or the way Edward I brought Scottish nobles to his side by granting them estates in England.

So, that same Diemed (to continue the example) could, possibly try winning over Roesone by granting law holdings and manors within Diemed, holdings which tie Roesone to Diemed without explicitly subjugating Roesone proper, but these holdings would bring money to the ruler of Roesone and they would remain within easy rich of the duke of Diemed as well as prone to confiscation if said ruler of Roesone became antagonistic to Diemed.

This was the strategy of Sigismund of Luxemburg, King of Hungary in his anti-Ottoman policies. He gave the despot of Serbia rich possessions in Hungary proper to help fund his state and defense against the Ottomans and thus tied the otherwise independent Serbia to him. He also did this with the Prince of Walahia (fathe of Dracula ).

[X-Tornilen/SM (John)]

I have often thought that marriage and vassal obligations arising out of marriage, or related to it, tend to be under-utilised in some games.  As Robert points out, it can be a great tool for binding one realm to another, a cause of war, or a very handy DM not-so-random event.

One of the greatest benefits can be for weaker, vulnerable realms stuck between two larger, antagonistic realms.  Robert no doubt knows more about this than I do, but it's my understanding that if a landed regent has two liege-lords, it was generally accepted that one of those liege lords couldn't expect or order their vassal to act against their other liege lord.  Take Robert's Roesone as a hypothetical example: stuck between a Diemed and Osoerde who dislike each other and are planning war, Roesone swears fealty to both Diemed and Osoerde.  Then, neither Diemed nor Osoerde could expect or order Roesone to march with them against the other realm - thereby sparing Roesone significant looses and costs.  Of course, such would be a very delicate arrangement for Roesone that would require very careful management.

I've also used this in gamjes I've run.  One example that springs to mind involved Elinie and Osoerde.  Elinie hosted a grand fair and tournament and, while at the fair, a younger son of an Osoerdean family met a young girl from an Elinien family (who, being an only child, stood to inherit her family's manor and lands near the Osoerdean border).  Certain feelings developed between them over the following months as they exchanged flowery letters across the border until they reached the point that they decided they couldn't life without each other.  They petitioned their families (who weren't keen) and their liege lords, who refused permission for them to marry - Elinie/Osoerde relations not being terribly good.

The young couple decided to run off together, which is where things really got tense.  The Eliniens decided that the evil Osoerdeans had kidnapped the girl in order to acquire lands in southern Elinie.  The Patriarch and Jaison Raenech exchanged some harsh words and were on the brink of war before the Points East Traders completed an espionage action and discovered that the young lovers were living together in the Free City of Endier.

They were both disowned by their families.  I think from memory that Kalien found out around this time and he stepped in and quietly offered the girl a position in his court and a small manor to the young man to manage, extracting an oath of vassalage from her and her husband.  It was a long term gambit from Kalien, because the Elinien family now had no natural heir and Kalien thought he'd cheaply buy a stake/opportunity in inheriting their lands through the girl at a later date.

[X-Roesone/ARR (Robert)]

A wonderful example I especially like the "buying a claim from the heiress" part, which adds an additional element to how concepts such as marriage can be used in the game. And with the way RoE II works, at least in my experience, I don't think it would be much of an effort for the DMs to introduce such events and let players try to handle it.

Just inserting a rumor that there is a bunch of manors (a type of holding specific to RoE) and a law holding, or even a county in, say, Alamie or Osoerde, which only has a young female unmarried heir, could create havoc as minor nobles or even major ones start piling up in Osoerde or Alamie pressuring the duke to give them her hand in marriage. Even getting your second son to "score big" would help the dynasty in several ways. It creates a "friendly" element in a foreign realm, and should this heir or his heirs die out, your dynasty has a claim to the inheritance (the second option is probably unlikely within the scope of a PBEM, but you never know. RoE I laster 13 years of game time, and regardless, it is how a dynsast should behave).

As for double vassalage, I've read an example from the Hundred Years War (but I can't recall the names exactly) in which a lord owing fealty to both England and France sent troops to both, to each from lands that were held from them. Not sure how he participated himself, probably excused himself on account of illness which was a frequent excuse.

Another good example was when the duke of Burgundy was fighting the king of France. He held the duchy of Burgundy from the king and the county of Burgundy from the emperor. When royal forces were about to invade the duchy, he manned the castles with soldiers drafted from the county. The background is rather complicated (and I'd have to look it up if I didn't mean to speculate or twist the facts), but the gist was that the subjects of the king would have been considered traitors if they opposed the king, but the soldiers used were subjects of the emperor. This legal wriggling ensured that the king would later not be able to prosecute anyone for treason. Not sure how exactly, but the duke himself was not considered a traitor.