A claim is a token: one attempt at one title, held by one person, spent by being used.
A claim has one of two sources. A conquest claim is granted to the king of a country that wins a front and takes a region. An inheritance claim is dealt when a titled parent dies: after one child receives the titles, each title gives one claim to the other living children in turn.
Three conditions, and none of them is an error when it is not met:
Taking the same region twice does not mint a second claim. One per person per title, always.
A claim cannot be granted, given or sold. A conquest claim belongs to the king who earned it; an inheritance claim belongs to the child it was dealt to. Claims do not themselves pass at a later death.
Standing where the duchy stands, with an army of yours on the ground:
| a camp | a warband you own or belong to must camp in that region |
| your presence | you must be standing there yourself |
| health | -10 |
| your day | one duel, if somebody holds the title |
The camp is the force on the ground; standing there is the man. Being a member of the warband is enough: you do not have to own it.
Nobody asks whose citizen you are. The other route into a duchy, claiming open ground, does ask, because it costs nothing but living in the country and standing in the region. Pressing a claim costs a declared war, a won front, a warband, a camp, a march and a duel you can lose. Fighting your way in is not the same act as letting yourself in.
If somebody holds the title, it is a duel. The same roll, the same prize, the same prestige as any other. Win and the title is yours and theirs no longer. Lose and nothing moves but the prestige.
If nobody holds it, there is nobody to fight. You take it. No roll, no prestige, and it does not cost you your duel for the day, because no duel was fought. It still costs the health.
The claim is gone either way. Winning spends it and losing spends it: it was one attempt and you made it.
It takes the duke and leaves the ground. The title moves to you. Who owns the region does not change: that is what winning a front does, and this is not that. You may end up a duke of a duchy standing on ground your own country does not own, which makes you a foreign duke, and a foreign duke still votes on who wears that realm's crown.
The person you took it from keeps their life, their estate and whatever prestige they have left. They also lose the ordinary duel prize on top of the title, so the next person to come for them finds them weaker. A fall is supposed to be a fall.
| you | one duel a day, however you reach it: a duel, a press, or claiming open ground |
| the duchy | one contest a day, whoever makes it, and only where somebody answered |
They do different jobs. The first stops one person grinding a king down. The second stops five people agreeing to take one duchy in turn, which the first cannot, because defending costs a holder nothing at all.
So if you are told the duchy has already been fought over today, somebody else got there first, and it can be contested again when the world day turns. Reaching it first is the race.
Two claims over two held titles cannot both be pressed in one day, because the second press is a second duel. Two claims over two vacant titles can, because neither is a duel.
A press against a vacancy spends neither day, yours or the duchy's. Nobody answered, so nothing was contested: the ground was taken rather than fought over, and whoever comes for it next is not turned away for a fight that never happened.
Three things, and nothing else:
It does not expire, it does not fade and it does not weaken. A claim on ground your country has since lost is still yours: you cannot press it there and then, but ground changes hands.
It is not a crown. No claim is granted over a kingdom and none can be pressed against one.
It does not move the border. See above: the duke moves, the region does not.
It cannot be given away. A claim is the claimant's, and a king who cannot win the duel himself has no way to send somebody who can.