Every country is a kingdom. It has one crown, and the crown has one holder or nobody at all. There is no other arrangement a country can be in, and no way to change the one it is in.
Below the crown there are duchies, one for every region on the map. That is five crowns and twenty-five duchies: thirty titles in all, and the number never changes. A title is held by a person, never by an account, exactly as a purse and a company are.
You will find them in three places. Realm is the kingdom itself: the crown, who wears it, the duchies of the realm and their dukes, and any election. The region panel on the map says which duchy stands over that ground and who holds it. Account → Holdings is what you hold and what you may give; the giving itself is done on the page of the character who receives it.
Nothing. This is worth saying plainly rather than letting the word imply more than the world delivers.
A duke levies no tax, commands nobody, and gains nothing from the region their duchy stands over. A duke has exactly one power, and it is his vote in the next succession, which is still the whole of it now that a council exists: the council is elected by citizens, and a duchy gives you no seat and no say in one.
A king does nothing but grant duchies, be succeeded, and decide a law his council has passed: refuse it, or ratify it so it takes effect at once rather than at the end of his day. That veto is the one thing the council added to a crown, and it is a power to stop rather than a power to act: a king cannot set a tax rate or create a coin himself, only prevent his council doing it, or let it do so sooner. There are still no ministers, no armies and no treasury he can reach.
See the council for what he is refusing, and factions for how a citizen gets there.
That vote is a decision rather than an oversight. It is also more than it sounds, because it is what decides who wears the crown next, and the crown is what holds the veto.
You have one heir, not one per title. Everything you hold goes to that one person together: your crown, every duchy under it, all of it or none of it. There is no way to leave the crown to one character and a duchy to another, so a realm cannot be split by the hand of the man who built it.
You may name any of your living children, change your mind as often as you like while you live, and name nobody at all. Nobody can name an heir for you.
You may name one before you hold anything. It decides nothing until you do, and it means a king granting you a duchy tomorrow does not catch you without an answer.
You do it on Account → House and family, on the child's own row: each named child offers to be made heir, and the heir carries the mark and offers to be unnamed. See dynasties for what the other children are dealt.
What you inherit does not come with instructions. An heir who takes a realm arrives carrying their own answer to who comes after them, which is nobody until they say otherwise.
Every title they held is resolved in the same moment, each on its own terms, and in this order:
holder dies
│
├─ 1. their named heir, if still alive ── takes EVERYTHING they held
│
├─ 2. else, a DUCHY goes up to its king ── he absorbs it
│
└─ 3. else, the title falls VACANT
The first rung is one question asked once, so a king with a living heir hands over his whole realm in one step. The rungs below it are asked per title, because a crown and a duchy have different places to fall to.
A crown has no one above it, so a king who dies with no living heir leaves an empty throne. A duchy whose crown is also vacant has nobody to absorb it, and falls vacant too.
A title is never held in trust for you. If your character dies without a living named heir, the title is gone. Creating another character does not bring it back, and gives you no better claim on it than anybody else has.
Your line is your children, not your next character. A title follows the blood, and the blood is a child born in a marriage or brought in by adoption; see dynasties. A holder with no living child has nobody to name, and a title with nobody to fall to is gone across a generation. That is the risk, and it is real.
Three different things, and only one of them is certain.
| the body — strength, training, health | resets. Build it again. |
| the estate — your purse, your goods, your companies | follows you to your next character. |
| the title — kingdoms, duchies | goes through the succession above. It may be lost. |
Your next character receives everything the one before them owned, and nothing they merely stood in relation to. Money in every currency, goods of every kind and quality, and every company you founded, all of it passes. It happens the moment you create them, in one step, and it happens once.
You are not given the starting gold again. That belongs to the player and is given once, however many characters you go through.
Two things can happen to an empty throne, and exactly one of them is open at any moment.
If any duchy of that kingdom is held, its dukes elect the next king from among themselves. Every living duke has one vote, however many duchies of that realm they hold, and they may vote for their own character. A vote cannot be taken back.
The world counts the votes every 72 hours, three world days. A duke holding a majority of the votes cast takes the crown, and keeps the duchy he already had. If nobody has a majority, nothing happens: the same election stays open with its votes intact, and is counted again three days later. An election never fails and is never replaced by another, so a realm whose dukes have all stopped playing goes quiet instead of announcing itself forever.
One elector voting while everyone else abstains is enough. A realm with exactly one duke crowns him the moment the throne empties, without a contest.
A crown is never claimed. There is no button anywhere that puts one on your head, however long a throne has stood empty and whoever you are. The dukes of a realm choose their king, and that is the only way a crown is ever filled.
If no duchy of that kingdom is held at all, there is no electorate, and the crown simply waits. What it waits for is somebody to claim a duchy: the first claimant becomes a duke, which makes an electorate of one, which opens the election, which crowns him three days later. So the way into an empty kingdom is a region on the map, never the throne itself.
A foreigner may be given a crown and can never let themselves in. The nobles of a realm may elect a duke who is a citizen of somewhere else, because a grant moves a title without moving the ground beneath it. That same character cannot claim an open duchy of that realm, because that route is gated on citizenship. They can take one by pressing a claim earned in a war, which is gated on a camp and a march instead. So a foreign king is always one the realm's own dukes chose, and a foreign duke is either one they were granted a title or one who fought his way in.
A duchy is open wherever no character other than its own king holds it. That covers two cases and it deliberately does not tell them apart:
| who holds the duchy | ||
|---|---|---|
| a duke, not the king | closed | only a claim, from conquest or inheritance, takes it |
| the king himself | open | he answers for it |
| nobody at all | open | he answers for it too |
From a landless citizen's side there is no difference between a duchy the king is sitting on and one he never bothered to give away, so the world does not draw one. Hoarding and neglect are the same offence.
An open duchy may be claimed by any living citizen of the country that owns that region, standing in that region, from the region panel. Nothing else is asked of them.
The one person who cannot claim it is the king himself. He is the man who would have to be beaten for it, and nobody fights himself. A duchy he holds is already his, and a vacant one is his to grant rather than to take: giving it to a duke is how it leaves his hands, and that costs him a vote.
What it costs depends on whether anybody answers for the ground.
Under a seated king it is a duel with him. Ten health, your one duel of the day, and the ordinary prize either way. Win and the duchy is yours and his no longer. Lose and no title moves, and the prestige you lost went to him: a realm's failed challengers leave their king harder to challenge than they found him.
Under a vacant crown there is nobody to answer, so the claim is free and instant exactly as it always was: no health, no day, no roll. That is what stops an interregnum freezing a kingdom. With no king there is nobody to grant, so without it the electorate could never grow and a deadlocked election could only be broken by a duke dying of old age. The land grab stays open while the vote is running, because the crown is vacant until somebody actually wears it. Crowning a king does not close it: it puts a defender on it.
A duchy admits one contest a day, by whoever reaches it first, whether they come by this route or with a claim. If you are told it has been fought over today, somebody got there first.
A king may give any duchy of his realm to another living character: the ones he holds himself, and the ones standing vacant. A grant is made from the receiving character's page: open them, and under A grant choose which duchy. Any living character may receive one, landless or not; Account → Holdings names the duchies you have to give. The one thing he cannot do is take a duchy off the duke who holds it. It is the only royal power in the world and the only way to a title that does not require somebody to die.
Until now it was a decision with a cost and no benefit: every duchy given away is a vote in choosing the king who comes after, and nothing anywhere paid him for it. A granted duchy is closed, so it is now also the one thing that stops him answering for it.
The trade, in one line: a king pays a vote in his own succession to stop fighting for an acre.
His exposure is the size of his hoard. Five duchies open is five duels a day, one on each, by five different people. A king who duels is hard to take and may hold his whole realm in his own hand; a king who does not is taken apart by his own citizens one acre at a time. Land is what a king gives away when he cannot win the duel himself.
His crown is never at stake. No claim stands over a kingdom, so the worst he faces is being stripped to a bare crown by the dukes who beat him for their land.
A duchy's king is whoever holds the crown of the country that owns that region right now. Nothing about the duchy is written when a region changes hands: its duke simply belongs to the conqueror's realm from that moment, and votes in his succession instead.
Anything that changes who chooses the next king is the kingdom's news, and appears in the log on the map: a crown elected or fallen vacant, an election opening, and a duchy granted or claimed.
Anything that happens to you is yours, and appears in your own log, read on the map under Mine: a title you inherit, one that escheats to you, one of yours that falls vacant, an heir you name, and an estate you come into.
So if a king grants you a duchy, you read about it in the world's news rather than in your own. See The chronicle.
A title is standing, not income. No duchy and no crown produces anything by itself; what a king has to spend is his country's treasury, under the laws in The council.