Dear nobles,
today we will talk about family, and as we all know family comes first.
We will reveal the initial marital status of the player's character, describe the closest relatives and mention the matrimonial challenges and whether it is worth sending your daughter to the order, and by the way we will answer a few questions that we have received from you.
Noble’s Life
Being part of a noble family at the beginning of the 14th century was something very exclusive, especially being a male heir of an old family long possessing their lands. Player character is just such a person, who reaps benefits from his status.
However, most often such an aristocrat since their childhood would be entangled in a complex network of connections that would limit his ability to choose, and that is what we want to partly avoid. Hence, we deliberately put the player's character in a rather unique situation. His parents are long dead, there are no living full brothers or sisters, and the extended family does not live in the immediate vicinity for various reasons.
This allows for a start with a fairly blank slate (besides the steps we described in Dev Diary #8 - Kingdom Reborn which also serve this purpose). On the other hand, he's not entirely alone. His other relatives will enter the stage later on future, but at the beginning of the game there will be two important characters: the extremely problematic half-brother Hennequin and daughter from previous marriage Marie.
The player's half-brother comes to him heavily drunk just after the recent invasion of the English forces and becomes one of many issues at the beginning of the game. Well, you don't really choose your family. P.S. Quality is as if we were recording with a potato, but Steam heavily limits the size of files, and we wanted to show off animations.
What do we mean by "from a previous marriage"? Well, the character is the ruler of a demesne in his 30s, so the chances of him being single by then are small enough that we put our bets on him being a widower.
Marriage
Previously mentioned immediate family will also allow the player to face relatively quickly the huge and complicated logistical, diplomatic and emotional challenge of marrying off his daughter. Finding the right bachelor (of course there will be at least a few available), engagement, preparing a dowry, and finally the entire wedding ceremony. In short, it's a costly undertaking requiring a lot of additional decisions. It depends on the player whether granting the hand of his daughter will serve to simply bolster an alliance between the families, cement the political agreement (a little more on this subject can be found in Dev Diary #6 - Diplomacy) or maybe her opinions and well-being are worth considering.
The dowry will also have a mechanical function. The player will be able to influence how much money or even their own land they are willing to give to Marie, and the amount of resources used will affect the pool of candidates. Another alternative is to send your daughter to the order which was a method of saving money. Although, what is worth mentioning, also the orders often required a dowry from women.
At the beginning of the game, Marie is only 10 years old and is still a child. But at that time noblewomen could have been married from as early as the age of 12, and get engaged much earlier.
Another issue is the player's own marriage, which is a case as extensive as the previous one. Here, too, the choice will have far-reaching political consequences and there will be a number of options. At the same time, we do not hide that the main candidates will be the daughters of the local landowners. This is also due to mechanical reasons. A wife's dowry can increase the size of the player character's demesne.
At the same time, we aspire for the wife of the noble led by the player to be a full-fledged character affecting the entire further gameplay and we will try to do it this way. We will certainly mention these ladies in the future along with the families important from the game perspective.
And of course, a couple can have children whose upbringing can also be a complicated matter. Because there were questions about further gameplay in the shoes of our descendant and more elaborate dynastic politics, we will explain straight away. We would love to do something like this, but we don't want to promise a game longer than we can deliver. The basis is the life of the character created at the beginning (if you are interested in character creation check out Dev Diary #7 - Character creation) and the game will focus on that.
That's it for today. I hope we've clarified things a little. Due to the holiday season, the next Dev Diary will be in late August or early September. We are still considering what to reveal in it, but we will tell you before its publication on our Twitter ( twitter.com/Nobles_Life ), to which we invite you. There, among other things, we regularly post historical information about the Hundred Years' War, which may interest you.