Arranging marriage of PK daughters and sons

[dvdmacateer]

I have been digging around the various books Rulebook, Knights and Ladies, Book of Entourage, Book of Manor and Book of Estate trying to find information on marriages of PK children and found nothing.  Did I miss something? Regarding marriage there seems to be a discrepancy between who actually does the looking for a wife. In the rulebook it assumes the PK is doing the searching  and then asks the liege's permission and Book of Entourage  states the liege selects the wife. 

[Morien]

5 hours ago, dvdmacateer said:

In the rulebook it assumes the PK is doing the searching  and then asks the liege's permission and Book of Entourage  states the liege selects the wife. 

The Book of the Entourage presents the updated RANDOM marriage table. Compare with KAP 5.2, p. 130-131.

EDIT: Ah yes, I see your point. Normally, the knight can try to arrange his own match, which is done via roleplaying. The GM can use the table in the Book of the Entourage, but it has mainly been constructed to take into account how much good will the PK has from the liege. You could use it without that modifier (actually, Loyalty and Deeds) to mimic what the PK might be able to find on his own.

Edited July 29, 2021 by Morien

[Morien]

16 minutes ago, dvdmacateer said:

I have been digging around the various books Rulebook, Knights and Ladies, Book of Entourage, Book of Manor and Book of Estate trying to find information on marriages of PK children and found nothing.  Did I miss something?

Normally, you would simply RP things out. As I mentioned in above, you can just use the random marriage tables without the modifier from the liege to find what the PK can find without the Liege's help. In particular, the Random Husband Table already assumes that it is the Lady's (possibly NPC) father/brother who is arranging the marriage, and the category she uses depends on how big her dowry is.

Note that in both cases, trying to find a wife or a husband, the roll is the best you can do, and trying to back out of that marriage would be an insult. You can't just keep rolling every year and wait for a high roll; that is what accumulating the modifiers are for.

Edited July 29, 2021 by Morien

[Morien]

10 minutes ago, Morien said:

Normally, you would simply RP things out.

Just to expand a bit on that...

As a rule of thumb:
1. The eldest son of a vassal knight will marry the eldest daughter of another vassal knight.
2. Younger sons of vassal knights marry when they can support a family (either as favored household knights or as more highly paid esquires) and usually marry a widow of a vassal knight (the hhks) or a younger daughter of a vassal knight.
3. Younger daughters of vassal knights tend to marry older vassal knights who already have an heir from their first marriage or esquires.

Naturally, all of the above gets modified by the beauty of the bride, the size of the dowry, the fame and connections of the father/brother/family/husband-to-be, etc.

In our campaign, the first-gen PKs were establishing family ties by organizing matches between their sisters and other PKs. In the later generations, there are still some PK family marital alliance building, but it tends to be more between NPCs, while the PKs themselves are marrying rescued damsels introduced in the adventures. One of the advantages of having reached the Romance Period... 😛

Alas, the Players have not been too keen on playing matchmakers, so the brothers/sisters/cousins have mainly gotten quietly married in the background, or sparking some family drama due to random family events I am rolling up. For example, a vassal knight cousin of one PK fell in love in a mere younger sister of another PK, and vice versa. The prospective mother-in-law vetoed the marriage in no uncertain terms, due to the girl's paltry dowry, so the PKs had to get involved and negotiate between themselves to get the dowry up to an acceptable level.

[dvdmacateer]

Thanks Morien that gets my scattered thoughts into line.  

Quote

Alas, the Players have not been too keen on playing matchmakers, so the brothers/sisters/cousins have mainly gotten quietly married in the background, or sparking some family drama due to random family events I am rolling up

How do you normally handle the background marriages.  I have one PK with 9 children. 

[Morien]

24 minutes ago, dvdmacateer said:

How do you normally handle the background marriages.  I have one PK with 9 children. 

Are they all surviving? Generally I expect the PKs arrange the marriages of their children or siblings. Often enough the old PK is dead and the guardian has arranged marriages to at least the eldest daughter, although this doesn't always happen, if the next PK is much older. 

After that, I have a random family event table that may generate marriage proposals for the daughters. I also start dropping hints to the players about the need for dowries. Generally, that are able to find a match since the old PK was usually quite Glorious and the current PK is likely on his way to Glory as well. So there are NPKs looking to form marriage alliances too.

Also, other PKs might be looking for wives for their brothers or household knights; in our campaign it is quite common for the PKs to allow their HHKs marry a suitable Stewardship-focused lady, since their manors tend to be scattered around Britain and hence need stewards anyway. So giving the manor for a brother to care for and allowing him to marry is a fine way to establish a spare cadet branch of the family.