The CROWNS system

[Roma_Victrix]

This is a great idea, it adds a neat role-play feature to the game, encourages more historically-authentic paths of expansion for certain factions, and thus I support it 95%. However, there's a thing about it that I dislike very much, and that is your idea to have faction leaders with the "usurper" trait ineligible for receiving any of the crowns. I think that's a bad idea, because it is very easy for factions to lose their core dynastic royal line, even with attempts at marrying faction heirs and leaders to princesses, or just family members to princesses, in hopes of perpetuating the original dynastic house and bloodline. AI factions are miserably worthless in that regard. After about a hundred years into the game, from my experience, most other factions have leaders who are "usurpers" and its easy even for a novice player to fall into this trap. That's because, correct me if I'm wrong, M2TW is hardwired to dick you over and supplant your original royal family entirely. From what I've seen it tries to do this at every opportunity.

In a M2TW mod like Europa Barbarorum II, where the princess agent isn't even available and you are at the mercy of the game in offering your family members with royal traits a wife to marry (to produce a future generation of family members with the same trait), original dynastic houses basically disappear after about 100 years. This affects the authority level of your faction leader and barring rare circumstances where you build him up by experience and luck as an Alexander-type demigod, you're most likely going to have crap faction leaders after that point in EBII.

I hope you will reconsider this thing about the "usurper" trait. If you do that, then this whole crowns business will be largely irrelevant and non-operational after about 100 years into the SSHIP campaign. There's no guarantee that the royal blood trait will survive among the family members of your royal house and sometimes the stupid game even makes someone who doesn't have the trait as the faction heir! It also doesn't help that we are unable to select and choose the faction heir on our own volition.

Another reason to dislike this feature of your proposal is the idea that usurpers or even illegitimate bastard children are unworthy or even unable to obtain the crown. Given historical examples to the contrary, this idea rests on flimsy foundations to say the least. William I 'the Conqueror', Duke of Normandy, was a bastard and yet he conquered Anglo-Saxon England and became its first Norman king. Henry of Bolingbroke basically usurped the English crown by deposing Richard II of England in 1399 and became Henry IV of England. I could give many more examples, but I think you get the point. This shouldn't disbar a family member from obtaining a crown in SSHIP.