How inheritance works in Crusader Kings III
When your character dies, CK3 applies your realm's succession law and gender law to every title you hold. This calculator runs the same rules so you can see the split before it happens, change your laws, capital or family, and run it again. It knows the game's complete de jure map — every county, duchy, kingdom and empire — for the 867, 1066 and 1178 start dates.
Who is eligible
The gender law comes first. Male Preference (the usual starting law) passes daughters over while any eligible son, or a dead son's line, remains; Male Only bars daughters and their descendants outright; Equal takes the oldest child regardless of sex; Female Preference and Female Only mirror the first two. On top of that, characters with the Bastard or Disinherited trait are excluded together with all their descendants, and a dead heir who left children is represented by them.
The three partition laws
Under any partition law your titles are divided among your eligible children. The oldest becomes primary heir and takes your primary title, your capital and every title the capital sits inside de jure. Remaining empires, then kingdoms, then duchies are handed out one at a time to the child who has the fewest titles of that rank or above; each title carries the held titles beneath it, and a junior heir who has received something gets nothing at any lower rank afterwards. Counties are shared out last, by county count.
- Confederate Partition is the starting law and the only one available to tribal rulers. Before dividing, the game creates for free any title of your primary rank that you could have created — you control more than half of its de jure counties — and hands it to a junior heir. This is how a single kingdom becomes two.
- Partition is the same division without any title creation. It needs the Hereditary Rule innovation (Early Medieval era), a feudal or clan government and Crown Authority 2.
- High Partition lets the primary heir take at least half of the titles at every rank before the others receive anything. It needs the Heraldry innovation (High Medieval era) and Crown Authority 2; Aragonese, Basque and Catalan cultures get it early.
Single-heir laws
Primogeniture gives everything to the oldest eligible child (a dead child's line comes before younger siblings), Ultimogeniture to the youngest, and House Seniority to the oldest eligible member of your house. All three need Crown Authority 3; Primogeniture and Ultimogeniture also need the Primogeniture innovation of the Late Medieval era, while Czech and Slovien cultures can take House Seniority at any Crown Authority.
How to keep your realm together
Under partition, hold only one title of your highest rank — a king with two kingdoms will always lose one. Keep your capital's duchy in your own hands, because the primary heir keeps everything inside it as long as every other heir can still expect a duchy of their own. Extra kingdom-rank titles can be given away, and heirs can be disinherited, sent to holy orders or, for a bastard, simply not legitimized. Above all, climb the Crown Authority ladder to Partition, then High Partition, then Primogeniture.
Frequently asked
- Who inherits if I have no sons?
- Under Male Preference, your daughters. With no eligible descendants at all, nothing is split: the whole realm passes to your oldest eligible sibling or their heirs. With no heir anywhere, a vassal's titles go to the liege and an independent ruler's go to a vassal or courtier.
- What do I need to enable Primogeniture?
- Crown Authority 3 (High) and the Primogeniture innovation, which arrives in the Late Medieval era. Changing the gender law also needs High Crown Authority, or Limited Tribal Authority in a tribal realm.
- Does the realm capital matter?
- Yes. The primary heir always inherits the capital county and every held title it belongs to de jure — except a title equal in rank to your primary title, which stays in the division. Moving your capital changes which lands stay with your heir.
- What does the co-heir get?
- Their share of titles plus every held title de jure beneath them, and they become the primary heir's vassal — unless their rank equals the primary heir's, in which case they go independent, or become your liege's direct vassal if you had one. Every eligible child also gains pressed claims on the titles they did not inherit.
- Which start date should I pick?
- The one your game began on: de jure borders differ between 867, 1066 and 1178 (Aquitaine exists only in 867, Portugal only in 1178, Bohemia moves into the Holy Roman Empire by 1066).