Content Warning: This post, unfortunately, contains mention of incestuous relationships, due to the nature of the achievement.
In Paradox's latest grand strategy game Crusader Kings 3, there is no incorrect way to play — you can go about ruling your dynasty in any way you like and the game is full of complex mechanics, engaging events, and procedural storytelling. This has led to some memes in the community, such as an irrational dislike of the French Karling dynasty, poking fun at the way allies behave during wartime, and of course, the ability to commit incest.
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So well known for the latter feature was Crusader Kings 2, that it is fully embraced in the sequel. There are multiple ways to "keep it in the family" and it's even linked to a full-blown achievement.
How To Get The "Keeping It In The Family Achievement"
The requirements for acquiring the achievement are simple: you must simply sire a child with the Inbred trait. As you might expect, Inbred is a congenital trait that comes with a whole host of drawbacks, but at least you get a shiny achievement with it.
The thing is, having a child with a close relative does not guarantee that the child will have the Inbred trait, which can be the frustrating thing about this achievement. Crusader Kings 3 is a deeply complex game with a lot of thought put into its genetics simulation, so there's some explaining that must be done.
The chance of a character being born with the Inbred trait depends on the number of common ancestors between their parents. The closer they are related, the more common ancestors they have, with brother-sister pairings having the most at 30 (the game only tracks four generations).
The Inbred trait has other requirements in order for it to spawn. At least one of the parents must have one of the following congenital traits:
- Barren or Sterile
- Scaly
- Club-footed
- Wheezing
- Spindly
- Giant
- Hunchbacked
- Bleeder
- Dwarf
Note that the traits listed above have a higher chance of spawning in the children of general incest, but can also be gained naturally and randomly too.
How To Commit… Ahem… Consanguinity
As you'd expect, there are plenty of barriers to actually committing the sin of "consanguinity" (in other words, incestuous relationships) — it wouldn't be a very realistic simulation of medieval life if there weren't, and it would be weird for all the AI characters to end up Inbred.
That said, there are multiple routes that you can take in order to facilitate the fulfillment of this achievement.
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Incest can be legalized through the game's faith system.
- Each faith has a marriage doctrine that dictates its views on consanguinity. There are four levels that can be chosen, with varying restrictions on how closely related two characters have to be before they cannot marry.
- Adopting a faith with lax consanguinity rules or creating one yourself is the easiest way to ensure that you can consistently form relationships with multiple common ancestors.
- The majority of faiths in the game follow avunculate marriage or cousin marriage rules, which both enable inbreeding but at a low rate. Four faiths begin with unrestricted marriage and provide the best chances of success by enabling close-relative marriage: Messalianism, Adamitism, Mazdayasna, and Zurvanism.
- There is also a perk in the Seducer tree of the Intrigue lifestyle that enables this behavior. Subtle Desire "removes the Incestuous penalty from Seduction Schemes targeting characters over 19 years old."
After multiple generations with partners having common ancestors, it should be no time at all until you get the Keep it in the Family achievement.
NEXT: Crusader Kings 3: Best Console Commands
