Divine Marriage Improved
It is a source of persistent annoyance that, despite it being a core part of the unique mechanics of Zoroastrians, Messalians, and the new Holy Family doctrine, actually making meaningful use of divine marriages is a terrible idea that will doom you to drooling, imbecilic heirs. (Realistic or not.) This mod aims to fix that, by more-or-less porting over the mechanics for divine blood (a special tag for dynasties to use in modding, introduced in some patch a long while ago) to divine marriages generally.
The main effect: Children born to close relatives of faiths supporting such unions (that is, zoroastrians, messalians, and pagan faiths reformed with either holy family or Dawnbreakers) will have a 75% chance of instantly and invisibly losing any non-inherited ‘inbred’ trait that they may have been born with, assuming that their parents meet further conditions as described below – effectively, a 75% reduced chance of being inbred. If they lose the trait in this fashion, it has a further 1/3rd chance of being replaced with lunatic, instead.
Further conditions that apply are chosen by the player in a once-per-game high priority decision visible to the player when they belong to a divine-marriage religion. The default choice is to restrict this effect specifically to children born to a divine marriage itself, but the player can also choose to extend it to children born of close-kin concubines, or even to bastards born outside any official union (so long as their parents are close kin and of the proper faith).
Secondly, it removes the 75% fertility penalty applied to divine marriages. This was especially bad for Messalians, since they have no secondary wives or concubines, making them have to choose between using divine marriages and getting more than one or two kids over a lifetime.
Thirdly, it makes the Way of Life seduction events treat Holy Family/Dawnbreaker reformed religions the same as Messalian and Zoroastrian – this appears to have been an oversight with Holy Fury.
Certain bastard birth/adultery events for Holy Family reformed pagan faiths still treat incest spawn as notably unholy and have additional penalties for incestuous adultery, while Messalian and Zoroastrian don’t – I could fix this, but it would involve changing the on_action_events and birth_events files, thereby dramatically increasing the chance of conflicting with any major mod. As such, I’ve left it alone.If a marriage is close-kin without the fact being generally known (e.g., because one of the spouses is a hidden bastard), it will not be afforded inbreeding protection.
