Crusader Kings 3 is all about families and dynasties. The emphasis is not on warfare but rather on ensuring your family line survives and continues to rule. Marriage is one important way, and perhaps the only way, to ensure that your dynasty does continue. You can also marry for that strong alliance you’ve always wanted or promise one of your kids in marriage to gain the same thing.

You right click a character’s portrait in your Court and choose Arrange Marriage, which will bring up a list of available characters in your Court. You can use the Find Spouse option, which will list all the people who are eligible to marry your candidate. You can also use the Character Finder to find another Liege to arrange a marriage with.

CK3 Arranged Marriages

Arranging marriages can be confusing in CK3 and there are several ways to arrange one. Also, there is one very confusing thing about the Arrange Marriage interface in this game if you’re not familiar with it, at least to me, and that is the Arrange Marriage screen itself. Clicking on the portrait of one of the candidates will bring up that character’s detail screen on the left side of the screen but it won’t fill in the spouse silhouette. If you right click on the portrait on the left, thinking you need to choose Arrange Marriage again, you lose the candidates available to you from the other Ruler’s Court. Instead, you need to click on the details box next to the character’s portrait in the Arrange Marriage screen. Clicking on the character’s portrait is a great way to look at that individual’s characteristics to ensure that’s the candidate you want but it is confusing if you’re new to the game. You can tell if you messed up because the Recipient’s portrait will change. Clicking on the character’s detail box will fill in the spouse silhouette.

Read More: Scrolling down to the bottom of the Arrange Marriage screen will tell you if an Alliance will be created or not. Find the advantages to having an alliance at this page on my website. You can find more pages about Crusader Kings 3 by using the customized menu at the top of the page.

Arranging a Marriage With Someone In Your Court

You can arrange a marriage between two people in your Court. Although your potential spouses will be a lot more limited than if you try to find a spouse for someone outside of your Court there are a couple of good reasons for doing so. One is to attempt to breed desirable traits into your children, another advantage is that since both persons are in your court the marriage cannot be refused. You also might be able to gain an alliance you need. Guests in your Court do have the option to refuse an arranged marriage.

To arrange a marriage like this you can either right click on the portrait of someone in your family and select Arrange Marriage or do the same thing with someone in your Court. If Arrange Marriage is not available, then that person is probably already married. You can click on his or her portrait to activate the character screen to see if that’s the case. If you’re really set on marrying someone to this person then perhaps a murder scheme is in order?

If you’re interested in arranging a marriage with someone in a particular Realm, perhaps to get an alliance to shore up a border, or maybe you just want to be BFFs, then click on that Realm to bring up the Ruler’s portrait. Right click on the Ruler’s portrait and click Arrange Marriage. If no one in that Ruler’s realm is available to marry off then that option will not be available. Once you choose the Arrange Marriage option a list of available individuals in your Court will pop up. Select the appropriate candidate’s detail box next to the portrait to fill in the Spouse silhouette and a list of potential spouses will be available from the other Ruler’s Court. Select one and send the proposal, providing he will accept it.

Using the Character Finder To Arrange A Marriage in CK3

You can use the Character Finder to look for a spouse. In case you don’t know where that is it is a selection list that is brought up by clicking on the three little dots at the bottom of the screen, the ones located next to the gear icon you use to exit the game. Clicking that will bring up several options and the Character Finder is one of them. Clicking that will bring up the Character Finder screen with a Filters screen next to it. If you set all the filters to “All” you can actually see a list of all the characters in the game but that’s not very useful for marriage purposes.

One filter you should definitely change is the “Diplomatic Range” to “Inside.” There is no tooltip telling you what the difference is between “Inside” and “Outside” but a quick check of the “Outside” characters reveals that you cannot interact with them so it’s best to eliminate all those immediately by setting this filter to “Inside.” You can also set the sorting order by several things, such as by Intrigue or Prowess, it depends on what you’re interested in. You will also most likely get better results by matching the character’s Culture and Religion to yours, but I have successfully married off people with differences in culture and religion. The penalty is that your character will probably take a hit on Prestige since they will probably need to marry down.

One great use for the Character Finder is to find good Council members. You probably won’t have the best selection in the world when it comes to who is on your Council. You can use lower ranking members of your Court to marry someone with a skill or trait that you need, like someone with a high Intrigue skill. Once married, you can bring them into your Court and offer them your Spymaster position as one example. You can gain all kinds of advantages with this option, like obtaining Claims.

To take the selection process one step further after finding a Ruler to arrange a marriage with you can use the filter at the Arrange Marriage screen by clicking on the magnifying glass that’s next to the “Sort by” option. At this screen you can narrow both spouses done even further by three categories: Age, Personal and Politics.

Finding A Spouse

One other thing I found confusing about arranging marriages was what the difference was between the Arrange Marriage option and the Find Spouse option. They both bring up the Arrange Marriage screen but with different candidates. It turns out that this is simply another method to either find a spouse from everyone who is available or limit it to your Court if you arrange the marriage instead.

The advantage to using the Spouse option over the Character Finder is that you’re finding all the persons eligible to marry your candidate, whereas with the Character Finder you’re usually arranging a marriage with another Liege.

CK3 Betrothal

A Betrothal is a promise that two people will get married, but they can’t yet because at least one of them is not an adult (under age 16). Just like a Marriage a Betrothal can create an alliance, but since a Betrothal is more easily broken than a marriage the alliance may not be as dependable. It can be broken by simply breaking the Betrothal. It probably won’t result in a war but the recipient will have a lower opinion of you, you definitely won’t be BFFs anymore.

Although the screen is an Arrange Betrothal screen instead of the Arrange Marriage screen the options and mechanics are the same. Like any other marriage you can scroll down to see what the results will be, like an alliance.

Matrilineal Marriage

If you have mostly or all daughters and no sons to marry off it’s time to take a look at a Matrilineal Marriage. This type of marriage ensures that your House will live on after your death. This type of marriage arrangement means that any children born from the marriage will be part of the mother’s house and not the father’s.