My thoughts:

The earlier "administration" suggestions sounded good in general, although overly complex.  I would enjoy having an option to use your own descendents as administrators, though, with different traits providing different sorts of bonuses ot the areas they administered (Or at the very least, relatives would provide tax bonuses.)

As for "females are married off, males stay home", I can see this going either way.  On the one hand, splitting the roles in this way would help keep the game easier to keep track of, and would avoid situations where, say, different channelers wasted time trying to marry off the wrong gender combinations, which I especially see as a likelyhood with the AI, and an extra mess ot wort out (depending on how the AI works, admittedly, I don't have much experience to know for sure how much of a problem this would be.).  On the other hand, being able ot marry both genders off does have the PC attraction, and also provides more options for sovereigns as to who they keep vs. send away.

I would prefer to have females being useful for something besides marrying off, whether it be administration, generalship, etc.  Whichever marrying options are chosen, the loss of good administrators/generals/etc. should definitely be compensated for with diplomatic benefits.  (Of course, in this case, all "beauty" like traits might need ot be merged together, or provide some non-obvious gameplay benefits, otherwise they would have no value.  If they were introduced in the first place, that is, which was suggested before although I'm not sure if it was implemented.)

As for inheritance, the system suggested does seem a little too simple.  I'm not sure what a more complex form would take, though, apart from all marriages having an effect somehow on inheritance.

As for being a mechanics that effects the AI more than players, to me this isn't an issue, since theoretically the story of the game, including all the diplomatic issues, would continue after the sovereign dies, we just don't see it because the player is eliminated, and since the imbalance obnly comes into play if the player looses, anyway.  I suppose the any inheritance system could be manipulated by players, but since marrying offspring amongst each other will improve diplomatic relations and have other such effects, these seem like they could be used ot reduce the ability of players to manipulate AI sovereigns into getting killed while still having enough relatives married ot get the inheritance.

I would be interested in seeing the system in a more fleshed out way, though (such as knowing howoffspring gets particular traits), since that could easily effect a lot of opinions people have.

I am very glad that Frogboy starts considering Sovereign succession.    I am proposing the following, a system involve a lot more fun & involvement from players.  Make the succession be a main part of gameplay (as an pre-game option)

When the Country A sovereign dies, an unique "Ark of the Essence" spawn somewhere in his country.  Only those who appears in Country A's Dynasty chart can 'equip' the Ark, including those are originally from other country.   Otherwise, the Ark cannot be moved.  Those who equipped with the Ark rules the country and gain the ability to use Essence.   The ark can be destroyed by some special magic (that requires 10 turns of casting time); when it is destroyed all cities/land of the country is destroyed, game over for that player.

Before the Ark is found, the player of Country A cannot make use of Essence, cast spells, use diplomacy, research spells/tech etc.  Basically, the player can only recruit or move troops but not much more.  Player A are forced to ask one of the bloodline to find the Ark ASAP.

Prince & princess can be married off to other country & so they are 'relocated' to another countries' Dynasty chart.   Even they are moved to another chart, the original player can still  have huge influence on them, because of an "Affinity" mechanism.  Everyone listed in the Dynasty chart has one "Affinity" value for each players, but its exact value is not displayed.

Assuming I have a high affinity with MY princess married to Country A, I can ask her to do many things inside Country A, by right-clicking her info card in the Dynasty chart.  Some examples:

1. share her line of sight (LOS) to me
2. espionage, sabotage, steal tech, 
3. improve my own popularity/prestige in Country A,
4. spread rumor to damage Sovereign A.
5. steal/smuggle items/troop/$ from Country A to me,
6. have influence in diplomatic treat,
7. Give me complete control of her for certain number of turns,  so I can ask her to do battles etc.
8. Make part of Country A to be my vassal
9. break away from her current Sovereign & come under my control/owernership

Doing any of flavors above consume certain amount of her Affinity points to me.

In most of the game time,  even her Soveriegn (Player) do not know where she is because she does not share her LOS to the Sovereign by default.   Affinity point has to be spent to ask her to share her LOS, or control her for a period of time.    They are 'special' heroes that are minding their own business most of time,  unless Affinity points are spent asking them to do something specific.   They are invisible in the cloth map to all players most of time.   Depending on their instinct occupation, they spend most of their private time governing their own allocated land/city, exploring dungeons, killing roaming monsters to level up, accumulating $, etc, all invisible/uncontrollable to the Sovereign's eyes.   

Even my princess now displayed in Country A's Dynasty chart, I can increase her Affinity value towards me by doing one of the following:

1. gifting $/items/troop
2. sparing her life, when she/her husband/son lost a battle with me.
3. let her son marry one of my bloodline

However, the action of Sovereign A has more ways to affect her Affinity value to him.   For example:

1. give her direct family more $$/land/item etc
2. arranging a prestigious marriage for her/her direct family
3. give her ample opportunity to level up quickly
4. force her to lost battles, by not providing overwhelming force
5. the Sovereign lost lots of war/Prestige/controlled area
6. someone spread rumor against the Sovereign
7. or, someone has murdered her beloved husband/son, etc etc.  

Finally,  if that send-away princess of mine happens to be the first one to equip the "Ark of the Essence" and she has high affinity with me,  I can ask her  to surrender the Country A to me, because I have accumulated enough Affinity points to spend.   I can pay lots of affinity points to directly control her, give her free troops etc, during the search for the lost Ark.   Player A can compete with me on who get the final control of her, by spending Affinity points or performing other actions.

If the princess is not the first one to equip it, I can help her.  Killing the current Ark bearer so she can equip it instead. A bloodline assasinating the Sov is possible, although difficult to execute as lots of affinity point is required.   However, if devs want 'Personality' can be introduced to all bloodlines, so the increase/decrease of Affinity point is different for different person.   Some of them wants to kill the Soveriegn without any other players' meddling.  

Interesting I like the dynasties Idea, but if were able to make heroes for our custom factions along with channalersI think it would be nice if our male/female channellers could marry our male/female heroes, it would make finding spouses much easier earlier in the game and make it to where you don't have to wait for a random bride/groom to show up.

as for the problem of heirs being male or female, I think it would be, and this may or something similar may have already been suggested, for the game to three types of succession lines: One a Kingdom succession line, where male son's inherit the throne; a Queendom succession line, where only female can sit on the throne, and lastly mix gender succession line where male's and female's can inherit the throne. The first born to keep it simple should be the crown prince/princess automatically, but I think, like others have suggested, that we should be to who amongest or children is best suited to inherit the throne.

I don't think the "un-PC" nature of a male-driven succession will hurt the game.  Medieval: Total War allowed you to get a +1 Dread attribute by putting fathers/brothers on top of princess units, for goodness' sake.  Medieval II got rid of that, but still had princesses as diplomats on a timer: get 'em married off for the diplomatic benefit, or see them retire to a nunnery.

Fair enough, but what about the idea that the raw princes-vs-princesses framework in the OP would be less fun than building the game to handle interactions between factions with different succession practices?

p.s. One more note on the 'politically correct' nonsense: The 'politics' that matter here are the terms that will be laid down for the Elemental backstory, of which we in the peanut gallery have yet to see more than the tiniest scraps. If it turns out that each and every canon faction has a strictly patriarchal world view, I'd expect to see succession bluntly treat males as people and females as resources. What that means for the currently-planned female soverigns is another matter entirely. I'm almost finished with the Mistborn trilogy, and have been surprised to find myself thinking frequently about how guns and combat aircraft tend to equalize the real-world genders, and might possibly favor the womenfolk in some frontline contexts.

Climber's idea is interesting, even if a bit flawed - nothing a polish can't fix.

Why is it good?

• First and foremost, it provides an event after the death of the monarch. The nation could have one more chance to redeem itself by finding the rightful successor for the throne;
• Second, it is not a bland event, but an extremely dynamic one. Every other nation could take part in this treasure hunt and hell yes, I can imagine the enemy's agents leaking through the borders like there is no tomorrow;
• Third, it provides a successful way of legitimizing the actual "heirs" to the throne. They are basically worthless as leaders, but damn sure they would love to fill their father's or mother's vacant seat if they could;
• Fourth, it can lead to major upheavals in the balance of power, both inside and outside the unfortunate nation. 

...from now on, I'll take some liberties with your ideas, Mr. Climbe, but in general the basics stay the same.

How could it work exactly? Let's make it step by step:

1. Sovereign die. Shame. However, in the place of his throne an Altar appears;
2. Chaos reigns (i.e. no use of Essence, diplomacy... Climber described this already);
3. All legal heirs are given the option to go back to their Kingdom of origin, without spouses;
4. The Ark (or something similar) suddenly appears somewhere inside the Kingdom, rumor spreads among the elite that it might contain the essence of the last Sovereign;
5. His children now start to look for the Ark, backstabbing or making alliances with whomever they can. If they don't put their hands on that artifact fast, someone else will and that could end their pretensions;
6. Rumor spreads beyond borders, anyone with a bit of power thinks about going through the borders to rob the powerful magic item;
7. At this point, several people will be looking for the Ark - many factions and powerful individuals inside the target nation will be fighting over it, or not, it will depend on how effective the "main players" of that Kingdom are in exerting their hegemony;
8. After an unit finds itself carrying the Ark, it must return it intact to another Sovereign or to the Altar;
9. If another Sovereign touches the Ark, he will absorb its essence and become personally more powerful besides being able to claim the Sovereign-less nation's throne;
10. If an unit survives long enough to move the Ark to the Altar, the chief of this unit will become the new channeler. What do I mean? Prince Albert controls one minor faction and manage to get his soldiers to capture the Ark. They miraculously survive a perilous journey to his castle where he gather forces to march towards the capital. If they manage to arrive the capital and have him put the Ark in the Alter, Prince Albert becomes King Albert, gets new abilities and will work like a normal Channeler. Succession ends and he can start cleaning the mess;
11. Now, Prince Albert and Princess Katherina might fail - a pesky hero, friend of the old King, was smarter and got the Ark alone with his party. He manage to dodge the armies and sneak into the capital placing it over the Altar. Now that Hero becomes King or Queen;
12. Things can become REALLY interesting when you imagine other rogue creatures taking the Ark and becoming channelers. Remember that dragon you allied? Well, it seems he is interested in becoming King because he just killed the heroes bringing the Ark back home at the service of Princess Katherina and now is flying to the capital. Wouldn't that be awesome? I think it would;
13. The Ark destroying thing is also possible. Foreign forces might try to destroy it before the insider's forces capture it. As in the original idea, it would blast everything inside that nation, like a magic nuclear bomb. Game over for that fella.

About the affinity idea, I don't think that is very good. I believe allowing the heirs to automatically move to their motherland after his channeler parent is dead is fair enough. If one of them was married before and manage to assure the throne, s/he might be given options to forfeit that marriage or resume it. If s/he fails, he goes back to the country he was married and disappears. Now, one question that never goes out of my mind is what happens to the royal clutter? Uncles, grandchildren, etc. Worse, what happens to the Prince Consort or the Queen? Despite the Ark idea being the most puissant so far, it doesn't answer these questions.

Finneglot, I like the polishes you make.  I especially like your idea that you make the chase of the Ark & the journery to return it to the Altar or a Soverign even more eventful & risky for everyone.

Also, I like your idea that the death of a Soverign will be annouced to all players.   So anyone who want to get their hands on the Ark will have time to act on it.

I am not sure if I like any other creature outside the bloodline can carry the Ark.   The way that only bloodline of the deceased Sov can carry it around simply make these nobles more special.

I like the Affinity idea very much.  But I do admit there can be rough edges.  I need more people to smooth out the idea.  Esentially those appears in the Dynasty chart as Dutches, Barons, prince, princess, etc.  They depends on the Sov, related to the Sov, but they are also plotting against everyone else.   They all have their hidden agendas, some of them are trying to becoming the next Sov.

The first born should never be the sucession automatically just because s/he is the first born.    Succession is about who have the most power/support (or better luck), when the last Sov dies.   These noble will use all the external help they can muster.  But of course all these external help come with a cost & their own agenda.  There is no free lunch.  

I should add that when this particular noble brings the Ark back to the Altar the Player do not get a new Channeler right away.   There should be a few turns before the noble assume the true power of the Sov.  During this transition period, others can bribe this noble and try instead to carry the Ark to another Sov, or try destory the Ark.

I like the Affinity idea that it is also an Esponiage idea that fit well to what had happened in history, intrigue in the court.

I think the marriage system should be simple at the outset and get more complicated in an expansion.

If the game starts to make each and every aspect too complicated all at once, I think it could hurt it with a wider audience. For exampl,e this game is one that could bring my kids away from their Xbox into the strategy genre because of the fantasy setting. Nothing wrong with putting some aspects into the game so there is a foundation and then adding more complexity later on.

One thing I would like to discuss is the sovereign killin'.

Brad said that there would be two options: either you agree that the sovereign's death = game over (SDGO), or the game can continue. While I understand that this was a hot debate (SD = GO, or not), but I would like to say the resolving the issue by implementing a game option is a bad move. Why, you ask? I see the SDGO/SDnotGO (SDNGO) as a vital part of the game on which the succession system, part of the research tree and a part of the game will be based. If you allow an option to change such a big part of the game you 'intentionally' remove a big chunk of the game, on which you worked to hard.

An example would be best here. Lets say there are several techs that greatly increase the survivability of your sovereign. One of the players go deeper & deeper into the corresponding tree, as he knows that he will be able to use his sovereign offensively, as with the developed techs he will make a "tank sovereign". With the "sovereign immortal" option on, the whole sub-tree would be worthless. Maybe it's not THAT bad, but take a look at the succession system. The way you develop your heroes, the way you choose fiances for your heroes, etc. is heavily dependent on mortality/immortality of your sovereign.

Nitty-gritty: I hope Stardock will make a final decision, whether or not to make the sovereign immortal, and NOT make it a game option, as it would divide to community, render part of the game useless and make the game harder to balance.

My 0.02€.

What about MY son. Can he inherit from ME? I find it a bit limiting if it is all one way succession. But that's me coming from not playing MoM so much. 

How easy would it be to make(mod) it all like a normal, expansive dynastic aspect of game?

Should surrender always be a Winner Takes All? 

Say the 'heir' is contested by another 'heir' planted by my enemy of equal to near equal standing.  Does that mean the nation will partially become a new indepandant, fracture into city states, usher in a civil war or get divided up between nations unevenly?  Here is the catch, how high standing my female asset is on the pecking order could determine how much of the empire is 100% guaranteed to be mine IF I don't get the whole plate already.  Maybe situations like this could be brought on by a random event when a surrender is made.

This is fair enough.  My concern is that if different Factions have different methods of succession, it will add complexity and confusion to the game without adding much to strategic decision-making.  This may be a case of YMMV: some players may love the hard-to-discern politics of such a system; others may hate it.  I probably fall into the latter camp.

What would be interesting is for there to be two rule sets for Elemental: Basic and Advanced.  The Advanced rule set could have complicated things like "Succession Types based on Faction" vs. the Basic rule sets simpler system.

In response to RogueCaptain, my view is that the Successor should usually take all, if everything else lines up.  If there's good reason for dispute--the Successor is an illegitimate child, or a Champion and not of the Sovereign's family, or another character has low Loyalty, or another trait or traits, or the peasants are dissatisfied, or whatever--then maybe the Successor doesn't get all by default, and has to fight for it.

That sounds like a swell idea to this non-coder. Sort of box away the Great Bucket of Options that so many of us tend to ask for, intentionally or not...

But your basic point about the subtle complications makes me admit that I have no idea how hard it would be for the AIs to make decent use of the interactions between different factions' succession rules.

Coding the AI would be the easy part.  The hard--and frustrating--part would be for the player to keep track of it all.  With too many actions/counter-actions, the game becomes a crapshoot.

Just a small idea, an integration at Brad's opening post:

a succession system based on a "city-per-city" level, instead of a kingdom/empire "all-at-once" level.

The Channeler/Sovereign can appoint his sons (and/or daughters) as "Governors" of one (or more) of his cities. This will provide some sort of bonuses at those cities.  (...not a new idea in this post, i know...).

During the game, those Governors will eventually marry a son/daughter of another Sovereign, probably as a result of an Alliance, or another Diplomatic Pact (or perhaps for a completed Quest, why not?).

Suddenly (or not...) the Channeler dies (or retires) and then the Succession System starts:

- for ALL the cities WITHOUT a MARRIED Governor:

- for a city WITH a married Governor: its control passes at the Sovereign whose son/daughter has married him/her.

After reading the thread, I'm not really sure where to begin, so I think I'll just toss out some thoughts here.

In general, it seems like the proposed system (all your stuff goes to the ruler whose daughter/female descendent is married to your eldest son) is both a little too simple, and a little counter-intuitive, and could stand to be more complex. After all, this is something that only happens once a Soverign dies, and how many soverigns will there be in an average game? On the other hand, most of the complexity should be in the set-up of children and marriages, not in something that other players would need to do after your death.

Now, when you think about it, this isn't just a matter of the soverign deciding who is going to rule his kingdom when he's gone - from a simulation perspective it has to do with the behavior of certain NPC's. Really, there's two aspects - first is that the NPC citizens of your kingdom are deciding to follow your heir, and second your heir is deciding which of the other soverigns to ally with. It's not like Medieval Europe where there's a peerage and a king to make sure the laws of inheritance are followed, so what I would prefer is for the succession to be determined a little more organically.

I'm assuming every descendent is going to be a hero unit on the world map. And as such, they'll all have their own stats and abilities. I remember reading something in an interview about selectively breeding daughters to have a high 'beauty' rating, to better marry them off. Logically, you could also have a child who is a great leader, or a great warrior, a cunning politician, a channeler, and so on.

So what I'm imagining is a system that would take all of those factors into account in order to determine who takes the throne, or whether they have any rivals, and so on. Here's a rough sketch of how it could work:

The Soverign dies.

1. Potential Successors
   
   • By default, the throne passes to the eldest son. Or, let's say your oldest child of the same sex as the Soveriegn. Of course, if they're dead, it could pass to the second child, or to the eldest granchild, great grandchild, and so on, according to whatever rules of succession.
   • Other children can make their own claim. For that matter, another hero that's been recruited to your side could make a bid for the throne - this would probably be rare, but it might be a good thing to include if a Soverign dies childless, for example.
   • This would take into account a variety of factors such as age / line of descent (mainly so that your son, grandson, great-grandson won't all fight over the throne), overall capabilities (if the eldest son is mediocre, and the second son is awesome, there's a chance that the eldest wouldn't get the throne), and relation with your heir (if the second son hates the first, he's less likely to follow and more likely to try to take the throne for himself).
2. Popular Support
   • If there's more than one claimant to the throne, there's a question of who the people will follow. Each of the potential heirs tries to win as much support as possible, splitting the empire up between them.
     
   • All of your heroes (including descendents who aren't making their own claim to the throne) pick one side or another. Possibly, some of them could defect, leaving your faction and becoming wandering recruitable units or whatever.
   • Likewise, all your cities and military units would fall under the control of one faction or the other, with military units possibly going rogue again.
     
   • Loyalty is again determined by how closely related each candidate is to the former soverign, what their skills and abilities are, and so on. It could be influenced by proximity, supporting the hero that is physically closest to them on the worldmap. Heroes could sway a city or unit that they're in, and so on.
     
   • Once that's settled, check to see how much overall support each one has, how many cities, units, heroes they have on their side. If there's a significant difference, the more powerful one might be able to win and take over the entire kingdom (with the other possibly fleeing into exile). If they're closer to equal, then the kingdom is more likely to split with each rival ruling independently.
   • If there's only one heir, there still might be the risk of units and heroes defecting to join another faction or go barbarian, if the heir isn't a good enough leader to keep the whole kingdom together.
3. Kingom's Allegience
   • Once it's been determined who rules what, the heir (or heirs) joins up with one of the other soverigns, taking whatever cities, troops, and heroes remain loyal to them.
     
   • Who they ally with could be influenced by such things as diplomatic standing, geographical proximity, and, of course, marriage. If the heir is married into another soverign's family, they're more likely to go over to that soverign's side. If the heir is actually descended from you (due to them being the child of a political marriage) then evern moreso.
     
   • If your child is intelligent, beautiful, etc then they are even more likely to convince their spouse to join you. And having multiple marriages between the two families would mean tighter ties and a better chance they'll join you.
   • If they kindgom is split between two or more rivval heirs, each of them could potentially go over to a different soverign, leading to a bit of a civil war in the kingdom.

That may seem complex (or it might not, I don't know) but this is really something just AI, just like much of the other game mechanics, where the calculations and stuff take place behind the scenes within the space of a second or two on the turn the soverign dies. Players should still be able to tell, or at least make a calculated guess, what will happen when the soverign dies, and plan accordingly - it just shouldn't be as simple and boring as 'marry your daughter to their eldest son and you inherit the entire kingdom when they die'.

I didn't read the whole thread so forgive me if this was already mentioned.

What if the order of succession was different (or varied) for each faction. You could have the factions which support all offspring as potential sovereigns or the factions which only support male/female heirs. It could be a Strategic factional choice with some yet undetermined consequences/benefits.

A faction could abandon various sons and daughters because they are too skinny, weak, fat, ugly, unpure, strange, marked by the gods, whatever.

Without knowing more about the system objectives I cant run with this any further.

Just curious: how do games in the Europa Universalis series handle succession?  Do they have a good model?

• Daughters get married off
• Sons stay with you

Simple, logical and fun (and politically incorrect as a bonus )

I support it.

In short, the previous system was based on marrying unspecified members of your royal family to other royals of friendly nations. This gives you a relations' boost, a way of claiming the crown of that given nation anytime and a dim chance of forming a personal union possibly followed by inheritance later by the death of one given monarch.

How personal unions are formed? Say, the Duke of Orleans dies without leaving a heir. From here, two things may happen: a Regency Council (more probable), that will rule the nation until the legal heir reaches adulthood or a personal union with one seemingly random nation holding a personal union. Personal unions can happen smoothly or violently, with the last option causing war to decide who, of two foreign, nations is taking the crown home.

And what is a personal union? Basically, is one nation being subject to another in military terms and in some economical ones. They are divided in Major Partner and Junior Partner, with the Major Partner being the ruler. The Junior Partner is not governed directly by the Major one, but is forced to ally itself unconditionally in any wars Major party is on. Also, it gives a little boost to your taxes, nothing too extravagant. A Junior Partner is also completely dependent on its foreign policy of the Major Partner i.e. it cannot declare war on its own.

The greatest advantage of being a Major Party is the increased probability of inheriting i.e. annexing the Junior Partner at some given time. This time is random but influenced by shadow statistics and it doesn't happen often. Personal unions can last for a long, long time without any annexation. They can also collapse very quickly, thanks to the pressure for some balance of power in Europe.

One thing I didn't discuss was the "claiming the crown" action. It allows you to gain a casus belli against any nation whom you have a royal marriage. This, however, is not advisable since it will destroy your relations with other nations whom you also have marriages.

Anyway, that's general scheme on how it was. 

EU III revamped its succession scheme in the last installment of the series conveniently named Heirs to the Throne. It has been around for two weeks and I still haven't put my hands on it but I can dig a thing or two about it, quoting developer Doomdark:

It seems dynasties have been properly implemented, with several clear factors balancing the transition of power instead of shadow statistics. I wish I knew more as it can probably be a source of inspiration.

PS: I've just discovered Crusader Kings has a powerful succession scheme - it might be worth giving it a look.

The Guild 2 pretty much comes to my mind when thinking about breeding sucessors to take the lead.   Basically, think of phenotypes (e.g. your RPG stats) as complex---i.e. polygenic, rather than the traditional Dominant/Recessive that you see in Mendel's peas.  Mating the two parents gives an averaging of the parents' phenotypes, with some randomization allowed.  E.g. Parent A has strength 2, parent B has strength 6, so the offspring has strength 4, with some deviations expected for other genetic events.

Dynasties should represent family houses though.  Ones that can cross kingdoms, and create positive diplomatic feeling when spread around by marriage.  But a failure of a dynasty shouldn't mean complete failure of the kingdom/race, but rather leave a void for an upstart dynasty to fill.

And also there needs to be considered whether or not the kingdoms are absolute monarchies, or more fedualistic, in which the dynasty can devolve to figurehead status, with a noble faction actually being the true power.  So multiple dynasties could have influence in a kingdom race at the same time.  A lot like the factional/election system of GalCiv2.

Liking the idea of unions, mentioned above.  Historically, some political units are simply amalgamations of houses, so the larger political entity might evolve quite a bit during a game, as it absorbs multiple houses by marriage and alliance, rather than just imperial conquest.

And then there's sticky question of interspecies relations.  Would half-human, half-elven dynasties occur/persist, for example?

And you could get into larger 'quasi-federations' (e.g. the equivalent of a united federation of planets or Holy Roman Empire) forming that not be fully autonomous against the member kingdoms, but bear influence because of international politics.

Also, I wouldn't assume a purely patriarchial system. History has quite a few females who have seized power through any means possible. Though this leads to yet another interesting point, which is how the kingdom is inheirited.  Kingdoms can easily be split between heirs.  Would the player control the sovereigns, and therefore have three kingdoms when such an inheiritance occured?

I agree, we need to know more about whether or not the nations in the game will use a Monarch or Feudalistic system, and whatever the devs decide I think it should remain that way throughout the game (rather than be able to change government types ala Civ 3) Frogboy mentioned using the series "a Song of Ice and Fire" as inspiration, and if you haven't read any of those books they use a feudal system. So if i had to place a bet, i would say Elemental will too (which is my hope ) but theres no telling just yet. I like your idea of multiple "dynasties" in one nation, because I could see a game where the different houses (which all reside in a city) all pledge allegiance to the sovereign (thus making up your nation). The outcomes of a scenario like this would always be different and unique and allow for a game to play out like the series above. I personally am a huge fan of "A Song of Ice and Fire" and so i would love for the game to follow it to a T, though I know it might not be everyone's cup of tea I do recommend it to anyone for the read, but I suppose we will just have to wait to hear more from the devs about how they plan to complete this succession idea... cuz all this specualtion isn't really getting us anywhere

True, but spouting in the forum is a way to let us maybe get heard, and maybe even inspire a programmer or something. Or maybe not.

Problems so far are the indecision of whether the death of a sovereign will mean game over or not, whether the children of the sovereigns will be able to inherit his/her channeler's trait and whether it is possible to be the head of state without being a channeler.

Without proper guidance, we are shooting in the dark.

I have a sneaking (and confusing to me) suspicion that the devs might want us floundering about with just a few details from inside their sanctum. After all, the more info they offer to help us 'shoot accurately,' the less likely it is that one of us will mention a fun target that they hadn't considered yet.

Mind you, I'm sort of trying to talk myself out of frustration over wanting answers just like the ones in your list.