The Forhuch were (are?) also a slave trading culture. I'm not sure how much we actually enforce our laws on our vassals.
We do, fully. This has been checked multiple times, but the abuse of half exiles is no worse than the Core, which, while not the same as nonexistent, and does in fact favor punishing unskilled former slaves due to our culture...is also one of the ways to actually bind them to our people. Remember they're currently only vassals because they follow Nomad Customs: I.e. the superhuman Hero warchief kicked the ass of everyone else, so you follow him, and then you follow his descendants.
It does make things politically sticky in an interesting way after he dies, if his children don't become King, as it will make political ties to vassals an election quality that would encourage our patricians to arrange marriages with vassal patricians.
The example of the Storm Ymaryn not getting smote (or getting smote, if they're unlucky) would be the same with or without the marriage, as they're Games participants and on our doorstep for trade. They're just too close for the marriage to make a huge difference. The same applies to them though, and we have the advantage as we're dominant in pilgrimage.
What the marriage will hopefully do is reduce the friction this would otherwise cause.
A fair point, but what about the purpose of the marriage?
The Storm Ymaryn have only two possible objectives for the marriage because they know our customs, a marriage alliance only lasts while the King does:
-They want to use our Genius for war despite already having a Martial Hero. Targets are Tin Tribes and Freehills.
-They believe they can get around the electoral system and make it dynastic.
The Forhuch have a simple reason, in that it is traditional by their culture to bind subjugated tribes to their chief by marriage, because to them without a bond of marriage, the two Peoples are not united by blood, and cannot be trusted to have their interests looked after except to maintain loyalty by force.
And the Patricians is just traditional power plays.
At 10-15% of the population, that's pretty much the same as 'banned' rather than banned.
Do we know if we've applied the laws about paying half-exiles to our vassals? I'm not sure how they'd afford them if we do? Double wealth costs are ruinous for us in the long term, but for people without ironworks, markets, or the true cities to put them in they'd be immediately catastrophic, particularly now our Artisan Games are open to them, so loads of actions have Wealth costs.
We applied them. We checked with AN, the vassals are implementing the same rules, but not suffering to the same degree because it primarily and significantly hits urbanized people more. Just means a lot more cash crops.
Waiwaiwait. Silly idea: if we do not want to waste mega actions and are afraid of what policy will do when stats are full, we can start another megaproject! Great Library even lacks wealth or econ costs, and completing several megas simultaneously during a war after bigger war is surely an achievement.
Ain't it brilliant?
Its actually narratively nice, since if we can finish it it's likely to trigger a Great Work being written before the Genius passes. If we value that over kicking highlander balls.
