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To stop vassals fighting in your realm, you can:
Ask them to end their war
Revoke their titles
Or kill relevant claimants in claimant wars
Alternatively, if you want to prevent vassals from fighting in the future, you can increase your Crown Authority or keep vassals as small and weak as possible.
How To End Vassal Wars
#1: Ask Them To End The War
In some cases, you can simply ask a vassal to end a war they have declared. Ask them to end the war or surrender, and they may stop.
The Demand Surrender option is highlighted under “Vassalage & Court; more”
Some vassals may refuse if they want to continue the war or don’t like you.
A vassal refusing to surrender in an internal war
You can use hooks here to increase your chance of success.
#2: Revoke Their Titles
If you revoke a vassal’s title, you might be able to end their war. You would have to revoke all of their titles; titles that are the target of a war cannot be revoked.
Note: you will need Crown Authority Level 2, or Level 3 for Tribal governments, to revoke titles from vassals. Their vassal contract cannot have “protected from title revocation” checked.
The Revoke Title option is highlighted under “Vassalage & Court”
This action gives you Tyranny, which will cause all vassals to dislike you, so be careful.
If a vassal has committed a crime that allows you to revoke a title as punishment, you won’t gain any Tyranny.
The Revoke Title option when used against a criminal – this action will give no Tyranny
Sometimes, vassals will rebel against you when they don’t want you to take their titles!
They will declare war with any other vassals who dislike you.
A war being declared after a Revoke Title action failed. Another character has joined this war
Again, you can use a hook here to help convince them to give up their titles.
#3: Kill Claimants & Their Family In Claimant Wars
The goal of a claimant war is to replace a ruler with another character, who the supporters would prefer to rule.
A claimant war, tipping in the opponent’s favor
In a claimant war, you can kill the claimant and their family, and the war will no longer have a purpose. This ends the war inconclusively.
This claimant has been executed after capture, so the claimant war immediately ends inconclusively
This may be difficult if your vassal is from an established family. If their title is inherited when they die, the war will continue with the next ruler.
How To Prevent Vassal Wars
#1: Increasing Crown Authority Level
Crown Authority Level 3 will prevent vassals from declaring war on each other.
This will put a stop to internal wars, which will restrict vassals from gathering land and power.
The tooltip for Crown Authority Level 3
Crown Authority Level 4 will prevent vassals from declaring any kind of war, which includes wars against internal vassals and external realms.
The tooltip for Crown Authority Level 4
If your vassal has a strong hook on you, they can still declare any type of war they want.
The player, as a vassal, is able to declare war on another vassal with a hook on their liege
Note: Tribal governments cannot regulate war declarations. Tribal vassals are free to declare both internal and external wars.
Avoid giving vassals the Sanctioned War Declaration option in their vassal contract. This will allow them to declare war despite Authority levels, just like hooks!
The tooltip for Sanctioned War Declaration in a vassal’s contract
Faction-based wars can still happen no matter what restrictions you’ve put in place. This is because factions are rebelling against those restrictions and you, as their ruler.
#2: Keeping Vassals Small & Weak
By the time you can control your warring vassals, it’s likely they’ll have expanded and become stronger already.
A very large, out-of-control vassal
Controlling vassals and keeping them weak will stop them from forming factions and attacking you as often. It will also discourage them from waging war against other vassals or realms.
As mentioned earlier, you can revoke titles from vassals, ideally as a punishment for their crimes.
A title has been successfully revoked from this vassal
You can also modify vassal contracts to control their power.
The tooltip for Forced Partition in a vassal’s contract
Add the Forced Partition option to make their lands split between their children when they die. Or, increase their Feudal Levy obligations to lower the strength of their armies.
Samantha is a Scottish writer, editor, and lifelong gamer living in Czechia. She loves to travel around Europe and enjoy the outdoors, as long as it's not too hot! She can usually be found constructing her next CK3 dynasty, carving some tails in Monster Hunter, or enjoying a horror show or two.
