The entire Crusader Kings series rests on one blunt insight: power isn’t a decoration you wear, it’s what lets you bend others to your will. In Crusader Kings 3 that used to mean blunt instruments — wars, plots, and the occasional discreet poison. The new wrinkle is subtler: leave someone breathing on the throne and make them sign what you need. This is the puppet system from the upcoming By God Alone expansion (already nicknamed BGA by the community).
At first, dev diaries made it sound like the mechanic was aimed at controlling the clergy so feudal rulers could play theocratic games. Recent screenshots, though, point somewhere broader: secular rulers can be put in the harness — even your own suz. can be made to behave.
The real novelty is in how orders work. In CK2 a vass. tied into a secret society would just go along with a request and that was that. BGA lets you give specific commands to the puppet, for example:
- demand independence for your own lands;
- extract a sum of gold from the treasury;
- declare war on a specific neighbor;
- throw an unwanted character in prison;
- revoke a title from another vassal;
- initiate faith conversion in your domain (judging by the icon with the palm).
So the obvious play appears: crown a child or an incapable heir and pull the strings from the shadows — as minister, chancellor, whatever office gives you the keys. History offers no shortage of comparable set-ups; this is hardly new, just packaged.
Problems, though. How will this interact with regencies and diarchies that already try to approximate the same control but in weaker, messier ways? Then there’s AI: the vassal directives system has been in the codebase for years and AI rulers barely touch it, so BGA risks being another “player-only” toy. Balance matters too — if a couple of gifts and one blackmail string let you own a neighboring king outright, the system becomes stale fast.
For modders, however, this is a boon. Regula Magistry and AGOT leap to mind, sure, but the cooler thought is structural: puppets are a ready framework for the landless courtier fantasy — formally nobody, practically choking a realm. Gritty, opportunistic, and possibly a little sinister — the kind of medieval politics that makes you grin when the plan lands.