I got a community warning recently talking about specific family/house dynamics that have occurred over time due to it being offensive somehow, and had to point out TW has tackled it much harder and declarative than I ever have. Which brings me to my essential question, in regards to all past Total War Games.....

Is there a overall binding logic that can be applied to all eras of total war in regards to how the family mechanics work, in how it overall effects game play?

I get multiple programmers have worked on total war over the years, and focused on different eras, and a few games are pure fantasy, not historical (never played them so don't quite know what to say).

As a American, the monarchies I know the most about is the British and Roman (post - Principate) systems. After that France and Japan is tied, and then after that it gets into ify theoretical territory for me, like Ibn Khaldun talking about the sociological rise and fall of dynasties across history, or random mentions in history magazines about house rules, a occasional Byzantine or German tract on reform of the nobility. I really don't know too much about how royal households operated for most of histories other than how young princes were educated, or how a king could good up so bad his household collapses along with his state, and why it is a really good idea not to repeat those silly mistakes. A monarchy beyond that is murky thing.

I know at some point after the establishment of minor protestant royal houses, the emphasis on succession laws switched from a male inherits the kingdom, be he a descendant of the king or merely the husband of the kingdom's legitimate heir, to the woman, leading to traditional royal houses to die off. It is why the modern royal houses of Europe mostly are Germans names, who started in the protestant belt, given princesses preferred once they had the ability to marry whom they chose to do just that, favoring the female lines of succession over the male.

The issue with the house of Hannover that you briefly see in Napoleon is a case in point. This shift in state sovereignty in favoring females over male lines happened after the rules for territorial inheritance of Hannover in Germany were in place, only males could inherit the crown in Hannover, but due to religious bigotry in England, only the royal lines could, and females who were protestant always were preferred. So England parted ways with Hannover due to a consequence of severe religious bigotry cloaked in feminism and equality, from a era that did not care about feminism and equality one bit but had to pretend to preserve house rules and national laws on succession. I know this happened shortly after the events of Napoleon and not in Napoleon, but none the less should be highlighted.... international not all houses are compatible for marriage.

Earlier, Spanish had a just claim to England, but a parliament decided otherwise with doubtful at best authority on the succession of the throne. This lead to multiple Spanish Armadas. Some quite just crusades against the English heretics. But let's say were played a TW game in this era, with a map the size of Medieval 2.... how far could you apply this transitional family dynamic? As far as I know, these rules didn't penetrate into Ottoman or Russian royal houses, even if on principle they be open at least theoretically to marriages from Catholic families (Russians later on certainly did). How do you consistently take a family dynamic from one era and apply it to another side of the map who's factions don't play by their rules and won't accept the wedding in the same way?

That's a big question. I'll likely be banned for merely asking given how offensive it is, but TW games deal with these very issues, right down to cuckoldry and ugly wives and infertility and heck, ToB even explored incest till it got patched up.

Another is older factional-family dynamics, like with Rome 1 how families could compete within a republic, but aim at monarchy. This somewhat remained in Rome 2 and Attila, and too a lesser extent in ToB.

If in twenty years we had a TW: Ages of Man that allowed you to play any faction in history, with different house rules from secular republics like the US or China to theocratic parliaments like England or Iran, theocratic republics like Rome and the Byzantines, caliphates, minor and major states, how would the logic unfold, as evidenced past games. Could the Imperial Japanese house which forbids anyone outside of the male imperial line to the throne marry a German princess?

Don't ban me for asking, I'm just interested in how you get all these incompatible lines to integrate in terms of a greater TW logic. How would sexual mores renouncing say, in game cuckoldry or unfaithful wives from modern Japan or Medieval England where this is denounced, be consistently carried over to more liberal states that embrace the destruction of family households ad the death of lineages, like England does, with German houses ruling over a foreign English people? This would collapse the monarchy in some parts of the world. I recall it being a issue during The Hundred Years War, a archer supposedly knocked up (I believe it was a) Norman princess while the husband was out on campaign. Was a constant mark of derision, the monarchy being illegitimate. Today, England would have fireworks celebrating it, how far they've changed.

I don't know if the various eras are compatible enough someday to have a mega game, in the sense of Black Adder going through the ages from the medieval to the modern unifying it all together.