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Co-Emperors and Symbasileuses for Byzantine Emperors

Check out my CK3 version of this mod here: https://cs2bus.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2758359624

This is a simple mod that allows the Byzantine Emperors to appoint their primary heirs as Symbasileuses (a Greek word for co-emperors). The appointed junior emperors will be counted as born in the purple and will have a few other features that enhance their ground within the sophisticated imperial politics. Perhaps the most important thing is that their children will be also born in the purple, so with this mod, no more non-purple-born grandchildren for your old emperor!

The "born in the purple" trait shows that the character was born when their parents were ruling emperor and empress at the time of their birth. Historically, Porphyrogenitus or the people "born in the purple" had higher legitimacy than people who weren't, granting a decent advantage to the descendants of the current emperor in the race to the Imperial Throne. Nonetheless in this game, when you get your grandchildren, they will not get this trait because their parents are not reigning at the time of their birth. However, this is NOT historical at all.

The Byzantine Emperors were not fools. Instead of threatening their own grandchildren's legitimacy, they devised a clever bypass to this problem by making their heir apparent as "Emperors", often upon birth. The appointed junior, co-ruling emperors had full access to the "purple room" inside the imperial palace in Constantinople, thereby giving birth to fully legitimate "born-in-the-purple" grandchildren as the future heirs for the Empire.

The very idea of multiple co-ruling emperors dates back to Emperor Diocletian, who founded the tetrarchy where four emperors existed, two senior and two junior, each having an army and a set of provinces to defend. However as the time flowed and the empire split in half, the title of junior co-emperor was not generally recognized as the sovereign of the empire anymore. Instead, the title of co-emperor acted as a de facto crown prince, just as the position that Prince of Wales holds in the Kingdom of England. Nevertheless, since they were "technically" (or de jure, so to speak,) emperors, their legitimate children were also considered to be Porphyrogenitus/Porphyrogenita, or born in the purple. There were several prominent cases where this fact affected the imperial politics in critical ways.

As the Byzantine Empire never gave up its identity as the "Roman" empire, the titles of the imperial office almost always had Latinized versions. The title Symbasileus is often associated with the "Caesar" title, which was the traditional title for the junior emperors, originated back from the days of Diocletian. Since the vanilla CK2 already uses "Caesar" as the Roman-equivalent of "Princes" and "Princesses", I chose to use "Caesar Nobilissimus (The Most Noble Caesar)" as the co-emperor title, since that is the proper Latinized title of the junior emperors during the late period of the Empire.

This mod allows the Byzantine Basileuses to appoint their children or primary heirs as their junior, co-ruling Symbasileuses. Upon reaching adulthood, the appointed Symbasileuses will have a council vote, which is a way to represent the concept of symbasileus influencing the imperial politics in a CK2 way. In addition, any legitimate children that born between the appointed Symbasileus/Symbasilissa and his/her spouse AFTER the appointment will be counted as born in the purple, receiving the appropriate trait. This is not retraced back to the children that were born before the coronation, so be quick if your heir is already a married adult.

Symbasileuses will have a vote not only in the council but also in the imperial succession, just like any other council members. In addition, the symbasileuses will have some juicy bonus preference scores over other candidates. The amount of the bonus is equal to the vanilla game honourary title Despot, so I don't think this disrupts the game balance too much. Note that the title Symbasileus is considered unique, which means that Symbasileuses cannot be granted any other unique honourary titles such as Despot, Caesar, etc.. You can still make them your designated regents, court physicians, or court tutor, since these are not unique titles.

This feature is also maintained even after you restore the Roman Empire.

Reflecting the change of title nomenclature as of Holy Fury update, the title name of the co-emperors will be dependent on the culture of the current emperor. "Symbasileus" will be used for Greek culture, while "Caesar Nobilissimus" will be used for Roman culture. For many other cultures, the default name "Co-Emperor" will be used. However, there are several "Easter Egg" culture-dependent symbasileus titles for some cultures that I think it would be interesting to hold the Byzantine Empire. This is dependent only on the culture of the Emperor, not the Co-emperor nominee.

To appoint a Symbasileus, just right-click the portrait of one of your children or the elected heir to the Byzantine empire and select "Appoint Symbasileus" targetted decision. You can dispose the Symbasileus by using "Dispose Symbasileus" targetted decision. Also, you can appoint any of the Emperor election candidates as a Symbasileus via tyranny, but it will take a huge prestige cost and major vassal opinion penalties. So you'd better make him/her win the emperor election first, and then appoint him/her as your fellow emperor. Finally, as of the 1.2 update, you can make the symbasileus one of your five councilmen, if you think one of their attributes is high enough to be handy.

Will be compatible with most of the mods.
Will conflict with mods that edit the file \common\succession_voting\01_succession_voting_specials.txt.
Cannot guarantee compatibility with any major overhaul mods. Use them at your own risk.

- No DLC is required.
- However, without Conclave DLC, you will not have the Symbasileus council member voting for your laws.
- Without Legacy of Rome DLC, you cannot use the Roman version of the Co-Emperor title, as you cannot revive the Roman empire.

- Add graphical GFX so that the Symbasileus uses the Byzantine Emperor's headgear and clothing.
- Add faction rebellion that installs the Symbasileus as the Basileus, while placing the former Basileus as the Symbasileus (basically an Emperor switcheroo that happened several times historically). Will accompany an update that makes disposing a symbasileus deteriorate vassal opinions (so that an AI emperor will seldom use the decision). AI vassals will have more chance to join this faction compared to other pretender factions.
-Add a feature where the council authority is high enough, the Marshal (or any other candidate-and-councillor) could demand a position of Symbasileus.