Life Peerages (Enfiefment)

Any NPC under your control, who is already a knight, may be made a noble, with the king's (or emperors, for others, or popes for the Spanish) consent. The King or Emperor, or Pope, has an option to do this for you. He must enter the ID of the NPC, and the ID of the fief. The system checks that the fief is ancestral to, and held by, the employer of the NPC, then changes the NPCs name and boosts his stature according to the rank of the fief and the following table:

 Stature

The Rank List is found in the file PEERS.ASC. Most NPCs will get a 1, 2 or 3.

These are Life Peerages, they cannot be inherited (which is fine, since we don't model NPC families.) Yes, you can give them to family members. You can only ennoble male NPCs. You cannot give them your highest title. You always keep that for yourself. You never lose control of the fief. An NPC is "your man." In terms of game mechanics, nothing changes except your NPC gets a title and a stature boost. The fief is always yours, as long as you can hold on to it. He doesn't even have to be the bailiff of the fief. It's actually a pretty good simulation of how things worked with the minor nobility. For simplicities sake, you cannot take the title back from your NPC. When he dies, you can give it out again if you wish. Given the stature boost, it's to your advantage to ennoble as many of your NPCs as possible. If you lose the fief you "granted," your man becomes "the pretender." You can role play the hell out of that (i.e., your guy wants to get his property back.)