So, as I sit here this morning I find myself pondering over something that I have thought of in the past, but never really spent much time on it. But I do find it curious how the game, or perhaps more specifically people and communities in the game, will be effected if the dance of dynasties plays out as described.
According to Caspian, it's very unlikely that any titled person will retain their title throughout the 10 year storyline, which sounds interesting of course, even exciting, things should shift and power should change hands and I'd be very disappointed if it doesn't. On the other hand, it brings up some issues when it comes to the real people sitting in front of their computers.
These people have taken time to create communities not just in the game but outside it. They've created websites, commissioned or created artwork and patreon accounts, social media accounts, and discords, most either under the control of a king or their trusted friends. And even at lower levels, many duchies and counties have these same sorts of creations. All of these items are, effectively, their personal and intellectual property beyond the reach of SbS...
So what happens when we take the dance of dynasties to its natural and ultimate conclusion. A kingdom, taken over either from outside forces or even worse from within. Now you have a new king, in charge of that kingdom and trying to piece together that community. How is it even possible? Assuming the old king is not cooperative with the take-over, does not relinquish control of their websites and communication portals and social media accounts. In fact they can use all those things against the new kingdom.
So what choice does anyone have? After using the game mechanics to do as the game intended and cause a shift in power through in-game means, they would now be pretty much required to completely rebrand and rename the kingdom (in fact even kingdom names would arguably be the ip of their original owner, but SbS may have terms that allow those names to persist after said king loses it), make all new content, and somehow convince everyone within the kingdom to go along with it. As if the task of just convincing someone to follow a new in-game leader isn't hard enough already... I fear this might make it impossible.
Instead, what we will see is players entrenched in their communities for out of game reasons. Some of those perfectly reasonable being that they've made friendships and the like and some of their friends just got deposed, that is a valid in-character response. But many of the other reasons would be meta at best, having to recreate the websites, content, networking, branding, even potentially lore of the duchies and counties because the kingdom is required to change would be an unbearable out of game burden on what should be a purely in-game concern.
So taken all the above as my working assumption, I see only two possible outcomes. 1- The out of game costs in time effort and money resulting from someone's in-game action will make it entirely impossible to garner support against even the most terrible ruler. If you manage to cassus belli through some other means you will immediately become the target of ire of every other member of that kingdom, mostly for out of game, meta-game reasons that are even more pressing and powerful than valid in-game roleplay reasons. And so they will immediately wage a war to remove the usurper and reinstate the original king, no matter how bad a king he might be. Thus making the promise of the game's design and any upward mobility at the highest tiers just an illusion.
The second possible outcome, is that neither the king or usurper is able to consolidate power, if not them, and nobody else has access to the aforementioned resources, content, and property out of game, then the kingdom simply vaporizes into an all-consuming civil war, I think this is far less likely as it will be bad for everyone and most likely they will go with option one, prop up the original king for stability regardless of any in-game reasons not to.
Anyway, pretty long post already, curious what others think will come of this. The out of game elements entirely uncontrollable by SbS or anyone else in particular could have a pretty chilling effect on the dance of dynasties system as a whole unless I'm missing something important...