The King of France doesn't swear fealty to any emperor, for example, so his holdings and all vassals that swear fealty to him or his vassals are grouped here under his highest title (The Kingdom of France).

Hitting the Independent Realms map mode will show characters grouped under the highest independent title in their realm. Right now we're on terrain map mode, but that can be switched with the small icons at the bottom of the frame in the top center. Unless you know exactly who you want to play and where they are, this may not be the best map mode for selecting your character. There are some bookmarked dates on the left along with suggested characters to play for those dates, but you can fine tune the starting date down to the day with the arrow buttons on the frame at the top center.

Note that this playthrough will be for version 1.05g, so some things may be different down the road.ДЄfter hitting Single Player you end up at the character and date selection screen. I am playing with default settings, so we're just going to jump right in. Long term you could grant out kingdoms if you're an emperor, which makes raising levies pretty easy, but king vassals can be difficult to deal with.Part 1: Picking a Character & Introducing the Interface

Actually I usually don't bother avoiding claims, but if they ever get into a position to threaten you they might rebel for your titles. Once my dynasty gets larger I like to start granting distant relatives land, since they don't have any claims on my titles but still add to my dynasty's prestige. If you try to grant them to people with high stewardship, there's a greater chance they'll convert the culture of the province to their (and your) culture, which makes peasent rebellions less likely. That'll show people who don't really have any ties (they won't inherit something else, which makes vassals more difficult to deal with and leads to messy borders in your realm, which annoy me, haha). The best way to find people is to use the character finder, searching your realm for men of your culture and religion, not rulers and not great house. To reduce the risks of revolts, I make sure to grant all titles to people of my culture (and of course religion). You can also just grant everything to one person and let them sort it out, but they'll end up in a much stronger position which could lead to trouble if they don't like you at some point in the future. If you want to keep your vassals weak the best way is to grant each county to a different (otherwise unlanded and unlikely to inherit anything else, anyone who's 'lowborn' is safe, haha) character and the duchy to one of them - I usually go with whoever has the de jure capial of the duchy (since the AI duke will try to make that his capital and make a mess of things by revoking the title otherwise) - You can find that in the de jure duchy map-mode.Д¬ontent people make great vassals, they'll get a +50 opinion boost of their liege. I try to only keep duchies I have land in (unless I'm a duke I guess). There are a few different ways to handle it.

Crusader kings 2 titles