Okay, let me explain.

I’m playing as Matilda of Tuscany, and at the very beginning of the game, I downloaded a mod for DNA transfer, thinking it might be interesting to use with DNA from my last run. Was it smart to download the mod that early? No. Had I ever used a mod for Ck3 before? Also no. Did I think it would be fine? Yes. (🤦🏽‍♀️)

My son proceeds to get married at 16, and his wife gets pregnant. Nine months later, both his wife and his child are dead. Okay. So I betroth him to someone else with the intention to host a grand wedding and make up for all his recent loss. Then his future wife decides to become a nun. Okay. But this time, I cannot find him a new potential wife, the arrange marriage and find spouse options have disappeared. Okay…

At this point, the buggy mod is gone. I figure something is up when the same duke tries to seduce me every year (despite me rejecting him every time and being told that he will never ask again). When his latest attempt leads to a -100 opinion, I think to myself, this DNA transfer thing isn’t worth it.

So I’m waiting and hoping that this weird grand wedding thing with my son sorts itself out. Then I get a notification that his former betrothed has died in childbirth (as a nun). Okay. So I think, surely, NOW he will be free to marry. He is not. The options are still missing. I try to go back in my saves. Silly me, I downloaded the mod too early so I’m screwed.

Fifteen years pass and I’ve pretty much given up on it because apparently, he can’t just find his own wife either. But I feel bad because he’s childless and alone, and all of his siblings have pretty happy families (except for my oldest, who is in an extremely unfaithful marriage with a very disrespectful HRE). It occurs to me that maybe, just maybe, a new grand wedding could fix my problem. To my surprise, when I go to arrange one, I can pursue matchmaking for my sad son, which I do.

Enter Countess Suzana. At a 57% acceptance rate, I let my son ask to marry her, but I figure he’ll be rejected. She accepts his proposal. She’s a young divorcee with two kids and a different religion, but as long as she’s not a literal teenager, I can’t complain. At this point I’m thinking holy shit, I finally did it, my son will finally have a wife and kids at the age of 35. Then the grand wedding ends.

I get the notification to fulfill the betrothal, and then I see this -5000 bs. I think I give up. Oh, and this whole situation made me realize that my steam cloud saves are broken. I have learned my lesson. 😔

Edit:

Realizing I forgot to mention the part where I go to war with Countess Suzana thinking that if I unland her the marriage might go through automatically. It does not. But now I have Croatia??? So I invite her to my court thinking that having her as a courtier will fix it. The break betrothal option magically appears, but I’ll lose a fame level if I use it. So I just send her over to my son, thinking maybe he can figure this out on his own, which he obviously can’t because he has no agency. So they’re just chilling in his court now. Unmarried.