I'm in this Imperial Ambition, and my Monarch bought the maps, sailed to Effemont and Gastrobury, but to annex Effemont you have to do the "Royal Marriage" quest... but he's married already, and I've tried before and a divorced monarch won't do. Maybe a widowed monarch, but killing the consort seems a bit too much, no?

So, if your monarch is married you can't reach platinum level in this Ambition, it's a bit unfair!

Divorce should work. I have to admit I sent my husband to the pit top be able to do this one. The barsteward survived the first 2 attempts

Hmm... for some reason divorce didn't work last time, I'll test with a new game, maybe I have a bug with this quest?

I have the same problem and divorce really doesn't help. I shall try to do the quest where the monarch will be replaced, this should be ok then for the Effenmont quest, I hope.

I had the king (a warlock married during a quest) killed by the spy (the lover and father of my daughter)! Poor spy, my Queen married Prince Elias and then killed him! *oops

LOL, I did the same... played the Assassination quest, killed the monarch, and then replaced her in the castle with another monarch.

Makes Effenmont kinda the hardest territory to annex, although in OTHER respects that quest is trivial

You know what, it just dawned on me that the Political Marriage quest probably requires both having an unmarried Monarch and having Effemont as an Ally!

So actually if it's so it would interesting because if you have a married Monarch it forces the choice between his/her spouse and completing the Ambition at platinum level. Poor Lady Suzanne, such a dutiful and pious Queen Consort (before she became a Peteran she was always hanging around the tavern, but now she's always at church, lol!). Lord Henry is trying to have another child with her, after that I'll have to *cough* get rid of her and pretend she died in childbirth, like many other medieval queens before her.

(any nice way to kill a Sim, apart from making them jump into the pit???)

you can always challenge them to a duel to the death.(but then there is a chance that you will lose and end up dead instead of her)

It is a bit unfair as when your doing the start up quest with your new king/queen your asked who they should give a flower to and that kind of kicks off a romance, then later you find out a quest is blocked.

Oh man, I'm doing this quest now. I suppose reading this thread beforehand would've been wise.

My monarch is, well, a ho. She has 2 babydaddies. I"m stuck at the point where my spy should be eavesdropping on Effenmount's guard. The spy has been hanging around the throne room for 3 days with no haps.

I wonder if failure to progress is related to the fact that the Monarch is no virgin bride...

edit: The spy had to hang around for a really long time until the Prince's guard spoke to the Queen's guard. At that point the eavesdrop choice was there. After traipsing off to the woods where the spy had to distract Elias' guard, then insult the prince, the Monarch challenged the Spy to a duel for the Prince's honour.

Moral of the story: Prepare to wait out the guard and the chastity of the queen is of no consequence.

with the Testingcheatsenabled you can drag the hunger all teh way down......Thats how I kiil off my husband for this quest.....It was quick and painless.....as I draged it all teh way down

When I did this quest, I got tired of waiting for the guard to talk to someone, so I sent my monarch to talk to him and had the spy eavesdrop on that conversation, and that worked fine.

I did the same, but the eavesdrop command kept dropping from the queue. I finally caught him speaking to a guard for about 5 seconds. *rolls eyes*

My monarch was divorced but I managed to complete this quest. I did get her divorced whilst playing a previous quest, if that makes any difference (her husband from the heir quest had horrible traits).

Either I got lucky or you got unlucky. I did think it was weird that my spy could eavesdrop on a conversation I had my king initiate for the purpose of getting information for the king, but I had no problems with eavesdrop dropping from the queue.
I was really glad it worked because I was so tired of waiting for him to go talk to someone. He kept reading, so I took away all the bookcases. So he started whittling, and obstinately refused to interact with anyone.
That quest goes a little easier with the knight as a helper, he just has to befriend the elf guard to get the information.

I was wondering, do you have to do anything to unlock this quest? I want to play it, but it dosn't show up when I'm browsing through "available quests". My Monarch is unmarried and I have a Knight (no spy, though) and I want the "Seduce" approach.
/Cat

Catyme24, Have you visited Effenmont yet? If so, have you allied yourself to them in the Kingdom view? You need to do these two things before the quest will appear.

I did the Effenmont quest while my Monarch was still single (although he DOES have a bevy of Romantic Interests and two children, one by the Bard and one by the Spy ). My Knight bought the map and sailed to Effenmont. This is necessary to have Effenmont show up on the map. A paltry 10 RP sealed the alliance, also necessary to complete this quest. The King then married Elianna.



I had the same dilemma when I then decided to try the Heir to the Thone quest. Elianna was a bit of a..um..liability. So I attempted to have my Spy poison her food using the Pestilence Poison. It didn't kill her outright, just gave her a "You've got the Plague, -15 focus," or some such nonsense, buff. I did NOT have the patience to wait around to see if she would eventually die of the plague, so I used the tried and true method of zeroing out her Hunger and Energy bars (See katierose33 post #11 above). Hello, Grim Reaper! Now Duncan, my Monarch, was free to quest for an heir.

Don't want to get off topic, but, has anyone tried the Heir to the Throne quest and had their Monarch marry an iconic NPC? Reason I ask is, Duncan has this thing for High Priestess Imayne of Yacothia, so I tried that route to see what would happen when a Hero sim marries an iconic NPC sim. The marriage came off with the usual herd of NPCs crowding around the couple as they attempted to exchange their vows (could certainly use a mod that keeps the NPCs in their seats or standing quietly to the side when a wedding or church service is underway -hint, hint)! Even got Imayne pregnant and had an heir (a boy, btw). However, Imayne's title did not change to Royal Consort. She remains as the High Priestess of Yacothia. I have not ended this quest yet for fear of affecting future quests where the ruler of Yacothia is involved. Has anyone tried this and, if so, are subsequent quests negatively affected?

Whew! Sorry for the verbosity!

Oh, thank you I have visited Effenmont, but I wasn't sure if I was to ally them or do the quest and then automaticly be allied - haven't played that much with the allies yet
Thank you very much again :D