One of the main goals in Mount and Blade games is always conquest. Capturing land and creating your own glorious kingdom. Here’s a quick guide on how to create a Kingdom yourself in Bannerlord.
How to Create Your Own Kingdom
At the start of a new game of Bannerlord, a handful of preexisting Kingdoms will fight for control of Calradia. If you wish, you can join one of these kingdoms as a vassal, or serve them as a mercenary for money. If, however, none of these Kingdoms appeal to you in Bannerlord, you can always create your own.
Doing so has surprisingly few requirements, though they are not the easiest to meet. To create a kingdom in Bannerlord, your personal clan must have tier renown of at least tier 4. Additionally, you will need to have lands of your own, such as a castle or a town.
Which of those you start with doesn’t matter too much. Having more than one to begin with will help drastically after you declare yourself a Kingdom for the first time.
The renown requirement for tier 4 can be filled personally through tasks and battles. Family or other clan members can also improve the clan’s renown for you. You can check your current clan tier at any time through the clan screen in the top right-hand corner.
The clan screen can be accessed through the lion head icon on the bottom left, or by pressing L on the campaign map. When the required clan renown is achieved and you have sufficient lands, you can declare yourself as a new Kingdom.
To do so, speak to a family or other clan member. Anyone assigned as a governor of a town or castle will likely be located in the keep of those areas, making them an easy way to achieve this. Enter the keep and talk to them.
If you have met the requirements as described, a new dialogue option will be available. Select the option that ends ‘It is time to proclaim a new Kingdom’, which is usually at the top of the dialogue list. This dialogue prompt will start the create a Kingdom process in Bannerlord.
The Kingdom Creation Process
Following the prompt, you will have to select the laws and culture of your new Kingdom. Your own culture will always be an option here, though sometimes other options you can choose from. These are typically based on the lands you own and are currently in when you make the decision.
This choice is not as important as it sounds in any case, it just lets you start with some policies in place. You can change these later at the cost of a small amount of influence. These specific policies will also be listed by the clan member after you make a choice.
If you agree to the options they present, you will continue to create a Kingdom name. This is separate from the clan name of your family. The game will automatically add ‘the’ to the name, so do not add one yourself. Decide on your own name, and then enter it. You will then be greeted with a brief cutscene.
The Dangers of Your New Kingdom
Following on from this, back on the Bannerlord campaign map, your lands will now be under your own banner.
Other Kingdoms may now consider you a war target. Make sure to consider your position carefully before you commit to the create a new Kingdom process in Bannerlord. Other nations will quickly attack you if they think you are weaker than them.
Any wars your clan had prior to the founding of the Kingdom will also be re-declared at this point. If you already have lords and other parties, it would be wise to end wars prior to founding, as they may get attacked. In fact it would be useful to do quite a lot of preparation before going to create a new Kingdom in Bannerlord.
Building up strength, creating other parties and making marriage alliances are all good ideas before this step. This will help to reduce the number of attacks you will have to endure at first. You can also recruit other lords through a new dialogue option, who will fight on your behalf. Doing so is often expensive and requires you to talk to them personally, however, which makes it difficult while defending your own lands.