really were
Roleplayers Guild
OOC here:
http://www.roleplayerguild.com/showthread.php?t=155311
IC Here:
http://www.roleplayerguild.com/showthread.php?t=155389
Cool thanks bro
@jammy Itâs impossible to navigate Mendosaâs return at the end of CoI without at least one of your stats taking a hit, possibly more. So I totally understand what you mean. Given that I tend to value charm and subtlety over reputation in my character, I usually pick one of the results that ends in a small hit to my rep while taking a small increase to at least two of charm, subtlety and RelMendosa. That generally means going with the:
âI greet him/her with appropriate formality, but with a warm smile on my face.â
option, followed by either:
âI am glad to see an old friend, and not afraid to show it, but he/she is nothing more to me than that.â
or if I prefer to play manipulative:
âNeither, really. I am smiling because I want Mendosa to think that we remain friendly in case he/she can be useful to me.â
The first nets you: +10% charm, -10% reputation, +20% RelMendosa
The latter nets you: +10% charm, +10% subtle, -15% reputation, +20% RelMendosa
The other options all result in a 20% charm loss, a 20% subtlety loss, or both. Any benefit to reputation also means a deduction from RelMendosa, and vice versa. The more open you are about your feelings for Mendosa the more he/she likes you, but the more your reputation also drops. The colder you are to Mendosa, the less he/she likes you, but the more your reputation improves.
IMHO, If the authors intended your reputation score to feel like a big chain around your neck, then theyâve succeeded handily.
You know what? I wish that they would go back and make an option to romance Jaunita, and sway the courts opinion so you can get her to be heir and become king/queen that way. Screw the slutty queen, I like Juanitas determined to be the best personality more. Sheâs only a bitch because you either replaced or killed her dad, and your her moms lover.
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That would be kind of fun.
Admittedly, what Iâd really like would be a completely spread AotC where, after Choice of Romance, you could continue with any of Torres, de Mendosa or the Monarch. If you work with Mendosa, it becomes something of a fantasy adventure and ends with you getting involved in the machine-magic, while with Torres, you and your spouse get caught up in the problems of the war and are possibly courted by both Aguilar and de Reyes for support, despite your royal disfavor (as de Reyes becomes Juanitaâs rival for power).
@Syndicate Juanita is just a child in CoR, and an adolescent in CoI, but I agree that Augustina as a woman isnât a particularly compelling romance interest. (Given that Iâve always played a straight male character, I canât really comment on the other side of the equation.) She has no feminine touches, and the male side at times bleeds through, like when she -effortlessly- picks you up off the balcony and sets you on the ground, making her come across as rather butch.
@Ramidel It is possible to continue with Torres in CoI as long as youâre also Augustin(a)'s lover and your relationship with Torres was strong enough to survive the revelation in CoR. But honestly, I donât think a whole lot of players cared much about Torres. I think Mendosa is a far more popular pick to run off with, and I agree that it would have been fun to continue the story as Mendosaâs spouse.
Well she gets married of in CoI so I assumed she was older⌠Still. Thousand year old Torres can romance you so why not be able to wait a few years get a stable position in court during the CoR line, then in CoI be able to âmeetâ her, like at some ball or play like with the queen. Maybe it mirrors what the queen did where she secretly plays a roll except hers is minor, yours is a major roll, and you sweep her off her feet(pun intended). Alot of back tracking but you could make it canon with a branching path, some time, ect. Iâd glady pay another 2$ to not have to be stuck with Torres, Mendosa, or your highness of adultery.
Who honestly wed Torres in their first playthrough?
Thanks for the links @Zed and @P_Tigras Lol! I know what you mean I was just like why canât I just say âHeyâ normally and my charm, subtlety, and reputation still be intact after working so hard for them! 
The authors did indeed tie a noose for this part. @Syndicate I see where you are coming from but I mean in the world of intrigue you should want power lol! Meaning The King/Queen is someone easy to manipulate. So while they lead the country you are the one pulling the strings. Power is everything in court and Juanita would be possibly very much an Elizabeth I which would probably put you as nothing more than her mother/father was, and she could bore of you in time⌠And finally @Ramidel you can continue with Torres if you are also sleeping with the King/Queen. 
@Daisuke I canât remember if I did the first time, but I did at least once, but was with the King on the side lol! I had money and power both! But I enjoy getting rid of the Queen Ines now and just taking the King for myself and allying myself with the Kingâs advisor. Everyone in court respect/fears me and if I want to in the future I could possibly get rid of the King (because he bluntly cheated on me) and rule until my Life Mage son can of age. 
@jammy
I donât think she would bore of you lol. She would see how her mothers whorish attitude brought about her familyâs destruction socially. I doubt she would want that for her kids. Plus, itâs just not really her nature, from what we saw, to be like her mom, if you know what I mean. She probably despises her and would never want to be like her. She could also, countering your point of her turning out like her mother, take after her father and stay faithful. And lastly, if you took out the queen, after getting Juanita named rightful heir from a political uproar you may or may not have started depending on your position in the court, you could be in the exact position your in now. Just because you marry someone less scandalous than the queen dosent mean you have to involve yourself in less shady activities, am I right? Juanita, in my opinion, would be easier to manipulate than the queen in her inexperience, gaining you much more power over her decisions than the queens. My argument is FLAWLESS!!! You dare question the almighty logic of SYDICATE!!! Lol just kidding.
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@Syndicate Lol I love your logic and other peoples because they give me ideas! XD I probably should have mentioned I was talking from the point of view with the King as Juanitaâs father and Ines the Queen-Consort as her mother. The King gets bored of Ines, plus she couldnât give him a Life Mage son like I did (even though I cheated ;)) but I see your point with Juanita being inexperienced, but she seems like she has a real âfireâ in herself because she was never meant to have the throne and like she wouldnât like me trying to control the court. Sending her off to Sahara worked perfectly for me, because I destroyed her motherâs family, put the fear of death into the Life Mage families, and gave the King a legal heir. I find the King easier to manipulate because heâs busy whoring about lol which gives even more power to me. And he may be dead by part 3 since I successfully killed my sisterâs husband while fooling everyone into thinking I was a victim of the attempted assassination.
@jammy
Does fooling them into thinking you were the attempted hit give you better reputation? I usually poison the fruit basket and invite the others over for tea. Anyway I see your point about her having fire but if you suggested things to her, in a helpful and perhaps loving manner(assuming your married) she would probably agree knowing your only trying to help her(at least thatâs what she thinks, though in my characters case it would probably be true) and that you have experience in the politics of the land while she focused more on magic when she was younger, because she never thought shed get the throne. I dunno, just an idea, but I wish they would include it. I donât really like the choices of a whorey monarch, an uptight old person, and a peppy âvisionaryâ. Juanita seems like the best choice, and my mega intelligent character would definitely go after her, seeing the opportunities. Plus can you imagine the monarchs and juanitas roles being switched like that. The queen/king would be so pissed that her daughter managed to get you even after all her shameless flirting! It would be Hilarious. Relationship score with the queen/long would go down, but that wouldnât matter if you got the court to vote in Juanita as rightful heir.
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@Syndicate Yep, itâs interesting how the game turns morality upside down in the name of survival, and a very understandably angry adolescent girl into your characterâs mortal enemy. Threatening the playerâs child was really, really stupid on her part, but not surprising. And between her royal connections and growing skill in death magic, she was very rapidly turning into a dangerous threat to not only you, but also to your children.
This game is not the usual adventure tale. You have to look at it as a role reversal where youâre stuck in the role that a lot of young women had to suffer through so many centuries ago. As the son of a landless hidalgo you just arenât in Juanitaâs league in this game. So even if you could afford to wait until Juanita was old enough, which the game makes clear you canât, Juanita would still be paired off with a âGrandeâ (high ranking titled noble) or a foreign King in a marital alliance instead of some poor hedge noble like yourself. Thatâs how things worked in those days.
For a ruling monarch who has already suffered through one arranged marriage like Augustin(a) the rules are a bit different. Even still, Augustin(a)'s marriage to your character is not without its consequences to the realm.
@jammy Let me just say that I adore the way your deliciously wicked little mind works! >:-)
BTW, Iâm not convinced that sending Juanita to Sahra is a viable long term solution. It gives the King of Sahra a claim to the Iberian throne through Juanita, and I expect them to declare war on Iberia the second Augustin(a) dies. She could also strike at your life mage son and heir over a distance, possibly with the help of Sahran teleport mages, killing him to get rid of the competition. Leaving an increasingly powerful, self-declared mortal enemy time to plan the demise of you and your children just strikes me as a very, very bad idea.
@P_Tigras I suppose, but wouldnât you be a high ranking noble if you got a very high and secure position in court? I know itâs unrealistic to have this happen but I wish the creators would consider it once the game is over as an add on in game purchase of sorts. Also, everytime I try to send her away, she ends up being accused of working with the life mages(forgot their name), and is killed. So do I do something wrong?
@Syndicate Women werenât given opportunities to earn titles the way men were, and we are stuck in the traditional womanâs role in this game. Women were either born with a title or married into them, and it was very difficult for a woman to marry up unless either she had something to offer that her husbandâs family wanted like large amounts of land or money, or her spouse was much older and already married one or more times, and thus was more concerned with the womanâs looks and possibly her personality, than her dowry at that point. Given that our family is poor in this game, we have no real dowry so, realistically speaking, weâd have no chance at a match with a powerful heiress like Juanita.
The above assumes that the playerâs sex is the non-privileged sex however. Yet the game insists that Iberia is gender equal, so there is no non-privileged sex. They try to lampshade it by saying that your familyâs lack of wealth forces you into being the more subservient partner in the relationship, and then they shoot holes in that very same logic as Mendosa tells you it doesnât have to be that way and he/she is living proof of it. The option to earn our own title thus really should still have been open to us, just as it was to Mendosa, because the premise that you absolutely have to marry because you have no other options to advance yourself doesnât really work when itâs perfectly acceptable for you to go out into the world and strive to make your own fortune.
So the game is actually a little odd. As a man youâre stuck in the role of a medieval woman in a theoretically gender equal world. Does it entirely make sense? No, not really. Itâs one of the issues I have with the game.
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@P_Tigras
I see your point. I also thought your character sometimes acts a bit to feminine with the jewelry, clothes and such. But luis de vegas is male so perhaps there could be a way to advance yourself, even if you are stuck in a subservient role.Well, I guess Iâll just hold onto my un-realistic hope that sheâll be added as a romane option in the future. There is some basis upon which it could work, so all is not lost.
@Syndicate Yep, I get the feeling that the game was written with a female player character first and foremost. Then they made the male version by changing around a bunch of pronouns without going through it very thoroughly. With a title like âChoice of Romanceâ, thatâs not entirely a surprise. I just wish they had edited the male player side of things a little more thoroughly for moments of gender dissonance. For the most part itâs ok, but every so often things can get a little weird.
Regarding gender roles, I agree again, theoretically you should be able to advance yourself outside of marriage given that the world is gender equal.