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If I revoke a duke's last remaining county, and he/she has no remaining vassals, will they remain the duke?

I wondering because I've just conquered England as Harald the IV of Norway and I have a duchess with one county, and a duke with one county, and I control the rest. I would like to revoke their county titles and then pass the duchies off to fellow Norwegians. But.... do duke's retain titles with no land?

The way I see it, if I revoke their duchy titles, they'll still be counts under my new dukes, if I revoke their counties I don't want them revoking counties from my soon to be newly appointed counts. I want them gone, and I don't really want to revoke 4 titles when there's a chance I only have to revoke 1 title each of them.

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Dukes (along with kings and emperors) must always have one county. There are no landless dukes. (An exception are certain special duke-level titles, see comments below.) Because of this the game won't let you revoke the last county owned by a duke. (If a duke loses his last county some other way, I believe he takes one of his vassal's counties or failing that his ducal title is destroyed.)

So if you want to revoke all four titles, you'll need to revoke the two ducal titles first. However you'll earn -20 opinion penalty with all of your vassals for each title you revoke without justification. A -80 penalty can make it very difficult to rule. Instead I would only revoke one or two of the duchies. Dukes with only a single county in their demesne aren't much of threat, lowly counts even less so. Also only revoke a title if you have a non-ambitious and friendly dynasty member to give it to. There's not that much of an advantage of having an unrelated Norwegian vassal over an English one.

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    Aren't there exceptions for titular i.e. unlanded titles at the duchy and kingdom level? The wiki implies they can progress from titular from landed by assimilating counties. Can they not be unlanded by by revoking a county?
    – Dacio
    May 29, 2015 at 5:32
  • @Dacio That's just the title itself. A titular title becomes regular tile once it gains a dejure county. A regular tile becomes a titular one once it loses its last dejure county. This can only happen for kingdoms and empires. A duchy's dejure counties never change. Normally a character with a titular title must a have county just like with a regular title. The exception are special titular titles that are held by certain landless characters. These are for special cases like revolts and religious leaders. I'm not sure if any of these special titles can be held by vassals.
    – user86571
    May 29, 2015 at 5:58
  • The following are Titular Duke-level titles that can be landless: Peasant Revolts, Religious Revolts Nationalist Revolts, Adventurer Hosts, Mercenary Companies, Holy Orders and Religious Leaders. In the case of the first four the title comes into existence when they declare their war and ceases to exist as soon as their war ends. Mercenaries and Holy Orders are generally not landed (Mercenaries) or only hold Baronies (Holy Orders) but situations can occur where they gain whole counties. Religious Heads generally need to hold at least 1 holding to continue existing, but there are exceptions.
    – CrusaderJ
    May 30, 2015 at 18:37
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You can revoke a duke's last county if the county is not a de-jure county of the duke title. Otherwise, you need to revoke his duke title first. For example, If the last holding of duke of Latium is Constantinople, then you can revoke county of Constantinople, and the duke of Latium will disappear and can be create again. But if the last holding of duke of Latium is Rome, then you need to revoke duke of Latium prior to revoke county of Rome. Or, you can grant him Constantinople, then revoke Rome, and then revoke Constantinople.

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