What happens if I kill a Jarl?

[AnkhAscendant]

Obviously you normally can't do it, but say you have mods that let you. Should I kill, say Balgruuf, what happens politically? Does the alternate civil war person take over as Jarl? Does the throne sit empty?

 

I'm going to assume the 'lazy gamemaking' path and guess that absolutely nothing happens and there just isn't a Jarl, but one can always hope for a little more depth...

[gsmanners]

For the game, all that happens is you break a lot of quests. Other than that, nothing.

[sinnerman69]

you'd have to look up the yarl's base id at the wiki's and then set them non essential in console command or a text doc bat file, yarl's are set as essential by default by the game Edited September 7, 2012 by sinnerman69

[Moraevik]

I can't imagine why you'd want to kill jarls unless you just want to break your game, AnkhAscendant. As gsmanners said, you'll destroy a bunch of quests, because every jarl is, in some way, involved in a number of quests. Killing Balgruuf, for instance, will break the Main Quest, the Civil War Quest, the miniquest involving the peace conference, and a Daedric quest, to say nothing of the Whiterun thane quest.

 

The throne will sit empty, or will have a dead body in it until the game cleans up, assuming that jarl's corpses actually are eliminated from the game, and you kill said jarl in the throne. The Civil War alternates aren't installed into their new roles until certain quest objectives are met in the Civil War quest-line, and killing jarls can break that quest-line.

 

Now, if you're serious about killing NPCs who are flagged as essential for a good reason, then just understand that it will certainly have unforseen and unintended consequences unless you educate yourself on the full ramifications of what you're doing. Good luck with that research, considering how intricately many of the quests in Skyrim are intertwined.

[GoodfellowGoodspring]

Just one of the many ways why the game isnt deep enough, despite being one of the most detailed worlds etc theres still not enough freedom for the player especially this time around with Skyrim and all these essential characters. There should be a system in place where Jarls can be replaced by another in the city when they are dead which is possible after all quests are complete etc, i just see the one way thinking and linear based gameplay restrictive :(

[AnkhAscendant]

Well geeze, I'm not planning to go around slaughtering everyone in charge. :P I just got a mod that removes the essential status from people except for when they're essential for a specific quest, so I realized (after said quests were done) I could kill them if I wanted. I kinda figured I would be underwhelmed.

 

I echo everything Goodfellow says... How open the world is really just highlights all the places where it isn't. There should be an inheritance hierarchy. Oh well.

[daventry]

Im more interested in why the Loser Jarls sit and sulk at the Palace when their Hold has been taken over, since i assumed you would attack they're Holds and Kill them off, so whats the point of them hanging around and complain all day.

[Moraevik]

No, you don't get to kill the various jarls during the Civil War campaign -- well, except for Ulfric, and you don't have to do the dirty deed, yourself. My guess is this is to insure that you get snide remarks whenever you get near them -- something which irks me to no end. You'd think they would be in exile, yes? Like not even in Skyrim. But, no. They're happily (or maybe no so happily) sitting at the table and stuffing their faces full of food in what is actually a hostile environment, seeing that they are now living peacefully among the victors of the war, but should really be treated as traitors because they actively supported the losing side.

[NaNLex]

actually if you kill elisif erikur will becomes jarl. because there should've been a quest where you kill elisif. the guards even talk about that

[LoneWolfEburg]

 

They're happily (or maybe no so happily) sitting at the table and stuffing their faces full of food in what is actually a hostile environment, seeing that they are now living peacefully among the victors of the war, but should really be treated as traitors because they actively supported the losing side.

I guess Brunwulf is just so benevolent, he's willing to grant all them refuge in his palace.

 

To be fair to Bethesda, allowing the player to kill Jarls would cause some storyline issues (Hello, Jarl Ulfric! I've just killed, in front of many witnesses, Skald for being a cranky old coot, Laila for being a delusional idiot, Korir for hating mages, Thongvor for having business practices I dislike, Dengeir for being just a touch too paranoid for me, Sorli for being a cipher, and Vignar just to complete the set. Just think of it, all of your Jarl and potential Jarl supporters are in Sovngarde now! You're still willing to promote me to a high rank in your Stormcloak army and be friendly to me, right?) On the other side of the argument, allowing the player to kill many random people also causes storyline issues - it doesn't make in-universe sense that anyone is still willing to deal with you after you killed 4-5 innocent respectable townspeople in front of witnesses, but it still happens in the game. Bethesda chose player freedom over universe consistency here, so why not do the same in cause of the Jarls? I guess they could set a hierarchy of inheritance for a while, and end it with generic randomly generated "Jarl of X" characters if everyone in this line is killed off.

 

Dunno what they should've done for Ulfric and Tullius, though. Not much point in the whole civil war questline if you can just go to the place where faction leaders are, and kill them off.