effect · kill_country_leader

Hands-On Usage

Commonly used in scripted events to remove a country's current leader, such as in coup, assassination, or historical death events. Once triggered, the game automatically promotes the next character in the party to become the new leader without requiring manual successor designation. Typical scenarios include orchestrating a leadership transition at a specific point in time, or removing the old leader before a civil war is triggered.

country_event = {
    id = my_mod.1
    title = "Leader Assassinated"
    desc = "Our leader has passed away."

    option = {
        name = "Accept Reality"
        kill_country_leader = yes
    }
}

Synergy

• [create_country_leader](/wiki/effect/create_country_leader): When the next-in-line successor doesn't fit the scenario's needs, you can immediately create a brand new leader after kill_country_leader, precisely controlling the successor's traits and ideology.
• [add_country_leader_trait](/wiki/effect/add_country_leader_trait): After the old leader is killed and the new one automatically ascends, immediately add traits to achieve the narrative effect of "taking office with built-in buffs."
• [has_country_leader](/wiki/trigger/has_country_leader): Use this before triggering the kill as a conditional check to confirm the target leader actually exists, avoiding anomalies from repeated execution when the leader is already gone.
• [country_event](/wiki/effect/country_event): Chain with subsequent events to trigger the next story beat after the leader is removed, creating a seamless political narrative.

Common Pitfalls

1. Mistakenly believing you can specify which leader to kill: kill_country_leader has no parameters—it only removes the current ruling leader and cannot target a specific character via field arguments. If you need to remove a particular character, you should first switch to that character's scope and use the appropriate character removal command instead of relying on this effect.
2. Overlooking the case where there is no successor: If the party has no other candidate leaders and you haven't prepared a successor with create_country_leader in advance, execution may leave the country in a leaderless state, causing all subsequent conditional checks relying on [has_country_leader](/wiki/trigger/has_country_leader) to fail. You must plan successor candidates ahead of time when designing event chains.