On Steam, the medieval simulation Crusader Kings 3 (PC, PS5, Xbox Series) has been a perennial favorite for years. In the game, there are countless achievements, but players also pursue a self-imposed goal: they breed the Kwisatz Haderach, the messiah from the sci-fi epic Dune.
What is the Kwisatz Haderach in Dune?
- The Kwisatz Haderach (“The Shortening of the Way”) is a mystical being: a genetically optimized superman who embodies the best characteristics of various groups in Dune. He is supposed to be a kind of male Bene Gesserit, able to access genetically sealed knowledge.
- The Bene Gesserit have been working for ages on breeding the Kwisatz Haderach by crossing different bloodlines. They marry members of the order with noble houses. The sisters can determine what gender their descendants should be.
- However, because a character in Dune opposes the breeding plan, the Kwisatz Haderach appears a generation too early. This disrupts the plans of the sisterhood and sets the stage for the conflict with which the Dune saga begins.
What is the Kwisatz Haderach in Crusader Kings 3? In Crusader Kings 3, you play as the ruler of a noble family. When you inevitably die, you continue the game as their heir. This can go on for over 600 years and about 20 generations. As the head of the family, you decide who marries whom.
Thus, players take on the role of the Bene Gesserit and cross bloodlines to generate better heirs in future generations.
In Crusader Kings, there are 6 inheritable positive traits – players marry an intelligent man to an intelligent woman and hope that their descendants will be genius. “Genius” is the trait in the game that grants the most valuable bonus.
A character who possesses all positive traits has been referred to by Crusader Kings players as “the Kwisatz Haderach” for many years.
Players of Crusader Kings 3 show their messiah and their breeding programs
What extent does this take? If you look around in the community, the “Kwisatz Haderach” comes up constantly. Players are proud of their “breeding programs”.
In a post from September 2020, a player says he carried out a “breeding program” for 400 years, proudly presenting his “Kwisatz Haderach”, an Italian emperor with outstanding traits.
A player showcased his “Bene Gesserit bloodline project” in November 2019: he had created an Excel table tracking which descendants were born from which bloodlines, how old they are (fertility decreases with age in women, ending at 45), and who married whom.
In August 2021, another player posted a newborn Kwisatz Haderach and demanded: “There should be an achievement for that.”
Crusader Kings 3: Genetics made easy – How to create your own messiah
How do you breed the Kwisatz Haderach? Incest is the easiest way. But most players find this closed off, as standard religions prohibit marrying close relatives.
If you want to marry brother and sister, you need to create your own religion that allows marriages without any restrictions. Polygamy further helps (via GameStar).
Genetics is a bit like playing the lottery: if you want to increase your chances of hitting the jackpot, you need to bring as many tickets to the table, which means generating many offspring.
This can lead to bloody inheritance battles – but something is always happening.
As a ruler, you ensure that your agreements receive titles, as only in your own duchy or counties do the offspring reliably multiply. In the first two generations, you start marrying yourself and your descendants to strangers who possess positive genetic traits.
From the 3rd generation onwards, you begin to marry your descendants among themselves, or the AI does this automatically in the more distant branches of the family tree.
For this, you select “Blood” in the dynasty traits, which further promotes gameplay and leads to your descendants starting into the harsh medieval world with better genetic traits.
This way, you should roughly obtain your own Kwisatz Haderach by the 5th or 6th generation, who strengthens the bloodline further through an event.
In this game, I received the Kwisatz Haderach
in the 6th generation when I managed to cross “Genius” (the brain) and “Beautiful” (the rose) along with the Strength
ability into the main bloodline. The Hare
stands for fertile
, makes characters live 5 years longer and increases fertility.
Crusader Kings 3 rewards extreme incest with a special achievement: Perfect Circle
Can anything happen? Yes, of course. Crossing close relatives carries the risk of genetic deformities. The “Inbred” trait makes a character relatively useless due to severe penalties. It also affects health, so the corresponding characters often die young.
However, Crusader Kings 3 also offers an incentive for this play style. There is the ability “Purebred”, which halves the chances of “Inbred” and grants additional bonuses.
Additionally, there is one of the most coveted achievements in Crusader Kings 3, “Perfect Circle”, which refers to the phrase: “When your family tree looks like a circle”.
For this achievement, you need a character who has only 2 of each type in the family tree instead of 14 different people (2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents).
A player on reddit explains the plan (via Reddit):
- Have a child with your daughter
- Have two children with your granddaughter, one boy and one girl
- Marry them to each other and ensure that they have a child
- Abdicate so that you can play as their child
- Make sure you are not cheated on
The method of the Bene Gesserit, whose plans span over millennia, is significantly more sophisticated but also takes much longer.
Isn’t all of this a little … sick? Yeah, it is. A running gag in the Steam community of Crusader Kings 3 is to post pictures of their daughter-granddaughter-great-granddaughter-sister-wife
and the bizarre adventures they experience with them.
We have listed more about the antics that Crusader Kings 3 can produce when you take it a bit too far in this article:
How I created a family of 977 genetically optimized killers in Crusader Kings 3
