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[FantasticDorf]

There's no such thing as a "Rich" family in fortress mode, because of the specific free-economy they find themselves in which only really limits them to how much land they are allocated and objects in the immediate viscinity to wear/posess/consume. Though definitely outside in world generation it's a different story as dwarves have their financial accounts, purchases and by most means already do have opaque family links that are hard to parse but definitely enacted upon.

However, most of these are largely invisible in terms of actual play and poorly shown like other societal groups in and outside your fortress.

• the exact network of who works for who is currently limited to immediate family, making it more open to allow customers & employees to notably visit, and seperate to loutish children of the establishment-owners if they dont work there themselves would be greatly more diverse and immersive. Generated w.g roles could have hosts of people helping, like farmhands (which might be a junior title to their children).

Fortress Mode

When dwarves immigrate, they might already be part of a family but they can't physically force their holdings into their 'territory' nor are the smallest groups of families very demanding at all if only being frustrated there might not be enough room in the fortress to accomodate their immediate members, especially children which hold high precedence based on gradients of 'family'. Its very likely compared to other races that dwarves will form family groups and seek to make them esteemed ambitiously, because of thier natural high tradition mixed with family values procuring lifetime ambitions like "Create a Lineage" in which to found and raise children to inherit their family's titles, expanding the family wide and deep.

• How to view a family line in abstract menu's could require a 'Societies' screen holding your temple & guildhall information, as well as any other organizations you host or have wheelings and dealings with as inevitably dwarves might be forced to interact in the future with groups outside the fortress walls like mercenaries, bandits, armies & assassins.

Families and how they interact with Holdings

At the moment, a dwarf can have a unlimited number of varied rooms but there's usually very little reason to provide such lavish rooms that only one dwarf can enjoy versus opening public venues, not all of the time this is suitable, because you might want to relegate a certain number of dwarves to area, and often doing this via burrows to enforce these changes can be very taxing. Children also typically sleep in their own rooms far away from their parents if they aren't denied from claiming empty ones, which then they'll snugly fit into their parents bed.

Wrapped within a single setting much like other screens attached to temples and guildhalls that offer choices, "Create a family title holding" and a detailed list of all the families inside your fortress would be accessible to attach to now own those rooms.

If little-timmy needs a family room and there is one made ready for them, they'll settle there instead over a exposed unclaimed room, allowing you to have essentially little complexes of housing, statue gardens, dining areas and tombs grouped together which should make fufilling family needs much more easy rather than being "forced" to mingle with strangers until you find members of your family by chance.

• There would be a additional setting underneath the family room designation, on whether to restrict the room to private/married use or to only family members, allowing the use of dining halls and single room multiple member tombs in a private setup.

• This only extends to first cousins as not to make the family system enormous as it can be for long lived & immortal races, as they would enter 'out of range' of direct line of inheritance until pulled back in or integrated into another grand family.

Titles and Inheritance

For the creation of a new family, there are two avenues of either a commoner family, needs to be embedded in marriage or a land owner inherited/liason chosen family.

Land-holder nobles like barons/baronesses can be single unit great families all of their own created when they're nominated or part of a inheritance succession, with the title holder being much more prominent than the rest of them if they dont have titles themselves. The politics of their families and station may often collide, as they may abuse their power to further their own family interests and vice versa if the family (or position) is particularly powerful.

For land-owners particularly, by binding the noble house to the fortress, it will more clearly line who's in line of succession by ordering the furthest out to be lower on the list to offer some help to players in understanding this and be able to help land-owners flex much more effectively by auto-enforcing your fortress as the family's ruling seat when exacting who's in charge of far-away sites rather than having barons accomodate in exile.

New tokens like [NEPOTISM] & [HEIR] (with arguements defining how whiny they are) can be devised to cover nuances for these family mechanics like royal prince & princesses, ensuring thier place in the fortress rather as a slightly important annoyance.

[NEPOTISM] as a position token ensures that a will usually push for members of their family to follow jobs that they can appoint, whether they are competent or not to fufill the task as long as it furthers the positions goals and ensure them work, but this can be overturned on public outcry or lead to rivalries between people rightfully meant to hold that position, or pre-existing tensions between family groups leading to infighting.

Humans sending their children to lead armies or by chance capturing the heir to a great house raises their worth in ransom negotiations and kidnapping plots, of which [MERCHANT_NOBILITY] great families are usually very wealthy, as well as well disposed to just sending more mercenaries to kill you instead and retrieve the precious family-member.
[HEIR] tokens with arguements regard more to the special conditions and treatment of children & direct adult descendents within landowner families, such as what their junior title should be on caste, whether adult heirs are expected to work and be financially accountable, and if there any any more special arrangements like also having sleep pretension or being enabled to marry outside of the family system (no hapsburgian schemes please) normally reserved for title holders and spouse.

By default the more prominent family's title carries on when they become married to interact with another family and produce a heir, and this can culminate in the creation of vassal nations and settlements by marriage union if one great family is unable to completely absolve the other due to being of similar size, like a king and queen of seperate nations should they be introduced, rather than the king in this scenario being the greatest member of the grandest family in the kingdom attempting to woo courtier's of noble families.

Disasters, Grudges and Vendettas

The impact that the death of a family line can be a based on is more or less relative to the amount of precedence & prestiege they hold beyond tenous personal links, the death of the ruling family line for dwarves particularly if they were viewed as benevolent as well as powerful creates a great amount of mourning, as the death of Queen Victoria did in 1901, with remaining Victorians wearing black for a year with lesser families creating fewer bad thoughts outside of their own group if any are left to remember them.

To the side of this, family members are often alike in their personalities as newly founded families and their relatives will be quite similar and likeable to one another (much of the time hopefully). Ill-will can be sown between great families that culminate in open feuds in which to re-apply the grudge system.

Angering families by a affront of something like failed diplomacy or rejected petition requests can adds a wider network of horrible schemes they could collaborate against you if they're not busy intrigue weaving against other rival families, like ive alluded to before with my comments about nepotism, they might simply use the family's fortune's account to buy off as many good grade mercenaries and assassins as funds allow and bribe leaders into pressuring them towards wars and retrieval missions. The human cities for this reason would probably have many ruling elite merchant families creating havoc with mercenary wars in a nice mirror to 14th century Italy.

placeholder for adventurer suggestion content i havent thought up yet, possibly on another post in this thread ill hyperlink to via here to save space.
Bibliography of similar threads.

-  Blood-line naming. « on: July 29, 2009
-  Clans: a suggestion regarding name inheritance « on: April 11, 2017
-  Family Units and Lineage-Based Last Names « on: April 17, 2018

[Azerty]

In the Middle Ages, the moving factor often were powerful families, whether noble families ruling over land or merchant families having trade houses. Indeed, there's still countries where it's still the case.

It could be a good way to select rulers for holdings, along with allowing player to give control to economy in order to reduce his workload: it might be tiring to care for farms in very large fortress, but it might be easier to do if these farmlands were instead given or sold to private parties such as major families, corporations or temples.

Small nitpick: ruler should also be able to sell land to such families, although they might love you less than if you gifted it instead.

Civil law need to be more fleshed: I made some suggestions here.