Tear Jerker / Crusader Kings II

• Suicide:
  • This trope is in play whenever a character is Driven to Suicide, especially if it is your character because you get an event that allows him to choose how to commit suicide.
  • Worse yet, when a ruler commits suicide, the negative perception of suicide means that every character's opinion of your character drops by 50, and this carries over to his heir. So this means that a man committed suicide, and everyone not only condemned him for it but decided to take it out on his child or sibling.
  • There's a chance a character trying to commit suicide can survive, but they're never relieved by this. They're always disappointed, and often the attempt leaves lasting harm to their body.
  • Children can even commit suicide.
  • Holy Fury added an event where an older ruler returning from a particularly bloody Crusade can suffer from crippling Survivor's Guilt and one of the options is a heartbreaking option to kill oneself as if to expiate their sacrifice.
• Even if a character doesn't commit suicide, depression can still stop his heart. It is possible for a twenty year old King with depression to go to sleep one night and never wake up again.
• New rulers get an opinion penalty if their predecessor is unpopular, so a ruler can start out being hated by his vassals without having done anything bad himself. This can escalate to the point where your dynasty becomes permanently hated with no way to win back the trust of your vassals; they form factions to wipe out your family, making it necessary to crush their rebellions, making them hate you more. It only ends either when you have revoked all the titles and handed them back to new vassals, or when your family has been driven out of court.
• A court physician can be executed for botching a treatment, even if he did his best. Imagine being a physician trying desperately to save the life of someone you respect, someone who might even be a close friend or lover, and not only do you fail but you are blamed for it and killed.
• Adultery:
  • It is always heartbreaking when you discover that your spouse has cheated on you, and morose if you tried to make the relationship work and make your spouse love you. You might start to wonder if your children are even really yours.
  • If you are a female ruler, then it counts as adultery if you find out about your first husband impregnating you after you already remarried. Your second husband won't believe that you got pregnant before marrying him, and he hates you for a decade.
• Parents in CKII often outlive their children. Whether by disease, imprisonment, murderous peasant rebels, assassination, suicide, or accident. It can be especially horrible if your baby dies in the oubliette, is sacrificed by pagans, or is killed during torture.
• In the game there are several families that you get to watch die out without player intervention. The last prince of the Merovingian Dynasty is a monk and the line of Clovis will die with him if you don't intervene by pressing his claim. The Karling Line is extinct by 1100, and even in games starting in the earliest bookmark the bloodline of Charlemagne and Charles Martel tend to go extinct on its own.
• Every time the Aztecs capture a major European City, they perform a massive human sacrifice of the civilians.
• Disease:
  • Disease is a real horror in this game. It spreads across Europe, regularly killing those it comes across. Hospitals can help somewhat, but even a fully upgraded hospital is no guarantee of survival. In large epidemics, you will even see piles of corpses on afflicted counties.
  • There is one event where your wife catches syphilis. One of the options is to assume she got it from adultery and to imprison her for it (less reasonable in this game as syphilis is an airborne disease in addition to being an STD), another is to try and take care of her. If your character already had syphilis, then the option to take care of your now sick wife reads: "Oh God, did I do this to her?"
• Getting thrown in the oubliette. You know you will be suffering a Fate Worse than Death, and that it will kill you in a few months if you don't get rescued or ransomed. On the other hand, some characters can last years in there, despite your attempt to dispose of them without killing them.
• Nomads have a special decision that involves choosing your own personal war horse, which you inevitably form a strong bond with. Some years later, your character will deeply mourn for their beloved horse when it inevitably passes away from old age. There are also event chains involving your character obtaining a pet dog or cat, with the same effect - sooner or later, it will pass away, and your character will grieve for it.