In our campaign, one source of grief are wives, mainly because they seem to lack personalities and only exist to maintain the manor and birth babies. This is ok for the most part, since the players mostly want to be out and about adventuring instead of playing the wives (our group is mixed gender, and the women are the least interested in playing the wives). However, since there are major plot hooks that could arise from the wives and the possibility for having the Gentlewoman bonus (which one of my players desperately wants), I came up with the following table to keep wives simple, but give them some character (inspired by the trait system in Shogun 2 Total War). Each time a character gets married (provided it is the usual roll the dice method), I roll a D20:

D20 Result
1-2 Shrewish

-1 Honor [Knight]
3-4 Ambition

-1 to Loyalty (Lord) [Knight]

+1 Energetic [Knight]

+5 Lustful
5-6 Greedy

+1£ Upkeep (so no Discretionary Funds for normal manors)
7-8 Fiscal Prudence

+1£ Discretionary Funds
9-10 Cunning

+5 to Intrigue [Knight]
11-12 Diplomatic

+5 to Couresy [Knight]
13-14 Beauty

+10 Glory per year [Knight]

+3 Appearance
15-16 Fertile

Having children does not affect future Child Birth rolls.
17-18 Loyal

+1 to Loyalty (Lord) [Knight]

+5 to Chaste
19 Warrior

+5 Battle

+10 Bow
20 Kind soul

Discretionary Funds are used for charity.

Folk Lore 15 [Knight]

Peasants adore her (and by extension, the knight). GM/Player discussion of situational "good stuff" as applicable

Roll d6: on a 6 gains the “Gentlewoman” bonus

If the modifier has [Knight] after it, the knight can use the skill in place of his own if the wife is present.

I'd be interested in hearing thoughts and feedback!

You want wives to be more involved? Create a character sheet for them and give the wife to another player to run. See what happens then. I like your idea as well.

Neat.

Couple of comments from my perspective:

1. I seriously dislike giving Player Knights flat bonuses. That +5 is nigh useless for a knight who has Skill 3, and is absolutely gold when he has skill 20. Instead, I would make all of those skill bonuses into a 'Wife's skill 15' that the Player can use to roll instead of his own skill when he has the opportunity to confer with his wife: "Psst. What was the protocol for being presented to the King again, honey?"

2. Greg has said that the Gentlewoman is reserved for full Player Character Ladies. Now, while you are free to ignore that (as I would be tempted to do in specific cases), having 10% chance of one is perhaps a bit too high.

3. Ambitious increases Lustful? I don't really see that.

4. While I can see Ambitious and Loyal affecting the PK's Loyalty Lord (either belittling the Lord or praising him), I would not make that into the primary thing about Loyal. If she is Loyal, she should be loyal towards the PK, iMHO.

5. I'd probably go for a flat bonus on Fertility, like +3 to Childbirth rolls. The children already born modifier doesn't really matter until towards the end; this would frontload the fertility.

Just a few things that came to mind.

What Morien said about flat bonuses is not completely useless. You do have a better chance to success, but it is biased. His suggestion about a "wife's skill" similar to the "squire's" roll is a good idea as well.

Thanks for the input! Hzark, the problem is that the players don't want to have to play the wives, but we all want them to be something more than passive baby birthers and housekeepers. At least have them have basic personalities so the players can write up stuff that happened during the Winter Phase :)

Morien, that's actually a good point about the bonuses and having them be "wives skills" instead. That would also solve the problem of involving the ladies without actually having to play them over actively. As for the rest of your points:
2. Greg has said that the Gentlewoman is reserved for full Player Character Ladies. Now, while you are free to ignore that (as I would be tempted to do in specific cases), having 10% chance of one is perhaps a bit too high.
That's a good point. Maybe come up with more traits and push the Gentlewoman into 25+ roll needed? That way the players need to either wait a long while to secure the hand of the lady and STILL not have a good chance of doing so, or get some bonus from play to justify a boost to the roll on the table. Any ideas for new traits?

3. Ambitious increases Lustful? I don't really see that.
I was thinking that she might be cozying up to higher ranking knights to further her own power

4. While I can see Ambitious and Loyal affecting the PK's Loyalty Lord (either belittling the Lord or praising him), I would not make that into the primary thing about Loyal. If she is Loyal, she should be loyal towards the PK, iMHO.
Loyal could increase Chaste by 5 as well?

5. I'd probably go for a flat bonus on Fertility, like +3 to Childbirth rolls. The children already born modifier doesn't really matter until towards the end; this would frontload the fertility.
Fair point, first son is all that matters

Ah, now I see what you mean. Those changes would work. :)

I might keep Gentlewoman as a special for specific ladies who get introduced by the GM, NPC level wives, like Lady Ahvielle in the Blood & Lust.

Although here is another possibility:
Make 19-20 "Kind Soul", that extra £1 Discretionary Funds gets spent on charity work. However, the peasants adore her, and by extension, the Knight. So She has Folk Lore 15 equivalent or something like that, the peasants tell her everything she wants to know (which can become useful in other ways, too). Then you can add a new 1d6 roll: on a 6, she is a Gentlewoman as well. This means that the chance is 1 in 60, or once in a campaign kind of roll. That would be my replacement suggestion for the Gentlewoman anyway in the main chart.

5. I'd probably go for a flat bonus on Fertility, like +3 to Childbirth rolls. The children already born modifier doesn't really matter until towards the end; this would frontload the fertility.
Fair point, first son is all that matters

Now, wait a minute! I heartily disagree with this point. On the surface, you are correct. First son inherits everything and is the head of the family. But to say the first born is the only thing that matters misses many points.
1. You CAN play a second, fourth, fifth, sixth, or seventh (+) son. The character creation system allows for that.
2. First borns can (and do) die. What happens to the campaign then? If he has a son, you can wait the given amount of years until he is playable. If of proper age, could play a squire (while everyone else plays knights) until he reaches knighthood. If not, then there is a choice.

Either you spend time and create a new character to start playing or continue playing with the FAMILY. If new character, then you start with your scores of a new knight.
Yes, a gm can accelerate you in age to get this new knight to the proper time so he won't have too much glory and skills missing. But, where is the back story of this new knight? He wasn't with the PCs in those battles, court scenes and so on. Or, you play him as a 21 year old knight with all the limitations on that. On the gamemaster side, what happens to all those plot devices that the gm has created for you suddenly goes poof and play the new person while waiting for the knight's son to arrive on scene. And, here is where I think many miss my point: How many players will create a new character, go through all the triumphs and tribulations that Pendragon offers for 5 to 15 game years, and when the original son is of playable age, dump/retire his new character to play the son of the original?

My solution to this is think of the Family when creating Pendragon characters. If the first born dies, then the second (or other) son becomes active. The story of the family continues. Many plot devices can be transferred, the basic goals of the original character can be continued, and so on. Depending on the gm, you may have played the brother already when your knight is out healing for a season. Or, be in two different locations in the same year.

Depending on how the player feels, he can continue with only the brother, or put him back into the background when the original son becomes playable.

Not per se arguing, but wanted to point out that IMHO that first borns are not the only thing that matters.

You are absolutely correct, but the first child is most important to get and for that child to be a son. After that it is spares and prayers :P.

So far we have had families spontaneously appear during the Winter Phase as players roll Family Events or if the story requires, as involving everything grinds the adventuring to a slow halt as we go through the family members' lives. As PKs have died, the players have either started playing a younger cousin or a brother that is on the cusp of knighthood. We're still in the early days of Anarchy (first year finished), so we're all learning the game and the world still. None of us had any real experience with the system prior to starting, so we like to keep things simple :) .