How does stress work in Crusader Kings III?

It's not easy to command a Crusader Kings III kingdom, and the decisions you make will have consequences. As the years accumulate on your character, they start to develop stress. It is a reflection of their mental well-being and how the recent upheavals in their lives have affected them in private. The type of stress you choose for your character to endure builds up and it comes from different events, large and small.

Screenshot via Paradox Interactive

Stress events will vary in the game, and it depends on the personality traits of the character you play as during your Crusader Kings III campaign. Shy characters will be much more stressed by being forced to attend large public events. Those stressful little events that go against your character's personality traits will add up. Important events leave a much longer lasting toll, such as executing a captured prisoner to make sure they don't threaten your rule. While this is the best solution, your character may not sleep well and stress is eating into their mentality. You can also expect to be stressed out by external events when your loved ones pass away or your character is locked in a dungeon.

Once your character has reached a certain stress level, they experience mental breakdown. Mental collapse imposes negative traits on your character that usually hurt them. However, they lose much of the stress they had accumulated. Mental breakdown affects your character's sanity, but it also affects their judgment, and they usually make a bad decision, like going out for a drink or shopping while spending a good chunk of your money.

There are three levels of mental disorder your character can endure: The first time you encounter one, your character does something minor to relieve stress. When they continuously receive a lot of stress within a certain period of time after the first one, they can experience level two mental depression and do much worse. These mental depressions overlap regularly, with level three mental depression having the most detrimental effects.

Stress is a natural thing that everyone goes through. It's incredibly rare for the characters in Crusader Kings III not to feel the stress of a mental breakdown, and that's okay. The negative effects at level one and two are something you can deal with, but you should start worrying about what happens at level three and take steps to prevent this from happening by finding outlets for your character.