Once you marry off an heir, your heir’s spouse’s attributes will also count toward your kingdom ranking. Their rankings will not be too far off from the rankings of your heir, since the talent levels of the heirs has to be equal. You need rings and diamonds in order to marry off an heir; the higher the talent level of the heir, the rarer the ring and the more diamonds that you’re going to need.
Marriage can be done in one of three ways. You can either enter a player ID to marry an heir of yours off to one of their heirs, or you can put a proposal out on the world channel for three days in order to find someone who wants to marry their heir off to yours. Or, you can match an heir up by hitting the “matchmake” button, which will find a random heir of a computer-controlled kingdom to marry your heir off to.
Later on in the game, you’ll begin to receive maids as a reward. The maids can be given to your consorts; when you give them maids, their charm will increase a bit, just as it will with the earrings. Maids are best given to the consorts who increase your military power, which will increase your overall battle score.
Your consort’s charm will increase the experience that they receive every time that you pay them a visit. That experience will be useless at first, until you match them up with their vizier by increasing the intimacy level above 10. Once you do that, then you can spend their experience on increasing the power and level of their skill attribute.
Most of the consorts can be unlocked via the masquerade (the chances are fairly random but also depend on how many times you’ve seen the unmarried consort on a masquerade), but many of them can also be unlocked by other methods. One such method is by earning VIP points and increasing your VIP level. New consorts will be unlocked at VIP2, VIP4, VIP6, and VIP8. The rest of them all come from masquerades.
If you are a big-spender with gems and you want a highly powerful heir, then visit specific consorts. Visits will cost 10 gems for every one intimacy level; for example, a consort with an intimacy of one will cost 10 gems, but a consort with an intimacy of 141 will cost 1,410 gems per visit. These visits can hook you up with the rarest of heirs, but can also drain your gems faster than absolutely anything, so engage in these only if you are a whale or a big spender.