First of all, I want to point out that European aristocrats never, at any point in history, compromised more than about 1-15% of the population of a country. How many nobles a country depended on numerous factors, like how centralized royal power was, how serious the threat of invasion was, and the overall population of the country.

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Obviously I don’t think there would be 86 different families, but say the king had 4 sons, would the three sons who don’t inherit the throne become dukes of other settlements?

Either counts or dukes, because a lot of kings found that leaving their younger brothers with nothing was a surefire way to make them rebel. If you were a king, your most dangerous enemies were almost assuredly going to be members of your own family, because they could serve as rallying points for disaffected nobles.

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Are all the leaders somehow related to the king?

Depends heavily on when your game is set and how large the kingdom is. In the 11th century, most of the Anglo-Norman nobles in England were not related to the royal family. Likewise, at the same time in France, most of the nobles were also of no relation to the king. That begun to change by the start of the Late Middle Ages (14th century), because families began marrying each other, titles got combined, and kings married their relatives to wealthy heiresses.

In England, a lot of nobles got a dose of royal blood by the beginning of the 12th century because Henry I of England had a lot of illegitimate children and arranged for them to marry Anglo-Norman, Breton, and French nobles.

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How many families on average weren’t related to the king and how did they get their position?

There were several ways someone could gain a noble title. They included:

• Being a great warrior. The most acceptable way and the way least likely to make the established aristocracy angry. This is because the entire purpose of the aristocracy (at least on paper) was to defend the kingdom militarily.
• Providing the king with financial help. This is the route of the German Fugger family and English de la Pole family and the numerous French Noblesse de robe. It was far less acceptable to the established aristocracy, because working at a job was so middle class.
• Being a close friend, advisor, or mistress of a king. This was the path of people like Piers Gaveston, Thomas Cromwell, Robert Carr, George Villiers, and Madame de Pompadour. The chances that someone who took this path was going to be well-liked by the other nobility, though, were not great.

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