Capturing enemy lords and their armies is one aspect of the early-access medieval game Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord.

Once you’ve captured a bunch of prisoners, you have a few different options. You can recruit them, set them free, sell them. There is one option specific to enemy lords and that is execution!

That’s right, you can now execute enemy lords in Mount and Blade! This feature wasn’t available in previous installments, but now you can get rid of pesky kings and vassals for good.

Here’s how to execute lords in Bannerlord and the pros and cons of doing so.

Capturing an Enemy Lord

Capturing an enemy lord is the hardest part of executing them. Once your army is big enough and you can tackle the big boys, go ahead and find an enemy lord your at war with.

Once you’ve defeated them you should have the option of setting them free, which will increase your charm skill, or holding them hostage.

Once you’ve captured them, you should see them in your party tab under the Prisoners section. For this guide, we’ve captured Reamald of the Brotherhood, the leader of his clan.

You’ll notice that you have two other buttons under his unit compared to normal units.

There is a button to talk to them, one to recruit them which will always be grayed out, and a red button. That red button is the one to execute them.

Executing Enemy Lords in Bannerlord

If you do decide to execute an enemy lord and click that button, this screen will pop up giving you one last chance to change your mind and a little more info about the consequences of your action.

Essentially, if you decide to execute someone their entire clan and possibly faction will never forget it. You will more than likely be forever hated by that faction, and definitely forever hated by their clan.

It is very hard to recover a relationship with someone after executing their brother, sister, father or mother.

Once you’ve decided to execute them your character will swing that axe, but right before it hits the screen goes black. You can still hear the sound of your axe cutting their head from their shoulders though.

Pros and Cons of Executing an Enemy Lord in Bannerlord

At first, there seem to be almost no benefits to executing someone besides some small satisfaction, but there is actually one very clear pro.

If you execute an enemy lord it’s one less army running around the map sacking your villages and laying siege to your castles.

Execute enough enemy lords and there will be no one left to pillage your land! It seems that executing only affects relationships with that faction and clan.

The other lords won’t care that you executed every vassal of a kingdom, so long as it isn’t their kingdom!

There are obvious cons to executing an enemy lord. As we said above, their whole clan will hate you and the faction might as well.

Since we executed the leader of the Brotherhood of the Woods, the other members relation dropped to a whopping -99. Imagine all the favors you’ll have to do to get that back into the positives!

We hope you found our guide on how to execute enemy lords in Bannerlord useful in your playthrough. If you’re looking for more Bannerlord content, be sure to check out our other guides!