More damage is done to his reputation by the fact he led the army into defeat as the lords of the realm start to distrust his ability, this can eventually lead to a series of bad marshals with a series of large scale defeats, effectively crippling their armies.Ĭapturing the king however does NOT handicap their faction in any way other then less troops, they still hold feasts in the kings court, they still offer peace and they still assign marshals. If you capture the marshal, another will be appointed. If you capture their king and hold on to him, you can prevent their side from declaring peace if you want a long, drawn out war. If you manage to capture the marshal of the opposing faction, then it'll be much harder for them to mount a serious assault on something until their king appoints a new marshal, which leads to. (I believe the default chance is a 50% escape rate every 72 hours for a prisoner in your party, but only 10 or 20% if they're in jail).

As dbemerlin mentioned in his answer, building a jail in your castle/town and putting a prisoner in there drastically lowers their chance to escape.

Also, every once in a while when you talk to a lord in your faction, your marshall, or your king they'll offer to buy the prisoner from you for some gold.

Every once in a while you'll get a ransom offer from the faction to get their lord back, its free gold at that point.

If you capture their king and hold on to him, you can prevent their side from declaring peace if you want a long, drawn out war.

If you manage to capture the marshall of the opposing faction, then it'll be much harder for them to mount a serious assault on something until their king appoints a new marshall, which leads to.

Like you said, keeping the lords on hand means they can't raid your stuff.

If you have a handy stash of them on hand its much easier.

Some lords may give you a quest to bring them a noble of a certain faction.

There are several reasons why you'd want to keep the prisoners.

Warband what to do with prisoners