After 15 years, The Sims’ best spin-off finally gets its due follow-up in The Sims 4: Royalty & Legacy

The Sims 4 developers recently promised an exciting year for the game, and the franchise as a whole, and we just got an early look at one of those first events. After some light teasing, the developer unveiled Royalty & Legacy, the game’s next expansion.

Royalty & Legacy’s first trailer debuted on Thursday, revealing a February 12 release date, and showing off the expansion for the first time.

There’s a lot going on in Royalty & Legacy, which is priced $40. For one, it introduces a new world, Ondarion, which is going to be the setting for your kingdom, as you join a race for the throne. The expansion introduces Dynasty and Nobility – two new systems you can use to create your own world of royal shenanigans.

Ondarion is made up of three neighborhoods (regions). Each region has a unique theme and culture, and they’re each ruled by a Dynasty. Dambele is a place that prioritises art and community. Verdemar is a chaotic world of outlaws and nobles. Finally, Bellacorde is an extravagant region known for opulence and romance.

Speaking of building places, Royalty & Legacy also adds a new Lot type, The Backroom Lot. It serves two functions that change with the time of day. For instance, it can be a library or gym in the morning, and shift into a night club at night. Dambele has its own library-turned-rave, for instance.

At the heart of Ondarion are all the possible fantasy lives and stories you can live. The Sims calls them Powershifts, and they include some well-known Arthurian fantasies and other, more silly ones.

Swordsmanship is the new 10-level skill arriving with the expansion, which further plays into those fantasies by letting your Sims duel. There are even Swordsmanship Tournaments you can watch take place across every neighborhood in Ondarion.

Then there are Secret Passageways, which let you speed up moving across the new regions. They essentially let your Sims teleport between designated passageways, either on their own lots, or other lots in the world. Some of these are hidden for you to find, while others you can create.

In terms of new careers, there’s the Noble Career, where your Sim can rise through several Noble Rankings by doing basically what nobles had to do in the middle ages to earn favour.

The aforementioned Dynasty System is how you can join any of Ondarion’s existing families, or start your own. You actually have a lot of say in what goes on, including the usual business of appointing heirs.

Of course, no royal roleplay would be complete without scandals, which is where the Scandals System comes in. Through it, you can create stories to discredit others, or even topple an entire dynasty.

In November, you may recall The Sims 4 introducing new free items inspired by West African culture. In creating that content, EA worked with a group of Simmers who have direct ties to West African countries.

The group’s guidance was once again utilised to build the Dambele neighborhood in this expansion, and some of the lots around the world of Ondarion were even created by members of the group.

While you wait for Royalty & Legacy to actually arrive, there’s more in The Sims 4 you can jump in right now. The game recently kicked off a collaboration with fashion brand Coach that brought several free items to Create a Sim, and Build Buy. That arrived alongside a free update, which already makes for a busy start of the year for The Sims 4.