This can be very dangerous without the might of a kingdom behind you, so the best method is usually to keep track of big wars that are happening and jump in to steal a castle from a faction that is losing and about to be destroyed. You'll need to declare war on the entire faction whose castle you want to take. If you're part of a faction, even if you're the one who actually storms the castle, it will still go up for a vote to decide its ownership (see above). Vassals who don't already have any land are usually prioritized over ones that do.ДЇor this method, you will have to be independent. But if you keep fighting for the same faction for long enough, eventually you will be rewarded a castle. Checking my notes, it said they were doing it to reclaim lost land. Ended up having Khergit and Swadia declaring war on me. They won't always respect the results of the vote, so you might get unlucky and have to try again. I fought the Vaegir tooth and nail to eliminate them and keep nice with everyone else. You can spend your Influence to swing the vote in your favor, but the final call is always up to the faction leader. When a castle or city is taken by your faction, a vote will be held to decide who it should be awarded to. Participate in the kingdom's wars and keep fighting battles to gain Influence points.

This will only give you their last known location, and they might have moved on if you had to travel a long way to get there, so keep checking until you eventually cross paths. You can find where the faction leader was last spotted by pressing N on the campaign screen to open the encyclopedia, then searching for their name or clicking on Kingdoms and navigating to the one you want.

This will allow you to become a vassal of one of the major kingdoms by asking their faction leader.

If you're independent, you can capture a castle and keep it for yourself.ДЇirst, you will need to get your Clan to Rank 2 by raising your renown.

If you're part of a faction, you can have one awarded to you by a vote of the realm's nobles.

There are two methods for getting your first castle in Mount & Blade II.

Mount and blade declaring war