I apologize for any redundancies, that being said, I love the idea of Dynasties but as currently implemented they fall far short of their potential.

1.  Succession:  Others have posted on the possibility of succession (as a toggleable feature at game setup) with heirs succeeding to the throne on the death of parents.  Many of these proposals involve making royalty age and eventually die of old age.  Others think that  a succession system will result in never-ending games, while proponents of change make the argument that a sovereign's death shouldn't cause the magical disappearance of their entire kingdom.  Here's my solution:

• Succession toggle at game start
• Speed of aging of sovereign set as an option (e.g. 30 turns = 1 year)
• Rare high-level quests or spells which require essence sacrifice to restore youth to the Sovereign
• Penalty for succession:  when your sovereign dies the next in line to the throne has some problem to deal with - maybe several cities have revolted and gone neutral, or perhaps a sibling and several army units try and stage a coup forcing a battle, or another faction opposes the succession and declares war - this would act as penalty for succession but also add verisimilitude to the game

2.  Daughter/Son Inequities:  many people pointed out that in the current build sons are preferable since the female in a marriage goes to the faction of the husband.  The best solution to balance this out that I've heard is implementation of a dowry based on the female's level.

3.  Internal Marriage:  many people have suggested that we should be able to arrange marriages between champions and our offspring, this is a great idea and would not make royal matches obsolete because it is expected that better offspring will result from royal marriages (e.g. if I marry my channeler daughter to a mundane champion maybe there is a 50% chance per child that they are a channeler, vs. 100% with two channeler scions of a royal family).

4.  Long-Distance Reproduction? Does it bother anyone else that even if my sovereign and his spouse are never in the same place they can still have kids?  The chance of offspring should increase the longer the couple are located in the same square as each other (e.g. both in a city, or could be traveling together).  I know there are gameplay issues for the way it currently works, but c'mon, do we really need to explain the birds and the bees to the folks at Stardock?

5.  Blood Magic:  What if Empires could sacrifice their children to fuel potent Worldwide spells?

6.  Marrying for Wealth:  In certain historical periods it wasn't uncommon for the noveau riche to marry those with titles but no money, perhaps you could match a child with a suitor that would be useless as a unit and give bad children in return for gold or some other resource - could be implemented as a location specific quest.

7.  Option to start the game married:  AI players start the game married and players should have the option of doing so as well.

8.  Offspring as Governors:  what if you could appoint a child or grandchild to oversee a "province" of your empire/kingdom and receive a province-wide bonus to some production chain like materials, military training time, etc. based on the child's abilities?

Ok, that's all I can think of right now.  All this being said I enjoy Elemental although it sometimes feels like a very advanced beta.  I'm looking forward to the game growing and changing over the next couple years.