Ok, I'm working on it now.
The problem with unwanted abilities on the pretender appears to have been solved in 2.08, as well as the needed abilities to mod starting dominion, path cost, and leadership values. Thanks Illwinter!!
So, the only real drawbacks now are that you lose a pretender choice in order to gain this one, and you can't add varieties of Kings to Ulm in one mod without offering them to several other nations at the same time. Also, the pretender effect on hitpoint based on domain strength isn't really thematic with a mortal king.
I thought another way to mod this would be to have a pretender Pope, and give the warrior king as a starting commander to Ulm. This would make sense because you can always ressurrect a pope
, but the King would be mortal and not subject to Domain effects on health. However, the warrior king unit would be a big advantage to Ulm even if they don't take the pope pretender, so it'd be unbalanced in that case, unless I chop down the number of starting military units Ulm has. Maybe that's the way to go.
Or, do all three - mods are easy enough to make, except for the graphics.
PvK