Don't know if any other Australians are playing this, but after talking politics with people the last couple of days it struck me that it's downright spooky how much this game reflects the current succession crisis in Australia.
The ruling dynasty had the elective monarch (Rudd) who was popular but tried to increase his crown authority and increase his personal demesne too much; and while he was relatively popular with the serfs, doing this made him unpopular with his direct vassals (and the burghers who didn't like his proposal to raise their taxes) who started a plot to depose him for his heir (Gillard). The old king went pretty peaceably without going into open rebellion, so the new queen couldn't imprison or exile the old king because she couldn't afford the tyranny penalties, so she gave him some prestigious but out-of-the-way lands and the chancellorship to try and keep him relatively happy. She then gave a bunch of nice titles to her cronies in the plot, and signed a sweetheart deal with the burghers, to keep up her personal support.
But the new queen had dreadful stats and personal characteristics and once in power had an awful lot of trouble holding the kingdom together, especially since she gained the kinslayer trait. The serfs kept revolting, and the vassals started to become terrified that she couldn't keep the kingdom together enough to protect their own personal lands from their neighbouring enemies (Abbott), who had quite strong claims on a lot of lands and even on the throne, a closer relationship with Rome, and the armies and the casus bellis to potentially take the kingdom by force. Her popularity with the vassals, never particularly high, started to drop the more worried they became and the more she seemed to fumble her rule.
One of the younger but most ambitious in the direct line of succession (Shorten) started plotting pretty openly almost immediately, but with low plot power, and he clearly would not be able to get the backers for the plot to succeed any time soon.
Whereas the old king, still loaded up with prestige, got a huge boost to his piety for peaceably accepting his overthrow without a damaging war, and went off on retreat to further boost his piety and personal charm. Being out of power, the vassals began to forget the huge penalties he had with them for raising the crown authority and his huge demesne; and with his high stats, piety and prestige, his relationships with the vassals started becoming higher than those with the queen. He also gained the ambitious trait.
A plot started to reinstate the old king and began to gather backers amongst the vassals, and while everyone knows the old king is now running the plot, his involvement hasn't yet been proven so the queen can't imprison/exile/strip titles from him without a huge tyranny penalty she can't afford. Her own spymaster has been sent to focus on trying to discredit him, but his intrigue skill must be pretty low because he only manages to fumble and make her look worse and the old king look better. There's rumours that the ambitious successor with the high plot power (Shorten) has been offered the most prestigious duchy in the kingdom and the stewardship in return for his support against the queen. While another close successor (Crean) has hitched his wagon publicly to the queen, gambling that the old king's plot will fail and that his loyalty will get him a higher relationship with the queen and her vote for the succession when it comes (even if it's only a claim to usurp the kingdom from the enemy, without any lands). A minor baron on the border with the enemy has come out publicly to support the old king (Cheeseman - yes, that's actually his name). The independent counts within the de jure kingdom seem to be aligned more towards the old king, especially the one harbouring a grudge because the queen made a personal promise to him and then broke it (Wilkie).
Now everyone is in a position they can't back down from, and the civil war is pretty much inevitable - the question just remains whether the old king will be able to gather enough vassals and levies to win back the kingdom, and of course whether the victor will have enough strength of arms left after the bloodshed to defeat the neighbouring enemy when they inevitably declare war. That is, of course, if the enemy king can survive his own unpopularity and prevent a succession crisis of his own (far less likely, but Turnbull is paying only $3.40 at the bookies, so who knows?).
Am I overthinking this?
(the answer is of course I am, but it's still impressive that the game models all these real-world factors so closely - and that in both worlds the desires of the serfs count for so very little)