Great suggestions guys! One thing I wish you could do in game is to the dirty work of an assassination yourself instead of paying. Sure, it should be risky, and fraught with reputation hits but it would be fun.
The other thing is being able to just intimidate, otherwise take actions against people in your court. As it is, all you can really do it seems is hire/fire them or pay to assassinate them!? It would be nice to be able to mess with them, else help them in other ways.
Listing exact birth dates for children would be neat too. Knowing that Natasha the 15 year old Princess is going to turn 16 in March (as opposed to December) of this year would be swell.
I restarted a couple times as Philippe of France in 1066 to get a hang for how it works (once I went on a conquering spree and realized the game simulates "bad rep" pretty effectively; once I totally ignored the Pope and didn't bother to pay him or keep the clergy happy and being excomunicated really has some teeth I see! <Yeah! Great design Paradox!!>; once I went on Crusade with a measly 1000K ducats in my treasury and quickly realized how inadequate that was to take on any Muslims).
Having now got a sense for how 'realistically' constrained the player is in his operations I'm onto a good solid match and up to about 1084. Philippe is getting close to 40, has had two or three wives, and has about 6 or 7 kids. The oldest Henri, just reached maturity and it looks like he is in many respects a more well-rounded noble than his dad (though Philippes 15 Martial is pretty macho).
So, I changed to Salic Consanguinity (based on a comment by you Veld in another thread) and my strongest heir will inherit.
I have seven "home" provinces (Ile de France; Amiens; Vexins; Reims; Sens; Chartres; and Orleans). As a consequence of my annexation of some of my neighboring small houses (Amiens, Champagne, Reims, Chartres) I've lost a couple vassals. Duchy of Aquitaine and Toulouse broke away, though they are both fairly loyal.
Of course if this were any other game the goal would be to keep nibbling away at neighboring provinces and adding more-more-more to my direct holdings, but I see that this is NOT just any other game, so I'm guessing that what I want to do is actually: (a) expand the KINGDOM of France by adding additional vassal; (b) create long-term marriages and other ties that can give me claims or inheritance of counties and duchies (either inside or outside King of France); and (c) focus on making my provinces as rich and happy as possible?
It seems like war is VERY costly in this game (which is as it should be). Granted, you sometimes get Techs discovered because you were at war, that you probably wouldn't have got otherwise, but Holy Craps! Losing hundreds of ducats a month to pay for an army of 10 of 15K guys is amazing! That is the most realistic representation of how militaries functioned in a "non-standing army" phase of history that I've ever seen!!

Why didn't they do something similar to this with EU?
Anyway, just love hearing from youze guys and I think I like talking about this games almost more than playing them
Paradox rocks. These games are not fun the way Fallout 3 is fun, but they are awesome strategy games. So glad to see that this art form is NOT in danger of dying out!