I think Crusader Kings feels less complicated if you play it like a RPG. But it's pretty brutal, yeah. In Victoria and Europa Universalis it's all about numbers, your characters die and you just get new ones, but in Crusader Kings everything is more personal: you can get sick from lots of stuff, become maimed after a duel, see your daughter forced to be a concubine to an old man, be backstabbed by your own children, and realize someone convinced the king that you're a traitor and see your lands stripped away from you. You even see your character growing old and getting scars through the years.
But that's fun too. It was thrilling to play that character I posted, not knowing if my genius and raving mad barely fertile empress would survive the plague and the rebels to see the end of the week, even though her death would mean I'd lose 600 years of game.
I wonder if there's a lesson jorbtar can learn from that.