I'm not a Stainless Steel veteran. But I'm definitely a resourceful player in medieval 2 .

Anyway, I play vh/vh with the byzantine empire and I'm on turn 78.
I've conquered all of anatolia + the 2 regions south/east of the caucases all the greek states, islands and sicily, tripoli, 2 souther italian states and Rome.

Sicily has been a great pain since the beginning and kept attacking me so I took their land and il corleone is gone now. The pope didn't like this because he is lame so he attacked my full stack army in naples with my 10 star general because his hat makes him stupid I think. But because he attacked and then I crushed him all the other italian factions started war with me because the pope is holy and all that shite but the ai on vh/vh is a real bugger and for some reason they can upkeep at least twice the amount of armies that I could had I control over their respective domains.
I have a 10 star general who is age 68. How long will he live, usually not that long right. Without him I'm toast because the papal states which has pisa and bologna gang up on me together with Genoa and Venice and all 3 factions send full stack armies for over 10 turns towards rome and it doesn't stop. There's not even a crusade on rome, I can't have that to lol.

It's like their armies spawn out of thin air. The only reason I keep them off is because I have this 10 star general, without him, italy will not be mine. They also have 6 through 8 star generals respectively and most of the battles are tough.
Italy could hae been mine if I had the recruitment and command capabilities I usually have in my playthroughs but my campaign seems to have a big big problem. A problem I've been running into on all my stainless steel playthroughs but more so with the byzantines. Maybe you guys can help me.

The problem is the lack of generals and governors, meaning I don't have enough family members. I need many governors for production in all my cities and some generals near the eastern border because the Mongols can always decide to attack.
It leaves me with next to no extra generals capable of defending/attacking italy but also no required governors to recruit armies in the italian fortresses and settlements I need to fend of the armies in Italy.

I only have 1 extra general next to my commanding general in to be used on the western front because somehow several family members recently died. I use him to ship him to all the settlement and fortresses in sicily, naples and southern greek states but Venice also attacks in greece.

If I had more governors (family members) I could recruit in more settlements to field more armies. But I have about half the amount of generals compared to the amount of controlled regions and that is minus the generals recquired to do battle in the field.
I never have been good with maintaining a balanced family tree, I'm at a lost on how to control it properly. Maybe it's also a lot different in stainless steel to Medieval 2 vanilla.

I use my princesses a lot. Are there generals notorious for having many of the fertile traits in my neighbouring factions that I could marry?

I'm thinking about restarting this campaign and if many of you have some good tips on helping me to simulate a royal baby boom of some sort I would appreciate it.
Any tip on getting more royal babies is a welcome one, including tips on how to train or acquire many of the fertile traits.

I also don't know how and who I should adopt. Sometimes I get faction pop ups that some very old family member has joined me through adoption or that some old guy got bethrothed. Can the same guy get bethrothed at a much earlier age? I mean, it seems logical that the earlier one gets bethrothed the more children they could potentially get.
Is there any way to manage this?
Remember that I expanded a lot with the byzantines in a short amount of time which is part of the reason why I'm short on family members. I do hope this game or Stainless steel specifically hands me the tools to more or less dictate how my family may look like over the course of 80 turns.

Your response is appreciated.