On the ex-royals issue:
The reason I think some people want them excluded is that you can get unbeleibvably good generals fromsecond sons. Try fulfilling all the crusades in a single Kings reign and see what his younger sons turn out as, they're godamn monstrous. Put them in charge of a decent army and those 9*s' worth of extra valour is going to tear through enemy armies allowing the general to rack up even greater stats. Take a look at mine, expert attacker, great against poor odds etc etc.

On the Genoese:
Yeah, the Marquis is right, Genoese in XL. I was turtling mainly, took the peninsula and the Holy Lands and just teched up and had fun destroying massive French and Egyptian armies (I had 5 9* generals by the end of that campaign). I only had ships to keep the Holy Lands in contact with home and hadn't spammed bishops to spy everywhere.
The Genoese appeared on my borders in Spain and the Holy Lands around 1320 and I realised something was very badly wrong. I spent a century and a half supporting other factions against them, kind of in a cold war scenario, we never traded blows ourselves. I'd assasinate, burn generals, cause revolts where I could and scoop up the provinces when they rebelled. Pretty much all the territoty but Spain and the mid east was taken in that manner.
I still won though on GA points, so it's all good.