I've found out, being fully aware of the strange turn/year/age issue, that it doesn't bother me at all while playing. I've always found 4 turns per year combined with 4 seasons, as in Shogun, very nice and I've thought that M2TW would be weird because of the 1 turn in 2 years but it doesn't really matter. I do take interest in my characters development and I'm also fully aware of Medieval history but the age of a character or the year of an attack don't bother me.
What does bother me is, that when I look at the year, I can't fathom why it takes so many years to travel through Europe. In my HRE campaign it takes at least 4 turns to travel from Hamburg to Bavaria. 8 years? Come on......

Best way for me is to ignore it. It depends all on the playing style.

R'as