Quote Originally Posted by Caledonian Rhyfelwyr
In games where I've had a bad reputation I never managed to get vassalls. However, I got my reputation up in my Turkish campaign, and had both Egypt and Hungary as my vassalls, althought they soon backstabbed me.

You can get your reputation back up, if you can be bothered, I'm not sure its worth the trouble. Anyway, if you do hope to just:

Always occupy conquered settlements
Always release prisoners
Keep good relations with factions
Set low taxes
Get high chivalry Generals
Make alliances and keep them
Attack factions with bad reputations

EDIT: Also better change this thread title before a mod sees it...

And don't use assassins - they take away chivalry and give you dread. This annoys me - I'm supposed to just sit there and watch a bunch of priests (or imams if I'm a Catholic faction) and other nasty guys running around my territories without knocking them off? No way.