Or is it normal to have your king die and then lose fucking everything? Every time, every fucking time I'm about to declare myself the King of Wales, something horrible happens. Don't have quite enough territories, don't have the money, my king's dead, my heir is 5, everybody revolts... I shoulda gone for EU2. I'm not cut out for life management.

Just hang in there, Crusader Kings loves to kill your family for no reason other than to spite you, but you'll get the hang of it.

One of my earliest games of CK ended up in Sweden collapsing quite early on. This is what happened:
King marries into an alliance
Wife gets depressed
Wife gets sick
Wife becomes infertile
King gets depressed
REVOLT, the entire northern parts of my kingdom revolts. I just barely beat them down.
Wife dies (oh goodie, new wife might mean some kids)
New wife, who gets pregnant almost on day one
King gets worms
Dies as she gives birth to her child
King dies, depress, filled with worms and with a kingdom that is falling to pieces.

I started as Gwynedd, 'cause I like Wales, and started going for King of Wales title, king dies during my first war, getting captured. But I take that province (Glamorgan), and settle down, wait for things to calm down a little, marry some people off the Scotland, Ireland, Aragon, whatever, then things start to get crazy, I don't even remember if I declared war on that one I wanted or if they decided to attack me, the other, big Welsh duchy declares war, I kick their asses, but can't claim the big one 'cause I don't have a claim on it, so I settle down again, to get money for my 'haha, fuck you guys, I'm king' celebration, BAM! King dead, 5 year old son in charge, 14 year old uncle who is in charge of just above me gets pissy, I tell him to fuck off and give me his titles back, I beat him up, my other two vassals get pissy, they all declare war, I'm running around beating them up, my main province starts revolting, I can't really stop to siege any of these territories, so in the end I have to settle for peace with them. When I saved and quit, I had one province. I started with three.

I think it's option a. ;p

I must be lucky. I started as the Duke of Moray last evening. 20 years in we're doing fine. One adult heir, some kids running about. Made friends with a neighbouring Norwegian count, then my liege the King of Scotland died and I told his heir to buzz off. It was a lovely independence time, since the Scottish armies were more busy with the rebellious Fife. Then some loser from Gwynedd declared war on me (most of the British Isles made claims on my territory, thanks to some bastard who excommunicated me) and some dudes from Ireland joined in. They must've missed the memo that I pledged allegiance to the King of England, who in turn was an ally with the King of France. I managed to eliminate Gwynedd's pathetic army despite having plague and dysentery in my provinces (broadswords, man), but had to pay the Irish. Now I'm watching the "Gwynedd steamrolled by England" show.

Oh, holy crap, we survived the excommunication of the ruler and the courtiers now stop running away every year. And one of the provinces got rid of the disease. Bizarrely my ruler's no-longer-bastard son made friends with the ruler's oldest rival. After marrying his daughter.