the woes of empire: nonsensical interrealm borders

Option one: Use the revoke plot on any/ all it is available. That should take care of any loose counts/ kings etc, and also weaken them.
Option two: Murder you vassals entire dynasty until you gain their title.
Option three: Accuse vassal of heresy, arrest and revoke titles at will
Option four:.... i still like the sound of option two

Jarren said:

Option three: Accuse vassal of heresy, arrest and revoke titles at will

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This is the best option, except slightly incorrect. Make an anti-pope if you don't have one, and excommunicate your target vassal. What you want is for the vassal to resist arrest. Then you beat them down and imprison them as the outcome of the war, and can freely revoke one of their titles. Then release them, attempt to imprison again, and repeat until all their titles are gone, or they're left with just one county, whichever you're aiming for. None of your other vassals will bat an eyelash if you do it this way.

Then move on to the next vassal whose borders offend you. This method does need you to have quite a bit of piety saved up, but hopefully you do if you've finished Holy Warring for the peninsula.

First thing: I assume you want to keep Kingdom of Aragon – simply because its biggest.

First, let's say this openly: there's no point in giving all Iberian kingdom titles to its owners – besides player's satisfaction, of course. I'd like to point you that e.g. duchy of Navarra has exactly the same de iure territory as kingdom of Navarra. Same goes, I believe, to Castille. And kings – contrary to dukes – can form indepence factions, so I don't see any benefit. And I assume that you are Catholic (if you'd be Muslim, relations hit for withdrawing emirates wouldn't be matter), then you don't have to worry about Andalusia as you can't form it. That could mean you only need to worry about Portugal & Galicia & Leon (provided you want Aragonia for yourself).

Second: I strongly suggest remodelling your realm with at least medium CA in Empire of Hispania. Otherwise, your efforts will be pretty moot – realms like Kingdom of Navarra will be incapable of holding their provinces against rivals you withdrew them from (and still have claims). And it makes process MUCH faster.

Third: rebellions. Don't. Prevent. Them. In fact, encourage them. I'd recommend saving gold. Then, you withdrew a few duchies and give them to their vassals. And transfer their not de-iure vassals to the dukes you want them at. Do this to the point your vassals become be pretty restless. Then, bribe & gave titles to those who have realms with regular shapes. Ignore others. If you did this properly, you should now face the rebellion of vassals you most likely considered withdrawing titles from - just because the others should have better relationships cause of bribes. Crush it. With saved gold (mercenaries) & retinues, you should be able to. Afterwards, you should be able to (benefits of „revokation of infidels titles free” at Medium CA) revoke one of its duties and give it to one of their vassals. Provided that they held only 1 duchy, that should give their vassals only de iure territory of their duchy – and free the not-de-iure vassals to transfers. And the best part of it? New dukes won't have relationship penalties for pre-rebellion revokations as they weren't your vassals when you did it

PAnZuRiEL said:

This is the best option, except slightly incorrect. Make an anti-pope if you don't have one, and excommunicate your target vassal. What you want is for the vassal to resist arrest. Then you beat them down and imprison them as the outcome of the war, and can freely revoke one of their titles. Then release them, attempt to imprison again, and repeat until all their titles are gone, or they're left with just one county, whichever you're aiming for. None of your other vassals will bat an eyelash if you do it this way.

Then move on to the next vassal whose borders offend you. This method does need you to have quite a bit of piety saved up, but hopefully you do if you've finished Holy Warring for the peninsula.

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I've had some luck with my chaplain accusing lords of heresy, which actually turns them into heretics. Forgot about that way, also works perfectly

Jarren said:

I've had some luck with my chaplain accusing lords of heresy, which actually turns them into heretics.

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I didn't even know you could do that. Free revocation of heretic titles sure would speed things along.

PAnZuRiEL said:

I didn't even know you could do that. Free revocation of heretic titles sure would speed things along.

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since it is kind of random which person they accuse, its not the best strategy. it would probably be faster to make yourself a heretic, then just revoke everybody's titles

Excommunicate, imprison and banish everyone in the realm. Literally everyone. Then reallocate titles to your heart's desire (use generate noble function with the gold earned by banishing and generated barons). The tyrant modifier only applies to people who were your subjects at the time, so you can just purge the aristocracy.

IMHO as the kingdom in Hispania are so little I had not given the title to anyone but retained for yourself, so revoke & banish and take the kingdoms for yourself (or destroy them).

Vassals make sense on the border of your Empire not in the core it...

For Spain you should keep south part of Hispain to yourself, and give kingdoms to your vassals, and wish them luck in attacking France. While you can expand into africa.

And why would you worry about a la spaghetti layout of your vassals? As long as they do not usurp King level titles they can own what ever they want. Providing you can beat them if they rebel.

I just did something similar to the Dukes of France. Starting as a Karling Count who plotted its way to the throne, I replaced every Duke in the kingdom with my family by the third generation, at the same time fixing all the Ducal borders.

Except I did it by imprisoning plotters and encouraging revolts and rebellions, not suppressing them. tl/dr You can use imprisonment to force a revolt. If the imprisonment succeeds, you just get a prisoner who will not revolt while in prison, and later, some ransom money when you let them out, but if it fails you get a free title revokation when you defeat the revolter.
If a large rebellion is imminent, go after as many righteous imprisoners in the plot, as the imprisoned vassals stay on your side.

how late in the game is it?

Personally I would have let one of the kingdoms drift over all of Iberia and then form the empire title after that was completed...

Gunnarr said:

Personally I would have let one of the kingdoms drift over all of Iberia and then form the empire title after that was completed...

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Same. If I don't create an single-Kingdom Empire, I make sure to create the de jure borders I want before creating the imperial title.

Go to low crown authority and it'll take care of itself.

I'm surprised nobody has suggested this yet: convert to heresy= revoke everyone's title for free! Then either stay a heresy and slaughter Europe to your hearts content with your new holy war cb or change back either by event or education of heir a generation later

Heresy... I never tried that one. That would be awesome! The penalties aren't as bad as being a super-tyrant for a decade. After that banishment spree I mentioned in my post above, I lived with a 710 tyranny penalty with my original subjects (nobody outside my realm cared though, nor did the vassals who were under 16 at the time... which was a nice surprise.) The heretic penalty is much smaller.

When I first started playing I was really OCD about de jure borders and hated seeing my vassals with random patchwork counties all over the place, but then I started reading about the historical holdings of various English noble titles. It seems that's pretty much how it was in real life. For example when Edward II gave the Earldom of Cornwall to Piers Gaveston according to Wikipedia:

These possessions consisted of most of Cornwall, as well as parts of Devonshire in the south-west, land in Berkshire and Oxfordshire centred on the honour of Wallingford, most of the eastern part of Lincolnshire, and the honour of Knaresborough in Yorkshire, with the territories that belonged to it. -

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And that's just an Earldom. The Dukes tend to be much worse.

Knowing this allowed me to relax and just let them inherit or conquest whatever they want, as long as they aren't getting large enough to threaten me I don't care.

I'd guess things were a bit better on the continent, but probably still a lot more chaotic than we imagine now.