The Baron & Baroness are the heart and soul of a barony. With any luck, 
if they are good, just, people then the barony is happy. If they are 
scheming, jealous, disorganized, or mean people, than the barony becomes 
an unpleasant place to be -- by varying degrees. So, I think it's 
impossible to limit the influence and the impact of the baron and 
baroness to "just the medieval bits". I think the important thing is 
knowing where to let the existing mechanisms do their job. We have a 
seneschal for a reason, just as we have a knight marshall, an exchequer, 
a chronicler, autocrats, a head of the cook's guild, etc. It's not the 
baron and baroness' job to do everything -- just to try and do the job 
they were elected to do as best they can.
