With the Chancellor, managing fiefs
You CAN give and swap and permute or whatsoever between your lords
Nothing will happen in the your relation balance
ONLY when you take possession of a new city (all applied)
if you don't go to chancellor to distribute the villages attached to it
then a bit after, village by village each time a pop up menu will be prompting request you to make a decision
From that menu, you see also a current review of all your lords name and their possessions per category (city, castle, village)
And whatever you choose, you will provoke the system to (and correctly) adjust the inter-relation between couple lords and yourself.
The way to get around with, is just after taking the city, go directly in the castle, talk to the chancellor, assign manually these villages before the prompting menu.
So, rewarding does absolutely nothing to the lords.