There's a clear issue at hand with controversy. When I was given the option to accept the position or not, I created a new save and within a small distance travels (the equivalent of going to Ismeralda Castle to Ismeralda (my castle), my controversy went from 0 to 59!! We weren’t EVEN at war! I reloaded my save and checked used the cheat to view the entire map and during that same time, after spanning the entire map, one thing happened. Some villagers from a distant town got attacked and captured by a group of sea raiders. I reload a third time, use a cheat to warp there and kill them off. I camp for awhile and let the game go and it went only up to 22 this time. I repeated this process over and over until by day 3 regardless of what I did (despite no fiefs being attacked), my controversy went over 50.
It doesn’t make sense. I reloaded a previous save (I run with 3 since the game has many bugs) and declined the marshal position.