At this point I don't even bother using companions anymore because I waste 20% of my gameplay time finding them if I take silly fights and get captured (which is fun). Companions aren't worth using with death on anyways.
In this run I'm doing a maximum choppage run, so I want heirs. I'm assuming at some point I get captured and chopped back.
The death & life being combined since a few patches was a bad move(I feel others may disagree), and as soon as I'll dabble with mods - read when its retail, thats the first thing I'll mod(ideally they would remove it back to how it was, where it was seperated, or give us a 2 choice toggle for it, the death-rate is "too high" atm, should be some "magic" that makes the mortal wound have a higher chance of flipping to wounded instead.)(This also works badly for some enemies as I've actually killed of clans in 1 battle(they had kids in the clan alive but no adults, so thus it got destroyed..)
That said, what I do with the companions is I do recruit full party of them, but I just leave them in different towns that our faction control, they win competitons, skill up that way, they improve relations with npc's, be it clans or ppl who I then can recruit higher tier soldiers from.
They also get abit skills in Charm from it so that sort of help abit as being a Steward perhaps to some limited degree.
When I need a steward of a faction-culture call it what you want, I already got one of "ok" skills to do the job.
I also have 3 other that I let lead parties, but I rarely field them in my army during wartime(which is basically 99% of the time, dial down the constant war focus will you, make it more like warband where there was truces that was limited by time etc, so you dont get peace, then the next day or so they declare war again(dont feel right).
In peace I do have'em in my army since its free to form + I then skill up the leadership abit faster wtih them in it(they need to buff the skillgain alot though for leadership, its so slow if you arent leading armies so slow).
But yah not only do haveing heirs being cool, but its actually quite good they are once you get'em all grown up(I have games where they are now leading armies and stuff, looong game)(conquered the whole world before they get old..)(read why there should be more peace aswell imo, so there is wars to be fougth for 2nd generation aswell, otherwize its kind of pointless to have it there in a sense)
