On one hand it makes sense that medieval european social relations imply, well, medieval european social relations and it makes sense to use your novel (or your show) to examine those.
On the other I can relate to many people wanting to see women in medieval fantasy to be represented in some other way than constant misery porn.
In a lot of media there is a villain who kills a subordinate who messes up or delivers bad news or something. This subordinate is irrelevant to the story, the viewer is just supposed to see that the villain is bad or crazy.
I don't think writers want underlings to be vaporized randomly
I actually don't see how this is relevant to the conversation at all. What are you talking about?