I managed to get to over 128 turns playing as Araby by never reloading from autosave, nor using 'Continue Campaign' but reloading from other save slots.
Then i got a new character, who, because the city it had assigned him to had a full garrison, was placed outside it. There were enemy armies nearby. I had to save the game to do other stuff and when i reloaded later it immediately told me he had had a 'Heroic Death', but his unit remained on the campaign map with his face whited out. I moved them. Then the next army led by a captain i clicked on the game crashed and all my saves were screwed except some before battles, which crash as soon as the battle ends.
Ooh. Hm, yes, that's really odd. Might be another character names screwup of some kind, but I don't know. You said all your saves were screwed - you mean including much earlier ones from the campaign?
not tried all of them yet - and unfortunately can't check now as i uninstalled and re-installed to C:/RTW instead of Program Files. Sorry - should have thought to check them all - but certainly the furthest back one i tried before it - which was before a battle- re-loaded for the battle but then crashed to desktop as soon as the battle ended