Medals mean nothing. The game has gone for very large periods of time between new medal handouts. As such, they are concentrated in a few hands, and one's number of medals has more to do with playing where people have medals than one's worth or contributions.
Also, I'd like to add another example of how having power does not mean we can use it in any way: bans. You can't just ban people at random. It's against the rules. Not sure where it can be found anymore, I think it was on the ban help page.
The thing is, the rules and policies are incomplete by nature. They weren't all there when the game first opened. People had to rely a lot more on the social contract. Then people did stuff that was commonly agreed to be abusive, and rules were made ad hoc. With the years, the rules and policies grew lengthier.
Just because something was never done before doesn't make it okay. You are right that there would be no way to make game mechanics to prevent the kind of thing that happened. But that doesn't make it okay either. There is no way we can do game mechanics to prevent strategic secessions either, or to prevent realms from organizing infil attacks to harvest their own bounties, or to duel for sport. "Do not attempt to take over a religion with the sole intention of harming it" could very much be one of them too.
'cause I'm fine with people infiltrating religions and attempting to undermine it from within. Putting public enemies in the top rank and getting all of the elders and their supporters demoted and/or kicked out and reforming the whole structure and theology of a religion in a matter of an hour, however, I am not fine with.
