We survived and I'd say it worked out -quite- well for us. While Thalmarkin was begging us for land and food. :p
It worked out good for us too.
Soon we'll blow away the blight and we'll become as giant as Ar Agyr at it's height. We'd just need Vatrona...
Actually the only ones for who it didn't work out well are Fronen and Enweil.
But I wouldn't call 30 gold/100 bushels begging exactly. It's not expensive but it's not exactly cheap either. And keep in mind that we were paying that price while having been driven back to only our capital /and/ still maintaining 17,000 CS on that city alone, 10,000 of that mobile. Whenever the undead were away for a while, our army would retake a few of our regions. It really was an epic fight for survival and principles. We would've lost it if it wasn't for the Archons, that's very true but for one: the whole continent would probably have lost the fight if it wasn't for the Archons and two: we came out of it stronger, we waited our time then expanded and replaced the many, many good RCs we lost with captured better ones from Vore.
And then there were also the semi-regular shipments from Sint of 100 gold/1000 bushels. That is where the diplomatic outlook of the post invasion era was made. OG and Sint scored good points with us, Fronen scored bad points, so we went with Sint and OG after the invasion.
Anyway, as for active nobles... dunno... a whole bunch. We've got pretty damn good movement rates I hear so I assume we're doing ok there.