What I said is, indeed, Alanna's point of view. But that doesn't mean that it's misrepresenting Luria's motives or views. It was a little incomplete, I'll admit.
Skyn brought up several different issues, and put forward some conditions for joining the Empire. Overall, they didn't sound too unreasonable to Alanna (or me), especially from the Fissoan perspective. It was the "we don't trust the name of Luria" thing that really got her, which is why she advised Alice that it was probably not wise at this time to try to bring them into the Empire. Not because we didn't like them, or because they wouldn't bow before us, or anything like that: They didn't want to be Lurian, and the Lurian Empire, even if it were to (somewhat absurdly, in Alanna's view) have a different name, would be fundamentally and unchangeably Lurian.
As for Chénier's drivel...yeah, Fissoa is smaller than Luria. With representative voting, that means they'd have fewer votes than LN in the hypothetical Imperial Council. Whodathunkit. What a shocker.
And...yeah, fighting a long-distance war is hard, both in terms of logistics and in terms of morale. It's not exactly a secret that Luria has been wanting to fight D'Hara since, well, forever. We were still discussing remaining military allies of Fissoa and sending a significant part of our armies to aid them against Falkirk. Until Skynarbau got insulting and rude.
And, finally, frankly, no, Luria doesn't care if Fissoa dies, at least not for Fissoa's sake. For most of our shared history, they have been a thorn in our side, and now they've got the same ruler they had before who was a major part of continuing the mutual distrust and hostility.
Why the hell should Luria care about them if he's just going to make snide jabs about "Alanna's influence" and plot against us even while negotiations about Fissoa joining the Empire are ongoing?
