1. Taking incorporate Barca and D'Hara land was, in fact, Shino's idea. And, if it wasn't his idea, he was the first person to say it in the Senate(and often and loudly I might add). AND neither Kale nor Hireshmont seemed to like the idea as I recall. I believe one of them referred to Shino as a backstabber and lowly. Can't remember which.
2. We didn't try to severely damage Aurvandil, Aurvandil tried to beat the !@#$ out of Barca and then we decided to jump in(more like we had to given 'moot rules). You could make an argument that we didn't but we all knew that, in the long run, they were gonna keep pummeling their neighbors, and so we decided to band together.
3. We began a war over our own territory with Kabrinskia, and in that war we sought to take no land, just defend the land that was ours, in other words, keep a pre-war status quo. Whether I liked the war or not is besides the question, the Kabrinskian war literally reeks of status quo.
4. Reforged relationships with the Astrocracies to go back to the pre-war status quo.
5. The Luria thing was the one thing that can be said that was outside the realm of the normal. Claps and hearty congratulations for that.
1. Taking Thysan is not really a radical change on any meaningful timescale; Thysan was a long-time holding of Terran until we gave it to Barca. Paisland is fairly radical, but, still. Sure, Shino advocated it: and failed. If it happens, it won't be because he advocated it: it's because leaders in Barca and D'hara asked Hireshmont to do it. The correlation between your opinions and reality does not necessary mean you caused it.
2. You say this with your grand knowledge. Because obviously there was never any plan to attack Aurvandil. Surely not. Surely Hireshmont hadn't been trying to gradually win the respect and support of the entire continent. Surely Hireshmont didn't just make a highly politicized conversion under the auspices of the prophet himself. Surely Terran didn't just succeed in simultaneously being the first realm to ever launch aggression against Astrocracies and win. Surely that wasn't a ploy to win their respect and try to destabilize Allison, nullifying the northern threat. Surely solidifying the alliance with Asylon wasn't part of that plan (it was, obviously: but Glaumring and his Aurvandil-love-affair sabotaged that pretty well). Surely the next part of the plan wasn't to buff up relations with Astrum, Corsanctum, and Morek. Surely we weren't already getting friendlier with the Lurias. Surely Hireshmont hasn't been hawking against Aurvandil since long before the war with Kabrinskia.
Oh wait, all of that is actually the case. Aurvandil's attack hastened a war we all knew was coming. You are entirely ignorant of any of the history that's actually behind the present war and the diplomatic preparations for it; you cannot presume to be able to state what it's about. If it was about saving Barca, we'd be done: Barca was going to get terms. We pressured Barca into abandoning those negotiations because we believed we had Lurian support, and because none of us saw the Long Winter coming.
3. Again, you are entirely ignorant of why we fought Kabrinskia. Sure, the public cassus belli was about sovereignty and all that. But ultimately we did it to get some field training with Barca, flex some muscle, destabilize Kabrinskia and delegitimize Allison (though we didn't think we'd be able to remove her totally; that was a lucky break), and strengthen our ties to Asylon. The idea was that with the north stabilized and the Astroist realms respecting both our warmaking capabilities and our diplomacy, realms like Morek and Astrum would hop on board. Crucially, that's not an impossibility, even now. Unfortunately, Glaumring's catastrophic bungling sabotaged much of this plan, and Aurvandil's pre-emptive strike crippled us. Everything depended on Lurian involvement at that point... and then they betrayed us. It was a neatly stacked house of cards that was nearly complete... when it came tumbling down to the tune of moans of starvation.
4. Oh yeah, because, status quo, Astrocracies were offering us military aid in wars. Not. Again, you're exceptionally near-sighted in these assertions: Terran's relationships did not return to "status quo antebellum." Our war with Kabrinskia won us many new friends throughout Astroism and made those relationships arguably stronger than before.
5. Well thanks, but you're not quite imaginative enough if you think "the Luria thing" was an isolated incident.
Terran's golden oldies are where they are for a reason: we're all playing a long game. Before Aurvandil, the long-game was "Get the Moot big enough to bully Madina, contain the Zuma, and keep our periphery cowed." After Aurvandil got pesky, the long-game became "Get the Moot stable enough and with good enough allies to remove the Aurvandi threat."
Finally, in a realm where the majority of the lords are not only new characters but new players in BM, I think it's hard to make a case we're locked in some kind of "old guard" situation. Hireshmont is in his fourth term of office (I think). That's 12 months. There are scores of rulers in BM with longer tenures than that; at least a half-dozen in Dwilight alone.
