Yea, but then again: would Madina have been a friend at the end of the day?
Madina had griefed us for too long. Yes, we may have Aurvandil to worry about now, but at least we got closure about Madninian "claims" to what was then our capital. The idea wasn't that Aurvandil would be our friend forever, but that we'd take care of them in due time as well.
Whether people wanted it or not, your ruler, until VERY late in the conflict (like, until you were obviously doomed and beyond saving to everyone's eyes but your own) refused to promise not to ever let such a war erupt again. There might not have been any plans, but he refused to curtail the "rights" of his nobles to "uphold their claims", and that this was not a promise a Madinian ruler could legally make. Which honestly quite undermined the later promise and pissed off some D'Harans more than anything.
And as I said above, the idea was never that Aurvandil would never betray us. We were just sick of Madina, and did not consider that Aurvandil or Madina were our sole options for who would reside to our South.
Oh I don't disagree - the format for Madinan Council of Lords was a pain to deal with IC. Vallyn himself saw more value in D'Hara as a good trading partner (we needed to send all that food somewhere), but convincing some of the Lords of that matter was almost a dead end. Especially considering the established RP's on the importance of the book of claims. Really as Doge I was more interested in securing D'Hara and Terran as allies but the long standing animosity was obviously an issue - plus the fact you wanted food prices at a certain level and the Lord who actually *controlled* that food. . . would not change his stance. Again - in-fighting in Madina was three quarters of our fun (and really, caused its demise unfortunately).
Major issue with being the Doge (or Lord Admiral) was that almost *all* the political power in Madina resided with the Council of Lords, the Doge was the head of the Council but had no authority to force something onto the Lords as they were all "equals". Awesome for RP and keeping things active in the Realm - a nightmare to deal with when trying to convince one Lord to do something he didn't want to (or more so, needed to be convince IC why his stubborn character should).
Oh I know - OOC I think it was a devil you know vs devil you don't option. For D'Hara there was no incentive to go either way and Madina failed to unify and provide a concrete reason for their long-time foe to help them. Really expecting you to come help us *would* be unreasonable since Madina for a long time saw D'Hara as our primary foe (I mean really, you were the only people we could reasonably go after who weren't Fissoans).
I think the war was great fun ^.^ And as lead to this war, which is good times as well. Vallyn. . .he might be a little angry with Aurvandil though
