Well, now we've got the two versions of the story. One of them, short on details and concise; the other one... Noblesse, be nice and don't talk just for once directly from Mendicant's mouth, for non English-speakers sake, would you?
Oh well the return of the regions and the tribute was heavily implied when Mendicant made it clear he would give Barca whatever they wanted in reason to get a peace they're happy about and redresses the damage inflicted upon their regions and their honour in war. And Aurvandil loves to flaunt its gold and how better than by being generous to a poor third world realm like Barca? I know for certain Mendicant mentioned these specifically to one or two people, I can't remember who however. But it was considered that we insisted upon rebuilding their fortifications personally until we decided that would have been too patronising.
Dear... that really touched me. How in the world such altruistic and philanthropist person becomes an absolute monarch? That's indeed a great deed and explains the nature of your character's name. In fact, maybe you should call him Mendiant ("Beggar" in French) as it's clear you find virtue in spreading gold for "poor third world realms". Real world would be a better place if there would be more Aurvandils and Mendicants around.
Yes, well we were happy to give up the regions in a way, to give them away is to deny their worth and to thus, extol the value of our own lands. That is until food production got changed and most of our regions became god awful producers of barely anything except for the northern marches (Gallaecia, Kydonia and Celtiberia).
And we had drawn those regions to the map, because it looked better geographically, it sort of... completed the peninsula if you look at it.
So that means you... would have given them back or not? If your own regions were unable to feed the "Grandiose Armée", it would be inconvenient to return them to their original owners I guess. Was it the case? Hmm, it's curious how the worth of some regions can change so drastically. But I agree with you, the skilled Aurvandilian cartographers showed everyone in Dwilight a very interesting vision of its geography. How did you manage to teach them how to use Paint so nicely?
We never wanted Barca to become a monarchy, or leave the Moot and I'm sure Mendicant never even implied or suggested anything to give that impression. But I imagine peoples imaginations run wild in the Moot. What we wanted was for Barca to do something about the corruption in their Republic, and a corrupt republic has no right to become a Monarchy in Mendicant's eyes, it would sully Monarchism.
I considered asking Barca to become a vassal state, but we considered it to be an insult to Aurvandil. Aurvandil fights alone and needs no vassal states, anything less implies a weakness, to say we need a realm to support us is to imply we need help and that would shame us.
So, apart from the renewed value of the marches in the Mendicontinent, the other condition was for Barca to solve the corruption issues? And that is because... you dislike corruption wherever it comes up? Moreover, maybe to be completely accurate to your comment about vassals and self-sufficiency, we shouldn't see any green sign in Aurvandil diplomatic relations. Oh well, maybe you are in peace with other realms just to spread generosity all over Dwilight.
I have to say that I can't decide between both opinions yet. Sincerely, as Vellos said, both of the stories have got huge holes. I'd really like to know a little bit more about the corruption in Barca in that times, if someone could kindly tell me more about it. Thanks in advance.
