Have not read all the details.
But I did see NoblesseChevalier claim he told Barca what was wrong.
That's either an outright OOC lie, or the Barcan characters are all exceptionally secretive. Consider the fact that, to this day, no member of the Moot has ever gone on record in any sense documenting having ever received any message from any authority in Aurvandil identifying a definition of "corruption" or any method to resolve it.
Let's consider the situation here.
3 nobles with family histories very, very similar to many nobles in Aurvandil all show up in Barca. They all know each other. They never participate in realm politics except to make similar complaints about military matters. They demand to have their own army, and support each other in elections. They have pro-Aurvandil politics to a strangely high degree.
Then when there is a political attempt to reduce their influence ("corruption" or "politics," eye of the beholder), they all change their allegiance to Aurvandil, simultaneous with Aurvandil reneging on the treaty that allowed it to beat Madina and hold Evanburg undisturbed despite Barca's claim and the Moot's support of that claim.
Mendicant then states that he will not return the regions or discipline the nobles involved because Barca is corrupt. When asked to specify the corruption, the only example he gives is that some nobles set bounties on other nobles (which is a pretty low bar for corruption in BM if you ask me). When asked what he proposes to be done about it, he offers no answer. When asked why he gives no answer, he states that Barca is beneath him. Why is Barca beneath him? Because he's the supreme sovereign or whatever.
And as supreme sovereign (Moot's internal reasoning here, which, when presented to Mendicant ICly, he took offense at and, instead of responding to the argument, quibbled over perceived effrontery), Mendicant redrew maps to redefine established geography to include those lands as part of his fundamentally sovereign lands. He had already announced the intention to form a realm in Madina (another monarchy).
Then, while the issue was growing, he shows up and crushes Barca with a giant army rather out of the blue, offending their republican institutions while he's at it. He continues to demand changes but won't say what. Meanwhile, he refuses to conduct collective negotiations with the Moot, and actively and concretely attempts to engineer separate peaces with different Moot realms.
In sum:
Our logic was clear. We see a monarch with a repeated pattern of expansionism and a worldview fundamentally incompatible with ours. We see rampant disrespect of claims and treaty law, the bedrocks of our system. We see a military force which knows no respect for diplomacy. We see obscure demands made and massive punishment when they are not met. We see a rhetoric of generosity combined with a massive display of force. We see active efforts which amount to the sowing of dissension among Moot realms.
In sum, it looks pretty darn like a massive plot to divide and conquer the Moot, replacing the Republican southwest with a Monarchist southwest (see: Provincia di Fiorenza). Maybe we were wrong– that's possible. I'm just saying that given the facts as they were, our logic was not faulty– it made quite a bit of sense (and, I think, still does).
Maybe our reasoning was wrong, that's entirely possible. But
