I'm not trying to claim it is acceptable or not. I'm just commenting about the time period used for examples.
As for the mercenary thing, I'm fairly certain that Tom has said in the past that the noble-led mercenary thing is not acceptable, and he has vetoed all attempts to allow such a thing to be easier or officially implemented. There's no way I'm going to be able to find a quote, so I'm going to stay out of the debate on this topic.
