As I said on the first page, I'm the complainer here, so you should know where I stand. But I do believe that the single biggest "rules lawyering" here is from the people who say that this constitutes a "surrender". A "surrender" is, in practical terms, a concession (territorial, for example) of some sort made by party A to party B to end a conflict where party B has an advantage. It is not a concession made by party A to a neutral party C for that purpose.
And as to anyone who is still using the "it's just two lords acting on their own will" argument, read the letters again - they indicate an explicit agreement on the part of the rulers with the intent of joining the entire realm into D'Hara, and it just so happens that there are only two regions where that can be done "with the push of a button".
Speaking of which, there's the "mechanical technicality" argument that says "Well, D'Hara still has to capture one region to completely envelop Terran", which seem to seek precedent from when the capital of a realm could be ceded without a takeover. If we follow that definition, then "realm mergers" were made completely impossible after the Kabrinskia case (jeez, dustole's got a real history with these, huh?).
It's the intent that matters here, though - the letters concede that D'Hara will have to take over Chateau Saffalore manually, and that they intend to do so. Just because you can't combine realms at the push of a button any more does not mean that the intent of combining them is unimportant. I'm not a magistrate, but I would venture to say that the most important part of determining a "merger" is not the means by which it is accomplished, but whether the two realms agreed to it beforehand.
