You both did.
I strongly disagree.
As far as RP goes, I find new characters to be the most interesting.
How does the second half of that sentence have anything to do with the first half? I have never seen any correlation between newness of character and level of interactivity in RPs.
Frankly, I really don't think you are the best qualified to judge that. You were one of the most prominent members of Enweil before the Fourth Invasion, and, as you say, you personally lost powerful characters to that death. You also, I would say, heavily identified yourself with Enweil as it existed during that period. This is a perfect recipe for bias.
I would also say that if Folcard hadn't been the ruler of Riombara when he was, there was a real chance that Enweil and Riombara could actually have repaired their relations. That means that the turnover that those deaths caused contributed to meaningful change within the realm.
Honestly, Enweil may not be the best example for this anyway, since it's a democracy. The best examples would be realms with long-standing elect-once rulerships and deeply entrenched powers behind the throne (dukes and such).
Guillaume got more powerful in Enweil than Nicolas did. I still had a ton more fun with Nicolas than I did with Guillaume, even if the latter even went so far as to form his own realm and personalize it as I wanted. The turnover wasn't generated by mortality. Handkor survived. The turnover happened because he left on his own, and because Guillaume accepted to give up to give the rest of the realm a chance. Had I wanted to, I could have stayed ruler in Enweil and assured its doom. I was ruler until the Jidington Armistice, after all, and I never stopped contact, and ennobled my advy there as soon as the war started. I am not tied to any particular era of Enweil, for I have played there since quite a while.
And really, elections are meaningless with figures like Handkor. The only times I (or anyone else) got elected ruler while he was there is when he either got wounded/captured at the right time, or when, at the end, he become less active and simply didn't run. A ton of realms have their own "Handkor", that they just re-elect over and over and over, no matter what.
And the "turnover" is really mostly a result of nobody caring enough anymore to campaign. Turnover by apathy, is that really what we seek? Had a chracter from an established family ran against Edriadsomething or other (cool dude, but I cannot remember the spelling) first time he campaigned, I doubt he would have won it. Now we have Valentine, which isn't really turnover either, he's been around for quite a while. Soon, both will have left. The rulers aren't getting replaced, they are just all giving up. The mortality totally destroyed the social dynamics of the realm, and the rest of the invasions destroyed the material strength of the realm, leaving it a hollow shell.
As for history and RP... New characters have yet to achieve anything. They have yet to interact with anyone. No accomplishments, no mistakes, no projects, no aspirations. Everything about them is determined solely by the player behind them, because there hasn't had any IC interactions to affect them. If I cared for stories people pulled out of nowhere, I'd go read a book. But I don't, instead I play a social game. New characters are purely the products of their creators, whereas old characters are the products of their IG environments.
