Cleaned up some more posts... Try to stay on topic.
I've never really understood why this rule (or say, the strategic secession rule) is so contentious. It's always seemed simple when looking at Tom's words and the context of every other rule. Is this done to circumvent mechanic limitations put in place for game balance? Hence why strategic secessions are prohibited to avoid realms seceding just to better prosecute the war with a capital that has quicker refit times to the front. Hence why merging is prohibited to avoid realms combining messaging interfaces, command structures, easier to send gold to each other, or whatever else to advantage a war effort (also, I recall Tom mentioning that no sovereign would willingly cede their authority to another just because it makes war easier to organize or what have you).
As I've said with strategic secessions before, this is one of those rules that is often accused, but quite rarely actually violates the rule.
And I have the same issues with interpreting this rule that way as I did with how the strategic secession rule was interpreted in our last case on the subject. If the only way to violate this rule is to explicitly say "I'm merging realms so that I can take advantage of game mechanics," then it's basically never going to be applicable and we might as well say "realm mergers are fine," because for all intents and purposes they would be. Furthermore, I recall that several of the characters involved in attempting to merge Summerdale and Thulsoma back in the day got lightning bolted for their efforts, and that case was similar. If that was an illegal realm merger and this isn't, I'd be curious to know why people think this is different.
