I'm with Eirikr on this. Boring realms are a breeding ground for spies. Spies are just nobles looking to earn favour outside their realm, as they fail to get it inside.
I'm sorry, Lorgan, but that's simply not true. In the several cases of very successful IC spying that I've seen, the characters that were doing the spying specifically came to the realm to perform IC spying. It has nothing to do with a boring realm, or earning favor, or anything else like that. (It usually happens in the most active realms, since they're the ones that have the most to spy on.) It's characters that are in the realm for no other reason than to pass on the plans/orders/etc. to some other realm. They're not spies that are locally produced through boredom or discontent.
Of course some people thrive on spying or are driven to it by IC actions and don't need a boring and distrustful realm to turn spy, but those people are rare, and negligible, or identifiable.
Rare? Yes. But the damage they cause has an impact that far outweighs their frequency.
Negligible? Hardly. Not when the enemy knows every order that you give to the army, within minutes of you sending it. Or when the enemy knows all of your plans.
Identifiable? Only if they're idiots. Even a half-intelligent spy in BattleMaster is undetectable without either spies of your own, or plain old dumb luck.
