I think you have cause and effect mixed up with Luria.
Luria is not the most fun because it is rich and powerful.
Luria is the most powerful because it has been the most fun and engaging realm to be in for a long sustained period of time. The internal politics and culture created a realm that people enjoyed playing in. That retained nobles and helped ensure that if the military wasn't the strongest, it was at least always competitive. Also, Luria never worried about fighting realms outside its small area. It only ever stuck to its own business so travel times (until recently) have never been an issue.
The concept of Dwilight is that you should stick to your immediate area of influence.
Only now has Luria completely conquered its own sphere, and is now dealing with the pains of being a large realm with limited battles. It also finally has a stable government which promotes a much more unified realm. While this has strengthened the realm it has also started to see noble loss now. we'll see what the end result is eventually.
In some ways correct, but in others not so much. Luria has seen some noble loss, but that was from nobles leaving to join the northern realms. I would also point to the fact that Luria has a large number of nobles having more to do with the monster invasion than any inherent superiority. The nobles from the west saw a realm that had large amounts of land and gold. This meant plenty of room for knight and lordships, as well as moving up in the realm because of Luria's reputation as an internally unstable realm.
They didn't go to Morek Empire, which had even more room and gold, plus plenty of open lordships, for several reasons.
1) It's a theocracy of SA, something that the westerners aren't exactly keen on.
2) It's much, MUCH further away than Luria.
3) The leaders of Luria were much more welcoming.
