However, much of the political situations needed to make such a plan successful were there. They were just hidden under the surface. You had to be a part of the CE alliance in order to see where the cracks were. My character knew about them, and made plans to use them if Coria was ever threatened.
Which made them operationally useless and irrelevant to my decision-making.
King Kerwin was made aware of the cracks by my character which allowed him to trust Coria more. That's one of the reasons Coria and Eston grew closer together.
And since he never shared or (to my knowledge) acted on that information, see above.
As to your point about preconditions. All of the preconditions that were *necessary* were available at the time when Merlin contacted the leaders of the Northern Alliance. Not all of the preconditions that would have been *wanted* were available, but the necessary ones were. That of course fell through. But hey, I'm playing a happy duke of a strong city.
Again, by the time Merlin made his offer, Hammarsett and Coria were already back at war. You have criticized Hammarsett's actions on the basis of events that happened after the fact, and you are Monday morning quarterbacking with the benefit of information we didn't have at the time. Nothing you have said points to a better course for Hammarsett or the Northern Alliance as a whole at the time given the information that we had and given the self-imposed restraints on Eston and Darka.
