Huh, it would be interesting to get to know your side of the story then, as my character was the one that kicked off the whole series of events which eventually ended with your character stepping down. I'm not nearly as annoyed with Alara though, as the realms that were at war with each other starting out would have made for at least a relatively even fight. It was Perdan and friends jumping in that made things absurdly unbalanced.
There's a lot that goes on in ruler channel and personal missives that realms, and even councils, miss out on. If you think I said a lot with RP's and public posts, you have no idea how much discussion was going on with certain rulers and power-brokers I'd become close to. I had been spending at least 4-5 hours a day, every single day, sending missives to keep up with all the strings I was pulling (and being pulled by, eventually). It just got crazy, but if it had worked out we'd have achieved great things.
Not to steal your limelight but Robb Starfall did a pretty effective job of sowing chaos on his own, even without you getting thrown in the mix. Sucks because we had gotten pretty damn close and discussed practically everything on a daily basis, both IC and OOC. At one point I had secured a trade deal for them to feed GX at pennies on the bushel, as well as a soon-to-be-signed treaty allowing our soon-to-be priests direct and exclusive access to spread the Phoenix Cult in Alara, and slowly convincing certain key members to consider a full-on-merger with GX in the future.
My own damn fault for not being more of a King and less of a democrat. Robb did apologize once, saying that this conflict is not what he had wanted, but that he had to do what must be done or lose his crown, and I did and said the same, but I wasn't so sure after-the-fact that it wasn't bs. To be fair, he probably thought I was lying through my teeth too, so I guess I'll never know.
When you jumped in, and Dodger later lit his powderkeg, there wasn't much that could be done to alleviate the already stretched situation. You gave Robb the perfect excuse to distrust me and renege his promises, and Dodger just forced me to abdicate before I had a chance to set certain things into motion to avoid future issues down the road. It went from an Alara-GX future merger a-la-Riombara to threats of war in the drop of a dime.
From my perspective as Xerarch, Caligus started the entire !@#$show. Can't speak for anything that went on afterward, but I should have ignored Dodger's camp and kept moving forward with my negotiations. The second I listened to the GX-against-the-world faction and pulled out of negotiating alliances, it gave everyone the opportunity to gank us.
After all, you're either with us or against us. Not wanting to become allies is an instant, clear signal that you're a target, and anyone with a hint of common sense would take that as a premeditated declaration of war and start making friends to ambush you with.
From what I've been told from a few former rulers from Magnus' time, Selenia was no Magnus. All the favor and mood I'd curried quickly flew out the window due to Selenia's vastly different methods of diplomacy. Not that there's anything wrong with that, its just different is all. Some liked it, some didn't: hence losing Fallengard as allies, Garas going from someone Magnus liked deeply to an enemy of (some) Xavax, and Xavax now being allies to literally everyone who wanted to murder us when Magnus was Xerarch, not to mention us joining Sirion despite Selenia and Magnus having planned to wreck Sirion and usurp them as the top-dogs on the continent.
If things had gone as I had been working toward, we'd have united the south and burned the north to the ground. A true Imperium - before (purposely, once we got too strong) collapsing into feuding Greece-like city-states with similar-but-divergent Lurianesque versions of Xavax culture.
Instead, we're a northern satellite realm fighting the south. Funny how that works out.
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Was going to call the retreat after the RP. !@#$.