Or, maybe, the problem isn't that the ruling was wrong, but that your interpretation of the rule is wrong? In fact, I think it must be, because you're trying to claim that it's a simple rule. It is anything but a simple rule, and that's part of the problem. In fact, you're still saying that the rule is "no realm mergers", when it most emphatically is NOT "no realm mergers". Precedent demonstrates, in a few cases, that this is not the case.
Here's another one: Wasn't it IVF at the end of the fifth invasion when all the lords up and switched to Enweil? (This was facilitated by the allegiance change bug, but as we've seen before, that has no bearing on the case.) Tom's reply about it: "They didn't really have a choice, as they are about to lose their only city. What else could they have done?" I believe they did then lose that city a turn or two later.
I have no problem with any number of lords changing allegiance. That's not what happened in Terran.
The no mergers rule is not intended to force people to play out a losing war to the last dregs. It is intended to prevent two otherwise viable, healthy realms from joining together to create a larger entity in which both of the two former realms will participate.
I'm not asking you to make that decision. The rule and the "spirit of the rule" is asking it. But you cannot abdicate your responsibility to enforce it because you think that it's a can of worms, or that the resulting decision will be one you don't like.
No, your interpretation of the rule is asking for it. What the rule demands is, in fact, what the Magistrates say it demands (or rather, what Tom allows us to say it demands). I am saying what I think it demands. Other Magistrates are free to disagree, and probably will. If we are allowed by Tom to say that the meaning of the rule is "Pigs have wings," then that is in fact the meaning of the rule (though of course that would be insane).
What I am suggesting is that Magistrates should absolutely make prudential considerations in our rulings. We've now had four realm merger cases: more than any other subject besides maybe clanning. We have an obligation to stop leaving this rule so ambiguous because it's apparently one of the most commonly-tested rules. I for one am not okay with the Magistrates voting to endorse readings of the rules that invite new and even more ambiguous, for lack of a better word, "litigation."
