Well, speaking as the General in question at the time I don't recall the way forward with the issue of Mansbridge being made clear by anyone that had more substance than "you can trust MI" which had, over years of war, repeatedly been proven not to be true and in any case was being said by Norland's former allies who had recently betrayed them to side with MI against Norland on the flimsiest of pretexts (in a Norlander's eyes a royal loses his status when he lowers himself to murdering nobles in their sleep and should be treated like any other common criminal).
MI had promised to return Mansbridge to Norland once relations improved but were vague about the terms and refused to clarify them before the treaty was signed. Many in Norland wanted to refuse to sign the treaty until that was rectified because they fully expected MI to renage on this deal but the then King signed anyway. Norland repeatedly tried to raise relations, even offering to feed MI's starving regions but were met by silence. As MI started to garrison Mansbride and allow their allies' troops to pass through it (against the terms of the peace treaty which forbade any military forces in the region) it looked like they indeed had no intention of honouring the treaty. Given their history of double-dealing and political treachery there was no reason to trust them to.
MI had failed to honour the treaty so Norland took back what had been promised.
MI's new allies then obligingly wiped Norland off the map for them, incidentally gaining much gold and land in the process.
Whatever else was known, believed or talked about outside of Norland this was all that Norlanders saw.
Sure, we could have waited and unspecified amount of time to see if MI might do an about-face and honour their treaty or, when the threat of war in the south faded, use Mansbridge as a staging post for an attack on Norland but standing idle in the face of treachery and threat because it was safer to do so was not Norland's nature. When the question of taking Mansbridge by force was raised the reply came back from all levels of Norland and that reply was "fight!".
I was about to cut your message short but I rather keep it all just to be sure I dont miss out on anything.
Norlanders must have been blind and deaf as the plan was not to have Mansbridge handed over to you but to let the treaty run out and then attack MI in full force making the northern part of MI to fall into Norlands hands once again, MI suspected that and thats why they did fill Mansbridge up with Militia. The time was specified in the treaty but Norland decided to break in and by doing so the guardians of the treaty had no options then to fulfil their duty. There were no backstabbing at all as the discussion in the rulers channel revealed all that happened prior to Norlands attack on MI.
Norland had failed to honour the treaty so the guardians of the treaty acted as promised.
I know for a fact that several Norlander knew what happened outside and what was talked about outside of Norland as they were informed by Sordnaz and the former ruler of Caergoth at the time.
None of the allies told Norland to trust Minas Ithil, it was the other way around as we all told Norland to muster for war.
Minas Ithil had no
new allies and BoM never became one as it was not in their interest.
There are no defence for Norlands actions at the time except that the common nobles might have been fooled by their ruler and that those who had facts was ignored, at the begining of the war BoM was dancing around in the north doing as little as possible while trying to negotiate with Norland but as that failed the war then turned even uglier and all because Norland broke the treaty.
If its true that the Norland council was unaware about the plans then we all were deceived as we were told many time to wait for the Althing to discuss things before the ruler came back to us when we made the plans to rebuild Norland into the former self.
