I would disagree and rather say a foolish ruler who let himself be manipulated against his council's explicit wishes.
The king going against the express wishes of his entire council? Sounds like internal strife to me.
The apathy part has more to do with the final end of the last remnants of what used to be Springdale following it's switch of allegiance to Morek. For quite a while they operated as an autonomous duchy within Morel. They even had their own religion, The Seven, which operated in the Springdale duchy. (I tried to convince Morek to wipe it out, but they declined to take my advice.) Eventually all the old Springdale supporters, and The Seven, just kind of faded away.
If a kid goes and shoves around a bully and gets a beating for it, you kinda feel pity for him but feel he deserved it in a way. When a kid shoves around a bunch of bullies and all of them give him the beating of his life, you'd judge the gang of bullies a lot harsher than you would have a lone bully. Imo, at least.
Your analogy is flawed at the very core. Thulsoma wasn't some defenseless little 12 year old kicking the 18 year old in the shins and sticking out his tongue. Thulsoma would have been a good fight for either Libero or Xinhai individually. Terrain, distance, monsters on Xinhai's southern border, the fortifications, etc., all combined to keep it from being a stand-up fight. And as it turned out, Libero couldn't take Thulsoma. They tried, but were unable to make headway. That's how Xinhai got involved. The two of them managed to push Thulsoma all the way back to the Keep, but couldn't break past the insane armies that Thulsoma could generate with all the gold exploits that were being used. Which is how, eventually, Astrum got involved.
The fact of the matter is that the force applied to Thulsoma was exactly the force that was needed to wipe it out.
It took all three realms to break Storm's Keep.
This is what the Thulsoma story felt like. Sure, they kinda asked for it. But ganging up so badly on such a tiny realm? I can't see how anyone would not shake their heads at this.
Because the scenario you describe is not what happened.
