Whatever.
The merger failed anyway. Like, epically failed, flopped on its face. So I don't care about the verdict, even though I think it's tremendous rules lawyering to say one can "surrender to a third party".
As Anaris stated, although at the time against the case:
My understanding of the realm merger rule is that it is intended to prevent a king from voluntarily giving up not only his kingship but his domain, which is not something a King should do.
(This applies equally to other titles of ruler.)
Which is precisely why surrendering to a third party works. While blatant things like a realm declaring war on another, and almost nothing happens in the war but they "surrender" to a third party would not be fine as its just abusing it, surrendering to a third party makes sense based on the reasoning of this rule because a king keeps more or equal power surrendering to a third party then if he were to surrender to the enemy.
Disclaimer: Its been awhile since the end of the case and I didn't reread it all or even the paragraph part of the verdict so my reasoning could be off from the official reasoning, which I will check at a later time.
