IIRC, Malus left behind a (small) Duchy, including a stronghold. And the Duke was pretty damn pissed.
Wasn't it a single-region duchy? The most substantial portion of the realm, pretty every region that was worth anything, which was what, >90% of the realm swapped allegiance to a friendly realm. The dregs that were left behind were so crappy the realm was essentially non-functional. This was a realm-merger, by all but the barest technicality.
Terran leaves behind a city, because it is mechanically impossible not to now that I've fixed the bug, and explicitly plans to have D'Hara conquer that city.
A "merger of equals" is not required to trigger the no-realm-mergers rule. Only a friendly merger.
"Merger of equals" is
explicitly noted in the description:
"Realm mergers are illegal. Realms may surrender to another, including annihilation of their lands, but they may not merge as equal entities on friendly terms."
Terran has, effectively, surrendered to Terran. They have granted all their lands, and titles to them, to D'Hara, resulting in the destruction of Terran. This is not a merger. It's spitting in Phantaria's eye, and daring them to go to war with D'Hara to get them back. (And, honestly, I'd LMAO is, as soon as Luria Nova declares war on D'Hara, if Phantaria and the Faronites did declare war on D'Hara and took them back. They totally should call the bluff.)
This is planned between the rulers, it is not a surrender, and it is clearly a violation of the realm merger prohibition.
Alaster did not propose a merger. He said that when Terran couldn't defend their regions any more, D'Hara could have them. i.e. "When we've lost, and have no hope left, we'll acknowledge defeat, and what's left of our realm will be yours." Terran is, from what I understand, getting crushed. There's no way it can last against both Phantaria and the Farronites, and no one is going to jump in to save the day.
All we have, so far as I can see, is one IC letter from Pierre explaining, in his own words, what would happen, followed by lots of OOC arguing over what does and does not comprise a friendly merger. What we don't have is any of the other letters with the discussion between the two. I don't know how you can assert that this is a friendly merger pre-arranged between the rulers, with the intent of actually merging the two realms, without seeing any of the actual exchange of letters between them. If you are going to assert that the two of them pre-arranged a merger, with the intent fo actually being a friendly merger, should we have some actual proof that this was the case? Let's trot out the letters between Alaster and Pierre, and see what actually transpired. Because all we have is Pierre stating that once Terran is obviously and clearly defeated, the remaining regions will join D'Hara. Which, to me, is perfectly legit.
I'd find it OOC spiteful.
I find a lot of things that people do in-game to be OOC spiteful. Am I now allowed to file Magistrates cases against them?
And besides, the Solaria merge was found to be illegal. People were punished. So you CAN'T say it was legit. Or did you ignore that entire case?
The second half of the process was ruled against the rules. IIRC, the part of the process where Malus absconded with all but one or two regions, which probably comprised 99% of the realm's population, food production, and gold production, was not ruled illegal. Malus took everything that was truly Solaria and merged it into Luria Nova, leaving behind a technicality.
Problem: There was only one fight in this war, and Terran won it.
So then since you're losing the war, I'll expect to see the Farronite's surrendering to Terran any day now, right?
In any case, this friendly merger rule needs some serious revising. If any rule can be interpreted by so many experienced players, in such greatly different ways, then something is definitely wrong with this rule. How can we expect the playerbase to get it right, when we can't even agree on a basic interpretation ourselves? Maybe Scarlett is right, and instead of enforcing the rules, we've turned into a bunch of rules lawyering !@#$%^&s.
