We know he intended to secede with the full knowledge that a strategic advantage would result from his action. No part of this was a surprise to him or a random occurrence. You guys keep hemming and hawing about the player's intent as if there could be any doubt about it.
You might also look up the definition of false analogy. Getting injured in a car accident is merely a risk that you try to avoid. The strategic advantage here is a foreseeable consequence of seceding and a relative certainty. But if you're driving your car and you see someone standing in the middle of the road, and you don't make any attempt to avoid him, then you intended to run him over. If you point a loaded gun at someone and pull the trigger, then you intended to shoot him. You're not excused just because the bullet passed through him and hit a deer.
Which is it. First we have people claiming we can't POSSIBLY know his intent. Now we have the revelation that the intent is obvious. It is reasonable to believe he understands the possible strategic advantage his actions could provide. Considering that this has been many times in the past, for example Fontan spun off SOA in the middle of the war against Old Rancagua and Ubent captured the rogue city of Isadril and turned it into the realm of Fallangard, creating a realm that could fight against Itorunt leaving Ubent free to focus on Sirion instead, it might be reasonable to assume that things are not as simple as you present.
By introducing the question of intent, the rule is made practically unenforceable and its reason for existence compromised. It essentially makes it so that something that is apparently considered to be objectively unfair (generating a wartime advantage through secession) is only considered a violation of the rule against it if someone is foolish enough to admit that what they did was purely to generate that advantage and for no other reason. In other words, it states that the very same action is unfair if done for one specific reason but not unfair if done for any other reason at all, which is both a logical contradiction and utterly nonsensical. Either it's not fair or there's nothing wrong with it; it can't be both.
This is false. Intent is a HARD thing to deal with I grant you. But we often "prove" intent in the real world without admission from the suspected guilty party. Just like in real life anything to do with intent is also likely to involve controversy. For instance the recent Terran-D\'Hara Realm Merger case hinged on intent. The magistrates had to decide if it was a friendly merger, or if the merger was a "surrender", though they did not surrender to the force arrayed against them. Yet in a previous case the magistrates declared
"Realm mergers are only allowed if all its regions are taken over through war. This would be the meaning of 'no friendly realm mergers allowed'."
It was decided that although the regions were not "taken over" through war, the intention was basically similar, it was a surrender.
