Cleaned up some more posts... Try to stay on topic.
And I have the same issues with interpreting this rule that way as I did with how the strategic secession rule was interpreted in our last case on the subject. If the only way to violate this rule is to explicitly say "I'm merging realms so that I can take advantage of game mechanics," then it's basically never going to be applicable and we might as well say "realm mergers are fine," because for all intents and purposes they would be. Furthermore, I recall that several of the characters involved in attempting to merge Summerdale and Thulsoma back in the day got lightning bolted for their efforts, and that case was similar. If that was an illegal realm merger and this isn't, I'd be curious to know why people think this is different.
If you are considering zapping players in a dying realm who are trying to keep the game fun admist game-wide declining populations then I think you need to seriously reconsider your policies. I foresee this sort of case becoming more common as the game continues to lose players, banning your existing and loyal player base seems counter-intuitive. This is a holdover rule from another time in this game's life. It is also extremely obscure and poorly worded. Realms can never merge as equal entities, and if they can it is not applicable here. Asylon maintains its governmental system, personnel (especially in regards to our King), name, capital, distinct history, distinct culture and overwhelming player amount. Further, Asylon unilaterally culled out FR nobles that it deemed politically harmful, explicitly demonstrating its overwhelming advantage in the duchy change. And that is considering the fact that you are ignoring that FR still exists in GF and might be able to exist indefinitely and perhaps even expand with the new addition of sea travel.
Your post is extremely troubling. In character wise I'm not sure what the problem is, it isn't like nation states in the past never conglomerated together. It seems like you want to bring down the hammer just because you don't like the way the rule has been applied or not, and not for mechanical or roleplaying atmosphere reasons. A dying realm can takes months to be finished off naturally, and I imagine that natural attrition is extremely boring for those involved. In this case a Duchess decided to proactively change her duchy in a way that made sense in character and in line with explicit or implicit political strife in her realm. The fact is that strategically this does not help our realm in our war, we now find ourselves in a food shortage after accepting the duchy change, further none of the regions would allow us to change the capital to a more strategic position. Finally, it lowers our population density per region.
I do not want to clutter this post, however I feel that the overwhelming amount of magistrates on the other side of this conflict puts Asylon and former Farronites at a severe disadvantage.
