The Thulsoma/Summerdale merger was that the Queen or king got lightning bolted for a couple of days and we were told not to try a merger. Which we did anyways by abandoning Thulsoma inthe end but never tried to recover the old regions because the Summerdale nobles were extremely paranoid of SA nobles in their realm, which Thulsoma was so they didnt want to actually see it succeed, even though it would have been beneficial. After they combined Averoth was to join ad we would have been a large force in the north. It was my idea to found a federated united kingdom under the Summerdaliam crown with three kings in revolving leadership etc. it would have been cool and we could have offered a good bit of strength in that region. What happened instead was fragmenting and little wars and the Thulsomans left to Asylon where we thrived.
This is the incident I remember, and it sounds like the bolt came down before anyone even tried anything, just based on the idea being discussed. But again, curious as to how that's different from this case - it doesn't seem to me like the proposed Thulsoma-Summerdale-Averoth merger was about exploiting game mechanics any more than the current case is, which calls into question that narrow interpretation of the rule and would seem to place more emphasis on the idea that realm mergers between equals are not permitted for other reasons (game balance? promoting conflict? keeping with Tom's interpretation of medieval governments?).
There are arguments to be made that interpreting this rule too narrowly will encourage more virtual mergers like this one and lead to consolidation of smaller realms into bigger ones, something that I am certain Tom would not care for since it replaces expansion by conquest and limits conflict. There are also arguments that this sort of merger should be permitted anyway in an era of a shrinking player base, as Graeth is arguing, but that would definitely be a departure from current practice.
