The truly sad thing here is that CE only declared war on Eston because Coria threatened to break our alliance if we didn't.
Come on, that's a bit stretched, we did no such thing. How many times has Saeculo complained at Enri for the Empires heavy handedness? If we've ever threatened to become less friendly, it was because of the way you used to push us around. The reason I found the accusation that we were the CE's lapdogs so amusing is because we had considered lowering relations with the CE if they continued to push us around for that very reason, that they were treating us as such but we were not.
We are supporting the CE now because yes, we are their colony and yes we are their allies. We want to be loyal to our allies, and we've certainly done everything we can do for the CE, we couldn't do much more save being destroyed and our lands given to Hammarsett. Coria is still loyal to the CE and whilst it cannot aid it Militarily any longer, that doesn't mean it's not rooting for it, we are happy if it's a mutually respecting relationship.
At the end of the day, our friendship with the CE is important, but you've not treated us much different to the other realms who have problems with the way you've acted. Yeah you've not threatened us, but we've not appreciated being pushed around. Enri himself apologised for Famine to Saeculo at the start of this war. Even before this war, when we refused you all military access to BoM, Tara threatened to take Lothruin from us! That was one of the reasons you were able to then have access.
Coria is in one of the most strategic positions on Atamara, and we are constantly asked for military access and then threatened if we do not give it. Carelia invaded us last time to get to Eston. It was only when we threatened to declare War that they left our lands. But for many Corians it was an unofficial invasion.
In the League of the Eagle and amongst the Generals, Saeculo had been stating his desire to attack Darka rather than Eston. The only reason that this didn't happen was because we couldn't have gained access to Darka because Talerium wouldn't let us due to the border agreement (and they had a bigger issue with Eston at the time anyway) and we believed Eston would refuse us access to attack Darka. (Infact now that I think about it, military access to Darka was actually one of the requests we made to Eston when we asked for peace).
Then given the 'too much peace', their actions against us in terms of halting trade, threatening us with starvation and then offering enemies of our realm sanctuary, it's only understandable that we declared war on Eston as these were at least two genuine IC reasons for doing so. Plus we were told we had the full support of our allies, we didn't have to demand this support as was stated.
It wasn't a war of annihilation however as we were only ever going to take a single region from them, ask that their Judge be removed and that we be allowed military access to Darka. We didn't ever intend for it to last this long, much less try and destroy their realm.
It's ironic that at that time, the situation was reversed and Eston was the equivalent of Coria, it was just in the way between us and Darka and I believe the main war would have been between our allies and Darka (well that's not a certain, but it was possible).
It's even more interesting that given this situation, the peace terms we requested were almost identical to the peace terms they requested. It just shows that neither realm look at one another as hated enemies.
