The devs said: had this kind of thing been done with priests, then something would be done about that too. It'd still have been abuse in the devs' eyes.
That said, I completely disagree that it'd have been just as easy with priests. Because priests take a noble slot, and those realms NEED those noble slots for troop leaders that defend the realm from the hordes. Turn all of those nobles into priests, and the realms would lose a bunch of regions.
Also, priests, unlike adventurers, aren't invisible.
And finally, pretty much everyone in BK has said that they'd have been pretty much fine with it had it been priests or other nobles, anyways. The most objectionable part was always the use of adventurers.
