The quotation marks are disingenuous. This isn't speculation, there is one confirmed both IC and OOC.
I think a point that I and others take issue with here is the description of the coalition as an alliance bloc. Our characters all had different reasons for wanting to fight Thalmarkin, the fact that everything lined up all at once does not, in any way, indicate that those realms would have ended up at peace with each other afterwards. There is a substantial segment of Obia'Syela that wants to fight the Vales and Nova again, as soon as is practical. Saoirse is very leery of the Sanguine Order, and conflict there is almost inevitable if she stays in power (which is by no means guaranteed). And that's just the stuff that I personally know about that could cause the whole thing to come tumbling down.
The fact that Thalmarkin gave reasons to so many realms, in my view, renders the argument about the alliance limitations moot. I think it would be extremely poor form to, for example, insult literally every other realm on the continent, and then go "nyah, only one alliance bloc gets to attack me!", which is obviously an extreme example but in this particular case, not all that far off from what happened. I recognize there is an ongoing disagreement about how to handle the intersection of IC justifications and OOC fun considerations, however.
I made an active effort to balance things. Yes, I was surprised that the other realms on the continent, as players, chose to look at a realm that had administrated its own balance and see that as a weakness to be exploited. I don't expect everyone to care about everyone else's experience, as nice as that would be. But I do expect rulers too.
This, to me, is a really big problem. Thalmarkins characters took actions, IC, that resulted in various situations. We heard after the fact that this was all part of an OOC plan to help balance out the fun of the continent. Which, even if true, was not discussed with people OOC. I've talked to a few people who play in Thalmarkin who had never heard of this idea. No one outside of Thalmarkin that I've ever talked to has indicated that they had any idea this was the plan.
So, some number of the players in Thalmarkin, which was not all the players, decided that for the good of the continent OOC they would take actions that impacted almost every other realm on the continent IC, never said why they were doing this except IC, and then were surprised when people did not respond their hidden OOC planning, and instead responded to the IC actions. To the outside perspective, this all looked like Thalmarkin's leadership had gone mad with power.
If you're going to take actions OOC for the fun of others, it's a good plan to tell those others what you're doing. As a for-instance, when Jenred was in charge of Arcaea after the Sunset Crusade finished, I similarly felt like we needed to stir some stuff up. So I talked with people OOC, made it clear why I was making the decisions I made, and when Jenred declared war on Zonasa over an old insult to his wife, everyone understood what was happening, and responded accordingly. I'm not the only one who has done this, to be clear, I've seen it happen before which is what inspired me to do it.
It's also a good plan to not go from handling everything in character to immediately attacking everyone OOC, insulting all of the
players involved, and demanding that they take action.
The number one problem with all of this, as far as I can tell from beginning to end, was a lack of player-to-player communication.
