Loyalty in provinces with multiple Law holders

[Nakraal]

According to the rulebook A regent can ignore a -1 loyalty grade if he holds half the law in his province. What about other regents with Law in this province? Shouldn't they be able to provoke loyalty problems?

If a hostile Law holder controls half Law in a province he can in turn remove a +1 grade for the regent (eg the regent has a successful agitate action but the hostile law holder "erases " its +1 loyalty effect). But shouldn't a hostile law holder be able to disrupt the regent's ability to soften negative loyalty grades? Or shouldn't a hostile law holder who controls less than half the law be able to cause problems?

In my current campaign my player is the Baron of Diemed. In the province of Ciliene (6/0) he holds 4 Law, while Avan holds 2 Law.

For example, according to the rules, Diem can collect moderate taxes (-1 Loyalty) and his law is enough (4 out of 6 max) to ignore the -1. At the same time Avan can't affect anything with his 2/6 Law in the province. Or can he? My feeling is that if Avan opposes Diem then Diem's Law should count like a 2 level law for loyalty purposes.

If Law in Ciliene was 3 for Diem and 3 for Avan, and Diem collected moderate taxes for a -1 loyalty, according to the rules Diem can ignore the penalty cause he has half the Law, but Avan can't do anything, because all he can do is either ignore or not this -1 grade.

TL;DR: Shouldn't a regent's law holdings subtract hostile law holdings when trying to determine their effectiveness on loyalty on a province?

[AndrewTall]

I would say that the rule should be:

For provinces with multiple law holders, the law holder may stack any allied law holdings with their own and must reduce any hostile law holdings to determine their effective law holding level for loyalty purposes.

In your example I suspect that Avan would agree with Diem to effectively stack their law holdings (the nobility vs. the peasants was at least as common a contest as noble A vs noble B) except during times of poor relationships as both regents benefit from keeping the populace calm in times of peace.

With a proviso of:
Where a province holds two separate populations, each population group is deemed to be in a different province.

For example if a province has population 2, 1 goblin and 1 sidhe, then the goblin law holder and the sidhe law holder are each treated as having a holding of 1 in a population 1 province.

The latter issue is probably done best for book-keeping by tracking the province as 2 separate provinces, albeit with the maximum population cap for the province split between the two.

TL:DR: I agree.

[Nakraal]

Ja, thats almost exactly what I had in mind. With the exception that even during peacetime Avan's law holdings behave accordingly to the diplo relations of the two states. ie They were mostly considered neural during tax collection, but when Diemed accepted Quirad Al-Dinn as the new court Wizard, losing "face" amidst the nobility for relating to the Shame of the Southlands, Avan's Law holdings became hostile.