Are you kidding me? Who attacked a VE fief within 2 days of strat for some bs reason about how we would reset the points? Who told multiple people that tkov and fcc members were to be attacked on sight, within a week of strat? Who allied with another faction giving them 1/3 of the map before anything ever happened? Who tried to install their vassals in the desert giving them even more land to control?
Didn't we trade a village for a castle? We attacked to take over control of the village that was in the steppe, it had nothing to do with trust, I think the main issue was that the guy wasn't there (I don't really recall at this point, but us attacking to take over a village as part of a trade seems like a non-issue). One person posted a post on the "Hospitaller" forums (that I, and I'm guessing 95% of other members) didn't even know existed (The forums), saying FCC and TKOV were attack on sight (which was not our official stance within our faction), even though FCC had been attacking a fief of ours near their land, and attacking our members.
The only time we attacked TKOV members was after they had been AFK in our lands since the beginning of strat, and they were 100 man armies with no gold, gear or goods.
The only thing you could say was that might possibly be valid, is the KUTT/Hospitaller Alliance (which was a defensive alliance with trading and other incentives that helped both factions). It made us the same size as the Velucan Empire. So I fail to see how that would make us any different than you.
We were feeling vulnerable from last strat with TKOV, Remnant (well kind of), FIDLGB, Chaos, and FCC all being on board against us. And if we could get a defensive alliance from someone to put us in the same size category as the Velucan Empire, then obviously that would be in our best interests. We knew we had a target on our back from day 1 in Strat 4, and there's no reason to not take precautions.
I still don't know why people saw our alliance with KUTT as an "aggressive" or hostile act...I don't think it has anything to do with actual numbers, more so the fact that people post a lot of propaganda on the forums, and most people are not privy to what actual happens in strat, and are more likely to believe it.
If you don't like someone, anything that is said negatively about them, you're likely to believe.