There have been many forays on how to evolve Corsair diplomacy that i know of- each and everyone has been swatted.
How this is connected to storyline devving and friday is up to him and the sair council to lay down here if they want- only thing i know that all 3 factions were busy writing propositions fitting them together mix&matching them and submitted them in time.
Of course there were better and worse exposées, but if the other 2 factions were as busy as the Benitez( which i am quite sure they were) then about 30 pages of written text were available as story suggestions.
What(if anything) survived the devving process- someone else might spill....
My personal opinion: Nothing will change on sair diplomacy- they will stay the too stupid to tie their shoes brutes- for the simple reason that every game needs polarizing badguys and for several reasons the corsairs are perfect for this.
Aka it is much easier to stay with same old same old instead of rethinking stuff properly as it needs actual action aswell as "might possibly maybe mean that others might have to give a bit from their piece of cake"
Other than that: Bretonia always was the more favoured target as far as i know, inRPly do to the weakend Bretonians and the easier access (O5 -->Cambridge). Other stuff may or may not apply