You know, when the We enter the conversation at the same time as Mathilde not providing the Karak with defenses for their most historically important weak point, it occurs to me that she actually did. In fact, it was the very first major defense she enabled the Karak to attain, even if she wasn't thinking of it at the time.
The We are natural predators of the Skaven. They're a force able to shift in response to the situation not just to guard old tunnels, but even mobile and clever enough to protect newly opened ones. For a a place like Karak Eight Peaks, worried about Skaven tricks opening new tunnels just as much as guarding existing ones they're likely a great boon to that effort as a result. Thus, by stating off that alliance, it's quite possible the We were the first major directional defense provided the Karak, if also the slowest to reach its full potential.
Of course, the irony is that the kind of person who saw the We as only a defense, a weapon to be wielded, would be sharply limited in their interactions and even ability to use them that way, while someone who saw them as fellows and allies would avoid many of those traps of thinking and possible bad relationships, and get both a far more capable ally, and a far more capable friend for doing so.
Which, in its own way, seems pretty Grey: Mathilde, operating in relative ignorance of one of the things she was really achieving --- or really with a willful intent to look at it through a more idealistic lens even as it was also explained in a way Dwarves new to and suspicious of the relationship would agree with--- had that same blind spot make her acts far more effective towards what a cynical intent would seek to accomplish than if she had been planning via cynical means.
(though it has been a while since my last read, so I'm not sure how well memory serves me here, though I think the whole "The We are Mathilde's great monumental contribution to the underside defense of the Karak." angle holds up on the broad strokes. And I like the poetry of it.)
