Not sure if you are joking or serious. Being face to face with your "largest" player and no wus for half a continent away from me, this recruitment should have padded your war stats.
A prepared backstab would mean that you are behind the lines, where there is empty villages stacking the front. You having premptive support behind the lines means that it would be tough to break you quickly. Also when offence is used in other attacks then you backstab, means that offences is out or low. And to top it all off, nobles would have been built in a different area. so there would be no nobles near you, which would mean killing troops, minting coins and building nobles by you.
But if that is not an advantage i dont know what is....
Plus you are nowhere near half a k away, infact a number of your villages are close by them, others are a short trip, but not even a quarter of a k away from them, maybe an 8th of a k if you are lucky. Remember twmaps does actually show the truth, if you want i can screenshot and highlight it for you.