As a member of NORTH I know the history of at least my own path to this family NORTH & WEST. Therefore I will shed just enough light on this so people understand why we are different.
Firstly, if this was just a regular family I don't think anyone would have accepted it, as we know full well the downsides to large families.. Sea of blue, pointwhores... and all that.
Secondly we are not a bunch of players/tribes that thought "Oh hey! Let's form a super-big family cos then we wont get attacked." Each and every branch of this family loves good servings of war, it is after all what this game is about.
The tribes we came from to form this (STD!! FIRE FEAR STFU and WEST) have all proven their war and diplomacy skills as individual tribes several times over. We have worked together in the past to great success, the move to a family was to aid us with improved communication (another big family downside) as well as being about to plan and operate more 'as one' when the time comes.
Now before the screen turns to a mess of blurry greyness (I've not had much sleep), I'll close with this statement:
We are different, we understand the downfalls of family tribes well and have spent quite a bit of time looking for solutions to these. If it doesn't work then fine you guys were right.. but if it does work, well then we'll be one big happy family won't we?
ps. This doesn't represent the views of the tribe, I am but a mere worker in this machine known as NORTH/WEST Family