So in my lore the island is pretty much inaccessible. Hard to land a ship there and hard to sail out, especially for the tribal inhabitants. So, since it's so sealed off, the surrounding nations decided that they would leave it alone and research without alerting the inhabitants to the existence of the rest of the world.
As for why they'd be researching Altrue's family... Well, wouldn't you?
So in my lore the island is pretty much inaccessible. Hard to land a ship there and hard to sail out
