[Truper]

It would help to know exactly what the message said, but it does sound to me like a dominion death. The number of provinces you own has little to do with your dominion strength in those provinces. Dominion is represented in the game by white candles, and you can think of your dominion as your people's belief in your pretender. If no one believes in him, he dies. Dominion strength is one of the things you choose when creating a new pretender, and I recommend taking a strength of 6 or so, until you know the game better, and under what circumstances you might want to deviate from that.