I'm more of the opinion that my jarl happened to be crushed to death by about 10 metric tons of bull**** falling on his head instead of anything Ulm did, but regardless, losing my ring of wizardry and the aegis, and not knocking out the army that that Jarl was sent to kill kind of sealed the game.
If you hadn't hit him from near maximum range with a single shot through a parry 7 shield and luck I'd be a bit more inclined to agree with the "skill" sentiment. I knew you had the damn thing and wasn't worried about it due to the absurdly low probability of it hitting from that far away. If my guy'd showed up without a brain after the fight I would have been completely fine with it. Getting hit on round 1 and dying is a different story completely (I think I had him scripted to air shield too)