It was the sovereign's territory, not foreign.
I have had one issue later today which was even weirder. Sovereign would not move, even when given a location manually. I had to manually take a couple of steps back and re-issue the move command. This was when sovereign had to move diagonally between two bodies of water (if that helps). It worked after moving him back and re-issuing the command.
I will try to reproduce tomorrow. Might be difficult though...