I don't think there is any documentation about the relationship between limbo and pending deletion, that is itself a bug.
Any hint in .bzr.log ?
I ended up in that situation more or less randomly months ago but I can't remember the details,
only that I was doing semi hackish things so I couldn't fully blame bzr and never reported the problems
(bad vila).
I trust you.
I don't think there is any documentation about the relationship between limbo and pending deletion, that is itself a bug.
Any hint in .bzr.log ?
I ended up in that situation more or less randomly months ago but I can't remember the details,
only that I was doing semi hackish things so I couldn't fully blame bzr and never reported the problems
(bad vila).