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Galadh: ...
Ok let me emphasize again as I might have not phrase it properly. Letho's main objective is to plant mistrust amongst the Nordlings, between the Nordlings and the sorcerers, as well as instability of the kingdom. Killing kings is a means to that end. Let's see what happens in the end:
a) Sorcerers are now enemies (at least not allies) of the Nordlings.
b) Civil unrest in Temeria.
c) Mistrust between the Northern Kingdoms. Note that whereas a few key players know that Nilf's are behind the assassinations, some seems to be unaware that Nilfs are behind all this. Instead, they suspect the sorcerers. And sorcerers are advisors of kings, so it possibly causes the leaders to suspect whether the other leaders have anything to do with the assassination and so on...

Now on to what you actually wrote. Why did Letho kill the useless king? "But given that Aedirn did literally almost nothing during the last great war except for getting ass-kicked, wouldn't Letho do better by killing another ruler and framing them into it, since they conspire anyway?". Hey, you answered your own question: "because sorceresses wanted [Demawend] dead to save Aedirn" and also "Oh, okay. He also got in touch with Iorveth thanks to them etc...". You don't seem to recognize the important of these 2 things.
a) It's much much easier to frame the Lodge of Sorceress when they are the ones who plotted the assassination. Plus, they already planned out everything with the escape route and all, and all Letho had to do was play along. " the other kings don't seem to have a problem with Stennis", why? Because he's a limp prick. Geralt said so himself. Wouldn't you agree? Here you have the best commander you've seen in a long time, fighting for your country, and what did he do, he went and poisoned her. From his selfishness and his short-sightedness, he would not make a good king (Dandy says so too).

b) It's thanks to Letho siding with the Lodge that not even the sorceresses knew that the Nilf sent him. He got in touch with Scoiatael, you say? What happened after that? The Scoiatael helped him, and he succeeded with Foltest's assassination (what you termed as "significant success") and got away unscathed thanks to their aid. Would he have succeeded if he had "killed another ruler and framing [the Lodge] into it"? Hardly. Remember, Letho said that, even with Demawend, he barely escaped and that was with the help of the Lodge.

c) If Geralt hasn't intervened, Scoiatael would probably continue helping the assassins and Henselt would probably go down. How did Letho manage to get so far? It all started with the assassination of the "weak and useless" Demawend.

d) Henselt didn't get killed? Queen Meve didn't get killed? Radovid didn't get killed? True, he didn't get that many kings. But as long as his main goals which I listed earlier, is achieved it hardly matters at this time.

e) Why did Letho don't get more kings in Loc Muinne, you ask? Several reasons. 1. He has no backup anymore. Sorceresses knew that he tricked them, Scoiatael knows, and his partners are dead. Loc Muinne is very very heavily guarded, even if Letho manage to kill a king if he's lucky, without any backup, he's a very dead man - Nilfs are there but they won't publicly back him for sure.

f) Again I must emphasize, the success is not measured by whether he kills 2 more kings or 5 more. Letho has killed a few kings, not get caught, made Sile unleashed a frakkin dragon on everyone, and the kings retaliated by killing and raping sorcerers. I don't know how much more chaos you want, but that is just full-on chaos to me. If Geralt hasn't stepped in and saved the day (once again), the damage would be much much worse.

g) "but on the other hand, what if Letho got captured? Presumably the witchers have some trigger to oppose interrogations, but even if, then magicians know the way of extracting some info etc... ": now you're just contradicting yourself, you claimed Letho would do best to kill as many kings as possible. Think about it, if he had insisted and still persist even without backup, he would probably had a higher chance of being caught/interrogated as you have mentioned. I'm not exactly sure if Emhyr wants that. I'm pretty sure he would want the hit to be hard but undetectable, instead of maximizing the number of frags while getting his assassins caught.

h) The northern countries have always been there, including Queen Meve.
>> In the last Great War: They all fought as a united front, the sorceresses were neutral (as far as I know), the kings were working together (even though Demawend was described as weak and useless by everyone in TW2, the wiki describes him as "As a ruler he was known for being rather cruel and envious, but also quite intelligent and knowledgeable about the tactics of war. He was, for example, able to predict Emhyr var Emreis' moves during the war with Nilfgaard") and Foltest was a brilliant war-like king, morale is high...

>> In this coming war (thanks to baldie): The Nordling sorceresses are no longer neutral, possibly even hostile towards the Northern Kingdoms, 2 Kings are down (civil unrest, nobles fighting for power, greater amount of scheming due to open opportunities), several civil wars have weaken Northern powers, the kingdoms probably have a harder time trusting each other now. Morale is probably shit right now. Aedirn might be all worked up etc, but I recall Geralt or his companions were talking about the political future still being shaky.

All this, done by Letho, Auckes, and Serrit (well, mainly Letho), and Letho would have escaped unscathed had he not waited for Geralt by his own accord. Who actually knows if the Nilfs are behind this? The Lodge, some of the kings might suspect something, Geralt and his party, whereas the majority of the people are probably clouded in extreme confusion. Having achieved all this, for one to question whether Letho have achieved substantial result is analogous to questioning a student who scored 87 in an exam, "How come you didn't score 100 in the exam?"

p/s: This is an optimistic point of view. We haven't considered if anyone in the Nordlings' side is colluding with the Nilfs.
Post edited July 19, 2011 by vAddicatedGamer