That is just incorrect. We've had more than just the one meeting with the man, we've spoken to many people across Kislev society from multilple strata nobody likes the Tsar and we know that the army is not all on his side.
Currently I only remember us talking to his son and to high end magic users. I am sure I am forgetting some others, but I am also sure we haven't asked for the opinion of any commoners.
But maybe I am wrong. Who were those of lesser status that complained about him to the point of insinuating incompetence?
I apologise if that is making you uncomfortable and will try to calm down, but it is just very...like why? If its just their opinion argue from that, don't try to crowbar what is known to fit the conclusion you want to reach.
I'm not going to deny my biases (my gut reaction to this vote is No and I also see no issue with trying to make up numbers to translate gut feelings because I was a long time fan of a community that actively did that), but right now, based on the discussion of the two of you, it feels to me like you are the one engaging in a mix of misrepresenting facts and accusing the other party of intentionality in their oversights.
Specifically the ideas that the palace guards are majority loyal to Boris over Vladimir, that Boris is obviously transparent and sincere, that we'd need multiple nat 1s in a row to leave any evidence pointing towards Mathilde and that Vladimir is widely looked down upon by the majority of the nation are all ideas that I don't remember seeing such strong support for in chapter text or Boney comments. Which of course might just be my faulty memory.
Then considering it "moving the goalposts" when the two of you have been arguing about one aspect of why loonyphoenix considers this a bad idea, and loonyphoenix considers there to be other problems as well after conceding that they were wrong about that one aspect and the general belligerence (not helped by the liberal use of "fucking" for emphasis repeatedly used towards just one person) make you seem actively hostile, over what in the end is a vote in how this story we all love should continue.
Can we really? It would be our word against his and Vlad does not like witches.
Lol we can just pay someone to deliver a letter to be vary of assassination attempts from someone within his confidence. Or tell our own Emperor and convince him that letting the assassination attempt or civil war come to pass is a bad idea, or just tell him the overall context and see whether he puts two and two together, or warn anti-Borisites in court and in the army or...
You get the idea. If we want to fuck Boris we can fuck Boris. And if we do it right, we can get rewarded for it once proven truthful.
People aren't stupid. Mathilde is clearly the leader of the project. If like that happens, people will rightly assume she's got her fingers in it.
Her fingers in convincing two powerful Kislevites to do something she thinks is good for Kislev that from the outside looks like people spending their own money to set up a bunch of stones. Boris will know exactly what we are doing and be miffed, but he will also think it's better than nothing and know that we know that he wants to kill his own father. Vladimir may or may not care, but the meddling will be minor, especially when compared to, say, a botched assassination.
Honestly, I have a hard time imagining major fallout from Mathilde subsidizing a bunch of Hag Witches in their attempt to negotiate support from random nobles in their attempts to place rocks in the wilderness. Not when Boris all but told us that Vladimir has a hard time controlling his own Boyars.
Not that I'm saying that this would be consequence free. He would likely become even less friendly to magic users (though I don't expect him to have the social capital to become outright violent) and the relationship to the Empire (which apparently is already close to nill) would become even cooler.
At that level, everything is political.
And yet arguing that Regimand killed the Empress for political reasons sounds misleading to me.
Boris will start a civil war if he has to. If we don't take it, Kiselv is fucked.
Either Boris is not attempting for civil war but for some other form of coup or assassination which he doesn't expect to lead to civil war and would surrender if said attempt failed, or Boris genuinely thinks that civil war is better than the status quo and has more insight in the situation than us so should be preliminarily trusted on this point, or Boris is a shithead willing to make the country worse than the status quo if he doesn't get his way.
I think it's less in bad faith, and more kind of stupid. That gets exasperating. There are arguments to be made for No, but the ones loonyphoenix advanced were not good. There were a whole bunch of people telling him as much (and yes, me included), Wombat is just the most... energetic about it. Telling them to tone it down, while not acknowledging that there's a reason they're getting heated, and holding an opposite but position centralish position, is frankly it's own sort of bad debating. It's silencing an argument you don't like, because of how it's presented.
That's not your intent, but it's a pretty common tactic you're inadvertently applying, and one I really dislike.
I guess my fault lies in not seeing their arguments as stupid. Failure to stay hidden would indeed be really awful. And they misunderstood just how good of an assassin Mathilde is, but even taking that into account the chance of failure isn't as low as others make it out to be. Nor is the chance of civil war a certainty if we refuse. There's mundane ways to assassinate someone that might well succeed. Also, their distrust of Boris is arguably a bit higher than warranted, but not as high as others accuse them of. This is literally a charismatic noble we've met a few times and who seems to be liked by a faction we sympathize with asking us to commit regicide. The bar for trust is higher than usual here.
And like, the whole thing got heated because they wanted to express their gut feelings in numbers, without hiding that that's what they were doing. And the explosion at hostility at that in particular made me feel like it was more due to some button they inadvertently pushed than due to anything else.
