Even "pawns", great leaders don't betray them.
As someone said in my Medieval Studies class, "Honor isn't about decency. That's bullshit. Honor is about having the public perception that you can be dealt with fairly."
Emhyr is, again, very much like Tywin Lannister.
He makes and breaks agreements while giving with one hand and holding a knife in the back.
Tywin Lannister promised the North to the Boltons while marrying his son to Sansa Stark, thus making him heir to the North (and thus the Boltons were never going to keep the North long)
But we've already determined that Emhyr is a mediocre leader at best, now it's only a matter of degree, of whether he is mediocre or shit.
I don't disagree that Emhyr wouldn't have thought that Radovid was that much of a threat at Loc Muinne. But if he had a brain and was prudent, he wouldn't get rid of a useful pawn without determining with great certainty that he isn't needed anymore. He would have kept Letho in reserve.
I don't think Emhyr ever actually considered Letho all that useful of a pawn and merely sent him on the equivalent of a suicide mission. The fact Letho was wildly successful and incredibly intelligent, achieving above and beyond anything he could have imagined made his execution all the more necessary.
Because Letho COULD kill Emhyr.
And if Radovid wasn't insane, that's EXACTLY what Radovid would have promised.
Not to mention the fact that Emhyr wants Ciri and she is being hunted by the Wild Hunt. He didn't think that Letho, who fought the Wild Hunt before, could be useful?
What a fucking idiot.
Again, the big issue is you're dealing with a man who can and will kill the leaders of countries in a time when that was sacrosanct. You don't want that kind of man around you.
And Letho clearly believes he's going home to retire at the Viper School with his buddies because that's the deal which was promised.
You can't just order a person like that to continue doing your dirty work when you made a deal that he fulfilled in an EPIC fashion. If Emhyr has no intention of honoring it, you need to get rid of him before he becomes a threat.
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It is irrelevant, the Lodge is already blamed and the mages are already being massacred. People finding out is not going to matter. When pogroms and massacres start, the truth becomes completely irrelevant because people are not killing mages because of kings, they are at the end of the day killing mages because they always hated and feared them and just needed the excuse.
Emhyr is already violating the rules and customs of the time by launching surprise invasions against several sovereign realms while they are in chaos without a formal declaration of war, blatantly taking advantage of a chaos that most people would probably attribute to him anyways.
No, Emhyr is just an imbecile, the game portrayed him that way. A passive, useless imbecile who only wins if Geralt has to do the work for him.
I believe if it came out, the entire North would rally against Nilfgaard in a single united alliance to avenge their fallen monarchs.
Because that's exactly what happened at Sodden.
