@Walter_vi_Britannia:
I was thinking more about the problem of the "inconspicuous" part. And there's a huge difference between being seen to go out and do "glorious" things, as you describe, and intentionally blackening one's reputation and ruining one's future prospects for the sake of having a minor geopolitical chess piece in the meantime...
...Nonetheless, if the king was sold to us as a natural schemer with an dark streak and a penchant for cruelty, I could totally accept it. But that's not the way it came off to me at all. It felt like a complete plot contrivance from a pretty bland wall-hanging of a "king," the shots, as a ham-handed attempt to take moral responsibility off of the shoulders of the prince.
It's totally fine if you read it differently, that's just how it came across to me. (For what it's worth, I enjoy this series overall. I just felt it broke my suspension of disbelief here.)