I see two possibilities. One could be that the victim was originally intended to be the King but the assassin missed/the assassinated intentionally took the hit instead. Or secondly, he was killed simple to remove an important ally from the King’s side.

Ah! I really like that idea. I had already imagined Laures would be stationed somewhere to the more eastern area (presuming the right side of the map is east) of Renais. It’s quite likely that once things begin to get slightly out-of-hand he would travel to Carcino. How things go from there would depend on whether the hostilities are [i]only[/i] toward North Carcino or toward the Golden Alliance as well. 

I was thinking he joined shortly after Santiago became the Commander ~3-4 years ago. Does that sound fine?