We all seem pretty stuck on Blair. Not to be critical, but lets think about the Admiral for a minute. The advertisements for WC4 calls Tolwyn "One man, derranged by war."
Tolwyn had seen over 40 years of war with the Kilrathi. Add that to the time he spent fighting the Pilgrims, and thats a lot of life to spend struggling for survival. I do not think Tolwyn was a fool. He was famous as one of the best military tacticians that Confed had.
The man was addicted to war, to calculating victory and conquest. What does he get after all his hard work? Exactly the opposite to what he wanted. Blair was the big hero, and Tolwyn was given a job heading up ISS... funny isn't that a turn-around from WC2?
I'm willing to bet that he'd planned it to work one of two ways:
1. Blair sees whats truly going on, defects, is either killed or captured, and is used as an example of the deterioration of security and a need to go to war w/ the Border Worlds (as he did in the losing ending).
2. Blair is asassinated by Seether and a Border World's "agent" is blamed. Thus Tolwyn uses it to make political headway.
Even with all the excellent points about Blair's arrogence and pride, I still have a hard time believing that Converting Blair was in Tolwyn's plan.
Addicted? No - he wasn't addicted to war, but rather he believed that the civilians (and particularly the professional politicians) who'd made a hash of the initial war effort weren't pulling their weight as far as preserving humanity went, so decided that the Black Lance project was the quickest way to get rid of the dead weight that'd nearly gotten everyone killed both during the outbreak of the war as well as the Armistice, as well as the aftermath. Remember - he's seen the same thing happen twice in his lifetime; the Kilrathi are assumed to be 'like humans' in their attitudes and behaviors, and so the politicians treated the Kilrathi much as they would other human societies which shared similar values and beliefs. Which meant that twice, humanity was caught on the verge of losing the war because they'd let down their guard as far as the Kilrathi were concerned, drawing down the fleet and putting everything in mothballs because there 'weren't any more threats out there'.
And Tolwyn did not head up ISS: he rather was in charge of the entire military operation through the SRA, which controlled all of Confed's military, and put him pretty much in the same position that Bainbridge was at the start of the Kilrathi War. Blair was the hero to the people, much as Tolwyn was one in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Earth, but that wasn't the point. Being a 'hero' carries very little cachet around the politicians, or so it seems, in the WC universe. What DID matter was that he had some political influence, and then he used it as best he could by working with those who knew him best... friends and enemies both.
Blair could have been a candidate for conversion, had he been approached correctly and had events not gone so horribly wrong for any such attempts to do so. He saw how things were running down, and commented as much to Maniac during their Nephele bar conversation, and may have been a possible target for convincing had Eisen not defected and had Blair never met Seether. The approach to Eisen was botched with a 'we're all in this together' sort of conspiracy invitation, which made Blair wary as well. Seeing Seether didn't help matters, nor did Paulsen's dismissive manner. Between all that, and the way things went down (including Maniac's recording of some groundside comm transmissions) as well as the two defections... well, there wasn't much chance of Blair 'coming to Jesus' at that point.
Under other circumstances? It's quite possible he would've become a Lancer... as he effectively does if you nuke the Ella Superbase and all those civilians. And even if he did get his ass wasted, his notoriety would at least ensure that the public would want something done about those 'awful Border Worlders'.
