Reason of State

Reason of State is a secondary quest in .
This quest is available during Act III, but has a number of prerequisites from earlier points in the game:
* Complete A Deadly Plot. This means doing Triss' quests, A Matter of Life and Death and Now or Never to get this one.
* Obtain and complete (or fail) An Eye for an Eye and Redania's Most Wanted. See the notes section for further details.
* Bribe Dijkstra with information about the Nilfgaardian Emperor Emhyr, rather than sway him by force during the main quest Blindingly Obvious.
 the decisions during this quest, as well as whether to complete it or not, will affect the circumstances of the game's ending.
 this quest will fail if not completed before starting On Thin Ice.
==Walkthrough==
At the end of Blindingly Obvious, Dijkstra tells the witcher to meet him by a warehouse near Novigrad Docks.
 the secondary quest Warehouse of Woe takes place immediately next door and if started, should be completed before continuing with Reason of State, since Warehouse of Woe will fail if you leave the area.
Once you enter, you will hear Dijkstra, Roche and Thaler conversing just above you. Joining the conversation, Dijkstra will reveal his plan on how to lure Radovid out using Philippa Eilhart as bait; the witcher may accept or decline the plan during dialogue. If he accepts, they plan to lure him to the bridge leading to Temple Isle. As the discussions finish, the screen will pan to an owl eavesdropping on the conversation.
When the witcher exits the warehouse, he is greeted by Philippa, who states that their plan would never work, as Radovid may be insane, but not stupid and wouldn't fall for empty words. She then gives the witcher Vizimir II's ring, to use as proof to get Radovid to believe Geralt and maybe even trust him completely.
To move ahead with the plan, go to Radovid's ship nearby and speak with the guard. Radovid is reluctant to believe it as many others have tried to give him false information about Philippa Eilhart's whereabouts, which he had dealt with brutally. Presented the ring though proves decisive and Radovid mobilizes his men to the bridge, taking the witcher with him.
Once there, Radovid orders his men to secure the bridge so that no one gets in or out, but then also orders Geralt killed while he is without his swords. Fortunately, Roche's ambush saves him and Geralt must now join the fight to defeat the Redanian soldiers and witch hunters on the bridge.
You'll only be handed a basic sword at first, but after the first few enemies you'll get your real equipment back too. There are a lot of enemies, but the Blue Stripes do an excellent job fighting them as well. Just be careful not to hit exploding barrels when you're near them and the rest should be easy enough.
Eventually, Radovid is cornered at the end of the bridge, but before you can get to him, Philippa appears out of a nearby house. She blinds Radovid with a powder and stabs in the back, killing him, then quickly morphs into an owl and vanishes. Geralt, Roche, and the Blue Stripes make a quick getaway before any more Redanian forces arrive. (25)
As the mission is completed, Roche, Ves, Thaler, and Geralt gather in the theatre to celebrate. Regardless of your dialogue choices, it is revealed that the assassins have been in peace talks with Nilfgaard and have negotiated a truce in which Temeria will become a vassal state to the empire, in exchange for Radovid's head and stop to guerilla activities.
Dijkstra, however, has other plans. Believing the price for both the truce and Temeria's restored sovereignty (which he considers questionable) too high, Dijkstra openly opposes Roche and Thaler's agreement. With Radovid dead, he plans to become Chancellor of Redania and continue the fight against Nilfgaard, and after the war's end unite the Northern Realms under his banner, including Temeria. Naturally, this doesn't sit well with the others, but they're surrounded by Dijkstra's men.
You now have a choice: 
*Walk away and let Roche, Ves, and Thaler be slaughtered, in which case Dijkstra will become Chancellor of Redania
*Defend your comrades and kill Dijkstra and his men, leading to the agreed deal with Nilfgaard
The quest then completes.
== Journal entry ==
:Momentous decisions altering the fate of entire nations are often made under unusual circumstances. For example, when Geralt was asked to take part in the assassination of King Radovid, he was standing in a bathhouse in Novigrad, half-naked and staring at a sweat-soaked Dijkstra. If he agreed to join in, he was to attend a meeting in a warehouse by the docks. There the co-conspirators would hash out the details of their plan to kill the most powerful ruler in the North.
:Their bold plan succeeded: the Redanian king was assassinated on the bridge leading to Temple Isle. Radovid's was not the last blood to be spilled as a result of this conspiracy, however. With no more common goal to bind them, the co-conspirators turned on each other.
:If Geralt does not intervene with Dijkstra's betrayal:
::Geralt, who has always cherished his neutrality, decided not to get involved and left the assassin's hideout before fighting began. Though Roche and his band had already overcome a great deal, it was clear they would not be able to defeat the overwhelming numbers of Dijkstra's thugs. Madame Irina's empty theater hosted a brutal spectacle in which the fiercest Temerian patriots met a bloody end.
:If Geralt kills Dijkstra:
::Though Geralt has always prized his neutrality, he did not intend to sit idly and watch Dijkstra's thugs butcher his friends. And so the Redanian spy's long-awaited moment of triumph transformed into his final defeat at the witcher's hands.
:If Geralt refuses to take part in the assassination (quest failure):
::To this day I don't know what truly drove the witcher to take part in the assassination plot against Radovid. I also don't know what drove him to resign from this participation. Such are the facts, however: Geralt first courted high politics, then left them at the altar to fend for themselves while he saw to a more important matter: the fight against the Wild Hunt.
==Objectives== 
*Meet Dijkstra, Roche and Thaler in the portside warehouse.
*Lure Radovid from his ship.
*Kill Radovid. (25)
**Follow Roche.
*If Geralt protects the Temerian patriots:
**Defeat Dijkstra and his men.
==Notes== 
* In the Official Prime Guide, it was noted that to unlock Reason of State, all three Assassins' quests (A Deadly Plot, An Eye for an Eye, and Redania's Most Wanted) had to be completed/couldn't be failed. However, it was later shown the latter two could be failed as long as one completed A Deadly Plot and bribed Dijkstra (as opposed to breaking his leg) at the end of Blindingly Obvious to get this quest to unlock. That said, you must still obtain all three quests and reach the practical ends and, if looking to fail the two that don't matter, do so at these points:
**During An Eye for an Eye, you have to follow through until you see Ves' health bar appear. At that point, you can fail the quest by letting her die.
**During Redania's Most Wanted, the actual requirement is that you search Philippa's hideout and find the Polished crystal. However, you could fail the quest by never returning to Radovid.
*Amusingly, Dijkstra uses a halberd as his weapon during the fight at the theater, right after he complains that he's always been cast as a halberdier.
==Bugs== 
*Regardless of what you did with the crystal during or after Redania's Most Wanted, Radovid will remark like you brought him the crystal.
*In some circumstances, the final cutscene doesn't trigger after killing Dijkstra and his men in the theatre. In order to complete the quest, you must escape the theatre by jumping over the fence to the left of the stage, go back to the port warehouse where this quest began, and kill all of Dijkstra's men there.
*It is possible that an enemy gets stuck up on the stage and never attacks, while your allies see him, but can't climb up. This could even be Dijkstra himself just sitting in place (and he isn't marked as an enemy until he jumps down), or one of his henchmen infinitely walking in a circle. The latter case is harder to notice and could explain the previous bug. Should this happen, if you're stuck in combat mode and can't jump up, can take the side stairs and attack whoever is on the stage, without facing any resistance.
*In the rare case when Ves died during An Eye for an Eye, mentions of her and her own dialogue lines are replaced, but she still appears during the assassination and all cutscenes. Everybody just acts as if she's not there.
*As of , Geralt is sometimes able (at least on PC and under yet undetermined conditions) to just walk through the doors to the warehouse at the docks. If you do so, the meeting talk can't start even though Dijkstra, Roche and Thaler are there and waiting - interacting with them starts regular, non-quest dialogues. This can be fixed by knocking on the door, even if from the inside, but a few other things can be observed as well:
** Talking to Dijkstra also teleports him and Geralt to a nearby house - upstairs on the other side of Warehouse of Woe.
** Talking to Thaler also teleports you away, but south into the Loggers' Hut outside the city walls and the coordinates are a bit broken, resulting in the conversation taking place "inside" the hut walls.
** Because these are non-quest conversations, this allows playing gwent with all three and is thus a possible workaround for advancing Gwent: Old Pals and/or Gwent: Big City Players at this point of the game - something otherwise impossible once the quest has started, and particularly egregious with Dijkstra as he becomes unplayable even earlier, at the start of Final Preparations because of his involvement in Blindingly Obvious.
** Dijkstra's henchman who answers the warehouse door is fully animated with mouth movement while speaking, despite Geralt being (without this bug) unable to see him from the other side of the door.
==Trivia== 
*When Dijkstra shows up after Radovid's death, he will quote a part from a play called "Vakmeth", act one, scene seven. This is a reference to Shakespeare's play Macbeth where act one, scene seven has the same lines.
==Videos==
File:The Witcher 3 King Radovid Boss Fight (Hard Mode)
File:Kingslayer - The Witcher 3 DEATH MARCH! Part 109 - Let's Play Hard
File:Witcher 3 - What Happens if You Sabotage Radovid's Assassination?|'Reason of State' Without Succeeding all Prerequisite Quest Experimentation
Category:The Witcher 3 secondary quests
ar:مصلحة الوطن
de:Staatsräson
it:Ragion di stato
pl:Racja stanu
ru:Дела государственной важности