I'd argue Andras was unneeded at Raeve keep (we certainly didn't see him do anything 10 orcs couldn't have done), in the battle agaisnt the field army Rowan wanted to keep him out of the field which certainly doesn't paint him as vital and he didn't even participate in the battle of Rastedel, he just led the army Rowan recruited marching through the gates opened by the coup Rowan made happen. Jezera's portals are indeed very useful but I was under the impression it was something she stumbled into like the necklaces that enslave Rowan and Alexia. If anybody has a line pointing to the contrary then I will certainly give her props for those.
As for the other individuals in the keep nobody comes even close to the amount of usefulness Rowan does. They are a pretty good support team but at the end of the day they are just buff bitches for Rowan while he creates all the successes that give them momentum going forward. Everyone else was dispensable.
Much like the portals and magic McGuffins its plot convenience they find/cajole these useful people. They are an empire held together by plot convivence and duct tape and the moment Rowan fucks off nobody will remember to buy more duct tape.
This might change now that they actually have to rule a large realm. Like I said Jezera rages and lashes out when diplomatic efforts don't go her way but now she has some actual leverage for the future which might mean she might consistently get her way. Andras seems to be actually reading about battles and was the first to recognize Rowan's battle plan could work. He might become a good general that doesn't need Rowan to pre-plan every battle for him.
But these are maybes for the future. I'd love the twins be competent and dangerous in their own right instead of bumbling from disaster to disaster and then running off to Daddy Rowan to fix it.
They are competent and dangerous. Jezera didn’t “stumble into” her talents, she honed them over the course of her life. She describes to Alexia at one point how she apprenticed to a jeweler for a while, which helps her craft the items she enchants. Her spycraft may be amateurish, but she does manage to affect both the battle before Rastedel and the political situation within it. And she’s no slouch in battle, getting the battle in Raeve Keep back under control after Andras is wounded.
Andras is consistently depicted as massively strong, able to take essentially any single person out in one-on-one combat (and several normal soldiers without breaking a sweat). He’s vulnerable, yes, and arrogant enough that he consistently puts himself in positions of danger, which bites him in the ass, but a powerful demon at the head of an army of orcs has shock value, especially on those occasions where he runs wild. Seeing Andras leading the army, even after the damage has been done, destroys morale. No Andras also means none of the orcs from the northwestern camp—Rowan wouldn’t have the respect he needed to even operate within the camp without Andras having appeared with him his first time there.
What Andras and Jezera are bad at is management. They’re temperamental and willful, and let their pride and whims cloud their better judgment. That doesn’t actually make them bad leaders—they just need people to take care of the management stuff for them, which they recognized and sourced Rowan for. They’re still highly dangerous, probably a match individually for any of the previous war’s great heroes; Jezera has some small talent at spycraft, even if she is still an amateur; and again, identifying and utilizing talent is a greater talent in itself than you seem to be willing to concede. There’s a reason modern bureaucracy is so inefficient, and that’s because talented people get lost in the shuffle.
And in no way could Rowan pull off what he’s done without the other major castle NPCs. Every one of them is pulling off jobs that it would take several other people longer to do, and Rowan doesn’t have the manpower or time to deal with that. Read any of the several instances of Rowan struggling with castle management, and imagine how much worse it would be without people as skilled as Cliohna or Skordred doing the jobs they’ve been assigned. If you got rid of any one big NPC, sure, it might not immediately fall apart, but get rid of two or three and not even Rowan would be able to hold things together.
