Well, if it helps at all, Niccolo is significantly less successful than Lymond is, at a great number of things. Not less ambitious, mind you, but far more prone to Fucking. Things. Up. Although one is obliged to read carefully to determine that, indeed, the results were not the ones he was aiming for. (Like I said: harder to parse, even when you get his pov, which you do rather more frequently than you do Lymond's.)