QUOTE]It was a joke with an old friend, as his following exchange with Vinnie makes clear -- he's saying that he trusts her completely because he just saw her come back. When Vinnie jibes him about it, they just laugh it off. That's not the same thing as openly deceiving someone at all.[/QUOTE]

Your interpretation is they're jibing. I hadn't seen them do that before, especially in the middle of a serious discussion about Stanley, but that's your perception. Mine is that they were serious, seeing as how Ansom doesn't have much of a sense of humor.

There are different degrees of speculation and assumption. We have been told that all units have a hidden loyalty score, and shown (from the interactions between them, especially between Stanley and others) that it is not particularly rare for high-ranking units to turn or betray their master from time to time. Therefore, given what we've seen of Stanley's decidedly egocentric, self-centered personality, it is not really a stretch to say that he may have a low loyalty to others.
Actually, we HAVE seen him show a bit of a needy side - remember his reaction to Wanda's explanation of the spell? "She hates me?" Stanley to me is a grade A attention whore, who takes negative if he can't get positive. But he prefers positive, as his tirade against Parson about being the 'evil' guy also shows.

We've seen nothing to indicate that he is capable of unprovoked regicide against the lawful king of another nation (neither on a personal level, nor a practical one). All of that is groundless speculation, based just around what you want to see, and not around anything in the comic.
Well, I mean, considering that he's currently attempting regicide against the lawful king of another nation, I'd consider that a good indication that he can do it if he desires. As far as provocation, SteveMB thinks a bit like I do. What Saline did is an offense against the Titans in Ansom's book.

Plainly, she has no capital-L loyalty to Ansom. She's a mercenary, not one of his units, and is free to break her alliance at any time -- frequent references are made to this. She's in the same category as Charlie, who was (going by his initial conversation with Parson) plainly free to stab Ansom in the back even during an alliance, and chose not to only because it would hurt his reputation. Jillian could lop Ansom's head off any time she chooses... the reason why she doesn't (and the reason why her magically-induced loyalty to Wanda failed) is because of her own personal feelings, not because of any magical compulsion.
This is my point exactly - she has no reason why she shouldn't avoid the fight with the dwagons, and yet she was able to break the spell. Stanley has more restrictions on him than she ever did, and a demonstrated better Loyalty score than Jillian, and yet he's supposed to have killed his ruler. And when I say he has a better Loyalty score, I mean that when he acquired the Arkenhammer, instead of making his own faction or killing Saline then, he instead 'trained a bunch of dwagons' and won lots of battles for Saline, by implication expanding his empire. Does not compute with the popular picture of him being a self-absorbed would be regicide.

When he's uncomfortable with other things when talking to Vinnie, he'll usually change the subject or admit his uncertainty -- why would he do such a flamboyantly jerk-ass thing as try to use Saline's death for leverage in an argument with his best friend, if he didn't honestly believe that Stanley was responsible?
This is a good argument. About the only rebuttal I could have is that by placing the focus back on what Stanley did, it deflected a bit from the 'why are YOU leading the coalition?' question. It then becomes a question of Stanley rather than a question of Ansom.