Firstly, that's not the reason why Garas has been targeted so often. Out of all the times he was targeted, I believe these two latest cases are the only ones where he was the ruler of Oligarch. In the other cases that was Catherine and he was General or Duke in stead.
From what I've seen in the game, the targeting of both Garas and Catherine has been related to what they can do to defend the city (raise militia; repair fortifications during the enemy refit cycle; rehire fresh defending units for the walls; distribute tax gold from the city; send military orders; etc). But by far the most common reason has been related to the raising of the peasants. I seem to think there was also some confusion about who could raise the militia too (Margrave/Duke/Ruler). I don't think the ability is actually that well understood as, apart from in Oligarch, I'm not sure many people have ever used it.
Thirdly, I disagree with your statement that assasinations are easier. Assasinations are very easy to defend against (not sure if they changed more than just the removal of the invisibility for infils, or also the percentage chances of success) by simply recruiting enough men etc. I speak from experience (have 2 assasins and 1 had 100 fame on both SF and infil for quite a while with skills at at least 80%) when I say that assasination attempts are very risky both in terms of the chance of failure and in terms of the consequences. I have the feeling they made escaping from jail a lot more difficult as well, meaning that capture often results in a ban and well after that it becomes a death trap to even go near the realm. Magic poses no such risk and from what I can tell there's no possible way to defend yourself against magical attacks. And based on how often they used this scroll on me, apparently it's not that hard to come by one.
I didn't really mean the level of effort that goes in to making the magical attack with a scroll, but rather all the background effort that goes into getting the scroll to the point where you can use it. It has to be created, gathered up by someone, carried to be sold or given to a noble (involving agreements to meet by the player of the adventurer and the player of the noble). Basically, there's a lot of background work that goes in to reaching a point where you can use a scroll for this specific purpose. I know there's a lot of effort that goes in to infiltrator training too, but that's largely work undertaken by one player. While the end use of a scroll actually involves a lot of work by several players that goes on in the background.
