An aristo MC with a high Homelander score will find it easier to overcome that yeoman suspicion and unite Shayard. It still won’t be simple – just waving the metaphorical Shayardene flag doesn’t in itself create a big tent for a nationalist movement, there will be tradeoffs and sacrifices – but a Homelander has a good head start. Doing it with a Cosmo aristo would be a challenge for the high-CHA player.
However you like! I don’t do canon pronunciations. 
If it facilitates waffle puns, go for it.
Some sort of Magna Carta will certainly be possible, but it will be a huge challenge to back it up with anything resembling genuine protection for the lesser orders. After a few centuries of tyranny, genuine popular accountability for the nobility and executive will be hard for most people even to conceptualize, let alone create. The law system necessary to make a reality out of civil rights doesn’t grow well out of totalitarianism or anarchy.
Not if you keep doing things he doesn’t like.
It’s actually first in the queue. G3 for Whendery (or the Westriding, for the Cabels), G4 for Nyryal (or the Reach), G5 for Erezza (or Aveche) – chapters that allow you to broaden your influence beyond Shayard and/or consolidate influence within it. And yes, Whendish waterpower could theoretically sub out some of the demand for blood in industrial production.
Not a single one of mine, and there’s no need to apologize. Just noting that of course I reserve the right to stay mum on any topic, and that I can’t respond to every query, speculation, or free-association session around the game.
We’ll see. An endgame where the Syntechnia still exists is one where either you or one of your primary rivals have rebuilt some sort of substantial continent-wide order. If you’re the Hegemon, you’ll have bigger things on your plate than smuggling for the guild; if others are, and in late Game 5 you’re trying to find where you fit in the world they’ve rebuilt, a major trans-national or inter-continental smuggling ring would be one fun option. But the feasibility would depend partly on how those rivals feel about you, as well as the strength of your relationship with the Syntechnia.
They pretty much all resent the dominance of Karagon in the trade rules, but that doesn’t make them Laconniers or even Homelanders – they definitely don’t want to see Shayard cut off from continental trade, either, and many of them appreciate the Karagond language and culture that let them form strong connections across provincial bounds. You could tip them in either a Laconnier or Leaguer direction if you choose to engage with them.
I don’t think Alaine will be in Grand Shayard; you’ll have a chance to interact with her again in G3, if she’s still alive. We’ll see if she could be convinced to outright join the rebellion or whether she’d remain a discreet external asset. I’m leaning toward the latter, but we’ll see.
The only ways to get longevity and heightened awareness in the gameworld are ultra-high-level Theurgic techniques that take decades to master – there’s no way to breed an aether-plant that would give that to anyone. No melange. (And no prescience, luckily for you, even with Thaumatarch-caliber Theurgy.)
Also no mithril. Chain mail is bulky and a huge pain to wear, just like in real life. Nobody goes around permanently armored. Theurges know that in an attack, they can wield blood to harden whatever they’re wearing by enhancing its protective telos. A fair number of the officers on the Halassur front will have been issued impenetrable bucklers and helms, but the blood cost of Theurgy-hardened armor is too high for anyone but top generals to wear a full set.
We’ll see if art winds up coming into the game. Definitely no plans to give the MC either forgery or artistic genius as a skill, though.
There is no convenient Plektos-hijacking flute, and again, no plan to give your character musical talent. I agree that a rousing chorus of “Toss a Coin to Your Rebel” with Carles the jongler would be a nice way to spend an evening.
The nobles in G2 Ch3 will be mostly engaged in social intrigue, not the luxury trade.
No plans for a pirate romance with the Qalsa, sorry. CoG has some other games to scratch that itch, I believe.
Impossible to know. They probably would have all gone down together; certainly enough nobles thought so. Horion on the other hand would say that if enough of the nobles had declared their support, the Hegemony would have had to bargain with the revolt rather than simply repress it.
Oh, absolutely. As the focus shifts to urban areas and major trade routes, there will be more satisfying outcomes from non-violent resistance than there were in Game 1, too. @Fiogan wrote some seven years ago that they hoped the MC could arrange for “copies of either seditious philosophy or even the Shayardene Codex to mysteriously start appearing all over the place. Rebellion through advancement of so-called unfortunate ideologies sounds like almost as fun as reading lessons for lots and lots of helots, spreading out from the smaller lessons at the start of the game.” I’m looking forward to writing more approaches like that.
I hope so too!