#actually EVEN IF odin think's it'll work he'd have to 100% believe in loki's loyalty to him and asgard. he must like that kid either way.

[nostalgia-tblr]

nah sorry i've thought about it and odin's "raise lauffey's only biological son as my own = he inherits when laffey dies = jotunheim is mine now/it's free real estate" plan just wouldn't work. it's a shit plan.

sure you can say your younger son is now the king of jotunheim but how are gonna get anyone there to accept that? even if he is now king by the letter of their law, how do you make that population accept his authority? the authority of someone who was raised by their enemy and who must be assumed to be loyal to that enemy. to borrow a phrase "you and whose army?" all you have there is a claim to that kingdom, you still need to make it happen.

whereas "found a baby, it's mine now, keeping forever with no expectation of this ever actually getting me anything else i just heart my new blue son (if ur offerin a 'free jotunheim with purchase' deal i wont say no tho obvs)" doesn't rely on outside events or anyone else's actions and so... it just makes more sense.

what i'm sayin is... i'm sure "ooooh this could be useful, i shall keep it" was a factor in odin's initial adopt-the-baby decision but i don't think it's at all reasonable for him to think it would actually work when the time came to deploy the plan and so no i don't think odin did just keep loki around for imperialism reasons, i think by the time that film is set he must have long since given up on that (other than a vague "well if it happens it happens" at the back of his head) and he really does just love his kid and hasn't told him where he actually came from in case it made him sad.