This is a rather difficult one to pinpoint but with the success of Roggvir I figured this could be a fun one to watch unfold.
What does everyone think of everyone's favorite Reguard Traitor/Hunted Woman, and in the end who's side are you on? The Ruthless Alik'r or the Young, Innocent seeming Lady hunted down throughout all of Skyrim.
I really want to believe that Saadia is innocent, but if she is within the crosshairs of the Alik'r, elite mercenaries of Hammerfell, she must have done something. This subject is tricky for me because of all the things I don't know exactly. As such, I usually side with Kematu because the rewards are higher :P
Ugh. I really dislike this quest, mainly because I think Bethesda failed. They were trying to go for a really grey morality, no right or wrong answer, and ended up with a quest that makes no sense, no matter which way you slice it.
According to the Redguards... Saadia sold out a city in Hammerfell to the Thalmor and they seek to bring her to justice back home. Yet, if you hand her to them, they kill her, dump her body somewhere, and she ends up in the Whiterun tombs. Also, refresh my lore-skills, but isn't Hammerfell still free and holding out against the Aldmeri Dominion?
According to Saadia... she's a Redguard noble who's hiding from the Thalmor who want to assassinate her. So, she's hiding in a nation crawling with Thalmor, due to the Civil War, in a nation where she sticks out like a sore thumb rather than in Hammerfell where she would be just another Redguard in a country of Redguards. Let's never mind the fact that we're meant to believe that the Thalmor hired Redguards instead of local agents, and not even any ol' Redguard, but the Alik'r.
Honestly, I never do the quest. When it first gets triggered, I use a console command and delete the guys that come talk to you.
Saadia is a traitor and as such deserved to die not only for her crimes, but to lie to me as well. After doing some digging on Skyrim Wiki, I discovered that the Alik'r are telling the truth, although I already knew that when I had a chat with Kematu and learned his side of this story. To begin with, Saadia's story has several inconsistencies: First, she somehow knows that one of the Alik'r has been arrested (after claiming that she wasn't even aware of their presence in the city of Whiterun), which suggests that the Alik'r might be the ones telling the truth about her. Second, in the book The Great War, the great houses of Hammerfell unite against the Aldmeri Dominion, and to date in Skyrim, these facts, along with Hammerfell's success at repelling the Dominion, undermine Saadia's claim that the Alik'r are assassins hired by the Thalmor, who want her dead for her speaking out publicly against the Dominion. Come on!! Redguards hired by the Thalmor, the ones they fought during and after the Great War? Cool story, sis!!