Of course it is at stake. Are you kidding?
It's not, as far as Picard knows when he chooses strangers over E-D pals.
But as far as he knows, it's not at any later timepoint, either. So somebody wants his head? Well, it's old and bald. It's not the Federation. For Picard, this is just personal. When the chateau gets raided, it turns out that those with an axe to grind with him are powerful. But it's still personal. And nothing suggests that the Federation would be threatened by any outcome of the duel between Picard and those who don't like him.
He didnt "let Dahj die". He is an old man with none of his Prof X superpowers. How could he have saved her?
He couldn't. Which is exactly why he feels guilty about letting her die. That's the only reason he's on this hunt originally anyway: to either confront or then just outpace an organization that killed Dahj, with considerable but not Federation-threatening resources.
No penalty for failure? They came to his house to kill him.
How is that penalty for failure? And there's no reason to think that success would stop people from coming to kill him. Quite to the contrary, those people would probably be even more pissed off.
But as said many times, this comes after
He watched tape of the murderers of Dahj wiping clean the evidence. He knows the Federation is on the line.
Nope, and nope. Those things did not happen, at least not in this episode yet.
Penetrated by the Tal Shiar/Zhat Vash. If anything is clear, it is that he did NOT decide to avoid asking his TNG colleagues because he did not think this was a serious issue. He said he would not ask because he knows they would do it. Which makes no sense at all.
When Picard made that statement, there was an
episode to go till things really turned from "embarrassing personal quest" to "risky mission to expose a galactic conspiracy". In that latter episode, we learn why Picard would wish to keep his distance, what with him already having dragged down at least Musiker with his personal pride and histrionics. We also finally learn that he
might be in over his head. And from trailers and previews, we know that he now will summon more help, including the sword-wielding elf and apparently also the Trois. We just don't know what sort of help he's hoping to get from those.
Timo Saloniemi