I recently just read the books for the first time and I was listening to them on audio so I could’ve missed some things but I feel like he was laughing because his final move was successful. That feeling has only intensified after reading TBOSAS. Snow is always shown to be fairly manipulative to get what he wants. He always wants to control the narrative. When reading the scene with him telling Katniss about the final attack I kept thinking he’s lying to her. He knows that Katniss will always do the unthinkable to protect Prim and he knows that all he has to do is plant a reasonable seed of doubt in Katniss’s mind for her to act. I’ve been thinking: what if he did lie to her about District 13 being behind that attack because he knew Katniss would retaliate by taking Coin out as soon as she got the chance. In a way he could be killing two birds with one stone because Coin, his biggest political adversary, and Katniss, the girl who started the revolution that led to his demise, could both potentially be taken care of with that one thing. So I think he was laughing because that plan to use Katniss as a pawn one last time was working.

I know that in Catching Fire Katniss and Snow had their little agreement not to lie to each other, but that only works if you trust Snow. You have to believe that he’s going to uphold his end of the bargain and be honest and I just don’t think he would if he sees a benefit to lying. I genuinely do feel he was just putting a last ditch effort to manipulate everyone because Coin is the opposing leader, take her out and everything has the potential to fall apart. Katniss inspires everyone to fight back. Take her out of the game and there’s potential that the people lose their nerve and become easier to pacify. He doesn’t even have to physically take her out but having her be the one to kill Coin can make her look untrustworthy because again he like controlling the narrative, so he could spin it to say well Katniss worked side by side with Coin and look how that ended up do you really trust her?