How To Make Intrigues That Don't Suck 

I appreciate that you brought up how people already in power are probably less likely to work against their superiors. It's weird seeing people make such a high-stakes risk, especially when (as you said) they're already so close to the top.

I think writers can learn a lot from drama/comedy in terms of characters. The one thing you learn if you're involved with the stage in any way, is that your actions and reactions should make sense, not just contextually to the scene, but to the pathos and ethos of the characters and their dynamics. Motivations are long, short and medium term and can be symbiotic or contradictory. As a safe bet it's always good to keep it as simple as possible. I think a lot of writers try to add way too much complexity instead of just getting into the characters like a tabletop RPG. You can get a LOT of nuance out of everyday conflicts, and you can communicate a lot more through suggestion than outright exposition.

This is very helpful for a guy like me who is pretty straight forward xD more often than not reaping the consequences both good and bad. Once I can formulate some ideas around what you describe an intrigue is, perhaps I will be able to create much more interesting plots.

When this is done successfully on a small scale, I think of Band of Brothers Ep1. Sobel, an unlikable and inept commander is in a position of power over his men. In order to get rid of him without any legitimate grounds that he has done anything wrong, his commander treats him well, speaks highly of his actual talents, and then promotes him to go lead a training school. It's set up as a "everyone wins" situation, but it really is political manuevering, so that better commanders can be put in charge of the unit before they launch the D-Day invasion. Intrigue doesn't always need to be bloodshed and assasinations, it could just be the good guys needing to convince the powers that be to move certain people around without upsetting the status quo...even if those people can read the room and pick up on the subtext of what is happening (that too can add to the drama). It can work best when said person is offered a technically better deal that they would be foolish or ungrateful to refuse on a surface level.

16:43 Stopping to think about it, it's actually curious that they didn't provide a better reason in Dishonored when they already had one in the story: the fact that the plague's spread was orchestrated but got out of control, in which case those responsible would want to get rid of anyone getting too close to finding the truth in order to protect themselves, which would be the case of the empress, given how personally involved she got, being so determined to find a solution to the point of sending her own royal protector in a mission to try to find a solution (maybe the letter that Corvo brought could even have contained some seemingly unimportant information to the empress which could have provided a clue about the start of the plague that could in the long term risk exposing the real culprits, and possibly forcing them to act in a haste after hearing the contents of the letter - being among the first to hear it as they were some of the highest government officials - to stop the truth from spreading and in the process failing to cover up all the evidences of the planned assassination, which the player could later find throughout the game). This would also be a good explanation as to why Sokolov is later found living in such an isolated but well guarded place: being the royal physician, he probably knew too much after all his studies about the plague, but was too valuable to just be disposed of, being kept as a prisoner and forced to work on the cure instead. That probably would also have made the story more engaging for players, putting the pieces together until figuring out why the empress was eliminated. At least it would be more interesting than just hearing it at the prologue as an info dump from the villains monologuing to the protagonist about their evil plan to gain power for no real reason.

k