A genre I enjoy reading/writing about (fanfiction or otherwise) is political intrigue. Intrigue-based plots however tend to be some of the hardest to pull off. Many authors tend to base their fictional intrigue off of stuff which has happened in real life.

What are some interesting political schemes which have happened in history? What nasty, innovative plots have people pulled off? Additionally, were there ever moments or loopholes which someone could have advantaged if they'd thought to do it?

 

In 1824, Henry Clay was losing badly against 4 other Republican candidates (one party race) with only about 10% of the vote, so he negotiated with John Quincy Adams, who was not in the lead, that was Jackson, and basically Clay told all of his supporters to vote for Adams instead the day before the election. Obviously, no one heard about this, because the news wasn't going to travel around the country even remotely that quickly, but Clay argued that all of his votes should go to Adams because he made the speech. The obvious problem with this is not all of Clay's supporters would have actually voted for Adams had they known their guy was dropping out, so Jackson, annoyed, founded the Democratic party in order to immediately campaign against Adams for the 1828 election. I guess it's a simple plan all things considered, but it did work.

 

So the story of what really caused Scotland to politically unite with England is quite interesting. The root of it all was economic (and to my mind economics is just one facet of politics, so I think this fits with your interest). The Darien scheme was a plan to set up a Scottish colony in what is now Panama. Its important to know that at this point Scotland's crown was in a personal union with England, but not a political union. So the King of Scotland was the King of England, but they were entirely separate countries.

The background to the endeavour was severe hardship in Scotland. In the 1690s Scotland lost something like 15% of its population to famine and disease, so the Scottish government decided to set up a colony in the hopes (to simplify things) that it would prove super profitable and sort all their problems out.

They set up a competitor to the East India Company, which promptly used its influence to ensure that no one in England or the Netherlands would invest. So the Company of Scotland could only get investment in Scotland. So they raised an amount of money that ended up being about 20% of the total wealth in Scotland, and funded an initial expedition, and then a secondary expedition to deliver more supplies and settlers.

The whole thing was a disaster. The leaders of the initial voyage were largely composed of political allies of the King, allies who had recently undertaken the Massacre of Glencoe at the King's direction and wanted to spend some time outside of the country to get away from the consequences of their involvement in that Massacre. They were utterly incapable of actually leading such an expedition, and when the second convoy of ships arrived they found the burned remains of several ships, and a bunch of collapsed houses with people living aboard the last remaining vessels of the first expedition. Eventually the Spanish routed the lot of them, and they went back to Scotland.

As you can imagine the financial consequences for Scotland were pretty devastating, 20% of the wealth of the country had been tied up in this and the only thing to show from it was a handful of ships and a small amount of cash in a bank account. So they decided to mount a more conventional trading expedition from Scotland to try and recoup the losses. However the captains involved went off piste somewhat, and decided to make a deal with pirates to raid East Indian Company ships to make some extra profit, before trying to renege on said deal. Long story short, the pirate stole the tradings ships and they both ended up being sunk. The captains, quite sensibly, decided against returning to Scotland.

The Company of Scotland sent out another ship to find out what had happened to them - lost at sea.

They sent out another ship - seized by the East India Trading Company under dubious legal pretexts.

At this point they have no money left. You can imagine the economic effects on Scotland. Most of the wealthiest Scots had tied up their entire fortunes in the venture, and plenty of non-wealthy folk had invested everything they had as well.

The rest of the story is a bit of a political disaster in which the Scottish government tried to get their own back on England by impounding an English ship and charging 3 of its crew with sinking their trading convey - they tried the case in Edinburgh in front of a jury, and the prosecution didn't speak a single word of a language the jury could understand (a combination of latin and a northern scottish dialect called Doric as I recall, Doric being practically unintelligible to normal people but technically being English so officially being allowed in court). As would obviously happen when the Government presents their case in languages that the jury don't understand, they unanimously found the defendants guilty.

The end result of this was a near bankrupt Scottish government, who petitioned England for help. They asked for England to pay off Scotlands debt and to stabilise the Scottish currency. England laughed at them, and then agreed to fix the value of Scottish currency against English currency. But regarding Scotlands debt, they only agreed to pay that off if Scotland entered a political union with England.

So the Scottish Government agreed to the Act of Union.

Now, as for the political schemes - it could be suggested that the people appointed to lead the expedition was appointed in order to remove them from Britain as their presence was a continual reminder of the Massacre of Glencoe and thus an embarrassment to the King, and also it could be suggested that the King (or his English advisors) saw the long term benefit of a weakening of the Scotland and so the appointment of utterly unqualified leaders was a deliberate attempt at sabotage. Its doubtful they could have hoped for such a success, the absolute failure and bankruptcy of the project, but even a moderate failure would have seriously weakened Scotland's position and left it far more vulnerable to England's influence.

 

I’ve been thinking of writing a story about this for ages, but the Faliero Coup in Venice is absolutely fascinating. Basically it revolved around Marino Faliero, (Marin Falier in Venetian), the Doge of Venice at the time. He sought to organize a populist coup against the senate, and to replace it with a dictatorship. There are rumors that it began when his wife, supposedly the most beautiful woman in Venice, began to have rumors of infidelity circle around her, and he was taunted by a young nobleman while in the palace; spawning an anger towards the old patrician families.

He recruited five men, all commoners, who were supposed to recruit twenty more each, and then who were going to recruit another twenty. But before the scheme could go forward, it was revealed. Marino was brought before the Grand Council and executed upon the steps of the Doge’s Palace. His face remains stricken from all records of the Republic.

 

That has a rather.. triangular structure which is pretty interesting, almost pyramid like, if you think about it..

Shame it didn't work out, imagine the precedent.

Just to spice it up, if every peasant who recruited a complete 20 became a (future) army officer, with the rank increasing with every layer under him, that would be pretty hilarious too. Definitely my 'headcanon' as to what was promised.

 

Any Crusader Kings player worth his salt knows that the more people you induct into a scheme the more likely you are to be exposed.

Rank amateur.

 

I assume that you've heard of the abdication crisis? There was a very small window of time between the abdication of Edward and the coronation of George in which the UK had no monarch. The Irish Taoiseach at the time, Éamon de Valera, immediately removed all reference of the King and any royal representatives from the constitution, thus further separating us from the Brits and the commonwealth.
Prior to this move, the presence of the King's name in the constitution and the 'Oath of loyalty' that TD's had had to swear before being sworn into parliament, had been one of the causes of our civil war, and a sticking point for many die-hard republicans.