Balance Of Power

The duel was set for the morning.

Dozens of plots, feuds, and intertwining desires were due to come to a head. The King and the Prince who hated each other were nominally the ones dueling, but the two Barons who were chosen as proxies had their own bad blood.

And then seemingly every member of the court needed one of the men involved to win, or lose, or die, or survive.

All the plotting caused a logjam, which should have left the duel untouched, except one woman with two doses of poison and a desire to maintain the current status-quo.