Intrigue

Intrigue

See also Conspiracy.

Borgias

15th-century family who stopped at nothing to gain power. [Ital. Hist.: Plumb, 59]

Ems dispatch

Bismarck’s purposely provocative memo on Spanish succession; sparked Franco-Prussian war (1870). [Ger. Hist.: NCE, 866]

Machiavelli, Nicolò

(1469–1527) author of book extolling political cunning. [Ital. Hist.: The Prince]

Mannon, Lavinia

undoes adulterous mother by brainwashing brother. [Am. Lit.: Mourning Becomes Electra]

Mission Impossible

team of investigators with Byzantine modus operandi. [TV: “Mission Impossible” in Terrace, II, 100–101]

Paolino

has cohort woo his covertly wed wife. [Ital. Opera: Cimarosa, The Secret Marriage, Westerman, 63]

Phormio

slick lawyer finagles on behalf of two men. [Rom. Lit.: Phormio]

Ruritania

imaginary pre-WWI kingdom, rife with political machinations. [Br. Lit.: Prisoner of Zenda]

X Y Z Affair

thinly disguised extortion aroused anti-French feelings (1797–1798). [Am. Hist.: Jameson, 564]

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Intrigue 

in literature, a complicated and intense interweaving of events as a method of structuring the action or plot in novels (mostly in adventure novels) and in drama. It develops out of the sharp clash between the main characters’ interests and their purposeful, often secret struggle. An example is the intrigue over the letter about the guardianship in F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel A Raw Youth. The peripeteia involving the letter also reveals the “tragedy of the underground” and the “ethical duality” of the protagonists.