I was going over older stuff and I hope no one minds my musings
Once, the Ministry of Integrity might have risen as a counterbalance to eventual Zheng interference, but their rising star losing his Way ended that path. As things stand, a realignment was inevitable. Do you understand then, Renxiang?"
"But," she glanced his way as he spoke up. "A simple fellow though I might be… I imagine that those grannies are getting a little tired of the world moving along without our say you know? Things these days are getting a bit lax aren't they?" he commented breezily.
Shenhua saw this coming.
It's kind of weird to think that the children of the Sun Wukong expy are the intrigue faction, but that's what it looks like. The MoI had been intended to counter balance them, but that isn't going to happen because they lack the strength after Jiao lost his way.
Meanwhile, Sun was an opportunity to break one of the founding houses, Bai, most likely. But Shenhua feels sure that the window of that opportunity is closed. And I believe she is correct.
At the end of the day, the Bai and Zheng are the last of the founding clans. It's an old rivalry, but I doubt they actually want each other destroyed. Meanwhile, the Imperial house continues to support policies targeting the old spirit-blooded clans. This makes the Bai and Zheng effectively brothers, even as they show outward animosity.
The Imperial house has itself, the sun, and the Jin. The problem is, having the Jin means the Xuan are opposed. The Jin hold a near monopoly on ports and take ruthless advantage of that.
So the opposing side looks like the Zheng, Bai, Cai, and Xuan. The big thing here is that even though the Zheng have roughly similar goals, they probably wont directly ally with the Bai.
The Guo aren't decided, but moves have been made to get them to pick sides. Probably, they'll end up as the Zhengs direct ally.
Even with the forces arrayed against them, the imperial house isn't going to go down easily. The Sun have the strongest standing army, and the Imperial house wouldn't hold the title if they were weak.
The big thing is. Sun is a king. If the situation evolves in the right way, he may very well decided to abandon the Empire, take his ball, and go home. This is actually a viable solution because the Zheng are fine with the Bai having a long term hostile neighbor, and the Bai aren't likely to ask younger clans for help.
This conflict was more or less inevitable. The previous emperor invested a lot in trying to break the old clans. Then, it either fell through because he ascended, or he ascended because he saw that it would fall through. Regardless, the attempt to remove entrenched institutions was noticed, and the time to pay the piper is coming.
