Realpolitik / Fan Works

• This trope is prevalent in Child of the Storm, with the colossal Gambit Pileup. Nick Fury's goal of protecting humanity, for instance, is noble and he's unquestionably on the side of the good guys, he's willing to use some very shady means to bring it about, with much of the story being a chess match between him and Lucius Malfoy. And that is but the tip of the iceberg.
  • Fury's protégé, Director Peter Wisdom of MI13, is an even worse offender, having almost none of his teacher's scruples and being a textbook example of The Unfettered. He takes advantage of Parliament's fears over the current global situation in order to amass resources and power at a rate that frightens the rest of British Intelligence, uses blackmail and bribery to secure the aid of superpowered individuals, and is working to control, or outright supplant altogether, the currently crippled Ministry of Magic as Britain's magic response organization. He explains that he genuinely does love his country, and that quite simply, there is nothing he will not do to preserve it.
  • Doctor Strange, meanwhile, plays both of the above, and just about everyone else like a harp, even when they know he's manipulating them. How? Two reasons. First, they know that he never lies. This is not the same as being honest, but it's an important baseline. Second, the consequences of not doing what he advises are usually a great deal worse, because he is working for the preservation of humanity. This means that everyone winds up, reluctantly, marching to Strange's fife.
• In Event Horizon: Storm of Magic, this is The Company™'s M.O. through and through, often resorting to underhanded tactics to get what they want. But they are also pragmatic and otherwise pretty decent in their conduct, at least compared to the other, considerably more outright genocidal villains in the setting...
• Summer Crowns has the alliances that the Dragonhunt forges with the Tattered Prince and Salladhor Saan against the Free Cities, despite most of the former's leadership not caring for either of them.
  • Braavos allying with Lys, despite historically being opposed to all the Free Cities which practice and support slavery.
  • The newborn Kingdom of Summer allowing the Faith to establish septs in their territories with tax exemptions and the right to raise their own soldiers (albeit on a limited basis). All done to provide further aid to their new subjects, as well as a way of drawing more men from Westeros in a way that gets around King Stannis' prohibition on the Dragonhunt recruiting new forces.
• Earth's Alien History:
  • Despite finding the people of Troyius repulsive, the Klingons still provide them with military and technological aid to counter TeTO's alliance with the neighboring world of Elas, as this gives them a foothold in the system.
  • The Quarians' reconciliation with the Geth is purely to give them better standing against the Five Galaxies.
  • After crowning herself Empress, Daena T'Drak has the new Asari Empire join the Pact of the Raptor alongside their old enemies the Romulans, noting that it's the best way to restore their species' prestige.
  • When Blackfire breaks her alliance with the Romulans and brings Tamaran into TeTO, TeTO looks the other way regarding the Romulan-backed coup which brought her into power in the first place due to preparing for the Reaper War and not having the time or resources to waste on removing her from power. After the war, they begrudgingly let her stay on as Queen (albeit with a transition to constitutional monarchy instead of absolute monarchy) since any other course of action would trigger a civil war which TeTO would get bogged down in.
  • During the Revenant Crisis, when TeTO is aiding the Ildrian Empire in fighting the rouge Decepticons and Klikiss robots, the Pact of the Raptor also gets involved. Officially, this is due to viewing the machines as a mutual threat to all organic life, like the Reapers before them. In truth, however, they're trying to win the Ildrians over towards the idea of joining them instead of TeTO, thus increasing their bloc's power and resources.
  • When Rimillia is discovered, Captain Georgiou offers to bring them into TeTO to help them terraform their hostile ecosystem and develop their primitive FTL technology to expand out of their system. In exchange, she admits, TeTO would get access to Rimillia's rich mineral resources and strategic location.
  • The Shield Alliance doesn't hesitate to take advantage of the genetic disorder plaguing the Valakians, playing up their own knowledge of genetic engineering as a cure and ignoring the potential dangers of it, to convince them to join their bloc instead of TeTO.
  • The Pact of the Raptor spreads propaganda of the Harvesters' and Vinn's past ways in order to besmirch the Shield Alliance's reputation and convince the Deltan Union to join them instead (they try to do the same to TeTO, but they have fewer skeletons in their closets).
  • The Romulans back the Duras rebels in the Praxis War, as they're more friendly to the Pact of the Raptor than the TeTO-aligned Azetbur government.
  • During the second Klingon civil war, TeTO can't directly intervene for political legal reasons, but still unofficially supply Azetbur's forces via the Conspiracy of Light (who are technically neutral), as the potential threat of reactionary forces regaining control of the Empire is too great to ignore.
  • TeTO reluctantly agrees to let the Pact of the Raptor keep Vorl-tak technology when they justify it as a counter to TeTO's vast number of superhumans. This then leads to a treaty between them and the Shield Alliance to share all new technologies in order to keep any one bloc from gaining an advantage over the others.
  • The Pact of the Raptor and Shield Alliance stay neutral in TeTO's war with the Goa'uld so that they can reap the benefits (per the aforementioned treaty) without any risk on their parts.
  • The Romulan government and its partners in the Pact reject the Zhat Vash's fear and hate of digital lifeforms, seeing the latter as potentially too good an asset to throw away. Because of this, and to maintain good relations with TeTO, they officially disavow the Zhat Vash after their Assassination Attempt on Hanka Kamiya and her Digimon partner.
  • The rest of the Shield Alliance is morally disgusted by the Bajorans' oppression of Cardassian colonists in the worlds Cardassia ceded them after the Praxis War, but unable to do anything about it because the Alliance's charter prevents intervention in a member polity's internal affairs. So to circumvent this, they coordinate with the Pact and TeTO to funnel weapons via the Conspiracy to a Cardassian resistance movement on the occupied worlds.
  • When deciding who to transfer Amber's Maiden Powers to, it's decided to give them to Blake Belladonna because she's from a prominent Faunus family, and a Faunus Maiden would keep Menagerie in the pro-TeTO coalition by ensuring an ace in the hole won't be used against them.
  • During the Peace Conference on Concourse following the end of the Goa'uld War, the decision to allow Bastet to keep her domain as a Vestigial Empire nearly makes the Tok'ra, Free Jaffa, and Dilgar all walk out in outrage, with them only being mollified by the fact that Bastet has been reduced to a powerless figurehead by the Ka'tee movement, who want to keep the domain intact as part of their beliefs about Katie's eventual return.
• One of the central pillars of Of Sheep and Battle Chicken is this trope. It is the driving force behind of many Council's actions, as well as the main theme of the story's take on the various galactic governments; anything is permissible to a group so long as it gets results.
• The Fight we Chose takes place during the beginning of the Vietnam War, but with the events of Gate opening in the US. Naturally you can't have a Cold-War-centric story without some political intrigue.
  • The US pulls out of Vietnam entirely, essentially conceding victory to the Dirty Communists. However, there is a silver lining to this; the guarantee of a unified Socialist Vietnam that is more closely allied with the Soviets against a greater threat: the People's Republic of China.^note Despite the USSR and the CCP being part of the second-world Combloc, they were definitely not allies due to differing core ideologies, best exemplified by the Sino-Soviet Split.
  • Khrushchev has his hands full holding back the Communist Party's insistence on somehow taking the Gate and the world beyond for themselves; since that would mean open conflict with the Americans for another dimension's civilization that cannot appreciate the benefits of communist ideology over capitalism. He settles for spying and patiently waiting for developments in the Soviet's favor.
• Fusion Impression: Whereas the Crystal Gems view fusion as an expression of love and relationships, Jasper sees it more as power-play, similar to how people use strength and social-standings as a means of ascending societal ranks.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic Changeling Courtship Rituals: One of Twilight's first thoughts after accidentally marrying Chrysalis is that this greatly reduces the chances of the changelings trying to conquer Equestria again. On the other hand, Twilight's sister-in-law Cadence is so caught up in her hatred of Chrysalis that she remains blind to these implications.
• Fate/Black Dawn: It is well-known that Morgan is a witch who is at least passively fighting against Camelot. She can still order a booth at a tournament and enter a fighter, because King Arthur can't just ignore such a powerful entity.
• Chasing Dragons:
  • When it becomes clear that Tyrosh is going to lose the Third Slave War, their traditional partner Lys abandons their alliance in favor of grabbing up as much territory as they can before the Abolitionist Alliance can.
  • With neutrality between the Abolitionists and the Slavers no longer being an option, Lorath decides that the safer option is to not piss off the militarily stronger Abolitionists, so aligns with Braavos and puts in place a plan to slowly emancipate the city's slaves.
  • Lady Shipwright despises Victarion for his raping and pillaging during the fall of Myr, but still plays nice with him for the sake of her House having such a powerful ally.
  • Due to the upheaval brought to western Essos' status quo since the Sunset Company's arrival, the dominant faction in Norvos decides to pursue a treaty with the abolitionists in which they will enact a slow manumission of their slave population in exchange for being allowed to annex Qohor's former territories unmolested. In the eyes of this faction, the small sacrifice of this change to their culture will bring their city greater glory in the long-term. Unfortunately, reactionaries decide to stage a coup rather than let this happen.
  • In response to Lorath's capitulation to Braavos, which they see as part of Braavosi colonialist expansion, Saath and Ibben band together to metaphorically draw a line in the sand.
  • Lys eventually sues for peace with the Abolitionists at the end of the Fourth Slave War to avoid being outright crushed, accepting the loss of their mainland territories to Myr and permanent military occupation of their islands by Braavos to ensure that they enact manumission on their slaves. And for their part, Myr only accepts a peace treaty (as opposed to their original plans of invading the islands) for the sake of preserving their alliance with Braavos.
  • At the tail end of the Fourth Slave War, the Tattered Prince sues for a separate peace with Myr, offering to aid them in liberating Norvos in exchange for he and his men being allowed to peacefully enter exile in neutral Lorath afterwards. Many on Myr's side want to just kill him for causing Brynden Tully's death during the war, but Robert accepts the deal, as most of the rest of the Abolitionist Alliance's forces have withdrawn by this point due to seeing the war as over due to Lys' surrender and the Exile Company's defeat, so he needs all the help he can get to beat Norvos.
• A Diplomatic Visit: The fic goes into great length about the political climate between Equestria and the other nations.
• There Was Once an Avenger From Krypton:
  • The Nova Corps allow the member worlds of their empire to do anything they want short of things like slavery so long as they stay members. This is why they don't intervene in Morando's coup on Arkiridion V, along with the fact that fighting him would destroy the military resources they'll need to face the Black Order.
  • Small-scale, local politics version — according to Chloe, the only reason her father supports Paris' LGBTQ community is because that gets him more votes than pandering to the religious crowd. The fact that Chloe feels the need to hide her real sexuality from him would suggest that his personal opinions are far different.
  • The Cluster has avoided invading Earth due to not wanting to start a war with the more powerful Kree. But now that Earth is in transition between the Kree and Nova Empires' protection, they're fair game.
• Children of Remnant:
  • One of the key parts of the story. Yes Salem is an unrepentant monster, but she is also the head of state of the most powerful nation on the planet. The other nations simply cannot ignore her, or even censure her. As long as they play her games, she will negotiate. Even with her negotiating in bad faith, it's still better than her just sending the Grimm against everyone.
  • This is also one of the biggest factors working against Jaune. All he wants is peace, but even if everyone believed that (which they don't), they have other priorities.
  • After chapter 44, all five of the Claimed are immortal. Mention is made of the world governments scrambling to figure out how to deal with five unkillable abominations instead of just one. Their first move is "give them whatever they ask for and be very happy they just wanted a visit from their friends."

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