The Washington Post published an explosive piece by columnist David Ignatius on Tuesday detailing the Saudi royal family feud that led to the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a feud that he writes “matches anything in the fantasy series ‘Game of Thrones.’ ”

The centerpiece of the article is an incident in the summer of 2016 in which allies of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, commonly known as MBS, organized the detention of a prominent rival in China—an event that, as Ignatius notes, bears similarities to what happened to Khashoggi in Turkey in October.

Businessman Tarek Obaid was a financial adviser to Turki bin Abdullah, a former governor of Riyadh and son of the late King Abdullah. Turki is one of the chief rivals of MBS in the power struggle that has broken out since the king’s death in 2015. Obaid was detained and brutally interrogated by Chinese authorities based on information from Riyadh that he was actually a terrorist financier organizing a plot against that year’s G-20 summit. (If you’ve been puzzled about why Arab autocrats seem remarkably unbothered by Donald Trump’s overt Islamophobia or China’s persecution of Muslims, consider the willingness of powerful Saudis in this case to exploit foreign fears of Islamist terrorism for their own ends.) Obaid was eventually released when the Chinese realized they had been deceived. He is now living in exile in Switzerland.

Since Khashoggi’s death, there’s been renewed attention on Saudi Arabia’s influence in Washington and other foreign capitals, from its vast lobbying effort to its funding of think tanks to its courting of prominent journalists. But Ignatius’ story—both the events recounted in it and its very existence—suggests the problem is more complicated. “The Saudis” are far from a monolith. They are a divided and fractious group of players who are not only fighting one another for power but are also using foreign institutions and governments as pawns in that struggle.

Of course, Saudi Arabia is not the only government that speaks with more than one voice. There are days when Trump and his senior foreign policy advisers don’t even seem to be representing the same country. But the problem is more acute for the only absolute monarchy among the world’s major economic powers. Moreover, it’s a monarchy where the rules of succession are ambiguous and there are literally thousands of potential heirs; the jockeying for influence among them is inevitable.

Ignatius reports that as the crown prince began to gather power, his rivals sought to turn the U.S. against him. “Knowing that [CIA Director John] Brennan and other members of the Obama administration were uneasy about MBS, several of Abdullah’s sons hired a leading strategic advisory firm in Washington, to gather information about the new dynamic in U.S.-Saudi relations,” he writes. Turki and Obaid traveled to Washington in May 2016 and spent several days holed up at the Four Seasons meeting with prominent former officials and journalists, including Ignatius, to raise concerns about the brash young prince. It didn’t work: Obama was apparently charmed and impressed by MBS’ talk of reforms when the prince visited the White House that June, and Obama backed his disastrous military intervention in Yemen, albeit with less enthusiasm than Trump would eventually show.

This lobbying offensive was mild compared with the MBS group’s later attempts to manipulate China’s state security apparatus to silence Obaid after he had publicly criticized the crown prince’s economic plans. Likewise, it’s worth keeping in mind that Khashoggi himself was hardly a classic dissident. He was, until recently, a royal insider close to both the late King Abdullah and the billionaire investor Alwaleed bin Talal, whom MBS had arrested last year. This isn’t to diminish the horror and brutality of Khashoggi’s killing, but the tragedy is perhaps better explained by internecine power struggles than the simplistic notion of a dictatorship killing a prominent critic.

Another recent story suggests why talk of “Saudi influence” in Washington is often overly simplistic. On Monday, it was reported that Kirsten Fontenrose, a former top White House official overseeing policy toward Saudi Arabia whose resignation earlier this month had been seen as a protest of the Trump administration’s lackluster response to the Khashoggi killing, would be joining Sonoran Policy Group, a lobbying firm that in 2017 was “the top recipient of Saudi Arabian money in Washington.” What initially looked like a pure example of Washington hypocrisy is in fact a little more complicated. As Quartz reported in October, SPG had been hired by the Saudi interior ministry, led by Mohammed bin Nayef, who was once heir to the throne until he was sidelined by MBS. Nayef had enjoyed close ties to the intelligence community under Obama but had lost influence in Trump’s Washington. Ignatius describes MBS as “paranoid” about Nayef. In other words, after resigning over Trump’s reluctance to punish MBS, Fontenrose defected to go work for MBS’ rivals. K Street is just one more battlefield in this royal power struggle.

In light of what we’re learning about the Saudi royal family’s divisions, Trump’s policy toward the country looks less like an embrace of “Saudi Arabia,” as a nation, than a personal endorsement of the crown prince. (Recall that Trump gave his tweeted endorsement to MBS’ unprecedented arrest, purge, and in some cases torture of his most powerful relatives one year ago.) This makes sense for a president who often seems to view foreign policy purely in terms of personal relationships and sometimes seems like he wants his own administration to resemble a royal court, complete with prominent roles for his relatives. (Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has become personally close to MBS over several trips to the kingdom and is reportedly the main point of contact between the two ruling families.)

Since Khashoggi’s death, several commentators have made the case that while the Saudi relationship is worth preserving, MBS must go. This is becoming a more dubious case to make. For one thing, the more we learn about the regime, the less convincing the notion that it’s in any way a bulwark for regional stability—as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not very convincingly argued Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal.

As the global backlash against MBS grows (the latest news is that Argentine prosecutors are considering pressing charges against him at this week’s G-20 summit), his critics should be wary of simply playing a part in the internal Saudi power struggle. MBS’ rivals, still smarting from last year’s purge, are clearly feeling emboldened by the international opprobrium being heaped upon him. Ignatius’ article itself is probably read in this context. Obaid, now in Switzerland, is a named source in the piece, and it’s safe to assume that most of the sources are associated with Turki’s side in the power struggle against the crown prince and are looking to further damage his already sullied reputation.

Ignatius concludes by comparing MBS’ “brutal paranoia” to that of Saddam Hussein during his dictatorship of Iraq and urges the United States to “calm this family feud before it does any more damage to Saudi Arabia and the world.” Better still to not participate in it.