Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, was the original ‘kingmaker’. A prominent member of the English aristocracy in the 15th century, Warwick was a member of a powerful family. It was he who provided the necessary support for Richard, Duke of York, to challenge for the throne of England, and for RICHARD’S son, Edward, to overthrow Henry VI.
What am I waffling on about? The Wars of the Roses, the English civil war of the 15th century, saw the House of Lancaster and the House of York battle for the throne of England. It is thought that this period of history inspired George R. R. Martin’s short work, “A Dance of Fire and Ice”. You may have heard of both, although, unless you’re in the UK, probably the latter rather than the former.
As a short aside, of sorts, there is a board game based on this period of history, called Kingmaker, which is a fortuitous name. If you haven’t played it, I’d recommend it. It is one of my favourite games; like Diplomacy, it ticks the ‘based-on-history’ box. There is also a version of the rules that was written by someone called Lewis Pulsipher.
Warwick was known as the Kingmaker because he put aside the ultimate ambition of becoming king himself (with good reason – he would never have been accepted!) to support others. And, when Edward IV proved to be less maleable as monarch, Warwick turned his favour to the Lancastrian side. Slippery little sod.
What does this have to do with Diplomacy? Well, there is a type of play in Dip that is known as Kingmaking, and I wanted to introduce the topic with a little context as to where the phrase ‘kingmaker’ comes from.
When all is lost
Unless your name is Goff, Fogel, McNamara, Lester or Arkwright (well, OK, not Arkwright, but I can dream, right?), we mere mortals will reach a point in a game when we realise we’re not going to win. This happens more often than not. In fact, in a good number of games, we may well face elimination. That’s the nature of the game.
At this point, we’re faced with a choice of how to continue playing. Assuming we do continue playing. All too often, certainly online, people in this position will leave the game, leaving the remaining players to try to play on with an ABANDONED POWER sitting doing nothing. For those who choose to stick it out, they are left with a choice.
There are different things you might do in this situation:
- You might play on, choosing to play as best you can, putting your life in the hands of your leading diplomat – you! – to keep you alive and to survive to the end of the game.
- You might try out new, risky moves, hoping that, somehow, you bamboozle your opponents to such an extent that they simply can’t work out how to get rid of you.
- You might try selling your services to the highest bidder and even jump between players and alliances, causing as much havoc as possible.
- You might stay in the game but not really play it, which is something I call CAPITULATING: not leaving the game but not really playing it, either.1
- You might remain in the game but try to avenge yourself against the player or players that reduced you to this sorry state of affairs, aiming to help another player to win the game.
It is this fifth option (there may be more) that encapsulates the act of Kingmaking in Diplomacy.
Not just an Armoured Duck
I think it was Richard Sharp who came up with the phrase ‘Armoured Duck’, at least in Diplomacy. It exists elsewhere, and in some video games it refers to a pet companion that can add to your defence. This is something of the idea behind the concept of the ARMOURED DUCK in Diplomacy.
Sharp mentioned it in his book, the seminal text of Dip players everywhere, “The Game of Diplomacy”:
There is one type of player who infuriates me beyond measure, the one I think of as the Armoured Duck. … There is nothing one can do about the Armoured Duck except try to get him interested in some other game because he isn’t up to the cynical skills of this one.2
Sharp describes this player as someone who sets themselves on a course of action and won’t shift from it. You may have stabbed them, so they set themselves on a course of vengeance, regardless of what happens; or they may have stabbed you and, again heedless of the situation in the game, they will carry on the attack and ignore your attempts to negotiate with them, often because they expect you to be looking for revenge.
A Kingmaker is something more. They act like an Armoured Duck, in that they will carry on regardless, but they are not playing for themselves. They align themselves with another player against you and will throw their resources into the attack, allowing the other player to walk into their SCs. This is the Diplomacy version of suicide, but with a twist. Not surprisingly, such play is often decried by DIPPYISTS as a terrible thing.
When is a Kingmaker not a kingmaker?
When they’re a DEAD DUCK.
The act of Kingmaking is only kingmaking when the player being helped has a chance to win the game. The very idea is that the vengeful player is seeking to not only defeat their enemy, but also help another player win the game. How can you be a kingmaker when the player you’re helping doesn’t have a chance to become king?
As you’ll see below, I don’t really have a problem with Kingmaking. What I do have a problem with is someone who acts this way when the game is in too early a stage to give someone victory. At this point, the person – the Dead Duck – is acting only as an Armoured Duck but with no intention of surviving the game. There’s no need for this behaviour except to satisfy the peevishness of the Dead Duck. It’s petty, and it shows that, like the Armoured Duck, they don’t understand the game.
But is it acceptable in Diplomacy?
Calling Kingmaking a strategy is, perhaps, a stretch, but it is certainly a way of playing the game. If you’re the victim, you’re probably less forgiving. If you’re the beneficiary, you’ll be more than happy to receive the rewards! To answer the above question, we need to step out of these roles and think about it from the point of view of people who play the game. Do we want to see Kingmaking in Diplomacy?
In many ways, this is nothing more than a philosophical question. It exists, although some players won’t practice it. Others are very ready to do so, and many of these come under the description of the Dead Duck. Does it add anything positive to Diplomacy? In all honesty, probably not, but it’s not the only practice that exists in the game that has a more negative than positive impact.
This isn’t the real question, though. What separates good and improving players from the rest is that they ask themselves what they could have done differently. Why did I get stabbed? Why did I fail to gain a win? What happened to make me the odd one out at the start of the game? It’s not a perfect science, and there are times when there was really nothing you could have done differently, but if you can see your errors, you can take action to eradicate them.
If you’ve been the victim of Kingmaking, ask yourself why. When we think about Kingmaking, it’s easy to say that it was the result of playing the game. Stabbing is part of Diplomacy, after all. This means that the Kingmaker must have done something that isn’t acceptable, that was irrational or emotional. And you could be right, at least some of the time. But I have three questions to ask you:
- Why did the Kingmaker act the way they did towards you? It isn’t enough to simply say it was the way they reacted to the stab. The question is why they felt that this was an appropriate reaction. For many players, when they’re stabbed they may be angry, frustrated, etc but they’ll shrug and get on with the game. It might be that this is how this player reacts, of course, but – in a game where relationships are such a huge part of the process – could you have done something to tie the player to you more closely? What was it that led them to aggressively seek revenge?
- Why was the Kingmaker in a position to take vengeance against you? Machiavelli had advice for this situation: if you’re going to attack someone, you must leave them in a situation from which they can’t hurt you.3 Sun Tzu has a slightly different take: go to war when you know you can win.4 If you stabbed the other player, and yet they were able to retaliate, even if they had no hope of reversing the situation, you did something wrong.
- What made you vulnerable to their vengeance? Nobody you stab in Diplomacy is going to come out as your cheerleader afterwards. They might acknowledge that it was a good stab (in time) and they might congratulate you for the effectiveness of it. But they’re not going to be celebrating it (even if they congratulate you right away). Knowing this, what didn’t you put in place to protect yourself?
Kingmaking doesn’t make sense
It really doesn’t. If you are stabbed, the last thing you want to do is blow up at the person who wielded the knife. You certainly shouldn’t be playing to lose the game! No matter what else goes through your head, you should be working out how you can survive in the aftermath. If you’re going to don the guise of a Kingmaker, you’re on the way to deliberately losing the game.
However, since when do we expect everything that people do, all the time, is going to be logical? We all have times when Logic is tossed out the window by Emotion. Even the calmest of Dip players can succumb to the odd spurt of anger, frustration, etc.
We can’t guarantee that anything we do will stop some players from seeking revenge, even to the extent of throwing the game to another player and losing themselves. Sometimes, as I’ve said, it really is beyond our control. Why would they do that? And you can honestly throw your hands in the air and say you would have succeeded if it weren’t for that pesky Kingmaker.
Other times..? Well, just ask yourself what you could have done better or differently that might have prevented that reaction. Often the Kingmaking is the result of our own failings.
- For me, capitulating is worse than SURRENDERING: if you surrender (leave the game), at least someone new might be able to replace you; if you capitulate, you continue to fill a spot without playing the game. ↩︎
- “The Game of Diplomacy,” ch. 2 ‘The smyler with the knyf under the cloke’. Sharp, R. Arthur Barker, 25 Jan 1979. Accessed on 27 May 2025. ↩︎
- “If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.” From “The Prince”. ↩︎
- “First lay plans which will ensure victory, and then lead your army to battle.” From “The Art of War.” ↩︎
THE DIPTIONARY 