Robert Evans

And I think this is...

streamlined, like he frames this as we need to be more efficient.

So we need to like collapse all these courts together so that they work more effectively.

But the crown prince's royal court had always been seen as an important perk and a good way for an ascendant prince to build a base of power for his own future reign.

You're picking out people that you want to be loyal to you.

You're giving them early jobs, ways that they can make a fortune for themselves, right?

If you don't have control over your own royal court as crown prince, you're losing out on a way to like build power for yourself.

And the fact that Mohammed bin Salman is in charge of the royal court allows his 26-year younger son to start making powerful allies and bribing influential royals with court positions.

So you can see already there's some signs that maybe King Salman doesn't intend for Imbian to ever actually take the throne, right?

That maybe he's setting his son up and kind of doing a fuck job on Mohammed bin Nayef.

Behind the scenes, people close to the royal family begin to whisper that even as he took on the crown, King Salman was suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's.

In this version of events, just as the king makes NBN his official successor, he's starting to cede a lot of his power and decision-making to his younger son, Muhammad bin Salman, who he appoints as defense minister upon taking office, right?

That maybe...

MBS is orchestrating a lot of this from the start because King Solomon's never all that competent to run anything.

So maybe from the jump, from the start of his dad's time as king, MBS is trying to figure out how can I get Mohammed bin Nayef out from being the crown prince, right?

And so he's orchestrating all of this.

And he makes sure he gets the job as the minister of defense because he knows that I want to kick this guy out of power immediately.

This guy has already developed a reputation as a war leader for our people.

So I need to develop a reputation as a war leader for our people.

And he was no time.