Apparently Powerless Puppetmaster



""Paranoia? I rule a city where I have to fake senility just to avoid being assassinated. I took Improved Paranoia like 5 levels ago.""

- Lord Shojo, Order of the Stick

Appearances can be deceiving. Just ask those who unwittingly serve the Apparently Powerless Puppetmaster.

When the game of politics is played with daggers and poison (and worse), sometimes the most advantageous place to be is off the board entirely. Playing the part of the witless, raving lunatic is a useful (and life-extending) tactic when surrounded by murderous schemers: rather than waste their energies eliminating the idiot, they spend their time instead betraying and sabotaging their more obvious rivals, leaving the Apparently Powerless Puppetmaster free to turn the players into pieces in his own game. When he makes a move, everyone assumes it's one of the other players manipulating him. Once the deception is complete, he can act with impunity.

There are two main variations on this trope:
 * 1. The character is in a position of authority, but plays dumb so that his "loyal underlings" believe he can be easily swayed in their favor.
 * 2. The character is in a position of no obvious authority at all, but which allows him to exercise influence over others regardless.

A subtrope of Manipulative Bastard. Compare Not-So-Harmless Villain.

Anime/Manga

 * Nineteen-year-old Emperor Shi Ryuuki in Saiunkoku Monogatari is initially called "stupid emperor" by members of his court disgusted by his complete lack of interest in ruling his empire, and his habit of spending his days hiding from court officials and spending his nights sleeping with other men. When properly motivated, however, Ryuuki reveals that he has a much defter hand for political intrigue than anyone suspected, and that there's a very good reason that he is the only one of six brothers to survive the imperial court long enough to take the throne; he cultivated the "stupid emperor" image as a survival mechanism, and refuses to rule in the hopes that his exiled older brother Prince Seien will return to take his place.

Film

 * Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars counts because he engineers the Clone Wars in order to assume power. No matter which side wins he also wins as he gets emergency powers from the Republic Senate, which he holds on to indefinitely and is also in charge of the Separatists as Darth Sidious. In his original conception, before he was introduced as the Big Bad for the original trilogy in its second movie, he actually was a powerless puppet as Emperor.
 * In My Fellow Americans, two former Presidents were battling a conspiracy which led all the way up to the current President. After they exposed the conspiracy and forced the President to resign, they found out the real ringleader had been the apparently incompetent Vice-President, who had used this as an opportunity to get the top job.
 * The Green Hornet: In the movie, anyone who hears Britt Reid speak for five minutes realizes he is a buffoonish Man Child. He is the heir to the Sentinel paper, but obviously Britt is a Rich Idiot With No Day Job who cannot do anything for himself. Then you realize he doesn’t need to do anything for himself: he continuously and successfully manipulates people much more intelligent than him (Kato, Casey and Mike Axford) into doing exactly what Britt wants them to do.

Literature
"Pollio: Do you want to live a long and busy life, with honor at the end of it?
 * Egwene,, from The Wheel of Time engages in this trope to avoid being removed immediately when the Sitters realize she isn't as weak as they think. It's one of the first hints that she's a Magnificent Bitch.
 * Rand also utilizes this trope when he points out to Perrin that a is in his interests since they are too busy plotting against each other whilst trying to win him over to risk the backlash at interfering with him. He goes so far as to say that he couldn't get away with half of what he does since with a United White Tower he'd be forced to bow and scrape to the Aes Sedai and ask their permission for everything!
 * in the Ciaphas Cain novel For the Emperor. Everyone thinks that he's merely a puppet being controlled by the Tau, or just plain incompetent,.
 * Emperor Sarabian of David Eddings' Tamuli: the entire court in Matherion was convinced he was either an utter dolt, a harmless fop, or a simple fool easily distracted by his silly hobbies. He reveals the truth to Ehlana, Sparhawk, and the others, and eventually proceeds to overthrow his own government, take proper control of the empire, single-handedly remove all the corrupt courtiers involved in a failed coup, and become a wise and effective ruler. And he has such a delightful time doing it.
 * I, Claudius:

Claudius: Yes.

Pollio: Then exaggerate your limp, stammer deliberately, sham sickness frequently, let your wits wander, jerk your head and twitch with your hands on all public or semi-public occasions. If you could see as much as I see, you would know that this was your only hope of eventual glory."

""Technically, Vetinari seems to have given in to every demand of every Guild for years, so the Guilds are driving themselves mad wondering why he is therefore still in charge.""
 * A Song of Ice and Fire has Varys the Spider All this while appearing to be little more than a powerless spymaster dependent on making himself too useful to kill.
 * In the Mordant's Need novels by Stephen R. Donaldson, this is a trick used by
 * It's suggested that Lord Vetinari in Discworld was this early on; later his power had become secure enough that he didn't need to. His entry in the first Discworld Companion says:

Live Action TV

 * Earth: Final Conflict has most everyone believing Ron Sandoval is in the back pocket of Taelon leader Zo'or, shackled by an alien implant.

Tabletop Games

 * Regent Tepet Fokuf from Exalted spends his time masturbating to religious texts and rubber-stamping any proposal someone puts in front of him. Strongly implied to be pulling a Claudius (see above), as actually exerting any kind of power would get him assassinated and probably trigger a civil war.

Video Games

 * The Viscount in Dragon Age II is universally regarded as a weakling when, in fact, he is one of the few Reasonable Authority Figures in Kirkwall who has kept violence in the city at bay for many years through subtle manipulation and maintaining the balance of power.
 * Emperor Uriel Septim VII from The Elder Scrolls series may count. While he is still The Emperor, his Cyrodiil legions are nowhere near the fighting force they once were and only his elaborate schemes keep his empire from disintegrating into many local kingdoms until his death in part four.

Web Comic
"Shojo: Ever since that day, I have found it easier to let them believe that I am senile and easily swayed. When I ruled in their favor, they assumed that they controlled me. When I ruled against them, they assumed that one of their rival nobles controlled me. I can make the decisions I feel are necessary without worrying about being killed over them."
 * Order of the Stick: Lord Shojo is possibly one of the most triumphant examples to date. He rules a Deadly Decadent Court and more importantly he knows it, and it's implied that it took a few assassination attempts to realize he couldn't just throw his weight around and expect to live very long. Instead he pretends to be old and senile and continually refers to his cat for advice and pretends he gets useful advice from him and is following it.

Western Animation

 * In G.I. Joe: Resolute, Cobra Commander admitted to his troops that he played this role in 80s because he hoped it would motivate them "to think". When he realized that all it did was not motivating them to be more clever henchmen but instead motivated them to try to take over, he dropped the act and the made it very clear to them and the world what a dangerous and competent commander he actually is.

Real Life

 * Boris of Bulgaria is arguably this as he rose to power he was the target of no less than two assassination attempts and a few years later was reduced to a puppet ruler by a military coup. He subsequently planned a counter-coup that placed him in sole control of Bulgaria. He then gave aid to Germany and got back territory previously lost with Nazi help in exchange for use of a single railway. The end result is that Bulgaria managed to remain completely neutral, in effect, throughout WWII and managed to save the Jewish population in the territories not retaken with Nazi help and emerged mostly unscathed from it as the Allies were reluctant to attack Bulgaria and have them come in to aid the Axis powers.
 * Claudius, Emperor of Rome, managed to stay alive through a series of purges and assassinations during the reigns of Tiberius and Caligula by seeming too dumb and useless to be a threat. When Caligula was finally assassinated, he became Emperor (by virtue of being the only man in the family still breathing) whereupon he turned out to be not so dumb after all. This was helped by the fact that he was sidelined by his entire family to the extent that he had more or less given up on running for public office on account of his limp.
 * Oda Nobunaga acted like an irresponsible fool from the moment he inherited his father's domain until his closest adviser committed seppuku in protest. He earned the epithet "Fool of Owari," but he had to in order to survive having several dozen powerful warlords surrounding his tiny fiefdom. The rest of Japan fell for it — those who knew were either on his side or dead — until the Battle of Okehazama, albeit that may have happened because of one of those warlords falling for it.
 * Abraham Lincoln, used this tactic to some extent to get control over his cabinet, whose members each at least initially tended to think they should be running the show. Later on, he dropped this tactic when it was no longer necessary.
 * Josef Stalin was originally thought by most everyone to be extremely harmless in his early years in the Bolshevik Party. He eventually got himself put in charge of the Party's newspaper and given nearly unlimited control over the organizational side of the party. He used this influence to get himself promoted to General Secretary where he used this power to appoint his supporters to positions of power in the Party. Lenin eventually caught on and warned people that Stalin was getting too powerful and the entire party laughed it off as a joke. The joke ended around 1930 when people realized that he had become a defacto dictator and that anyone who looked like opposition, or looked like thinking about looking like it, was either dead or breaking rocks in the Gulag. The rest is very bloody history.