[The King Is Dead] Connecting the Star to the fiction

It occurs to me that if picks aren't simultaneous interesting things happen. For example, whoever called the conflict could pick a side and narrate that they're trying to block and how. Then the other player picks a side. She can decide who wins since she picks second, but now it's quite explicit - one thing or the other will occur vis-a-vis Agendas. Better yet. The attacker picks first. That way the defender cannot decide whether to win or lose without knowing what the fiction is. But deciding to lose kinda hurts advocacy rather a lot...

There could be an adjudicator. Hm, okay... that's very intrigue-ish. In all cases not everyone may be fighting. So there is 1 player who overall beats the rest of them. Except there's not. Fine, just say the player in between them. Either opposite if they're adjacent or adjacent if they're not. So the attacker picks a side, then the adjudicator picks a result, then the defender picks a side (there are two with the chosen result) and loot is distributed. Who cares who won? A conflict can only start like this if the GM agrees an Agenda could be at stake. There must be each side of any Agenda available in the game somewhere... so if there's "start a rift between England and France" there must also be "prevent a possible rift between England and France". Defender gets narration responsibility/right. Isn't there a problem with conflicts being really juicy for players? Yes, solve this by having a GM every time, and in fact the GM for a given player's scene is predetermined. You get 5, and the... 3rd? year everyone is their own GM. (Not sure what that does.) That player won't get a conflict in the scene. Or an Agenda. So actually it turns out there are 5*4=20 scenes you get a possible Agenda in. Still fine.

So what's the difference, choosing between two losses or wins on the Star? Ah, the result is not what happens, but what it would look like happened to any hypothetical observers, which may or may not in fact be what happened. The defender's chosen side then must be the side the hypothetical observers concludes "caused" the result. This is fine for all but physical conflicts. How would another House cause you to win a fight if not present? I guess that's when you slip in guards, poison, a sabotaged weapon, etc. It may take playtesting to see if that will work.