Player hurt by party and NPC actions

[the_reaver]

Okay guys here goes. I honestly feel bad about this whole situation so I would use this account to finally ask some advice from the community. Here we go.

I am running a modified Kingmaker using my own story and antagonist. I say kingmaker because my players have never had a solid base of operations and it was something we had always wanted. So fast forward to level 17 (last night's session) I have a PC who advocated that an former player's cohort take the position of Councilor. An NPC cohort of another player advocated the position be filled by one of his apprentices. With the whole of the Duke's council then vote (with a man missing as the position is currently trying to be filled by the above actions" The math says it will be a stalemate.

Now the Cohort(Ranger) of one player is going to vote for the druid while the other cohort( initiate of the seven veils) is going to charm that cohort to changer his vote to end the stalemate. I never target PCs with stuff like this since they will immediately know something is up in character. so to boil it down its basically cohort vs cohort. Well the ranger fails the save of the charm monster and the IOSV has a CHA of 22 (will save 20) and the ranger get a total 16. The PC says "wait why did you change your vote?" I give reason response is something along the lines of the "fecal matter of a male bovine". He requests a different PC cast antimagic field ( with no perceptions or indicators to KNOW that something is amiss). The PC complies but casts a selective version leaving the two cohorts out so the magic isn't affected. Vote of course unchanged. the one who cast antimagic is Neutral but marrying the other cohort and i ask the PC out of character what it is they want to do. I twist no arms and make no promises. The result is that the duke is angry over the apparent betrayal i believe.

Now both the druid and the IOSV have similar stats in terms of benefiting the Kingdom, Both are relatively unknown to the rest of the party so there is no emotional attachment. I feel that the PC Duke is angry because he got outsmarted / betrayed by another PC. The PC duke is an Alchemist / Master Chymist who has a reputation in the kingdom for being unstable and rash the Cohort IOSV is serving a LE PC who is basically Game of Throning the council. I can't blame him because its a cool idea. All said and done the PC alchemist is pissed at me (GM) so i am wondering if you guys can give any advice on the matter. I know some responses are going to be "talk to him" and I intend to but i am giving him a few days to cool off and I will talk to him Wednesday as his schedule will permit time then. I will probably also get the other PCs together when I do this over a voice chat if I can. So to sum up. What Do?

[The black raven]

I too would be angry at having my council (and party) getting ready to stab me in the back after spending so much time saving their lives in so many adventures.

[the_reaver]

That the thing.In all of this the alchemist has been doing things which threaten stability and has acted with an overal arrogance (in game of course) citing that "i'm the king" as an excuse as to why he gets away with it. They aren't so much betraying him as they are calming him down. The council has been acting in a full diplomatic manner since like level 9 and still will. The only difference being that when he comes up with a crazy idea in character it will get shutdown. Again this in a non GM interference, its almost all PC motivated. Though I will take responsibility for killing off the NPC that is now needing to be replaced. I want to show that through war and everything else not everything will always immediately return to the good times. people die and things change. They are too used to going " oh we screwed up and cause unrest" to which they immediatly go " i build a house to shut up the peasants"

[The black raven]

I think the whole realm needs a good old-fashioned revolution a la Galt

[the_reaver]

Its funny you should say that. They are about to go on a trip and my Main antagonist is going to keep them from returning via the Scepter of Ages and will basically destroy the kingdom (in the timeline they end up in) Afterwards they will succeed on returning but it will be before kingdom destruction but they will have been replaced but still have the resources at their disposal so things will work out. But this is, of course, unknown to the PC for story purposes.