A public peeing scandal couldn’t stop my rise to power for long in The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy

For a Live mode fanatic, The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy expansion is a regal delight. Not only can your sim become the ruler of the entire kingdom or the head of a dynasty, but the path you take to get there can be embroiled in scandal with lashings of explosive drama.

The Royalty & Legacy expansion may have coincided almost perfectly with Valentine’s Day, but while throwing grand balls and rising to the top as a royal power couple is one option, there’s some real fun to be had by being messy and unfaithful too.

Buying and selling secrets, exposing scandals, extorting friends and even family are dastardly ways to secure your place at the top of society. But I found it's all too easy to topple from the spotlight with a scandal as simple as accidental public urination.

The fragility of noble dignity

In Royalty & Legacy, you can join the Noble career, working your way up to become the highest-ranking in all the land. You can also pursue the new life aspiration "Social Puppeteer" by finding and spreading secrets about other sims. I wanted to see what I could achieve with such power, creating Constance who I played by ascending the Noble ranks to become Queen. After achieving that, I decided to rock her world with a scandal, enlisting her husband, Rami, to cheat and trigger a divorce.

That royal rift meant I could take advantage of the new events called Power Shifts, one of which I can trigger by kissing a frog. So, Constance did just that, rebounding from her broken marriage with an amphibian smooch, which turned into a woman named Presley who became her wife.

That could have been scandalous enough already. But then, Presley peed herself in public. It wasn’t meant to happen. I was too busy forcing Presley to carry out Noble tasks like practicing her Swordsmanship skill and replying to Noble mail. My plan was to have Presley challenge Constance for the Throne. Toppling a dynasty wasn’t on the cards yet, it turned out, as Presley ruined her reputation by emptying her neglected bladder in the street. Before the expansion, her public urination would’ve resulted in an "embarrassed" moodlet and a dire need to take a shower. In Royalty & Legacy, if people witness such a shameful event, well, you’ve got a scandal on your hands and it’s what people do with these scandals that make all the difference.

Scandals can happen in a number of ways. There’s practicing voodoo on other Sims, kissing frogs—which no one witnessed Constance doing—having a sordid affair, birthing a secret love child, and even sending fake breakup letters. It’s not entirely clear how many scandals you can make happen, but I certainly enjoyed finding out. Peeing in public seemed like a fairly mediocre scandal, and yet it catapulted Presley into usurping an entire dynasty.

Instead of covering for Presley by promising to keep the secret, which Queen Constance could have done, I opted to have her extort her own wife into abdicating her noble title. Why? Well, as I mentioned, Presley was working her way up the Noble rankings, and could have eventually earned the right to duel the Queen for her place on the throne, a threat Constance could not suffer. After all, only one sim per world can hold the title for ruling the realm.

A villain is born

Despite earning "favor" with the royals, an interesting new concept that allows you to carry out particular tasks to win said favor, and holding court to help the Sims of Ondarion with their problems, the Queen’s betrayal became Presley’s villain origin story. Scorned and angry at the Queen for taking her noble title, I decided to pivot Presley into becoming fully toxic, plotting to pull the same abdication scam on the head of a dynasty. In some ways, this felt like my own villain origin story, an unexpected revelation from the Royalty & Legacy expansion—and one I loved.

Armed with her notebook, where you can record and check the secrets you know, Presley headed to the computer to buy as many secrets as possible from the information broker, a mysterious sim named Connie Fidential (get it?) that will buy and sell you the secrets of other sims.

But, Presley’s target wasn’t the queen. No, that partnership had already ended in divorce and Presley no longer had her sights set on crown and court. As Presley grew tired of living in the shadows, a divorced ex-frog with a bladder problem, she set her sights on Enzo Alto, a dynasty head who's conveniently single by default.

When you know a secret about someone, you can expose it either just by word of mouth or on social media. But, one simple scandal wouldn’t be enough to stop Enzo being the head of his dynasty. All that would cause is a bit of embarrassment and a purple cloud following him around before eventually lifting after a few days.

Secrets only last a certain amount of time before "fading", which can be tracked in the notebook. Enzo's secret penchant for voodoo had a seven day timer, so Presley had to move fast. Trouble is, you have to live in the same household as the head of the Dynasty in order to join in, giving Presley her opening to topple it. So, the seduction began. It didn’t take much. It never does in The Sims 4, right? A barrage of flirting, suave kisses, and even a quick WooHoo in the new "secret passageway" behind a cuckoo clock and Enzo was thoroughly charmed.

Toppling a dynasty

Married and moved in, it was time to strike. Armed with the several secrets she’d brought from the information broker, Presley chose to extort Enzo to take over as dynasty head. He handed it over with a surprising amount of dignity and even a hug, completing Presley's ascent from frog to riches.

And while there’s a "unity" standing in your dynasty that dictates whether you’re stable in your relationships or in crisis, Presley bringing down the Alto dynasty didn’t cause too much disruption. It was almost like she was destined to take over all along.