Intrigue and political navigation can be hard to run. There are a lot of moving pieces, and it is a game more about subtlety and reading people than it is about killing and fighting. Most systems aren't built to handle intrigue, and even games that purport to have 'social interaction' as one of their pillars of play don't actually provide mechanics or much in the way of suggestions for playing this out.
For my own uses, when needing to prepare multiple NPCs for an intrigue attempt, I've found there are three things that can be good to have on hand - in addition to whatever normal stuff I prepare to be able to play the character. This does make an intrigue NPC more work, but you knew that by default when you chose to make a path of adventure for intrigue. Consider it this way though, you're choosing social mechanics and spygames over combat. So really this is just your combat prep time put to a different use.
