Michael Ramon

So, I have one story that sort of uses a noble houses system, but it breaks a few of these clichés because of the story's perspective. So this alien race (the Variada) have five "courts" (Azurite Court, Olivine Court, Carnelian Court, Citrine Court, Obsidian Court) that vie for power. The Azurite Court is the dominant one at the start and functions as House Good Guy, with the Olivines scheming to overtake them as House Bad Guy. The others are mostly House Background. The core of the plot is that the Olivines tried to kidnap the daughter of the Azurite leader, and this ended up with her on Earth, with Olivine minions trying to track her down. Pretty straightforward. What makes it interesting is our protagonists: We have Azurite Princess McGuffin, Ordinary Earth High School Student (so, entirely outside of the noble house system) and Exiled Olivine. Exiled Olivine was in hiding on Earth because she pissed off the higher-ranking Olivines, but not because she objected to their House Bad Guy-ness. Rather, she was a low-ranking branch family member and stole from the main Olivines for personal gain, which made them turn on her. So she has a skewed moral compass, but knows more about Earth than Azurite Princess McGuffin and more about the Variada than Ordinary Earth High School Student, so the two of them need her. Especially as she has concluded that her best path out of exile is to earn the Azurites' favor by returning Azurite Princess McGuffin. So we have three perspectives: Azurite Princess McGuffin believes in the basic House Good Guy/House Bad Guy dichotomy, Exiled Olivine is from a "House Good Guy's really not that great" upbringing and Ordinary Earth High School Student comes to the table with no preconceptions about the two.
The real twist on this comes near the end, where the Azurites use the Olivines' overreach to expose their schemes to the other courts and badly damage the Olivine Court's standing with the others, giving House Good Guy a clear win. However, in order to do this, the Azurites made a deal with one of the psychopathic Olivine minions the protagonists had been evading, and in return for his cooperation, the Azurites agreed to let him do whatever he wants with Earth (which is basically to terrorize it in a the Joker kind of fashion). In other words, House Good Guy screwed over Earth in order to beat House Bad Guy, because Earth doesn't mean anything to them. The protagonists are, of course, able to deal with the minion guy eventually, but since our main perspective is from Ordinary Earth High School Student, House Good Guy's realpolitik leaves the reader and characters with a much lower opinion of them than the start of the story would have suggested. They are still probably better than the Olivines, but any impression that they are squeaky-clean Dudley Do-Rights has been wiped away.﻿