Following this thought. Stop and think for a minute. What happens in the real world? Families, wealthy, well connected families tend to intermarry. Look at the royal families of Europe. It's been happening for centuries. Father passes down to son etc.
So, let's assume that centuries ago, someone worked a deal with someone else, x worked a deal with y. Both x and y become rich and powerful. They pass on the wealth to offspring but they ALSO pass on the connection to family x and y. Now fast forward to today.
I was thinking about all the blackmail going on to compromise those who they cannot buy, and the question arose as to WHO exactly is doing the blackmail? The ones at the top logically. They know that being too easily tied to these kind of things tends to bring about their swift demise, so they use those compromised underlings to do their dirty work for them all while appearing to be squeaky clean themselves.
I know a lot of this is obvious but sometimes it helps to state it all together to try and get things into focus.