Off with His Head

From The Dietz Foundation:

Designed by Ian Winningham, Off with His Head is a game for 2-6 players (recommended ages 12 and up) where the players are French nobility in the aftermath of King Louis’ death attempting to put a figurehead on the throne so that France may again be controlled by nobility behind the scenes rather than by the family of the Sun King.

Players each have a hand of three cards and each card has its own special effect (examples are in the image gallery).  When a player plays a card on another player, the card’s effect comes into play and when that’s done, it becomes the player’s turn who had the card played on them, so that there’s never a set turn order to each round.  The King has cards, too–but those are face down.  Victory comes when the players can maneuver the play of the cards to get the king with a specific set of cards–but you only have so many rounds to do this before the peasants rise up and overthrow l’Ancien Regime.  A full game should take less than 45 minutes.

And if you get good–the game comes with additional cards that can be added to play to make things more challenging for players!