It was the profanities-laden Facebook live stream that gripped the Philippines.
Sara Duterte, the vice-president, appeared in a darkly lit room on a Saturday evening in late November, livid and foreboding.
"This country is going to hell because we are led by a person who doesn't know how to be a president and who is a liar," she said of her boss, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
"You're all sons of bitches," she said, rattling off a list of names including the first lady, Liza Araneta-Marcos. "You've never faced an enemy like me."
But what came next was a threat so extraordinary it shocked even Filipinos, who are no strangers to dirty politics.
Sara Duterte said she had spoken to a hit man about killing the president.
"I have talked to a person, and I said, 'If I get killed, go kill [them].' No joke. No joke," she said. "I said, 'Do not stop until you kill them,' and he said, 'Yes.'"
For those watching, an unlikely alliance between the Philippines's two most powerful political dynasties, the Marcoses and the Dutertes, was exploding in real time.
There had been months of simmering tensions and public backbiting. Now it was all-out war.
"I called it the House of Cards, Game of Thrones miniseries, Philippine version," said veteran Philippines political analyst Ronald Llamas.
"I haven't seen anything like that in my 40 years in politics."
What followed was a cycle of vengeance culminating last week in the arrest of Rodrigo Duterte, the former Philippine president and head of the Duterte clan, to face charges of crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court.
He is now awaiting trial in the Hague, which will examine the notorious drug war he waged as president in which thousands of Filipinos died.
Political insiders in the Philippines have revealed to Foreign Correspondent how the Marcos-Duterte family feud directly contributed to Rodrigo Duterte's arrest.
An extraordinary alliance
The political marriage between the Marcos and Duterte families was always one of convenience.
Sara Duterte was the frontrunner in the 2022 presidential elections, but did not want to run for the top post, to the dismay of her father.
Instead, she partnered with Ferdinand Marcos Jr and agreed to run as his vice-president.
It proved to be a winning combination. The pair secured a landslide victory.
"Marcos and Sara won without attending any presidential debate," said veteran Philippines political analyst Ronald Lllamas.
"There was no clear platform, no clear principles, no clear vision, analysis. Even Sara Duterte later on admitted last year that there was not even friendship."
But their alliance was mutually beneficial.
For the Marcoses, it provided a path back to Malacañang, the presidential palace, after decades as national pariahs.
Marcos Jr is the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr, who ruled the Philippines as a brutal dictator, including nine years under martial law.
He committed widespread human rights violations and plundered billions of dollars from public coffers, leaving the country in extreme debt and many Filipinos in poverty.
When Marcos Sr was ousted in 1986, his entire family — including Marcos Jr — was forced into exile in Hawaii.
They waited patiently for the right moment to return to power.
Many agree Marcos Jr's historic political comeback in the 2022 election would have been impossible without the support of then-incumbent Rodrigo Duterte.
For the Dutertes, there was even more at stake.
Their alliance with the Marcos clan was necessary to shield Rodrigo Duterte from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over his bloody war on drugs.
During Rodrigo Durterte's presidency, tens of thousands of Filipinos fell victim to extrajudicial killings.
Vigilantes gunned down drug suspects in the streets, while police piled up bodies while hiding behind claims of self-defence.
By the time Rodrigo Duterte stepped down, rights groups estimate 30,000 mostly poor Filipinos had been killed.
In 2018, the ICC initiated a probe to investigate whether the leader's actions amounted to crimes against humanity.
As president, Duterte was able to block investigators from entering the country.
But as the end of his term neared, he needed to secure the support of the Marcos family to keep the ICC at bay.
"The Dutertes knew if they don't win the next government, they're in danger," said Llamas. "It's not only political survival, it's physical survival."
Initially, Marcos Jr protected his new ally by continuing to block investigators from entering the Philippines, but as a spat between the two dynasties spiralled out of control, that would soon change.
All-out war
Within weeks of Marcos Jr and Sara Duterte's inauguration, cracks began to show.
The Dutertes and their allies were not given their promised government positions and Sara Duterte admitted to feeling "used".
The first lady, Liza Araneta-Marcos, publicly derided the vice-president, saying she was "bad shot" — a Filipino term of derision.
Meanwhile, the Dutertes shot back, accusing the president of being a drug addict.
By June 2024, Sara Duterte had resigned from the Marcos cabinet and, by late November, she was airing her fury in the now-infamous Facebook Live video.
It was the straw that broke the camel's back.
There were calls for the vice-president to be impeached and, on February 5, the House of Representatives obliged.
For the first time in history, a vice-president was being impeached.
Sara Duterte now faces various charges including corruption and plotting to assassinate the president and she is expected to be tried by the Senate when it resumes in June.
If convicted, she will be ousted and barred from ever holding public office again.
Some in the Duterte clan see her impeachment as political revenge.
Eleanor Duterte, the 83-year-old sister of Rodrigo Duterte, believes Marcos Jr is "of course" behind the impeachment of Sara Duterte.
"The Republic of the Philippines is in political turmoil," she said, sitting in the living room of the Duterte clan's ancestral home in Davao City.
Eleanor is frail and hard of hearing, but she is every bit as fiery as her younger brother and makes no secret of her loathing for the Marcos family.
She thinks her niece Sara Duterte should have been more circumspect in her dealings with them.
"She trusted Marcos to be up and about, a morally upright person, but she was deadly wrong. Even the Filipino people will admit that they were all trapped."
The animosity runs deep on both sides of the feud.
In Ilocos Norte, the political fiefdom of the Marcos family, vice-governor Cecilia Araneta-Marcos — the cousin of the president — blamed the Dutertes for the falling out.
"I am a bit disappointed because they all started so well … but the Dutertes seem to have other thoughts or other plans," she said.
"For me, I would like to just tell everyone to just stop it. At this point, let's think of the common Filipino. Let's solve whatever problems we have right now."
Game of thrones
The feud is unfolding against the backdrop of the country's mid-term elections in May.
Campaigning has already begun and divisions between the two camps are as stark as ever, with Marcos Jr is fielding his own set of senatorial candidates separate from the slate endorsed by the Dutertes.
But according to Ronald Llamas, the feud has always been about who will be the president three years from now.
"They were fighting for succession, for continuity," he said. "It was 2022 but the fight was over 2028 — who will be the next president."
Both camps see the mid-term elections as key to shoring up their power.
Sara Duterte continues to be a popular presidential candidate, while Martin Romualdez — the president's first cousin who Marcos Jr appointed as speaker of the House — is rumoured to be his pick for successor.
If the Marcoses can consolidate their hold on the Senate, it will be a massive blow to Sara Duterte.
Half of the 24 senatorial posts are up for grabs in May and it is crucial for Marcos Jr's allies to win as many seats as possible to ensure she is convicted at her impeachment trial.
"If the impeachment succeeds, [the Dutertes] can no longer run for any elected position, even a village chief, for the rest of their lives," Llamas said.
On the other hand, if the Dutertes are resurgent, Sara could win a political lifeline.
"If [the Marcoses] don't destroy the candidates of Duterte in the mid-term … that might create momentum for the Dutertes going into 2028 and make the president an early lame duck," Llamas said.
"So that's the importance of the mid-terms. It's in the middle of this all-out war between the Duterte and the Marcoses."
With the stakes set so high, the Marcoses now appear to have reached for the trump card.
Marcos Jr strategically shifted his stance, saying that while he still would not help the ICC, he would not stand in the way if an Interpol arrest warrant was issued against Rodrigo Duterte.
Last week, they swooped, arresting him at the airport in Manila.
The Dutertes have decried the move, with Sara Duterte branding it "oppression and persecution".
Marcos Jr denied the arrest was politically motivated and said the ICC investigation "was initiated even before I came into the picture".
"It's natural for people to put political colour in this but we just followed Interpol," he said. "It's not because it's one person or another that we do the things we do."
Poisonous dynasties
The feud between the Philippines's two most influential families has exposed the dark reality of the political dynasties that dominate the nation's political landscape.
No-one knows this better than former senator Leila de Lima, who spent nearly seven years in jail on trumped-up charges after she angered Rodrigo Duterte.
In 2009, when De Lima was chairperson of the Philippine Commission on Human Rights, she initiated an investigation into extrajudicial killings in Davao City when Rodrigo Duterte was mayor.
Rodrigo Duterte has "not forgotten that," she said. "He has not forgiven me for that. He has marked me."
In 2016, the year Duterte became president, De Lima won a seat in the Senate, where she again called for a probe into the killings.
She was swiftly charged with three cases of illegal drug trading and jailed. It was only in 2023, after Rodrigo Duterte left office, that she was cleared by the courts.
"They just wanted to silence me," she said. "They just wanted to make an example out of me so that other politicians would no longer have the courage to … fight the killings in the war on drugs."
Her ordeal is also why rights activists in the Philippines believe the ICC is the best — perhaps the only — avenue to find justice and accountability for Rodrigo Duterte's killings.
Neri Colmenares, a human rights lawyer who filed a case with the ICC in 2018 on behalf of the families of those killed in the drug war, said it would have been nearly impossible for the Philippine justice system to bring a case against Rodrigo Duterte while he was president.
"That's why so many people pinned so much hope with the ICC," he said. "We would've preferred if a Filipino justice system worked but since we don't have that, the only recourse left is for the ICC."
The arrest has been hailed as a victory for human rights and a step towards accountability, thanks in large part to the tireless efforts of the families of drug war victims.
But Colmenares said ultimately it was the Marcos-Duterte feud that helped make it happen.
"There was a tectonic shift when the Philippine government [said] … we will not intervene or object to it," he said.
"We don't care in the end what Marcos's purpose was, as long as justice is afforded to the victims. That's what's important for us."
Leila de Lima thinks political dynasties are largely to blame for this whole saga.
"[Having political dynasties] breeds impunity, it breeds corruption, it breeds social injustices and the big divide between the rich and powerful on one hand and the poor, the voiceless and the powerless," she said.
"Because it's the same faces, the same family names."
A recent study shows 80 per cent of candidates in the 2025 elections are linked to political dynasties.
As Filipinos wait to learn the fate of Rodrigo Duterte, who is now at the Hague awaiting confirmation of the charges against him, many appear to be tiring of the epic feud engulfing their ruling class.
A January survey showed the largest popularity drop for both the president and vice-president yet.
De Lima believes the ruthless political ambition of the two families is hurting Filipinos.
"Instead of focusing on the real needs … especially of the marginalised sectors, they're into this political fight," she said. "An honest to goodness, fierce political fight."
Watch Dynasties At War tonight on Foreign Correspondent at 8pm on ABC TV, ABC iview and the ABC In-Depth YouTube channel.
