My mom’s side of the family is all at odds because my aunt was a chronic shit-stirrer who would casually make up blatant lies about other family members. She was extremely nice, so the people around her tended to believe her. But all of the family members who didn’t spend a lot of time around her would quickly see through her BS, often because they were the targets of her lies (because they were never around to defend themselves when she was lying about them).

By the time she eventually died, like a quarter of my mom’s family refused to even go to the funeral, including two of her own children (my cousins). Another quarter of the family only went to try and mend bridges with the people who had been listening to her lies for years.

Things are better now that she is dead, but there is still a lot of residual “I can’t believe you actually thought I would do that” type of tension between the formerly-ostracized family members, and the family members who had been listening to my aunt the whole time. And that remaining quarter of the family who refused to go to her funeral are still absent. It’s amazing what kind of damage one manipulative person can do.