In the world's leading oil exporter, princes and clerics wrangle behind closed doors over cautious but critical changes aimed at reconciling Saudi Arabia's conservative traditions with the needs of a modern economy - not least the role of women.
Reforms, such as King Abdullah's decision last month to grant women more political rights in future, often follow months or years of tough negotiations in which conservatives warn of a dangerous backlash against too-rapid change.
"The conservative old guard will resist any new move," said Mohsen Al Awaji, a cleric in Riyadh who wants more democracy.
"The conservatives have significant power, but this slow move from the government [of giving women more rights] does not match the requirements of the Saudi people."
The king pledged to include women in the unelected Shura Council, which advises on legislation, and to let them run and vote in future municipal elections, the only public voting now held in the country. The next such polls are due in 2015, while the Shura council membership is to be set in 2013.
At stake is the future of a Western security ally which sees itself as the leader of the world's Sunni Muslims due to its status as home to Islam's holiest sites in Mecca and Medina.
Abdullah's power in a wealthy kingdom with a youthful, increasingly outward-looking population, stems from a centuries-old alliance between his extensive family and clerics of the austere Wahhabi school of Islam.
A week after the king said women would have more rights, the former judiciary head, Sheikh Saleh Al Lohaidan, warned him not to tug too hard on "the thread between a leader and his people" in case it snaps.
A hardline cleric, Muhammad Al Habdan, had already written on Twitter that allowing women to join the consultative Shura Council was "haram", or religiously forbidden, explicitly challenging the king and the clerical establishment.
Another conservative warning shot was fired two days after the reform was announced, when a Jeddah judge sentenced a woman who had defied the Saudi ban on female drivers to 10 lashes.
Yet for the most part, the Wahhabi establishment kept its views on the king's move private, offering neither public praise nor condemnation of a step it had previously opposed.
"Princes would like the world to think that they have this powerful constituency that rejects reforms," said Madawi al-Rasheed, author of A History of Saudi Arabia and frequent critic of Saudi policies.
"But clerics are subservient to princes and serve them by showing they are backward and conservative, while the princes look progressive by comparison."
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