In O5R usually there were story prizes for winning tournaments, some of which resulted in cards, but as I recall those cards were not on the whole consistently good or bad, so the effect of winning tournaments on the card pool and thus strength of any specific clan was somewhat limited, at least when I played in Diamond and Lotus. Often the result was just a flavor card, a piece of flavor text, or something like “Costs 1 less gold for X clan players.”
I remember Phoenix got Kaneka as an in-clan personality after winning the last GenCon in Gold Edition (I think I got that right?) When Kaneka came out he was a powerhouse of a military character, but Phoenix didn’t really have a military deck at the time and it appeared that he wasn’t designed with any Phoenix themes in mind, so he mainly saw play in other clans, as most dynasty characters were legal for play in any faction’s deck in O5R provided you met honor requirements (and there was no equivalent of conflict characters.)
The problem in O5R is that story prizes were numerous and varied and, as they hinged on tournament results, somewhat strange and random at times (see Kaneka joining the Phoenix, above.) In this respect FFG has done a good job of clearly limiting story results to choosing between sensible pre-written scenarios.