The Deathbed Letters

WIP - Summer Camp 2023

These are a series of letters sent by the former king of Abror, Anjoul the Eighth, to various members of his court in the few weeks before his death in 5344 EA. The missives grew more threatening and nonsensical as the days passed, and the king resorted to odder and more secretive ways of smuggling them out of his room, including hiding them in his chamber pot, writing on napkins and dirty laundry, and, at one point, scrawling his words on a servant's back. All but one of these letters were intercepted by his wife, the queen, but the one letter that made it to its intended recipient sparked a civil war that is currently ongoing.
The letter that started the civil war was received by Anjoul's nephew, Brunee, and claimed that the king's son and heir, Crysjn, had been replaced by an impostor. The letter stated that therefore Brunee was the true heir to the kingdom of Abror. Brunee took this at face value, and after Anjoul's death he asserted his claim to the throne. Crysjn and his mother did not take this well.
That letter on its own would be rather damning, but in the context of the other letters it perhaps should not have been taken seriously. Other letters claim a bunch of other things, such as the fact that the doctors were deliberately making him more sick, that the ghost of his dead father kept visiting his bedside, or that the queen was making use of dark magic. He was also convinced that his limbs were being replaced one by one.
Whilst there is no doubt that King Anjoul believed everything he wrote, the veracity of the claims within the letters have been harder to prove. The queen and the newly-coronated King Crysjn the Second reject all contents of the letters, insisting that Anjoul's sanity had been deeply affected by the disease that killed him. Brunee, however, takes the letter he received as the truth, and this fuels his continued push for justice and the throne.