I like to think of it was holding the throne until the rightful heir arrives, kinda like what’s happening in the RP right now.

In any case I do propose this for the sake of moving events along: a small timeskip of about a week, in which during that timeskip Maren vanishes. None of our characters know where she is or what happened to her except that she’s not in the country anymore and she’s not dead. At the same time various uprisings and battles breakout throughout the kingdom between various factions, which we may or may not end up being involved in.

This way we can reposition our characters into different places as it suits us. Naturally we can also make some minor lords and nobles who we could employ ourselves or each other with. I’ll likely make a few like commanding Bernard Dowson and maybe a few upstart warlords. Of course there’s other adventure to be had too, such as monster infestations and such. Bandits and deserters robbing villages and caravans, all sorts of things.