Writing a novel.

[Mistborn]

One of my long defered personal projects is too write a fantasy novel. So the outline I have is for a small work about a sucession crisis. While the king is comatose one his deathbed his son and heir gets assassinated leaving the kingdom with out a strong claimant to the throne, political machinations ensue.

What historical events should I be resarching to use as a model for such a secnario.

[Blasted]

Anything where there is a succession dispute. Why there is a dispute is essentially immaterial.
Depending on the time period that you're interested in, the War of the Roses may work out for you. It's well known and there are lots of sources.

Having said that, I think that the later Roman Empire would be the best way to go - lots of machinations and big armies doing big things. The sources aren't crash hot though, lots of gaps and obvious biases. But check out the Year of Six Emperors for fun.

[Cynic]

Shakespeare's historical cycles are a great reference point.

[Ancient History]

Good on yer for deciding to write the novel, btw.

[Doom]

You might want to consider Roman civil wars, to see how people with no "real" claim to the throne still managed to find a claim and put together an army to give it a whirl.

Key to writing a novel is to make progress every day. Once you get a decent layout for what your story is hopefully going to be, dedicate yourself to a certain wordcount every day (I go with 1000 words...and I've yet to write a book that actually matched my layout, but it's still good to have).

[angelfromanotherpin]

I always liked the setup from the Four Winds L5R saga.

Eldest remaining child is a bastard.
Eldest legitimate child is a woman.
Eldest legitimate male child is a priest, has sworn off worldly power.
Youngest child was adopted into the previous dynasty for political reasons, is running as one of them.

Also, the Chinese Three Kingdoms period is a super-involved succession war.

[fectin]

The Italian states had a fair amount of intrigue. Besides, everyone like "Florence + magic" as a setting.

[Finder]

Whenever I think of heirs being assassinated, I think of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand which started(?) WWI. You could work that in. What Angelfromanotherpin said has a good ring to it, too, though, with all the intricacies.

You'll have to let us know how the novel progresses. I'm interested.

[Drolyt]

One of my long defered personal projects is too write a fantasy novel. So the outline I have is for a small work about a sucession crisis. While the king is comatose one his deathbed his son and heir gets assassinated leaving the kingdom with out a strong claimant to the throne, political machinations ensue.

What historical events should I be resarching to use as a model for such a secnario.

If you want to involve foreign countries the War of the Spanish Succession might be worth a look. In that case there were legitimate possible heirs but they were members of the royal families of foreign countries and thus the situation threatened the whole European power balance. It might be interesting if a foreign king was trying to use his relations to the royal family as an excuse to try and annex the kingdom.