The Will of Emperor Hiratus

And this is why we have all the elaborate and unnecessary complicated rituals for royal edicts.

What happens when an Ardenian ruler dies? If they had designated a member of imperial family as official heir, the heir inherits the throne. Sounds simple enough. If no heir has been appointed, the oldest child inherits by default. Still following, right?
Now here is a quiz for you. What if the emperor originally names his second child as imperial heir in a will, but after some time makes an official announcement that he intends to change the designated heir. In a new will, he names the third child as new heir. The problem is, this new will is only discovered and presented to the public after the emperor's death - in breach of all protocols and rituals. You have three children all with some sort of claim to the throne. Who gets to rule?
This here is a very real question that was brought up after Emperor Hiratus passed away two centuries ago. It had first divided the imperial family into three camps, then the imperial court and nobles, and after that - the entirety of the Ardenian Empire. Several decades of brutal civil war split the once-invulnerable empire into three independent realms, and led to much of its border provinces rebelling and gaining independence from the weakening imperial throne. And to this day, many people in the Ardenian Empire and beyond would argue on who was meant to be the rightful ruler.

Document Structure

Legal status

The whole problem lies in the ambiguity of the legal status surrounding the late emperor's wills. One could argue that the officially announced intent to change the line of inheritance implies that the second child had lost the trust of the emperor, and as such is no longer considered the designated heir. However, the third child was never publicly granted the heir's honours - so you could also say that the second will was not yet in effect when the emperor died. But if there is no will, then the first child was an imperial heir by right of birth. Then again, if the process of changing an heir was never formally finished - does that not mean that the first will is still in effect?
And then there is an issue of authorship. If the second will was only discovered after the emperor's death, how do we know it was really his hand that wrote the will? It has his seal, but it was never spoken of by the emperor himself. The court officials who discovered the will all chose to support the third child's claim to the throne, but was it because of their loyalty and belief in the late emperor's last words or because of their role in fabricating the document? And so, the Ardenian Empire was brought to its knees by a piece of paper written at a very unfortunate timing.