Description text for a historical strategy game set during the Crusades. Written for a Total War writing test.
In the 13th century, the Sultanate of Egypt is ruled by the Ayyubid Dynasty. Sultan Najm al-Din holds the throne with the support of the Mamluks, an army of slave-soldiers under his command. The Mamluks are less loyal to the Egyptian state than they are to their sultan — especially since he has taken Shajar al-Durr, a former concubine of their own number, as his wife.
As Louis IX of France leads the Seventh Crusade against Egypt, hoping to topple the center of Muslim power in the Near East, word spreads that the sultan suffered a severe wound in battle against the crusaders. Severely ill, Najm al-Din is now said to lie secluded in his tent within the Egyptian army’s base camp in Al Mansurah.
But the sultan isn’t merely ill — he’s dead. Shajar al-Durr has conspired with Emir Fakhr ad-Din, commander of the Egyptian army, to conceal Najm al-Din’s death from the crusaders and from their own people. Egypt is now ruled in secret by Najm al-Din’s wife and his chief general, issuing orders they claim are from the hand of the sultan himself—determined to hold the Egyptian throne against the crusaders until Najm al-Din’s heir arrives to claim it.