Well, Howard did like to inject mythological incidents into his stories in new lights, and with such an evocatively named character as Tyr I simply couldn't resist.

I'm sorely tempted to based the King of Brythunia on King Arthur, or perhaps Vortigern or Uther Pendragon if Arthur's too obvious. He'd be based on a mixture of celtic Arthurian legend, with some gallic and polish stuff thrown in for good measure. Basically I want all the faction leaders to be characters, but with enough strong good and bad in them for the player to take them down whatever path they like.