There are a few things that need to be in place for your historical kings to work properly

Start with your campmap/names/heroes.txt file. First you define the forename list for a faction, and the number of "royal" forenames (I'll extract examples from ancient, as that's the only heroes file I have available right now )

SET_FORENAMES:: FN_01 1 5 // Mycenae
This takes you to forename list #1, and selects the first five names for royal usage. Further down you must define your "historical kings" - I usually only bother with one of them, as I find later ones being a bit unpredictable!


FAMOUS_KINGS:: FN_01 1 // Mycenae
//name no. comnd, dread, piety, acumen portrait vnv
2, 1, 2, 2, 4, 4, -1, attacker1
The first line is the command, faction name, and number of entries in the list. My most common error is to leave it with 0 instead of 1.... DOH!

The second line follows the headings above it. Remember that under "name" the five names you choose from in this example will be 0 to 4 (NOT 1 to 5 - my second most common error....). You can set portraits by giving another number, but I generally leave them as random (ie -1). The vnv must be correct, as found in the events.txt file which gives a long list of them. Third most common error is to forget the number - eg simply putting in "attacker" in this case. To avoid potential problems/debug try using 'NO_V' (ie no vnvs) in that column - you can change it later when you want to jazz him up a bit

Keep a note of the King number (2nd column) we'll check that later.

Next you must define your name list:

// Forenames No 1
//
// Greeks
ADD_FORENAMES::

"v_Achilles" // royal 0
"v_Aeneas" // royal 1
"v_Hector" // royal 2
"v_Aeschylos" // royal 3
"v_Agamemnon" // royal 4

"v_Agathokles"
"v_Agathon"
"v_Aias"
........
So from this, you will see that our start king will be "Hector" the 1st

You're now finished with heroes.txt and need to go to the startpos file.

Check you are calling up the correct heroes.txt:

//========================================
//Set the names and hero file for this startpos
//========================================
SetNameData:: "campmap\\names\\yourmod_HEROES.TXT"
Then you need to specify the start leader:

SetStartLeader:: FN_01 0 5 1 1 1 1 1
Here I'm picking "king 0" from the FN_01 famous kings list (note this also starts at 0, not 1).
After that, you define the "pre-game" kings. First, how many of them? Here it is 5 - one for each of the royal names. The five '1s' after this say that for each name, there has been one king of that name before the game started. Now notice our King Hector was given number 1 in the heroes.txt declaration, but there is a 1 in position 2 (remember it is 0-4), from before the game start. This still means that our starting Hector will be "Hector I" (because he began his reign before the game started), and all the other names will crop up as King Whoever the Second, and start counting from there. If we made the entries '0 0 1 0 0' instead, then all the other Kings after Hector would appear as King Whoever the First.

Another major source of error I have encountered is getting these king numbers confused. If, for example, I had entered '0 0 0 0 0', then our starting king would have been 'King HectorROMAN_NUMERALS###!!!', or whatever that so familiar error message is . If I had entered '1 1 2 1 1' I think the startpos would have failed to load at all, and the era would not be available in the start campaign menu.

Also, if the number of entries is incorrect, that will also throw an error:

SetStartLeader:: FN_01 0 5 1 1 1 1
SetStartLeader:: FN_01 0 4 1 1 1 1 1
You don't necessarily have to list all of the royal names in this section. For instance if we did want all "number ones", we can do it two different ways:

SetStartLeader:: FN_01 0 5 0 0 1 0 0
OR

SetStartLeader:: FN_01 0 3 0 0 1
as the game will assume any that are not defined will be 0 by default.

When that lot is all set, all you have to do then is to place him in a province owned by his faction.

Hope that helps