Super fair question! As a GM I tend to view adventures and modules as prompts rather than scripts, so when I decided to try my hand at writing one I wanted to try and strip everything down to the most evocative and useful things and leave the type of stuff that I've always skipped over or rewritten when running other people's works.
My hope is that the things like the derelict king's title are evocative enough to beg these questions and that the GM running the game will answer it for their table.