Guiltythree
I think the Mad Prince is linked to Sunny - either he is him because of some future time trave stuff or he'll fight him - : Sunny just gained a crown memory, arrived on a raft where a madman (him?) carved words with his nails, he has a sword that inflicts madness and gains power based on his own madness AND he fears for his sanity when using Shadow Dance as of late (Shadow dance would explain his swordmanship) He's strong obviously (almost a titan) and has a connection to Weave (through weaver) that might justify why he targeted it in his madness
What makes me think that Sunny might be the Mad Prince is also that the numbers add up for the others : - Soul Stealer = Mordret - Devouring Beast = Effie (hungry flaw + mad) - Undying Slaughter = Jet (needs to kill to survive) The problem is that Torment doesn't really fit even a corrupted Cassie and I can't imagine Kai as a Dread Lord either. Neph cannot be defiled/corrupted which would explain her absence (= a hero or the first seeker maybe) OR her death prompted the madness of the others (Sunny's for sure, maybe the others one by one). I'm talking about possible alternate timelines here so we can get imaginative lol
i think that when a outsider goes downstream and go back upstream when they reach upstream they are in the past before they entered so imagine like this sunny and the gang enters the nightmare weave is still intact so they dont have much problems and go to the estruary but they dont have the key so they sunny manages to make the key but something there makes them mad and they start going upstream but they are half a century before they came and become the 6 plagues minus nephis since she cant be corrupted then i dont know what might have happened from there maybe these versions of the cohort entered their own mad bodies after time passed and reached the time they entered now
I bet all the defiled have some kind of connection to Sunnys group, like it's very clear how Sunny could be the Mad Price with his sword that turns him and his enemy's mad and the crown that he just got, and of course his battle style, it could totally be exactly as she describe it. This is such I great story G3 I can't wait to read more.