@Shogun

I think death magic is very good with Ceresa and Resoln but it doesnt help warlord Verga very much nor any other warrior based sovs as it relies on good spell mastery. Life magic on the other hand is good to dip into for any kingdom sovereign for regeneration if nothing else.

I think bless shards would be good for a new kingdom rather than the existing 4 and it could come with a package of extra life spells (like Resoln's trait gives 4/5 death spells) - something along the lines of martial prowess backed up by strong clerics.

I disagree life is very powerful as is. Besides getting regeneration and heal you also gain other even more powerful spells like shrink and growth. Don't underestimate these two spells. Using shrink against powerful creatures drastically decreases their attack and if you then cast a growth spell on a powerful worrier champ or sov. you then have a huge advantage. Not to mention the call to arms spell. Granted having plenty of money allows you to hurry units without bothering with said spell but if you want to save your gold for another project and you have plenty of mana sitting around... The life spell that makes a unit come back to life if they are killed is very useful under the right circumstances as well. Finally the healing and regeneration spells scale up as you gain more life shards. Overall life magic is quite powerful especially if used in conjugation with a hero/sov. worrier. If I were to suggest a new spell for life magic though I would suggest a spell that only damages undead and demons for a small amount of damage that scales upward with the number of life shards you own. I would call said spell, unoriginally, "Smite Evil".

Drain life comes at death 3 wheras heal comes at life 2. Also drain life has a casting time and can be resisted so I don't think it's clearly better than heal.

I think shrink is fine in life - it's one of the few spells in life that requires spell mastery, pretty much all of their spells ignore things like spell resistance and counterspell