The contentions that were eating at all of Lehi-Nephi now permeated the last of Noah's loyalists. Among this self-selected group of men, only the king and the priests appear to stand together, with the rest desiring to return. The official reason for the division was the desire of the men to avenge the deaths of their wives and children. The nature of what happened suggests that it was the final act of political overthrow. Finally the king was shown to be less than infallible, certainly less that divine, which he might have claimed as many kings have.
The king and the priests were the old government. The men turn on their old government and decide to eradicate it. They succeed in killing the king, and would have done so to the priests except that those priests managed to escape in some way not recorded by Mormon.