Who was the First King of Blackmoor? (Split from Erwin Andah

[aldarron]

I'm sure that Aldarron and Havard are already aware of this, but I wanted to add this to the discussion. I managed to find a passage on p. 5 of DA1 that seems to contradict the 4E timeline and some of my previous evidence that there was a king before Uther....
There is no mention of a king in any of this, so clearly the DA1 background has taken the stance that there was no king before Uther. There were only the barons, and Uther was among them.

Yep - that's why I talked about scaffolding. If you prioritize the DA material, you will arrive at a different framework.

This may still be a retcon compared to the FFC.

Yes, I'd say so. It's also contradictory to ZG Blackmoor.

I wonder whether it came from Dave Arneson's notes or was a creation of David Ritchie to either clean up continuity problems dating back to the FFC or create a more compelling backstory for DA1.

Well.... Arneson had written some material for a project called "The Blackmoor Chronicles". These materials were sent to TSR where they were heavily reworked into the DA series modules 1-3 (DA 4 was wholly produced by TSR). Arneson had no input in the changes made, which included placing Blackmoor into the distant past of the Mystara setting and creating the whole backstory of the setting. So any continuity problems were self created by TSR when they choose to recast Arneson's material.

But it's still strange that two passaages in the 4E timeline imply the existence of an unnamed king before Uther and an existing crown to which Uther made his claim. Given that ZGG was trying to maintain continuity with not only the FFC but the DA modules, I now suspect these were mistakes.

Not really. ZG generally, and Arneson parrticularly, didn't feel constrained by what TSR or anybody else had done with Blackmoor, but did decide that from a marketing standpoint it made sense to be in general conformity to the DA series. Somewhere around here IIRC Dustin Clingman talked a bit about that.

Ultimately, if you choose the FFC as your strict basis for Blackmoor history, you'd be inclined to maintain that there was a king in Vestfold at some point, and this king may have continued to reign until Uther became king or simply died and left the throne vacant until Uther claimed it. But then you have to ignore or rewrite a fair bit of DA1 history.

That's correct. Scaffolding again. You have to ignore or "correct" some points of "history" no matter which product line you favor.

And Uther's claim to the throne in DA1 would not only be a rebellion against Thonia but a rebellion against the reigning king of Blackmoor, whether he was a vassal king or not.

Not at all. If the previous ruler is dead as is entirely possible, Uther is not rebelling against Blackmoor. IMC timeline I posit that Queen Maragaine dies without heir, leaving Uther as the leading candidate.

If you're looking for overall continuity between the FFC, the DA modules and the ZGG publications, the simpler choice is to declare the reference to Ra-All as King of Vestfold as invalid. Maybe Ra-All's rise happened in the original campaign but was later forgotten or retconned out of the setting. Whatever the case may be, Uther being the first King of Blackmoor seems to require the least effort or retconning and offers the better continuity with everything that followed the FFC.

I'd strongly encourage you to follow whatever take on Blackmoor you find the most fun! Having said that I wouldn't think that's the simplest solution of least effort, because when you get into the ZG material you will still find a whole lot of contradiction to the DA stuff (hello mage kings!). The simplest solution overall is to pick one "history" and ignore the others - but maybe that's not the most fun either! heh.