03-10-2011, 01:07 PM
Havard Wrote:In the case of the Dog Duke and the Bloody Duke, I wonder if they were actually Dukes, or that they were instead Barons. If not, we could take it to mean that Blackmoor was reduced to a Barony after the fiasco with the Bloody Duke, with Vestfold (Earldom) becoming the dominant center of the region.
-Havard
Regardless of who these dukes were, I like that idea a lot. It makes sense that Blackmoor is the "old" capital and Vestfold the new. That shift in power could easily be tied to the growth in size, economy, and importance of Vestfold, while Blackmoor remains an out of the way town.
Regarding the dating of the Bloody Duke, there's a line in ZG's BM Dungeon (area 11-38) that doesn't quite fit your timeline: "Hundreds of years ago they were imprisoned by the "Bloody Duke"..."
Regardless of what you want to make of that, I'm not really feeling that Raddan qualifies as a duke or Baron, as he never had full control of Blackmoor and seems never to have had Imperial support or claim to peerage title in any case.
I've some timeline ideas I'll post later.....