Greyhawk and the Great Kingdom

[Scott]

I've never really thought about it before, but it seems like Greyhawk was a part of the Great Kingdom during Zagig's Reign, maybe within the Viceroyalty of Ferrond.
The timeline shows the frontier of the Great Kingdom reaching Greyhawk in the year 1.
The text and the timeline state Greyhawk became a free and independent city in 498.

[geneweigel]

I have no information regarding specifics in that regard. Gary said that he had developed a lot of information (that was stolen in the hostile takeover) about the Ganz I and Ganz II (Ganz II is the Ganz of the 1980 Folio) eras of Selintan however he couldn't recall exactly how he had it set up. (As an aside, he did mention that the last name "Yragerne" came into the mix with Zagig. That is none of the rulers had that last name prior.) Note: Urnst was absorbed by Nyrond after Nyrond's independence from the Great Kingdom. So the Landgraf of Selintan may have been subject to the overking directly like the Duke of Urnst was prior to the Nyrond annexation.

[Scott]

Greyhawk was founded in the early migration peiod, no indication of how long after the founding Ganz shows up is given, but it could be close to 1,000 years before the present.
It was around 254 when Furyondy crowned its first king.
356 when the Kingdom of Nyrond was established. Nyrond took the County of Urnst in the process. I believe the Duchy of Urnst was already a palatine state at this point.
In 498 Greyhawk proclaims itself a free and independent city, and the County of Urnst become a palatine state.
Greyhawk had to declare independence from something. It seems likely that Greyhawk would have been a part of the Viceroyalty of Ferrond, or maybe the Duchy of Urnst, or maybe some other division in between.

[geneweigel]

Gary just used the the term "overlord" when referring to what the broken chain meant:

As a free city, Greyhawk shows the broken chain to indicate it has escaped
the bond of having a noble overlord as it's master, the overlord being
represented by the castle. The six yellow circles are gold coins (bezants),
indicating the city's wealth due to commerce and enterprise.

However, I was too busy trying to get him to iron out the "current" mode of the city to get any history out of him. The only straight out inquiry into history was regarding the historical morphology of the "CITY OF HAWKS" map. (e.g. The Foreign quarter is the original Village of Greyhawk, the old city prison is Ganz's castle, the old city is the pre-Zagig city, etc., Ganz University established post-Ganz. Most likely during or after Zagig's time)

BTW I never received the story of Iuz q&a answers back from him either. It became moot because the graphic novel deal went under so he didn't bother following that up. That definitely would have had some history to it.

[Scott]

Aug 10, 2008 13:35:28 GMT -5 geneweigel said:

So the Landgraf of Selintan may have been subject to the overking directly like the Duke of Urnst was prior to the Nyrond annexation.

After thinking about it, that seems the mosy likely case.

[geneweigel]

He did mention several times that "lord mayor" was equivalent to a "duke" however it was regarding "current" Greyhawk.

[Scott]

That would probably be the case for the ruler of any palatine state.

[geneweigel]

I think that angle is stretched as far as it will go. Unless somebody has something else to add. Perhaps the WILD COAST entry in the Folio/Gazetteer is the telling clue as portions of it were never under control of the Great Kingdom, Furyondy or Urnst but lists other states: Celene, Ulek, Hardby and Greyhawk.

[Scott]

Really, I think it's a case of a lack of consistency, which Gary was frequently guilty of. I was just tossing around a few facts, trying to make it all make sense.

Another possibility is that Greyhawk was, for all intents and purposes, independent during Zagyg’s reign due to the decline of the Great Kingdom, but the city never made a formal announcement. The 498 date could just be the date of the official announcement, which may correspond to the date of the first Lord Mayor/Oligarchy, as opposed to some noble overlord.

[geneweigel]

Yeah, sometimes he said stuff just to get people off his back it seemed. He might have said one thing to various people to leave him alone but in the e-mails that he wrote me regarding the GH website he seems more imaginative and exhuberant in his replies than in the forwarded correspondence that he sent me from others. His motivation at the time was to get back into the GH fold by contributing to my "alternative Greyhawk" site but they didn't want to pony up what Trigee required. Aside from that motivation, he said fans of his version of Greyhawk superceded any writers mining him for ideas for published Greyhawk. So there was a lot of that going on which is why his answers didn't "mesh" sometimes.