Talk:Prince Edair

Prince or King?

Woah. I'm a little bit puzzled by "Prince" Edair. I don't have the SoS in front of me now, but it says here on the Wiki page that he was made his father's successor after Baede's death in 1256. It is however a little bit unclear whether or not he was actually crowned king or not? A guide in Divinity's Reach tells us that King Roderick ordered the building of the garden within the Upper City in 1265 AE. The way we're given this info, strongly suggests that Roderick was king in 1265. So, Edair must have had an extremely short rule, or not ruled at all?. Why is he even referred to as "Prince", and not king? And why wasn't Baede's eldest son named as Baede's successor in the first place? Also: I'm now a bit in doubt whether or not Roderick is "very likely" to have been Baede's eldest son? ... just so many questions :S ... Titus The Third 22:40, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

You're right to be puzzled by this. When I wrote this article, I *really* wanted to open by calling him King Edair, but I looked at your family tree and I looked through SoS, and there's nothing I could find anywhere that says he actually ended up king. The book ends before his coronation; in fact one of the reasons for the Great Krytan Blockade was because Edair didn't want to be the first Krytan royal not to have been crowned in Lion's Arch.

Usually I'd be alright with making the assumption that he did end up king, but in this case, as you say, within 9 years Roderick was ruler, so it's not so safe a bet. I guess the 'very likely' line (not written by me) comes from an assumption that if it wasn't Edair that ruled 9 years after the end of SoS, it must have been another child of Baede, which seems fair (although the page should state that an assumption is made).

As for the issue of primogeniture, it seems that in the modern Krytan royalty at least, the title is not automatically passed down to firstborn sons, but there is some sort of selection. The message delivered by the Gabrian's Comet used the word "chosen" "selected", iirc, and this was what held Cobiah in suspense between hearing of the king's death and hearing the name of his successor. This wouldn't have been possible had the identiy of Baede's successor

Imo, best thing to do would to just acknowledge the discrepancy on both pages ("This source says this, but this source says this"), and leave it at that. Either someone screwed up the dates a little or there's crucial a piece of lore that we're missing; I don't think we're well-enough equipped to decide which. —Santax (talk · contribs) 23:49, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. A "This source say this, but this source says that" type of sentence / trivia / notes section would be the best way to go ahead. The "very likely" line comes from myself. I didn't know about King Roderick before User:Blackvale pointed him out as "it is likely..." on my family tree talk page. At this point I didn't realize that Prince Edair had earlier been named as Baede's successor, so I immediately jumped to conclusions.

On a side note... I see developers answer forum threads regarding WvW and patch releases and bugs all the time. Where's our - lore nerds' - support? :P Titus The Third 09:08, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I just checked the book, the first thing that Cobiah asks after he hears of Baede's death is who he named as successor, so that's how the Krytan royalty seems to work these days. I don'

There's a lot about the kingdoms that still isn't clear to me, tbh. Orr became an independent nation in 2 AE—independent from whom? The Primeval Kings didn't reach Vabbi and the Crystal Desert until 29 AE. Was Doric king of a "Kingdom of Tyria" that encompassed the modern territories of Ascalon, Kryta, and Orr (which became independent in 2 AE)? I think that makes the most sense. In this interview, Ree says that Mazdak was a prince of Orr who left to establish Kryta. Mazdak himself says Kryta was founded "When the human race was as young as [the sylvari]", which, unless he's being hyperbolic (which in fairness is likely), would be ~183 BE. In all the book timelines, however, some of which were published pre-release (meaning it could have been retconned since), but others which were published several months after release, say that Kryta was established as a colony of Elona in 300 AE and later gained independence in 358 AE. Which was it? How do we reconcile Historical Monument of King's Watch with the scriptures of Dwayna? Aargh!

So yeah, some "lore support" would be nice :P Back to the matter at hand, if I had to speculate on an "in-universe" reason for the apparent contradiction re: Edair and Roderick, I'd say the simplest explanation would be that Edair just had quite a short reign, at most nine years. Much shorter reigns have been known to happen. From SoS: when they're trapped in the brig of the Trident Tenzin Moran says of Livia, "The Shining Blade's oath is to the throne...but it's very specific. Her oath is to ensure that the royal line continues to rule. I've heard rumours that the Shining Blade doesn't care who sits on the throne, so long as it is a descendant of Salma the Good. They ensure that Kryta and the line of Salma continue. Shining Blade can't let Kryta fall to Orr...but they can support an alternate heir to the throne". Isaye takes this to mean that because Edair had not yet been crowned, Livia was still following the last orders given to her by a king of Kryta (namely Baede, who wanted Lion's Arch to remain independent). But it also mean that if Edair was a really terrible king, then Livia's oath would require her to depose him and install a new monarch, rather than see a revolution that could abolish the monarchy altogether. It's a big leap, but it would begin to explain the circumstances of the end of Livia's tenure as Master Exemplar of the Shining Blade. Otherwise, given that she's been guarding monarchs since Salma and can seemingly live forever, she'd still be doing it today. --—Santax (talk · contribs) 12:56, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Many questions here, but I do think some of them are already answered. This will be a bit from the top of my head, so please forgive me for any factual errors:

First of all, you got to remember that the human race origins go back to long before the northern continent (Tyria) was ever inhabited. We know from the gw1:Timeline and gw1:An Empire Divided that the humans first "appeared" in Tyria (the world) in 786 BE. That is a LONG LONG time ago.

Though I can't remember the source, it has also been said/indicated that the humans "were brought to Tyria from another planet". At least we know for sure that we were not the first ones to arrive/evolve. Both the Giganticus Lupicus and the Forgotten predates us. The Charr most likely do too.

So, for sure, Mazdak is just probably the stupidest monarch ever! (Seriously: ArenaNet should just remove that statement from the game! It is just awful to see something like that...).

Then, in 205 BE: humans started to appear in Elona and Tyria. Following logical reason: I presume that the Canthans started to send ship expeditions towards the north. Elona was probably (again: following logic) the first to be found by humans (which is also supported by the presence of the gw1:Primeval Kings and gw1:Fahranur, The First City prior to any major events have been described in Tyria). So, I'm thinking that the weight of the first Canthan expeditions ended up on gw1:Istan.

But, as history shows us, a part (probably a smaller part) of the expedition fleet continued further north. My guess is that they continued with the shore in their sights, before they for some reason decided to stop on the Orrian Peninsula. Here, they must have started to build the first Tyrian city: Arah, with the help of their Gods. Over the years, the Tyrian faction of humans starts to spread towards both the north-west, north, and east. This rash expansion might have created what we see described in the Scriptures of Dwayna: possibly a clash between the Tyrian and Elonian human factions and/or the (Forgotten) Serpents (which would have nothing to do with the Historical Monument of King's Watch - separated by 116 years!). So don't even try to reconcile those two :)

Such a clash could also explain the Elonian colonization of Kryta in 300 AE. It was of course initally established by Mazdak probably sometime BE. As for the "independence" given to Orr, Ascalon and Kryta: again following logic, I think it is safe to say that these kingdoms (except for Kryta) didn't achieve independence from anyone. I think it was just a natural consequence of the growth and expansion of the humans who initially arrived in Orr. As we see in our world, when a kingdom grows too large, it creates the need to break it up into different factions. This was probably getting quite apparent during King Doric's last days, and the UST (United States of Tyria) was eventually sliced up and shared between Doric's sons or grandsons. Titus The Third 14:39, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Edit: maybe it would be more appropriate to continue this discussion on the forums. E.g. here. Titus The Third 22:30, 6 May 2014 (UTC)