Lord British

Lord British is the founder, the first king, and the long-absent ruler of Britannia. He is the inventor of the Virtue system on which the moral architecture of the realm rests, the architect of Trammel's creation, and the central figure in every era of Britannian history from the foundation through the Age of Shadows. The character was originally portrayed in-game by Richard Garriott — the creator of Ultima Online and of the single-player Ultima series on which it is based. His current absence from the realm is the result of a lore-canonical departure: he carried a powerful artifact (said to be the shards of the Gem of Immortality that powered Mondain) into the Ethereal Void, where it would remain beyond the reach of the dark sorceress Minax. The throne sits empty in his absence, and the Britannian Council rules in his stead.

Origins

Lord British's story begins before Ultima Prime — the canonical timeline of the single-player games. A man from what would today be called the real world, by the name of Cantabrigian British, found his way into an enchanted realm of orcs, kings, elves, goblins, and "bobbits" (analogues of Tolkien's hobbits, with the first letter of the name changed). He rose to become the king of one of four island nations in this strange, magical world.

That world was threatened by an evil mage named Mondain. Lord British used powerful magics to summon a Stranger from his former realm — a hero who would, in time, become known as the Avatar. The Avatar grew in strength, wisdom, and knowledge, and ultimately killed Mondain. To do so, the Avatar shattered Mondain's Gem of Immortality — and the shattering of the gem created a great number of parallel universes, the Shards that the Ultima Online players know.

At this point the histories of Ultima Prime and Ultima Online diverge. In every Ultima Online shard, Lord British went on to consolidate the disparate peoples and kingdoms under his benevolent rule, and the unified realm took the name Britannia.

The reign

For the long era of Lord British's active rule, the realm was characterized by a thoroughgoing fiction of benevolent monarchy. NPCs throughout Britannia spoke consistently — and, by all appearances, sincerely — of their love and respect for their king. From respectable townsfolk to gypsy vagabonds wandering the countryside, the unified voice of the populace praised British's rule. Save for the perennial Player Killer problem, the fiction held: there was every reason to view Lord British as a ruler both benevolent and efficient.

Britannia was a kingdom rather than a democracy, but the realm carried democratic accents. Lord British listened to his subjects, and his rule was tempered by a Council that would later become the Britannian Council (also called the Ruling Council or Royal Council) — the body that has come to rule the kingdom in his stead since his departure.

His military chief was the famous Dupre, who carried the Order of the Silver Serpent (later, the Britannian Royal Guard) on his shoulders. His court wizard was the famous Nystul, who would author the most consequential magical work of the era. The seat of government was Castle Britannia, also known as Castle Britain, located in the western part of the capital city of Britain.

The creation of Trammel

Lord British and Nystul, facing an invasion from Mondain's former lover Minax and her innumerable evil minions, performed the great sundering ritual that created the mirror universe of Trammel. The original land was renamed Felucca and largely abandoned to the violence of the era; the safe new facet of Trammel became the home of the bulk of the realm's population. The decision was a controversial one: Lord British's abandonment of the old realm is the most-questioned decision he ever made as ruler of Britannia. Many veterans hold that the move surrendered the realm's heart to Minax and the Faction wars that would follow.

Dupre's off-stage participation in the Faction wars carried the king's banner forward in Felucca even after the ritual; the rest of the realm largely turned its back on the original facet.

Of Order, Chaos, Virtue, and Blackthorn

Lord British's most enduring legacy is probably the creation of the Virtue system — sometimes also called the Order system. The full architecture of the Eight Virtues, the Eight Shrines, the system of Honor, Compassion, Justice, Sacrifice, Spirituality, Honesty, Humility, and Valor — all of it stems from Lord British's authorship.

A noble in Lord British's court, a good friend named Blackthorn, once overheard a conversation between British and the Time Lord — a conversation also overheard by Sherry the Mouse. The contents of the exchange are described elsewhere in the lore, but the result was that Blackthorn formulated an alternative moral system that came to be known as Chaos. Where Order and Virtue stressed (well) order and virtue, Chaos stressed individual rights and individual freedoms. The two noblemen continued their friendship — they played chess together long after the philosophical schism — while their more fanatical followers slaughtered one another in the streets as part of the Order/Chaos PvP system that gripped Britannia for years.

Lord British's first departure

Lord British vanished from the realm with no explanation given. In his place, the Britannian Council ruled. Despite Blackthorn's philosophical adherence to equality and freedom, his heart was that of an arrogant aristocrat. Blackthorn harbored deep resentment that British had not named him as his successor, and that resentment drew him into an alliance with the evil entity Exodus and with the alien race known as the Juka. The three powers waged a savage, brutal war against Britannia — the events known canonically as Lord Blackthorn's Revenge. The war was eventually repelled by the players, under the nominal leadership of Dawn.

Sometime later, with Lord British still absent, Blackthorn — without help from the Juka or Exodus — launched an assault on the city of Yew, during which he was slain by Dawn.

The out-of-character explanation for Lord British's first absence was made public on 30 March 2000: Richard Garriott had departed from Origin Systems Inc., the company that produced Ultima Online. The character followed his player out of the world.

The return

Off-stage, some kind of bargain was struck between Garriott and the company he had founded. Lord British returned to the realm shortly after the release of the Age of Shadows expansion. During this second period of presence, British was not played by Garriott himself.

The return was designed to be temporary. Lord British eventually departed again — this time to take a powerful artifact (said to be shards of the Gem of Immortality that had powered Mondain) into the Ethereal Void, where it would remain permanently beyond Minax's grasp.

Some weeks before this final departure, Lord British held a memorial service for Blackthorn. During the service, British stated — among other things — that he was abandoning his goal of unifying the Shards under the Virtues. With that statement, Blackthorn effectively won the Order/Chaos conflict, in death. The system of moral absolutism that British had championed quietly conceded ground to Blackthorn's vision of individual freedom.

After British's departure

The Royal Council ruled the realm for several years following the second departure, until the ascension of the corrupt monarch Casca — Britannia's second ruler. Casca's reign ended in his fall, and he was succeeded by Dawn, the same woman who had killed Blackthorn years before. The throne thus passed from the line of British's original choice (the Council) through usurpation (Casca) to legitimate inheritance (Dawn). Britannia today rules under the line that descends from these events.

The British character has appeared in other games, played by Richard Garriott — most notably Tabula Rasa and Shroud of the Avatar — but he has not returned to Britannia.

The death incident

On August 8, 1997 — during Ultima Online's beta version — Lord British was killed by a player. The character Rainz had stolen a fire-field scroll and used it on the wall where Lord British (controlled at that moment by Richard Garriott himself) and Lord Blackthorn stood. Blackthorn was unharmed by the flames; Lord British dropped dead the moment he entered them. It appeared that Garriott had forgotten to enable his "invulnerable" flag for the speech. The cry rang out: "HE DIED."

Rainz was allegedly banned for this and other misdeeds during the beta test. Garriott later challenged his killer to a rematch in his subsequent game project Tabula Rasa; the challenge went unanswered, and that game has since been retired.

The death event was woven into the Ultima Online fiction as the basis for the Royal Leggings of Embers artifact. Killing Lord British had also been a built-in puzzle in several of the single-player Ultima games — a player tradition stretching back to the very first Ultima.

Iconography

Lord British's typical iconography includes the royal crown of Britannia, royal robes of red and gold, and the throne at coordinates 0°0'S 0°0'E in Castle Britannia — the canonical center of the world's coordinate system. In modern UO with the king's continued absence, the throne sits empty, preserved as a historical landmark. Several player-driven role-playing factions on individual shards have, in their fiction, designated alternative occupants of the throne for periods.

Legacy

Lord British is the load-bearing character of Ultima's mythology. Without his founding, there is no Britannia. Without his Virtue system, there is no Britannian moral architecture. Without his creation of Trammel, there is no two-facet structure that defines modern UO play. Even his great failure — the surrender of Felucca to the Factions and the eventual concession to Blackthorn's Chaos — is the structural premise on which the modern game is built. The realm runs on systems that he authored; his absence is the negative space that defines the present era.

See also

Britannia, Castle Britannia, Britain, Britannian Council, Royal Council, Trammel, Felucca, Nystul, Dupre, Blackthorn, Lord Blackthorn's Revenge, Casca, Dawn, Avatar, Mondain, Minax, Exodus, Juka, Sherry the Mouse, Time Lord, Eight Virtues, Order vs Chaos, Gem of Immortality, Ethereal Void, Royal Leggings of Embers, Richard Garriott, Ultima Prime, Royal Britannian Guard, Order of the Silver Serpent.