On the Origin of Daventry

During the production of the games, two simultaneous official theories about Daventry's existance and how it relates to earth were created.

Daventry Is On Earth
Throughout the production of the games, the authors of the manuals and even the introduction video for KQ6, insisted that the games portrays earth history of a european-like kingdom that occured a long time ago, when magic and mystical creatures still existed on earth, and that is the reason for refrences to many earth legendary characters, historical characters, and earth books. Even in KQ8, there is implication that the game may occur on earth, in that gnomes refer to the world as earth.

"A long, long time ago, when unicorns still roamed the forests and the merfolk still dwelt in the shallow waters frequented by men, there ruled in the kingdom of Daventry..."-KQ1 manual.

"A long, long time ago, when creatures of myth and magic walked the earth openly with lesser mortals, there dwelt in the kingdom of Daventry...."-KQ2 Manual

"A long, long time ago, when magic was the only science known to man, there dwelt in the land of Llewdor..."-KQ3 manual.

"Once, in a kingdom called Daventry...According to legend, shortly after Rosella's rescue King Graham decided it was time to pass on his adventurer's cap..."-KQ4 Manual

"Long ago, in the kingdom of Daventry..."-KQ5 Manual

"A long time ago, there was a peaceful and prosperous kingdom called Daventry."-KQ5, King's Quest collection.

"Long time ago in the castle of a kingdom called Daventry..."-KQ6 intro.

"...face of the Earth...Mother Earth..."-Guidebook to the land of the Green Isles.

"I can shift the earth's magnetic pole just a tad..."-Gnomic Terramancer, KQ8.

Daventry Is In Another Universe
Where as Peter Spear, and his co-authors of the King's Quest Companion insisted that Daventry is in a seperate universe that coexists with our own, and that the citizens of Daventry withdrew from Earth and still communicate with us from there. The events of Daventry more or less occuring simultaneously with earth, and messages would be sent to our world soon after occuring in their world. Peter Spear never gave any specific dates as to when people withdrew, or when the events in the stories took place.

Real World
These competing ideas existed throughout the course of the production of each additional game up to the last edition of King's Quest Companion, and King's Quest 7, and the later released King's Quest Collections.

The interesting thing of note is that both the manuals and the companion were created from notes from Roberta Williams herself, though she did not necessarily have a hand in directly writing any of the material. Its hard to say which is her personal viewpoint since she literally supported both.

Mask of Eternity's material never comments on when or where Daventry is located.

Both Location Theories May Be True
In order to keep the manual and KQ6 intro in line with Peter Spear's theory one could interpret that the manuals, and intro dialogue are written in the future by historians of Daventry when technology has taken over, and magic no longer exists. At that time they may consider Daventry to be their earth. From that point in time they communicate to people of earth to around the same point of time as their ancestors did.

Though its possible for the original intent of both theories of the location of daventry to be equally true in the literal sense.

It is possible that the people of Daventry withdrew from earth into the earth's past. So that their universe is on earth only in the past, and they communicate with people of their future from back in the past. This would also explain why the gnomes refer to the world as earth.

This idea originates from a hypothesis in the quantam mechanics of time travel which states that time travelers don't actually travel back in time but rather they slide over into a parallel dimension, similar to how every loop on a coil is parallel to every other loop on the coil but still connected to each other from one end to the other. So the term time travel is a misnomer as the person isn't actually traveling back in time but rather crosses over to time that is parallel on a coil of time. Even though the time traveler exists in a parallel dimension one can still partially influence the future by the actions commited in the past because time moves forward it will eventually catch up with his original dimension as the coil of time winds up to his original point in time.

Read the novel "Timeline" for an example of this hypothesis being used in a story.

The Silver Lining
The team of the unofficial The Silver Lining has chosen to use the withdrawal theory for their game's history and even specified an exact date of the first withdrawal, 4000 BDC, according to their timeline.

The Official Timeline
Though in the official timeline the date of the withdrawal had to have been at least 10,000 years before Graham's Coronation.