CLAN McDUCK!

Getting away from this wretched political stuff.  Oh, take me to better Alternate U's!!!)

Clan McDuck - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia  ~snips (but there's so much more, all wonderful.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_McDuck ( lots of things should be linked, here, but I don't know how to do it.  Or pix).

The Clan McDuck is a fictional family in the style of a Scottish clan, from which a great number of Walt Disney Company's comic book characters held their origin.

According to Don Rosa's timelines the Clan is known since 122 AD,[1] when an, as of yet, unnamed member of the clan sold stone to the construction crew of Hadrian's wall. The Clan McDuck was originally called the Clan MacDuich, but dropped the Gaelic spelling of the name in 1071 and became the McDucks. The most famous members of the clan are Scrooge McDuck* and Donald Duck.

*'Scrooge McDuck or Uncle Scrooge is a Glaswegian[1] anthropomorphic duck...'

This has been expanded on in the Italian Disney comic universe in the story Storia e gloria della dinastia dei paperi (History and glory of the duck dynasty).[2] According to it, the clan was founded during the 1st century BC by Pah-Peh-Rheo, an Egyptian, who had become a Roman citizen as Petronius Paperonius. Originally following a campaign of the Roman Army to Britain, he eventually decided to settle in Caledonia (the Roman name for Scotland) among the populations of the Picts.

Donald, his sister Della Duck and her children Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck are descendants of the Clan through their maternal line of ancestry.

In the early 1950s Carl Barks was in his second decade of creating comic book stories starring Donald Duck and his various relatives. He had personally created several of the latter, Scrooge McDuck and Gladstone Gander being the most notable among them. But the exact relation between them was still somewhat uncertain. Carl decided to create a personal version of their Family tree. To better define their relations he added several previously unknown relatives. Carl never intended to publish this family tree as he had created it for personal use.

In 1981 Carl was well into his retirement but his stories remained popular and had gained him unexpected fame. He had given several interviews and answered questions about his personal views on the characters and their stories. Among other subjects, Carl described his early version of the family tree. Rough sketches of the tree were published in a number of fanzines. Fans of the characters were pleased for the background it added to them. At this point Mark Worden decided to create a drawing of this family tree including portraits of the characters mentioned. Otherwise Mark made few changes to the tree, most notably adding Daisy Duck as Donald's main love interest. His illustrated version of the tree was published at first in several fanzines and later in the Carl Barks Library. The later was a ten-volume collection of his works in hardcover black-and-white edition.

In 1987 Don Rosa, a long-time fan of Carl Barks and personal friend of Mark Worden, started creating his own stories featuring Scrooge McDuck and his various associates. His stories contained numerous references to older stories by Carl as well as several original ideas. After several years he gained a fanbase of his own. In the early 1990s Egmont, the publishing house employing Don, offered him an ambitious assignment. He was to create the definitive version of Scrooge's biography and a family tree accompanying it. This was supposed to end decades of contradictions between stories which caused confusion to readers. The project was to become The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. The family tree accompanying it was first published in Norway on July 3, 1993.

In the process of working on Scrooge's biography, Don studied Barks' old stories mentioning his past. Then he added several ideas of his own. Among them were biographical information for Scrooge's supporting cast. In a way Scrooge's biography was also their own biography.

The seat of Clan McDuck is the McDuck Castle. The castle was first featured in the Carl Barks story The Old Castle's Secret in Donald Duck Four Color #189. Barks' only other story to have McDuck Castle was in The Hound of the Whiskervilles.

Don Rosa used the castle in The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck,[4] Parts 1, 5, and 9, and in A Letter from Home/The Old Castle's Other Secret. According to The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, the castle is located in Dismal Downs, somewhere in Rannoch Moor (a non-fictional location in Scotland). The nearest village is the fictional MacDuich. The McDuck family (except for a few family ghosts) vacated the castle in 1675, relocating to MacDuich, and later to Glasgow due to the depredations of "a monstrous devil dog." [5]

Other comic book artists have used the Castle too. The most famous use of the McDuck Castle outside of the Barks/Rosa universe is an Angus/Vicar story titled The Sobbing Serpent.

According to The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, the castle was built in 400 AD, as portrayed in the unpublished first draft sketches.[6] It is most probably based upon Andrew Carnegie's Skibo Castle, befitting the character of Scrooge McDuck as a loose caricature of Carnegie.[7] Upon the death of his father, Scrooge McDuck became Laird of The Clan McDuck and owner of the castle and its lands.[8] Indeed, Scrooge had supported the castle financially for many years prior, enabling the McDuck family to reoccupy it in 1885.[8]

In the show DuckTales, McDuck Castle appeared in the Episode The Curse of Castle McDuck where Scrooge, Webby, and the Nephews investigate a crisis in Scotland. That Episode is loosely based on The Hound of the Whiskervilles.[9]

Tartan of Clan MacDuck

Two Tartan patterns are registered with the House of Tartans, MacDuck, and MacDuck Final version (note spelling variation: MacDuck vs. McDuck).[10] These were created and registered by the Walt Disney Corporation, the MacDuck Final version in 1942, and MacDuck in 1984. Both tartans are non-fiction in nature and are available as bolts of cloth or finished kilts and other garments.

Some sources state Disney created the MacDuck Final version with Scrooge McDuck in mind.[11] This is unlikely, as Scrooge McDuck made his first appearance in 1947, in the story Christmas on Bear Mountain.

A tartan which looks like Mac Duck Final version is shown on some Don Rosa stories, such as The Old Castle's Other Secret or A Letter From Home.

Motto of Clan McDuck

Scrooge McDuck's gravestone epitaph reads "Fortuna Favet Fortibus." This is the best candidate for a clan motto.[12] Translated into English, it means "Fortune Favors the Brave" (or "Bold," or "Strong").

Main article: Scrooge McDuck

See also

Duck family (Disney)   Don Rosa's Scrooge McDuck chart    Rannoch Moor: The region where Dismal Downs is located; a real location in Scotland.

Categories: Donald Duck universe characters |  Fictional families |  Fictional family trees |  Disney comics characters |  Fictional Scottish people