This is a timeline/chronology of characters and events for the TV show: Haven
For Disclaimer and information see Chapter 1…
Chapter 2
1227 - THMS
1254 - THMS
1281 - THMS
1308 - THMS
1312:
Abu Bakari II becomes the only Emperor of the Mali Empire* to abdicate the throne when he decides to emigrate permanently to the Empire's colonies in what we today call Central America.
* The Malian Empire grew out of the dual power of Mali-Ghana and completely transformed West Africa** – a vast, wealthy kingdom that reached its peak in the 1250s and existed unchallenged until it began to decline in the 1650s. It included the legendary city of Timbuktu, a global city of culture and learning; alongside the ancient World Power of the Egyptian Empire to the North, the Ethiopian Empire to the East (Africa's oldest independent nation) and Great Zimbabwe in the south, it was one of the four great Empires of Africa that dominated that Continent for centuries. It conquered a large area of Central America up into Mexico and the Gulf Coast of what is now the Southern USA**, particularly Guatemala and Nicaragua, which gave access to vast reserves of high-quality gold, and was the co-source*** of the continent's eventual name of America.
Abubakari set sail with a flotilla of over 100 ships and several thousand large pirogues (each able to hold about ten men). Including crew and passengers, top-of-the-line sailing ships could hold between 200-300 people; in the Bible Book of Acts, Chapter 27, when the Apostle Paul was shipwrecked on Malta, the ship had 276 people aboard comprised of crew, passengers, prisoners, slaves, and soldiers, which took place in about 60AD. In 1120, when the White Ship sinking plunged the English monarchy into a succession crisis, the top-of-the-line, if unimaginatively named, vessel had over 300 people on board when it went down. Abubakari's fleet of replenishing colonists numbered between 27,000 and 60,000 people assuming 100 ships of 276 people and 4000 pirogues of ten people each. Since the Malian Empire's ethos was one of conquest and colonisation, with their Emperor himself settling down in the neighbourhood it is impossible to believe that the Malians shrank back from exploring up the coast of Central America into the Gulf and up into the modern-day United States. It seems highly likely that certain individuals and/or groups "found" their way north to Tuwiuwok as folks do seem to "find" Haven one way or another.
** The Mali Empire's colonisation of Central America is largely suppressed in schools because it causes a major headache for the racism that is Political Correctness (whites are all evil, non-whites are all victims) and the creed of Victimology – i.e., it's always someone else's fault.
Some black Americans were in the Americas centuries before Europeans as pillaging, looting conquerors (Malians); others were brought across as slaves from the Mali Empire's seaports in the 17th Century. However, black Americans have received millions in monetary compensation from the US Government, so how do you say to Will Smith and Kanye West, 'hey come on down your ancestors were from Kenya, Rwanda and Congo so they were brought over in the 1500s as slaves, here's your compensation cheque', then tell Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson, 'sorry your ancestors are from Ghana, Mali, Guinea and Sierra Leone, which means they came over in the 1200s as conquerors and pillaging invaders, you don't get a bean – oh, and by the way, these Indian tribes from Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia and Florida whose ancestors were attacked by yours trying to push up into North America want big fat compensation cheques with lots of zeroes from you because of your Imperialist ancestors.'
There would be absolute uproar. Such history would also open the can of worms that is: who to sue? The Muslim empires invaded the coast of Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Scandinavia and the Dalmatian Coast of Europe, kidnapping white Christian slaves (they particularly sought out redheaded people and tried to kidnap aristocratic and royal families). Prior to the Muslims, the Vikings of Scandinavia had also undertaken identical slave raids against the same countries. Likewise, the Polynesian Maori invaded New Zealand in the 13th century and exterminated the Celtic and Indonesian colony populations who had lived there for over six hundred years before the 1200s, so in theory the Indonesia and Ireland have grounds to sue the New Zealand Maori for reparations for the genocide of the real First Peoples of New Zealand.
Virtually everyone in modern Britain has a case to sue Norway, Denmark and Sweden, Finland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and every Muslim nation going for big-buck slave-reparations. Unfortunately, black Americans don't have that easy route because unlike the white people kidnapped from their beds in terrifying night time raids by ships that could get upriver in-country, they were not kidnapped by white slave-traders from America and transported back there, they were attacked and conquered by black Africans in Africa, transported to the coast over a period of time from one slave trader or owner to another and sold to white Europeans by black Africans.
On top of this, slavery saved thousands of lives, as the conquering Mali Empire wanted the land, the livestock, the gold and gemstones, the forests and quarries, but not the 'inferior' people cluttering up the place – who would have been slaughtered en masse had they not had financial value as slaves. A slave had the hope of escape, being killed as economically worthless ended all hope. The black Africans who ended up in America as slaves would otherwise have been victims of an African holocaust had there been no slave trade, just as the Nazis exterminated the Jews because they viewed them not just as racially inferior but also financially worthless.
The idea that the New World was only home to Indian tribes and that blacks and whites never got near the place until the 1500s is not the case, and in the mythology of Haven, as it being a "haven" for those seeking sanctuary, it is quite likely that by 1400 AD the interconnected townships of Tuwiuwok probably had a recognisable "ethnic minority" population amongst the predominant red Indian Mi'kmaq of white Celtic West Britons and black Malian West Africans. This is highlighted in the TV show, where in S4:4 the 'douen' mythical creatures that steal children, are not Amerindian or Celtic but Afro-Caribbean origin, even though the man that summons him is White European (though possibly of unsuspected African ancestry). In S4:7, Carrie Benson is clearly mulatto with African ancestry and when she claims her mother's family have had the Trouble "for generations" this may suggest that her mother's family were Malian Imperial colonists who made their way North to Haven by "hopping" up the eastern seaboard every few generations, or even sailed up all at once in exploratory sorties after initially landing in Central America with Abu Bakari in the 14th Century
Again, tying into the mythology of Haven, it must also be remembered that the portal "pool/well" works both ways. Just as some people born There must have been raised and lived Here, so too vice versa – and in S4:12 and S4:13 the example of Dave Teagues – who went 'back' home through the portal and then returned "Earthside" strongly suggests that two-way travel more than once was not just possible but maybe even "commonplace" during certain eras. Indeed, for all we know, the Neanderthals and Denisovans (a good majority of both species of which lived in Russia, not that difficult a journey to manage to Maine) did not become extinct because of supposedly "superior" H. sapiens, or even extinct at all - but rather, to borrow from Men in Black: Elvis isn't dead, son, he just went home…
*** There has been considerable debate over the naming of "America" with the traditional teaching of "Amerigo Vespucci" being largely debunked today. There is no way to be definitive; however, a strong possibility is that the word "America" came from two different but coincidentally contemporaneous sources.
The Celtic peoples originated in the mountain regions of the Balkans – Carpathia, Styria, Anatolia. They were the most successful civilisation of Western Europe, going North to become the Vikings of Scandinavia and the Scythians, Slavs and Tartars of Russia, moving across Europe as the Norsemen (Normandy) to the coast of Portugal, and down to meet the Oriental/Asiatic/Arabic peoples of the Southern Mediterranean and Middle East. In what is now Brittany, France, the two dominant tribes were competitive but collaborative rather than combative and conflicting: the Armorica and the P/Bretonii. (In English, P is interchangeably correct with B, as t is with d, and u with v). Both tribes moved up into Cornwall, Wales and England, the latter tribe becoming both the Bretons (Brittany) and the Britons (Britain). The Armorica settled in Wales, many becoming known as the 'ap Meurig' (sons of the Meurig/the Armorica). The Celts as a civilisation in whatever form were excellent seafarers, as demonstrated by them reaching and colonising in some form the Americas and New Zealand by the 400s AD., 600 years before Leif Erickson, 800 years before the Maori, and a full millennium before Columbus.
By the 13th Century, one family of Armorican descent had become wealthy landowners in Wales, the Earls of Gwent, the Ameryk family, who casually cycled through ap Meurig, Americke and Ameryk as a surname. This family sent scions to Bristol, where the family became prominent in the fishing trade that existed between the New England tribes and Bristol. In the mid-1400s, Richard de Ameryke was born at the family's home of Meryk Court in Hertfordshire, and moved back to Bristol. Increasing the family's wealth through shrewd business, in 1497 he was the main patron of John Cabot's voyage in the Matthew to what became North America – Newfoundland and New England. As was both traditional and expected at the time, Cabot named much of the coastline after his patron, Richard de Amerike. In the Bristol Calendar is recorded for 1497: 'on St. John the Baptist's Day (24th June) the land of America was found by the merchants of Bristowe [Bristol]' (quoted in The Book of General Ignorance (2006)).
This was five years before Christopher Columbus's noted voyages to South America in 1502, with his cartographer, Alberico Vespucci.
Martin Waldseemüller-Matthias Ringmann's famous map was published in 1507 and had 'America' in the corner. Research suggests that Alberico Vespucci changed his name to Amerigo Vespucci only after 1510, if indeed he changed it from Alberico to anything else at all, as two of the four letters purportedly from Vespucci using the name 'Amerigo' have been proven to be posthumous forgeries and the remaining two are ambiguous. It was only in 1510, three years after publication, that Waldseemüller's 1507 map co-author Matthias Ringmann made the statement in a reprinted issue that the continent had been named the feminine-tense Latin 'America' after the explorer Americus (masculine-tense Latin) Vesputius, in the tradition of Europe and Asia (both named after women).
By that point over 1000 copies of the Waldseemüller map had been sold – a large amount for the period - and there is no record of Vespucci, who died in 1512, using the name Amerigo or Americus before 1510, when he was named as the 'inspiration' by Ringmann rather than the more logical 1507 when the map was initially published to widespread interest and publicity. Either a) Ringmann's belief was sincere but mistaken, or b) Vespucci was given the nickname by others without them realising his name was really Alberico, or c) he realised he had an opportunity to claim the credit for the discovery of a continent.
However, in Columbus' voyage of central and South America from 1499-1502, just two years' after John Cabot had named the northern coastline Americke, they encountered the coastal Nicaraguan Indian tribe, coincidentally named the Amerique, whose lands had vast reserves of high-grade gold. In order to entice patrons for future voyages, Columbus et al understandably waxed lyrical about the "gold of the Americas" to anyone who stood still long enough to listen. He of course meant the tribespeople, but with two different and widely far apart stretches of the same continental eastern seaboard nonetheless being given names so indistinguishably similar, it is understandable why Waldseemüller logically just assumed that 'America' was the name of the entire continent in his map of 1507.
In terms of the mythology of Haven, the credit acquisition by Alberico Vespucci rebranding him or being rebranded as the name-giver of America is similar to S4 where 'William' claims credit for the causing the Troubles by afflicting people into the Troubled to both Audrey, Nathan et al. Yet there is clear and multiple-source evidence throughout Seasons 1 to 3 that the Troubles per se, as in the dimensional portal for a start, long pre-dates Haven and the white European William appears to be.
1335 - THMS
1346 – 1353 (minor outbreak 1216 to 1224 in England) major outbreak of Y. Pestis, named the Black Death (formerly the Plague of Justinian).
1362 - THMS
1389 - THMS
1416 - THMS
1443 – THMS
1450 AD – Johannes Gutenberg's printing press is established in Europe (in Britain by 1475). Mass production of batches of the same printed material that multiple people can read at their leisure is underway.
1470 – THMS
1483 – 1485:
Reign of King Richard III, last "native" Englishman to be King of England & Wales. Richard III was noted a man of great intelligence, military strategy but also of justice and having a magnanimous* nature –
* Richard III built upon the provisions of the Magna Carta already had in such provisions as Habeas Corpus. He made law the system of "bail", whereby an arrested person could be freed upon providing security from fleeing, which meant that the arrested person did not have to be kept in prison until a trial that could take weeks or months to start. In conjunction with his law on "bail" he also made two other laws and had them applied throughout the country: "Blind Justice" – everyone is equal before the Court/in the eyes of the law - and "Presumption of Innocence" (innocent until proven guilty), which was in direct contravention of most law codes, such as the Napoleonic code, which was Guilty until they managed to prove themselves innocent.
Both of Richard III's new laws were revolutionary concepts – one, that a prince was just as much subject to the laws of the land as the village pauper and two, that it was the accuser's responsibility – even if that accuser were a high official or a prince and the accused was a serf or peasant – to make their case in law against the accused or the accused would be set free.
Under the usual system of Class Superiority and Guilty Until**, the accused was automatically considered 'guilty' if he or she was a lower social class than the accused, say a village baker accused by the local abbot or mother superior, and the accused had to prove him or herself innocent of the charges – if the accused was an affluent but elderly widow accused by her town mayor son-in-law of witchcraft to get her money or a local peasant accused by the local Lord of the Manor, these had been hopelessly railroaded. Forcing the accusers to come up with something that would stand up in front of not just a judge but a jury of twelve individuals reduced such miscarriages of justice**.
These three legal principles of Bail, Blind Justice and Presumed Innocence are relevant to the mythology of Haven because they caused directly King Richard III's fourth great invention: a free Press. Unlike other countries and his own predecessors, Richard III universally deregulated the printing industry, giving printers the freedom to print what they liked, rather than what was approved by the King or the Catholic Inquisition. One of the reasons for the English Civil war in the 1640s, 160 years later, was that King Charles I Stewart, having been raised in Catholic France and married to a Frenchwoman, Queen Henrietta, who considered Protestant England apostates in league with the Devil, abolished the freedom of the press and took back the role of Ultimate Censor/Veto. Charles I personally decreed what could or could not be published, as was the case under King Louis XIII of France, his brother-in-law.
The freedom of the press created by Richard III in England in 1484 gave England books on any and every subject and above all gave freedom of information to the people. The fact that the British Isle Celtic settlers of Haven had the literacy and ability to set up a newspaper in America in 1684 is as a direct result of the legal reforms Richard achieved, despite a reign that lasted under two years.
** It is ironic that Richard III continues to be presumed guilty of the murder of his two half-nephews Edward V and Prince Richard even though there is no real evidence that indicates either boy was murdered at all, never mind by Richard, and both his cousin-competitors for the throne, Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, and Henry Tudor (who eventually succeeded in usurping the throne as Henry VII Tudor) each had a far stronger motive for wanting both boys dead, and there is no evidence either of them murdered them either. It is telling that at the time of his death, he was called a Prince of blessed memory.
Before 1497:
As outlined above and Chapter 1, at least some sort of permanent human settlements were in place in the greater Haven area along the coast between Bangor and Portland (Maine, not Oregon). In S4 Dave Teagues reveals that Sebastian Cabot recorded that the Mi'kmaq were well aware of the Troubles by 1497 and in S1:1 Welcome to Haven, when Nathan Wuornos is showing Audrey Parker along the cliff top, he reveals that Tuwiuwok Bluffs is a Algonquian-language phrase meaning 'Haven for Troubled souls' which was Christianised by 17th Century settlers as 'Haven for God's orphans'. The Mi'kmaq name for the area, already in existence and indicating a place of sanctuary or refuge before 1497, shows that the area was notorious for being a centre of supernatural activity.
How the Troubles manifested pre-Town and pre-Troubled is not as yet described. During Seasons 1 and 2, it at first seemed as if The Barn was basically some sort of quantum physical Interchange Station, where people, creatures, objects and maybe even weather/'natural' phenomena from different dimensions or universes either deliberately or inadvertently went into and back out of others for whatever reason – either as regular travellers or one-off visits, etc. An analogy might be the way trade has existed between the south coast of England and north coast of France for thousands of years, with daily ferry services doing the twenty miles from Dover to Calais over 2000 years ago and nobody thinking anything of it. An example might be similar to Pennsylvania Station below Madison Square Garden in New York, or King's Cross/St Pancras Station in London. The Barn even had a 'station manager/caretaker' in (fake) Agent Howard.
However (in S3) Howard asserts the Barn was created specifically for The Woman/Audrey/her incarnations, and was not in fact a general interchange station for travellers between worlds/dimensions. It is implied that Agent Howard also exists to support Audrey: if the Barn were a general interchange station, when Agent Howard seems to have been killed (S3:13) the Barn should not have been that much damaged, but if the Barn/Howard were purposed for Audrey rather than a general population, the massive damage caused to the Barn would be much more explicable and understandable.
We see a hint of this 'Audrey exclusivity' in S2:3, Love Machine. An analogy would be the difference between the Barn being over-the-counter painkillers like Paracetamol/Tylenol, or it being the liver transplant that's only compatible with Audrey. Another pre-S3 hint that the Barn was about Audrey rather than a general interchange was its mobility: the Barn is on a relatively small, obscure island: Kick 'Em Jenny Neck, which can only be reached by boat. The island appears to be mostly woodland with clearings and a few grassy hills. For example view shots of the island show trees along the shoreline that hide the interior landscape and in S2:3 the Barn is hidden from general view deep in a forest glade that Duke and the real Audrey Parker have to dock the boat and walk a good 20-30 minutes to get to. In S3 the Barn appears far more visibly on the hill top of Kick 'Em Jenny Neck (and then only to Vince Teagues) – if the Barn were a general interchange, then frequently moving around the island would be detrimental to the travellers using it, but if the Barn was only linked with and intended for Audrey, its remaining on an island that was not conducive to being a general thoroughfare would again be logical and reasonable.
We discover in Season 4 that at least one other portal to at least one other dimension has always existed on the Haven coast (what Dave and Vince call the 'soft spot' between worlds); whether there may be other portals in the vicinity of Haven other than the Barn and the Lighthouse Pool Portal is unknown. The reason I discount the "door" on the hillside that Jennifer Mason found in S4:4 and opened to bring Audrey back through is because I am not clear even after watching the episode whether the hillside where she, Duke, Vince, Jordan, Dwight et al gathered was the same hill on Kick 'Em Jenny Neck Island as in S3:13.
If yes, it would be the same portal that once appeared to be a barn, not a separate one. Or if it was an entirely different portal, in that case that would be at least three portals around the area of Haven:
The "Barn" on Kick 'Em Jenny Neck Island is the first we learn of; since it is the first island that is directly visible from the floating restaurant deck of The Grey Gull, which we know to be ten miles up the coast from central (Main Street) Haven, the Barn itself is more correctly considered to be a "soft spot" or "portal" along that area of the Maine coastline rather than being a portal in Haven itself.
The "door" on the hillside – if it is not the same hillside as the Barn (i.e., on the island) that Jennifer "matched" to hearing the foghorn, that is a second portal that is clearly inland and again, clearly not in Haven itself.
The "pool" under the lighthouse – this is the only "soft spot" actually in an urban area – on the miniature jetty spur on Haven seafront.
In the riddle of S4:11 the "pool portal" appears to be called the "Heart of Haven", although it is clear that in the literal sense - geologically, geographically, topographically - it is not the centre, or heart, of Haven town. The "Heart of Haven" must refer to an emotional or paranormal (or both) status – as we would say, 'Jane Bloggs was the heart of that family' or 'integrity was at the heart of everything he did' or 'greed was the heart of the matter' – referring to the central theme, or core cause, or emotional/mental reason.
The pool portal appears to be far more volatile and dangerous than the Barn – even when the Barn was apparently "dying" in S4:1, with chunks of brickwork falling, Duke was not in any imminent danger of being brained by falling masonry or being injured seriously, whilst the "portal" in S4:13 looks to be the dictionary definition of "seething cauldron" that will "dash you against the rocks".
In S4:13 The Lighthouse has a lighthouse built over the portal, which exists as a pool or well in the rock – similar to The Magician's Nephew, the first in C.S. Lewis's seven-book Chronicles of Narnia series where Diggory and Polly discover "the Wood between Worlds" and a series of ponds or wells that are actually portals to other worlds – jump in/out of the pool to go to/leave another world/dimension.
The "pool" we see in S4:13 requires to have four people to "unlock" it so the capstone cover will slide back (indicated by the carving of the Guard symbol.) However, it appears the lock comprises of two elements: the symbol/tattoo shows a human figure at each 'compass point' of the 'maze' (N, E, S, W) but two of the black stylised figures are male and two are female, so S4:13 indicates that a two-man two-woman combination is the only one that will work, over say, three men and one woman or four women. In S4 these conditions are met by Audrey, Jennifer Mason, William and Dave Teagues. The apparent second element is that all four people must be Otherworld/Extra-terrestrial -that is, not born in 'our' world/dimension but the other dimension. Again, Audrey, Jennifer Mason, William and Dave Teagues meet this criteria.
Since, presumably, the same key-lock system operates on the other side, the Otherworld side, that must mean that at least four Earthside people comprising of two men and two women must currently be living in that dimension at any one time should anyone (other than Audrey who has the Barn like a short-cut) wish to come back to this one.
We know this must be the case from S4:12 & S4:13 where Dave Teagues*, who was adopted by Vince's parents, reveals that he has been through the portal at least once before – since he came back, there had to be four Earth-born people of the right sex ratio in that dimension/reality/world to unlock and open the portal for him to come back through – although he doesn't mention who they are.
Given the age gap between Dave Teagues (b.c.1935), Audrey (100s years old), 'William' (100s years old) and Jennifer Mason (b.1981), the four non-Earth-born, it appears as if babies born in both or multiple worlds/dimensions have been taken from one world to another for adoption for just such a 'back-up plan' for several generations at least.
The prevalence of lighthouses along the Haven coast is therefore presumably significant in that they serve to disguise the location of the important lighthouse, similar to the ruse of hiding a single diamond on a crystal necklace, or a pearl amongst a string of white beads. Haven has at least five that we know of: the one Beatrice Mitchell/Helena is imprisoned in (S1:5), the one 'cracked' by Garland Wuornos in S1:13 (presumably rebuilt), the Portal Lighthouse itself and two anonymous ones seen in the credits.
The violent nature of the portal as seen in S4:12 & S4:13 may be an allusion to the topography and geology of Maine. Scientifically, that lengthy stretch of coastline down from Newfoundland, through New Brunswick and down through Maine is known as 'drowned coast'; the rugged, craggy steep coastlines and multiplicity of islands indicates that sometime in the prehistoric past the area was land above sea-level that was suddenly drowned by in-rush of billions of gallons of water – the coastal coves and 'bay inlets' are actually grass valleys filled with water and the islands including Kick 'Em Jenny Neck are mountain tops that soar above rolling hills, grassy plains and vast forests – all drowned in an instant in some ancient cataclysm.
The churning portal in S4:13 may be an allusion to Maine's "Old Sow", the largest tidal whirlpool in the Western world. This may be a hint that perhaps the Troubles or the portal was responsible for ancient upheavals that literally changed the landscape and that maybe the portal has been used to pass between Earthside and Otherworld for millennia.
After all, why exactly, should there be anything inherently bad about humans being able to move between Earthside and Otherworld? For example, in Season 4, William claims to Audrey that he and the original her (Mara) were not punished for moving back and forth between Otherworld and Earthside, nor for opening the "soft spot" at all, but rather for the wicked acts they used their access through the portal for. They were punished only for their victimisation of the people of Haven in using the black charcoal stuff as a vector to infect a person with a Trouble – somehow the black stuff must affect DNA as the Trouble becomes hereditary, meaning it changes the operation of certain already-present genes in the human body.
As already mentioned, after many decades of linear timeline palaeontology orthodoxy, many scientists now agree that instead of a linear development from stupid apes through humanoid Neanderthals to Modern Brilliant Us, the human prehistory of Earth saw at least four, probably more, co-operative (and competitive) species of humans co-existing with roughly equal levels of intellect, technology, religion, culture and social order. Just as we H. sapiens have five 'colours' but are one species, scientists are increasingly of consensus that the co-existing species were H. sapiens (us) Neanderthals, Denisovans, either Heidelbergensis or Australopithecus (or more likely both) and H. floriensis (Hobbits) and that these plus any yet to be discovered also came in a variety of 'colours' depending on where they lived, such as Russian Neanderthals being white skinned and Spanish Neanderthals brown-skinned. Additionally Neanderthals are believed to have been at least brunettes and redheads. As previously stated (see 'Spring/Summer 1173' in Chapter 1), these species may not have become extinct at all – at least not in Otherworld.
* In S4:13 The Lighthouse, Dave Teagues reveals that he has been through the portal before (and come back through) as he was born in Otherworld (he was adopted for reasons he never explains by Vince's parents). He displays great fear and loathing of the portal and claims that Otherworld is a horrible place, yet he claims to the others that there is a "compulsion" for an Otherworlder to go back to Otherworld through the portal (does this same compulsion affect the Earthsiders in Otherworld when they are near the portal?) In the denouement at the end of S4:13, Dave seems to snap into an almost trance-like/hypnotised state, walking blindly across to the portal "well" to go back to Otherworld; snapping out of it as he dangles above the maelstrom clinging to the side of the portal he is terrified until he is pulled back Earthside by Vince and the others.
However, this means that his actions and reactions in S4:12 When the Bough breaks must have been lies: Jennifer Mason, Vince and Dave go to the promontory lighthouse. When they open the access door, Vince and Dave start arguing about how they are going to get up to the top of the lighthouse:
Vince: No stars, no ladder…how do we get up?
Dave: Looks like we're out of luck then.
Jennifer: Why don't we go down the trapdoor?
Vince: What door?
Jennifer: You don't see the door?
Dave: No –
Dave has to be lying at this point – if you watch the scene, before the dialogue exchange between the three of them notice how Dave glances around him nervously and how he doesn't actually look at the spot on the floor where the trapdoor is, as if he is avoiding looking at something. He is clearly relieved when he says they are 'out of luck'. But if Dave has been back to Otherworld through the portal and back through to Earthside and if he was born in Otherworld as well, all of which he admits in S4:13, then he must know the trapdoor is there and he must be able to see it, even though he says he can't.
When Jennifer says she thinks that the lighthouse is the "heart of Haven" and that she can see the trapdoor when they can't means it is her fulfilling the role of "summoning the door", then she and Vince decide to go down there – at this Dave says, 'I think going down there is a really bad idea.'
He does go down with them through the underground passage to the portal chamber, but whilst Jennifer and Vince move with the curious but cautious attitude of explorers, Dave seems to exhibit a great reluctance to be somewhere he is unhappily familiar with. Given that Jennifer Mason was also apparently born in Otherworld and adopted by Earthside parents and that there are other 'I was adopted' responses, it seems that Otherworld birth and Earthside adoption is a recurring theme – the reasons why are not explained, but presumably the requirement for two Otherworld men and two Otherworld women to unlock the portal Earthside and two Earth men and two Earth women (logically) to unlock the portal on the Otherworld side must be a factor in the periodic adoptions.
1497 AD:
John Cabot makes his voyage to Newfoundland, Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
1497 AD – October – THMS
1497 AD – October to February 1498:
In S4:8, Crush, Dave Teagues states an explorer named Sebastian Cabot (presumably chosen to denote that the real life Cabot had a relative with him on the voyage) spent the winter living with the Algonquian Mi'kmaq living on the Maine coast near Tuwiuwok, who told him of the 'ancient legend' of a period of great evil: there was a 'soft spot' or thinner layer between two worlds that existed in that area, and the great evil had come when an anonymous 'someone' had 'opened' an otherworldly door through that soft spot, effectively punching a hole in it.
The Mi'kmaq told Cabot that the harbingers of the evil returning were sightings of horseshoe crabs with human eyes. Dave and Vince are delighted that the evil hasn't returned, except that Jennifer Mason has seen them twice. Additionally, when Jennifer reads the riddle in S4:11, the first line said: During times of great evil – the use of the plural tense denotes that there is a recurrence of the 'great evil' that has to be stopped, otherwise the riddle would have said, 'During the time of the Great Evil'…
Before the evil returned, the Troubles could be ended permanently if The Woman killed the person she loved the most. In terms of mythology, this would be a standard trope of an act of ritual sacrifice – presumably:
The Woman (the High Priestess) would have to kill the person she loved most –
The Propitiatory a.k.a. Expiatory Sacrifice – the sacrifice as repentance and remorse for whatever great wrong had been done to innocent people
In front of, and therefore witnessed by:
The Guard (medicine man/woman, other priests) AND
The Mayor/Selectmen/Chief of Police [king/chief, and the tribal leadership) AND
The worshippers (non-Troubled townsfolk/tribespeople), AND
The Supplicants (Troubled townsfolk/tribespeople)
At the specific site of the 'soft spot'/ 'otherworldly door', that is, in front of the literal door (the Altar) of the Barn (the Temple) of the Supreme Power involved (the God, or Avatar representing it – e.g., 'Agent' Howard)
In short, the Troubles would have been ended permanently if Lucy Ripley had killed James Cogan in front of the Barn in October 1983, or if Audrey had killed Nathan there in October 2010. But it wouldn't have worked in 1956 because whilst Sarah Vernon had friendships, the only person she loved during that period was her baby son, thus it would have required infanticide.
Unfortunately, as revealed in S4:8, this would only work when the Evil was still trapped in the other world; if it broke through – as William did when he followed Audrey back to Haven - then if The Woman killed the person she loved most it would not be salvation but destruction – although this raises more questions:
Why does the presence of the Great Evil Earthside mean The Woman having to kill the person she loves the most not only will no longer work, but becomes a terrible event causing catastrophe? The whole point of evil is that it rejoices in destroying love, and as Nathan says – absolutely correctly, in S4:8 when he is trying to persuade Audrey to shoot him, 'this is the most loving thing we could possibly do,' for the people of Haven.
Another question is: what is the "how" of that destruction and the nature of this supposed chaos and agony? Again, Sebastian Cabot's journal seems notable chiefly for its omissions rather than its inclusions, almost like an anti-journal: the fact that it offers hints only to then leave out the actually necessary/important information to fix things - but why would the Mi'kmaq intend to do that and cause so much difficulty for the town's protectors, when a family in their tribe have been the hereditary protectors of Haven for generations, as Vince reveals in S4:12?
It reminds me of the painfully bad Ahriman plot in Season 5 to 6 of Highlander: The Series where you could have shoved the Titanic and the iceberg through the holes in logic. First of all, Cassandra the great seer (and Immortal) has no knowledge of Ahriman, despite being over 5000 years old – and since Duncan is the sixth Immortal to fight the demon, why have the previous five not left detailed instructions on how to get rid of it? Since the knowledge of the next rising of Ahriman has been known about for centuries, why does the old professor wait until the last minute to let Duncan MacLeod know about it when he should have been prepping him for the battle for years? Likewise the Mi'kmaq are trying to stop the evil and help the protectors, so why on earth is there no full disclosure of the Intel' that will allow the good guys to do that? Was there a second journal that got lost (misfiled in Haven museum or library for instance?) somewhere along the way?
1524 - THMS
1530s:
The Roman Catholic Church officially bans polyandry* (one woman, multiple husbands) and polygyny (one husband, multiple wives).
In terms of Haven mythology it is possible to suggest that there may have been an Arthurian connection between Merlin, Maine, (as outlined in Chapter 1) and the dimensional portal/Troubles.
In S4:12, Vince Teagues mentions that The Guard symbol, which is also used as a tattoo, was a hereditary but clearly supernaturally imposed birthmark amongst the Mi'kmaq. The symbol does seem to have a distinctly Celtic origin to it. Merlin, Uther, Arthur and Ambrosius Aurelius, would have been far more familiar with Celtic Christianity than Roman Catholicism, as the 'decision' of the Synod of Whitby in AD 664 was largely about academic, esoteric matters of the correct dating for religious events (Easter) which everyone agreed on, rather than practical daily living activities where there would be inevitable dissension.
Roman Catholicism, supposedly founded by St. Peter in Rome, was always the most conservative and bureaucratic denomination; developing in the heart of the Roman Empire, it forged a strong sense of individual identity and politicised religious practice that other forms of Christianity did not have to, being further away from the intrigues of politics, economy, society and existing religions. Celtic Christianity, purportedly founded by St. John, existed on the outermost edges of the Roman Empire and outside its borders, as most of Britain was not part of the Roman Empire bar South-East England. There was therefore little political conflict, aided by the fact that Irish Celt Christians were immensely admired for their education and exploration as the "most learned men in Europe"; their faith was entirely Celtic not Catholic.
Most post-Norman (1066) historians of the era were Catholic monks, who of course "wrote off" anything pre-Christian. Several of these claim Merlin, Arthur, etc., were "converted to Christianity", however, whilst this may be true, their continuing to be pagan under Celtic Christianity was not a problem. By 350 AD Christianity was entirely apostate, or at the very least a religious organisation so massively different from its founding that it would have been unrecognisable to Christians who had lived just 50 years' earlier.
Unlike Roman Catholicism, made dictatorial in having to cling to its identity in the crucible of Roman socio-political, economic and religious upheavals as the Empire was already in creeping decline by 100 AD, only 70 years after Christianity was founded, Celtic Christianity of Scandinavia, Western Europe, Britain, Ireland, Iceland and Greenland was much more socially and politically laissez-faire. To give Celtic Christianity its proper description, it was really Celtic Christian-Paganism (CCP), which was much more accommodating as it was basically a blend of pagan (as in the prior non-Christian religious sense) with Christian bits bolted on. Examples can be seen in the three season long TV show The Almighty Johnsons – set in New Zealand, the show is about four brothers' who are the current Incarnations of the Norse gods; the show's mythology was clearly more taken from Wikipedia than any serious research into the Norse pantheon, as throughout the show mixes and matches authentic unreconstructed snippets of original Norse religion with revised Christian elements.
Amongst the blended elements of real-life CCP was the continued practice of polyandry* (simply ignored) and the practice of monks who could get around the celibacy "rule" because whilst technically being unable to marry they could have a concubine; although more rare, CCP "nuns", who developed out of pre-Christian priestess religious orders could also get around this rule by having a concubinus (male concubine, the plural is concubinii for males and concubines for females) though this was not "officially" allowed.
However, nunneries, just like monasteries and chapter-houses, were not a Christian invention, but Christian religious orders, especially cloisters, followed similar set-ups, especially as founding a religious chapter-house was seen as a signifier of piety and devout faith. By the AD 500s "double houses" had been invented during the Merovingian Dynasty (AD 400s) ruling France and were basically what Americans would call a duplex and the British semi-detached houses. One half was a monastery (men) and the other half a nunnery (women) but the "ruling officer" was an Abbess, as double houses were usually founded by royal or aristocratic women – this initial patroness would be the first abbess.
By the 7th century the consistency of female leadership meant a double-house was automatically termed nunnery no matter whether the male contingent residents numbered more than the female. However, during the rise of Norman feudalism in the 11th Century, resulting of course in the Norman conquest of England in 1066, there was a drive for single-sex monasteries or nunneries, as there was a little too much "concubines" and "concubinii" going on. For example, King Edgar of England (AD 943-975) acceded the throne in 959 AD and just a year later in 960 at the precocious age of 17, he snatched 24-year-old Wulfthryth (Wilfrida, c.936 - 1000 AD) Abbess of Wilton in Wiltshire, taking her to Sevenoaks in Kent.
In 961, Wulfthryth gave birth to their daughter Eadgyth (Edith) and returned to Wilton Abbey in 963 where she resumed being an Abbess without apparently much issue – as "penance" for snatching Wulfthryth purposefully for sex, Edgar did not wear his crown for seven years. Interestingly, Wulfthryth was a popular pin-up or "celeb" at the time for her intellect, and political acumen – partly why she had made Abbess before the age of 25 - but nothing about her physical appearance and looks is even mentioned.
Marriage by "bride abduction" was a long-standing Celtic tradition – which could have been the case with Owain mab Urien and Teneu of Lothian, as explained in the paragraphs below - oftentimes with everyone in on it and having a great time sneaking about and playing up the dramatics, than actual kidnap - and Edgar and Wulfthryth remained on good terms. No legal marriage ever took place but Eadgyth was considered legitimate as Wulfthryth was viewed as a concubine of Edgar during his lifetime (she outlived both him and their daughter, Eadgyth) and she may have had other concubinii simultaneously with or more likely after Edgar in her own right. Wanting to discredit CCP and demonise the Anglo-Celt kings for their Norman King paymasters, the post-1066 Catholic monks rewrote big chunks of Anglo-Celtic history: St. Wilfrida becomes pretty but dumb, Edgar a monster who slaughters nuns wholesale as he drags her from the cloister and all such events were "marriage by rape", in which the misogynistic Catholic monk writer often finished off with the woman being executed by being burned at the stake for what was in only the technical sense, "adultery".
In terms of Haven, if Merlin, Arthur and others of their era had contact with the Mi'kmaq and other Algonquin-language tribes in Canada and New England such as the Iroquois, there would have been no issue with Merlin** - steeped in the great learning of the Irish and Gaul monasteries - being a CCP "Christian" saint whilst also continuing to be a "Pagan" sorcerer, and the "Troubles" of the area would have been politely ignored by CCP saints, monks, and so on.
Things such as close-relative marriage/concubines and concubinii/ parentage of offspring (half-siblings, first cousins***, aunt-nephew/uncle-niece, step-siblings/parents) under CCP were not viewed as desirable of course, but accepted with a 'oh well' tolerance; only direct incest, that of genetic parent-child sex was viewed as an offence. Under CCP the way that looting, pillage, murder, rape, robbery, theft, desecration, conquest, warlords, and a variety of issues were dealt with depended on context and local custom and practice.
For example, in the post-1066 "Christianised" history of St. Mungo (St. Kentigern, who supposedly converted Merlin to Christianity), the Saint's mother was Princess Teneu, daughter of pagan King Lleuddun of Lothian (Scotland). Teneu is raped and impregnated by pagan Owain mab Urien, a Welsh prince who gains access to her by disguising himself as a woman, and her enraged father has her thrown from a cliff (which she miraculously survives) and she is then set adrift in a coracle (a curragh, exactly the same type of oxhide boat that Tim Severin sailed from West Ireland to Labrador in) to die of exposure.
Except it is of course entirely nonsense; under Norman feudalism, women were chattel, property, and robbed of rights as were lower-class citizens – peasants and serfs. In CCP Britain pre-1066 society was considerably more egalitarian and cosmopolitan. An accurate, pre-1066 account of St. Mungo's life would have been far different. The naïve, stupid Teneu of Norman Roman Catholicism certainly would have been an intelligent, cosmopolitan woman, with social-economic and political power in her own right.
If her pregnancy with Mungo was the result of a sex attack (which is highly doubtful) by Owain (who certainly would not have gotten away with disguising himself as a woman), she would have been leading the army to go slaughter him; her father certainly wouldn't have been punishing her for being a victim by trying to murder her. When the Romans publicly raped Queen Boudicca's two daughters a couple of hundred years earlier, the princesses were at her side when the Iceni battled the Romans and at the victory, had their rapists brought before them, tied up alive in front of the entire Iceni and Roman crowd as each princess set herself on fire and then embraced her terrified attackers, burning them alive with herself. Wimps the women of Anglo-Celtic Britain were most certainly not!
There is no way to know, but it is interesting to note that the most probable "real" Uther and his son Arthur were respectively Enniaun Girt (Enion Yrth) and Owain Ddantgwyn, who were each High King of the most extensive and powerful pre-Norman kingdom in England: Powys.
During its 200 years of peak power (407-610 AD) Powys ruled most of Western England. It is possible online to see "maps" of the British counties as they were before the 1974 central Government "reorganisation" (not to be confused with the even worse 1998 boundary shift). If you look at such a map, then the Kingdom of Powys covered what we called the counties of Cheshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, the southern bowl and spit of Derbyshire, the western half of Leicestershire and Oxfordshire and Berkshire, the northern half of Wiltshire, all of Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Shropshire, and eastern Herefordshire. This gave Powys control of the western Thames and trade/travel access down river to London. Powys also included Flintshire and Denbighshire in North East Wales. It was the largest and most militarily powerful Anglo-Celt Kingdom of the time.
Additionally, Enniaun/Uther had ruled the most powerful Welsh kingdom to ever exist, Gwynedd (c.400 AD – 1283) in his own right as his older brother Ambrosius Aurelius ruled Powys. Their father Cunedda, scion of an Imperial Roman family who was also a Celtic Christian Bishop or the son of one himself, had been the last Roman Governor of Gwynedd and continued on as self-appointed king (warlord to us) in 407 when the Western Roman Emperor formally withdrew the last few legions back to Rome to fight the Visigoths. Gwynedd comprised of Anglesey, Caernarvonshire, Montgomeryshire, and north Radnorshire and north Cardiganshire. Owain as the younger son got the "younger" kingdom of Powys, and Powys' western border was safe and protected from danger because Owain's older brother Cadwallon ruled Gwynedd.
Why Ambrosius got Powys not Gwynedd is uncertain, except perhaps the oldest traditions which state Ambrosius was not succeeded by his son Merlin but his brother Uther – perhaps Merlin had renounced the throne in his teens to pursue an "interfaith" career in the CCP and extant Celtic religions and so Cunedda and his sons hammered out the agreement of succession well in advance?
This "reach" of Powys and the security offered by Gwynedd bordering the west meant that the southern border of Powys controlled all of the mighty River Severn which meanders up the Anglo-Welsh border and both banks of the Severn estuary including the key port of Bristol, home of John Cabot's patron Richard de Americke in the 1400s. So to the south, Powys bordered onto the co-second largest and most powerful Anglo-Celt kingdom with Gwynedd: Dumnonia, or "greater" Cornwall: the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset and the southern half of Wiltshire. And what do all the oldest traditions unanimously agree on? That Arthur's mother was Ygraine of Cornwall. In Norman times, Ygraine is downgraded from queen/princess to one-dimensional duchess and Cadwallon her brother-in-law (or possibly one of her polyandric husbands, see 'Shippers Choice, Chapter 7) is confused as Duke Cador or Cadwallader of Cornwall, sometimes Ygraine's husband or her son by Gorlais, Duke of Cornwall.
So you're Arthur/Owain – you're safely allied to the two other most powerful kingdoms Gwynedd and Dumnonia courtesy of your brother and your mother; your main threat comes from the south and east of the invading Danes, Norsemen, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Goths and Mercians. So what does logic and prudence suggest to you and to your adviser Merlin is the best plan? A strong alliance with the most powerful of the kingdoms that border you on the north. Powys' northern seaboard included Liverpool, the great gateway seaport that allowed access to the Isle of Man, south and western Scotland, Ireland, Iceland and beyond. But whereas Bristol was situated on the estuary of the Severn, protected by ships having to come upriver and pass between banks controlled both sides by Powys, Liverpool was on an exposed Irish Sea peninsula, easily visible and accessible by oceangoing vessels and quite literally a short "bunny-hop" down from the most powerful northern Celtic kingdom of mainland Britain:
Gododdin, home of Princess Teneu. Gododdin covered mid-lowland Scotland and became the eastern-mid kingdom of Lothian (Edinburgh) and the western-mid kingdom of Strathclyde, also taking in northern England both east and west above Hadrian's Wall and Antoine's Wall. Gododdin either directly ruled or indirectly controlled: West, Mid and East Lothian, including Edinburgh, Scotland's capital city and the southern bank of the Firth of Forth, the port of which gave access to Scandinavia; plus Lanarkshire, Peebles, Selkirk and Roxburghshire, Dumfries, and Kircudbright, wherein was Scotland's Second City – Glasgow, home of Princess Teneu. It also controlled Northumberland, Westmorland, Cumbria and northwest Lancashire. Owain already ruled or had positive allegiance with all of Western England and Wales, so an alliance with Gododdin, even via a subsidiary principality region, would make Arthur effectively Bretwalda (Chief of kings) or High King of Britain, not just England.
So it is most likely that Teneu was the "real" Queen Guinevere, with Mungo (or St. Kentigern) being retrospectively credited with "converting" his most famous – and for the Catholic Norman monks – troublesome relative, Merlin. Like "Arthur" was a flattering battle name meaning Dreadful Bear, so too Guinevere, or Guenhwyr in Brythonic, "fair, pale, literally "white bird"" means "fair" in the sense of beauty and graceful appearance not fair in the sense of being just and properly apportioned out or solved. Guinevere was a description or a flattering title bestowed on her like Arthur was on Owain, not her actual name.
As an example, in the 1300s Edward the Black Prince finally managed to marry his great love, Joan the "Fair Maid of Kent"; she was so called because of her very pale skin, light-coloured hair (some people are so blond their hair is not just flaxen but platinum white) and light-coloured eyes, pale blue or green or a pale brown such as topaz. Many readers might remember Diana, Princess of Wales – slender, porcelain skin, light blonde hair and very light blue eyes? That is most likely what Joan and "Guinevere" looked like.
The successor of Owain Ddantgwyn, his son (and Teneu's?) was Cuneglas, also known as Cynlas Goch in Brythonic – Cynlas the Red. Being of Roman-Celt descent, Owain was most likely a swarthy skinned brunette (possibly with the large hook-beak Roman nose!) so if Teneu was the real Guinevere it is possible she was a redhead and Cuneglas inherited her pale skin and red hair. Cuneglas was a contemporary of Gildas, and the monk portentously scolds him as one of the bad kings in his most famous work, De Excidio Britanniae (published c.517 AD, attributed to 547 AD). Gildas refers to him as a "tawny" man, indicating Cuneglas may have been a strawberry blond rather than a true redhead.
But of course all the Arthurian legends had to be reinvented wholesale from the Roman-Celtic egalitarian originals for the new Norman feudal King William I Conqueror and the Roman Catholic French clergy – having just essentially usurped the English throne with a bogus claim, the last thing King William would have been enthused by were tales of a great English King who drove the foreign invaders off the White Cliffs of Dover. Likewise the Roman Catholic clergy who disapproved of the more down-to-earth, less money-hungry and relaxed Celtic Christianity would not be enthused by tales of CCP Merlin: monk but also magician, or Guinevere and Morgan le Fey, 'university educated' queen but also priestess, and 'university level' educated princess but also a sorceress.
Hence the Christianised watered down versions of Merlin (silly old fool) Arthur (petulant and cuckolded) Guinevere (vain and vapid) Morgan le Fey (evil and murderous). In fact the earliest legend accounts have Arthur and Guinevere as a successfully and even happily married husband-and-wife team of King and Queen, with no conflict between Arthur and his possibly illegitimate son/nephew Mordred (possibly Mungo/Kentigern in real life). Owain Ddantgwyn's successor (possibly also his son by Teneu/Guinevere) as High King of Powys was Cuneglas, not Mungo, so again the post Norman stories could have been a garbled account of why, as with Ambrosius and Uther, the older son did not take the throne – most probably rather than converting Merlin to Christianity, Mungo was taken on as a protégé/apprentice by his famous relative – the patronage of such an esteemed religious and political figure would have helped Mungo immensely even without him being able to legitimately claim Merlin as a relative.
Such things as the adulterous Sir Lancelot du Lac never existed – Lancelot was 12th Century invention of the famed French poet Chrétien de Troyes, whose great contribution to literature was inventing and using a new poetic style to give his characters a "complete" story – he essentially created the concept of the narrative romance by his poems having "three acts" or at least a beginning, middle and end - which is why his works are often considered prototype novels six hundred years before Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, invented the fiction genres we know of today and had published the first general novels. He also wrote in the vernacular or ordinary French, giving his work much wider accessibility.
In terms of the mythology of Haven, look at how vested interests "reinterpreted" and produced and promoted "revisionist" histories of the original legends and events. This goes on even today – there is almost no area of history, archaeology, anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy, human biology or any other "ology" where there is consensus because people (often self-appointed with the description "experts") are always "re-examining" things either to generate their own career as a TV mouthpiece, or courtroom "expert witness" or because their patron/funder/paymasters want a certain theory to be X and not Y.
Often there are good intentions behind the "we need to act now and sift the evidence later" – global warming being the classic example of what appeared to be imminent meteorological catastrophe for planet Earth due to mankind's recklessness which had to be fixed pronto. Now however it turns out we have a great deal of unexpected breathing space (no pun intended) to examine scientific facts. But if you look at Haven, aren't the Teagues – especially Vince – and their predecessors – exactly the same? Look how many times Vince especially, and Garland, and the late Simon Crocker and Eleanor Carr and goodness knows who else, made unilateral decisions about what Audrey, Nathan, Duke, Jordan and et cetera and et cetera should and could be allowed to know, and similarly made arbitrary decisions based on nothing but his or her own confidence in their personal judgement to lie and deceive Audrey, Nathan, et al, for "their own good", the "greater good", and so on.
This is not to say that William and Mara are not "really" evil, but it's hard not to be suspicious and looking for hidden symbolism in everything because as I shall mention further on in respect of the Haven Herald newspaper, those prejudiced Norman politicians and Catholic monks had nothing on the "spin" put out by Haven's newspapermen, and its former Chief of Police and the shadowy "selectmen" not to mention The Guard and so on.
* The reason Roman Catholicism finally banned the polyandry it had been ignoring for centuries, was because it was under multiple sieges in the early part of the 16th Century. In 1536, the half-Celtic King Henry VIII Tudor of England effectively invented Anglicanism when he set himself up as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. At the same time, and more importantly, the Muslim Empires were reaching the height of their power under Suleiman the Magnificent. The Muslims practised polygyny (one husband, multiple wives) and the Catholic Church could not take the moral high ground when Christians practised the same type of marriage from the other sex perspective – polyandry. A third-pronged attack was the Reformation, with Martin Luther disapproving of Islam, but absolutely detesting Roman Catholicism, not to mention Calvin and other Puritan, 'fire and brimstone' reformers.
Also for Polyandry: See 2010 'Shippers Choice' in Chapter 7.
** It is possible that Merlin created The Guard symbol as a hereditary mark (like the Troubles are hereditary) for a Mi'kmaq warrior or shaman or medicine woman, to help alert to and get rid of the Great Evil. This would account for the Celtic "flavour" of the symbol. It also raises an interesting possibility in that it was a supernaturally imposed hereditary presentation – that was positive, or that worked for the good. The symbol of The Guard is a hereditary, genetic expression through the generations that so far has no bad effects.
So could this mean that originally all the Troubles were the same? What if William lied to Audrey in Season 4 when he told her that she and he together had created the Troubles? What if William and Mara's crimes were not that they created a Trouble in a person, but that rather they damaged or warped the one already present into something negative or harmful/dangerous, when it hadn't been before?
As we have seen across the Seasons, each Trouble in of itself could be useful in some contexts and if expressed in the right way: if Jackie Clark's ancestors could once control if or when people saw their worst fears upon looking at their face, imagine how useful and reassuring it would be to Haven folk to be able to repel privateer/pirate and land-based attacks as well, such as during the Revolutionary or Indian Wars – without having to kill anybody because they ran away terrified. Similarly what about the ability to draw enemy ships, approaching militia – or an approaching hurricane, then just tap the page or rub it out and no more natural disaster bearing down on Haven (Season 1, Sketchy).
What if the reason that Tuwiuwok/Haven was originally called "a haven" was because Wade Parker was right when he told Duke their power was a "gift"? What if before William and Mara, the Afflictions had been Abilities? William has already demonstrated to Audrey that he can damage or change the DNA of a human being (S4:8, S4:12) and in S4:12 he tells Audrey he didn't create the Trouble, he merely "tweaked it" – perhaps what William and Mara did was "tweak" people's Talents into becoming Curses, and that is why they are being punished?
*** Consanguinity or Close Relative Reproduction (i.e., having a child or marrying a close relative and having a child with them) is generally viewed as taboo or undesirable. As a genetic genealogist, I can explain that the reasons why are complicated, because CRR is like a double-edged sword swinging like a pendulum:
If you have a child by a genetically close relative, such as full or half-sibling, parent, grandparent, uncle/aunt or half-uncle/aunt or first cousin, you have a reduced chance of having a child that is defective or retarded. Yes, you read that right: reduced. That is why you will notice a discrepancy between what the experts write should happen to Royal families like our British one where there are a lot of close cousin intermarriages, and historical examples like ancient Egypt where the Imperial family of Pharaoh customarily married sisters, half-sisters, aunts and cousins and what actually does happen – the British monarchy has remained stable and the world's longest-surviving family monarchy (over 1500 years from Cerdic King of Wessex in a direct lineage to HM Elizabeth II), and a succession of Pharaohs who achieved wondrous things in Empire. This is because the way DNA works, in that generally speaking for millennia, humans lived in small, isolated gene pools, so the DNA gives extra protection against deformity and defectiveness when sperm and egg belong to two very closely related individuals.
Unfortunately, the double-edged and pendulum comes in because this protection and reduced risk only lasts for about six consecutive generations. After that point, the sword swings from reduced risk to increased risk of deformity and defective offspring. Again, to simplify, this is how DNA works and is a survival of the species trait in that after so many generations, new genetic material must be sought – the gene pool cannot remain isolated. In ancient Egypt, the habit of Pharaohs of marrying half-sisters and half-aunts routinely boosted the DNA, and likewise although Elizabeth II is a direct descendant of Cerdic, the line takes a very meandering amble around Europe, Russia and even Africa to get there, delivering a fresh infusion of "sturdy middle-class stock" (P. G. Wodehouse) into the gene pool at regular intervals. The habit of ancient Chinese Emperors of having vast numbers of concubines (the Empire was ruled by the Emperor and the Dowager Empress, who was his mother not his wife) meant that fresh DNA was always being introduced into the Imperial gene pool.
In some regions of the world this "closed tradition" of endless consanguinity causes serious problems, particularly in the Kashmir and Pakistan regions of the Indian subcontinent, where consecutive generations of first-cousin marriage remains both traditional and expected culturally. In recent decades in Britain, the National Health Service now has difficulties with Pakistani Muslim immigrants whose imams (equivalent of Catholic priest or Protestant vicar/pastor) lie to couples that the Kuffir (infidel) unbelievers are lying when they explain the genetic risk of deformed and defective children as a way of 'attacking Islam' as the imam gambles that by the time the 7th, 8th, etc., generation of first-cousin marriage starts producing deformed babies, he will be safely deceased, or have moved elsewhere, and the British NHS will pick up the care 'tab' for British-born disabled babies of Indian subcontinent parents.
Because it takes so many generations for the "switch" to go from positive (reduced risk) to negative (increased risk) the geneticists are unable to prove their case to suspicious young couples more inclined to believe a respected, elderly religious imam than a man barely older than them hectoring them about something that is deeply personal and private. The same reasons are why it took so long for lead to be realised as a neurotoxin, because in the small, regular doses that contaminated milliners and hat makers, it took forty years before the person developed any symptoms of neurological damage by which time he or she had often already died of old age anyway. Only from 1923, when General Motors began adding large quantities of liquid lead to petroleum (gasoline) did the effects of lead neurotoxicity on the human brain become rapidly apparent, due in large parts to the ghastly death toll caused by airless, non-ventilated car manufacturing plants in Detroit.
1551 - THMS
1578 – THMS
1582:
Pope Gregory XIII effectively founds the Gregorian (aka Western, aka Christian, aka Secular) Calendar as a revision to the existing Julian Calendar.
Gradually over the next 350 years all Christian nations take up the calendar, particularly from the 1600s when Aloysius Lillus invents the "leap year" concept that makes the calendar easy to calculate.
1602 AD – first recorded European colony in Maine*, i.e., intended to be permanent rather than transitory trade post
1602 AD – TEAMS May, most likely between this point AND
1605 AD – THMS October
The first 'official' British/Celtic-ancestry** settlers move into Tuwiuwok, gradually the name moves to the Anglicised "Haven". We learn in S3 that the Teagues family were amongst the white "founders" of Haven and in S4:12 that a male Teagues founder married a female Mi'kmaq Tuwiuwok (Havenite); in S4:8 it is revealed that the Driscoll family were also amongst the "founders" and it is implied by Jack Driscoll and Vince Teagues that Duke Crocker's ancestors were also a "founder" family, though not explicitly stated as such.
* The first recorded European colony in that area of was Popham Colony in what became Massachusetts in 1602, and the second in 1607; Boston, which seems to feature in the mythology was founded on the coastal harbour of Shawmut Peninsula twenty years later. Between 1602 and 1607, 1602 as a TEAMS year or 1605 as a THMS year seems plausible as a "founding" year for "Caucasian persuasion" Haven.
** There is a strong Celtic racial/religious heritage to Haven - like Leif Erickson, the places and people appear to be of Celtic ethnic ancestry or origin, although whether this Celtic link is important to the mythology of the show is unclear at this point.
Bangor is Welsh, Derry (fictional town in Stephen King's works, which is the nearest large town to Haven) is Irish, Portland is English and a goodly portion of the settlers have Scots background: Cole Glendower, patriarch of the mermen; the McShaw family owned what is now The Grey Gull for three generations; Jordan McKee which is a Scots surname. Other Celtic names abound also – Chris Brody (S2) is Irish as is William, Gregory and Whitney Brady (S3); Dwight's surname of Hendrickson is Scandinavian; Duncan Fromsley is an English name as is Jonas Lester and Duke Crocker. In S3:4 Vince tells "Tommy" that the Teagues were amongst the white founders of Haven, and Teague (variants Tighe, McTeague, O'Tighe) is a Celtic name derived from Taidhe, existing in Cornish, Manx, Irish and Scottish records.
1630 AD – "official" founding of Boston*, Massachusetts.
* Boston appears to have some significance in the mythology. In the pilot, Audrey is living in Boston when Agent Howard assigns her to go to Haven to find Lester (presumably Jennifer Mason is also living in Boston as well at this point and continues to do so until she agrees to relocate (ambivalently) to Haven with Duke in S4). Arla Cogan appears to have been living in Boston from 1984 to 2010 in the "skin" of a man (see 1984). Harry Nix kills his first known victim, his sperm donor son Paul, in Boston, thus attracting the notice of the real Tommy Bowen, whom Arla "Cogan" (maiden name unknown) murders and uses to infiltrate Haven as him. When Duke is sucked through one of the cracks in the damaged Barn, he 'lands' in the Boston aquarium – fortunately for him, as had he hit ground at the speed he was falling, he would have probably been killed instantly by the impact. Jennifer Mason is also living in Boston.
1632 – THMS
Continued from 1659 in Chapter 3…
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The Cat's Whiskers