Lore/Story Eltom Mayor Is An Abusive Father (hidden City Family Relations Explained + Timeline)

'Ello today I will be outing an abusive father lol

I noticed the story of the family in the Hidden City is kinda sucky, where the mayors of the two cities at the end end up being married, for some reason, and the story makes even less sense when you sift it through.

The quest doesn't give you explanations for this, so I figured I will.

The characters if someone's confused:

Eoric - mayor of Eltom

Mayor of Theasead - Eoric’s wife (or ex-wife rather)

Ardulf - Eoric’s and mayor of Thesead’s child

Unexplained story parts / inconsistencies in The Hidden City:

Spoiler: yes

1. Ardulf wants to compromise his own father’s biggest secret to the Gavellian authorities.

2. Eoric leaves his wife when he finds out she’s pregnant, leaving her to take care of the child alone, however she keeps the secret of Eltom rather than ratting him out first thing.

3. Ardulf wants to compromise Eltom to the mayor of Thesead first, who is his mother that also knows about the city.

With those unexplained and somewhat weird events in mind I wrote a timeline of these three to explain all of it. The starting point of it is probably around AP 970, otherwise everyone would be too old or too young:

Spoiler: The timeline of the Hidden City family

Date unknown (possibly around AP 970): Eoric and Thesead mayor marry (neither is yet the mayor of their respective cities, and Thesead mayor doesn’t know about Eltom yet).


~975: Thesead mayor falls pregnant. When Eoric finds out, he panics and leaves his wife, moving to Eltom.


~975: Ardulf is born.


~980: After a few years, Eoric reunites with Thesead mayor and the two are in good contact. Eoric visits rarely, giving his wife the idea that he lives in Wynn to not spark suspicion. Despite coming back, he still isn’t ready to be a father and dislikes Ardulf. The two have bad relations onwards.


~990: Eoric becomes mayor of Eltom and tells his wife about the city. Ardulf starts visiting his father, despite their relationship being bad. They don’t get along further, but now that Ardulf is in hit teens he begins to understand what was done to him all those years and without knowing better, wants revenge on his father.

~995: Ardulf moves out from his mother’s and unbeknownst to his parents, moves to Eltom where begins his plans to compromise the town and get revenge on his father for what he’s been doing to him for a decade.


Between ~995 and 1000: Thesead mayor finally becomes mayor of Thesead. Her and Eoric create the fast travel between their offices unlocked in-game in the Hidden City. As Ardulf already left, he doesn’t know about his mother taking office.


AP 1000: Events of the Hidden City take place.

This is how the timeline explains the points from the first spoiler:

Spoiler: Explanations

1. Ardulf wants to compromise Eltom because his father abused him as a child and he seeks revenge.

2. Thesead Mayor didn’t tell Gavel authorities about Eltom because she didn’t know about it herself yet.

3. Thesead Mayor actually took office in Thesead after Ardulf had already left; he was so invested in his plan for compromising Eltom he never contacted his mother.

that's it really eoric is an abusive father

________________________________

god how do I change the hidden in title not being capitalised what is this