The Land of the Great Kingdom and Environs

If you haven't seen it yet, check out the video by Jon Peterson (author of Playing at the World) highlighting some awesome pre-D&D treasures from his collection:

"History of D&D in 12 Treasures"

Item #5 is a map, labeled in the video as "Great Kingdom Map, Gary Gygax, 1971, Territories of the Great Kingdom". In the accompanying post he further describes it as  "showing Blackmoor and other Castle & Crusade Society holdings". In the video Jon gives us several glimpses of the map that show a number of familiar kingdom names from the published World of Greyhawk, 1980.

An earlier version of this map, originally published in Domesday Book #9, appeared in Jon's book in 2012. This map has some geographical features named but is mostly missing the names of kingdoms. However, at the time I noticed that Dave Arneson's hand drawn map of Blackmoor from the First Fantasy Campaign (1977) matched a portion of the Great Kingdom Map. Combining the information from the two, I posted ("The Weird Enclave of Blackmoor") an annotated map with speculative locations of Blackmoor and Greyhawk:

Now, thanks to the glimpses of the "new" map that Jon has shown us in his video, I see that I was basically correct in the locations for Blackmoor, the Egg of Coot, the Duchy of Ten and The Great Kingdom, each of which is named in this map.

While the outlines and geographical features of the "new" Great Kingdom map are not identical to the previous one, they are close enough to roughly transpose the kingdom names back on to the mostly blank original map: 

Observations:

-Obviously, many changes were made when this world was later adapted as the World of Greyhawk in 1980, but it is striking how many familiar names appear in familiar locations. 

-Perunland is between the mountains to the northwest of Nir Dyv lake, as with Perrenland in the published Greyhawk map. 

-A Paynim Kingdom is further to the northwest, south of the Far Ocean. In the published Greyhawk this becomes the Plains of the Paynims, south of the Dramidj Ocean.

-The Hold of Iron Hand, north of the Paynim Kingdom on the Great Kingdom map, likely became the Hold of Stonefist. In published Greyhawk it is not anywhere near the Paynims, instead being at the western base of a northwestern peninsula in the same position relative to the Barbarian Kingdoms. Gygax seems to have split the northern areas of his Great Kingdom map, putting the the Hold and the Barbarian kingdoms on a great peninsula to the northeast, and leaving Perrenland, the Paynims and Blackmoor in the northwest.

-A Grand Duchy of Urnst is to the immediate southeast of Nir Dyv lake, as in the published World of Greyhawk. A Kingdom of Catmelun is to the southwest of this, possibly where the Kingdom of Nyrond is in the published version.

-A Grand Duchy of Geoff is to the west near the mountains, as in published Greyhawk.

-Where the City of Greyhawk should be, there's C. of Yerocundy [sp?] and to the west, a Kingdom of Faraz. There is the possibility that these two were combined to form the Kingdom of Furyondy, which in published Greyhawk is to the west of the lake like Faraz.

Interestingly, Andre Norton's 1978 Greyhawk novel, Quag Keep, uses similar but not identical names for two kingdoms:
 
"We shall have Yerocunby and Faraaz facing us at the border. But then the river will lead us straight into the mountains" (Chapter 6). 

-A Duchy of Maritz [sp?] also appears as an island on the Great Kingdom map. 

Quag Keep further mentions:

"In addition he saw a dozen of these silver, halfmoon circles coined in Faraaz, and two of the mother-of-pearl discs incised with the fierce head of a sea-serpent which came from the island Duchy of Maritiz" (Chapter 3)

This warrants a closer look at the geography mentioned in Quag Keep versus the Great Kingdom map. Andre Norton consulted with Gygax in writing Quag Keep so she possibly saw an earlier version of Greyhawk using these names.

-Neron March (possibly "Nekon") might possibly be a predecessor of "Gran March".

-In the comments Jon mentions Walworth north of the lake and that In published Greyhawk The Shield Lands appear in the same location and are ruled by the Earl of Walworth. In the video, Jon mentions that Gygax was named the Earl of Walworth in Domesday Book #2, and Walworth represents his holdings in the game (and is also the name of the county that Lake Geneva is in, in Wisconsin).

-I left out material from the map in the video that I couldn't read, and several small areas around Blackmoor that don't seem to correspond to anything significant: March Slove, County of Celate and County of Stabilny. 

-The title of this post references the Foreword to the original D&D Set, also reprinted in Holmes Basic:

"From the map of the "land" of the "Great Kingdom" and environs - the territory of the C&C Society - Dave located a nice bog where to nest the weird enclave of "Blackmoor", a spot between the "Great Kingdom" and the fearsome "Egg of Coot"".

See also these follow-up posts:

Megarry's copy of the Great Kingdom Map (2017)

Locations for the Tomb of Horrors on the Great Kingdom map (2018)

Chainmail Announcement from Domesday Book #9 (2021)