Clan McDuck
The Clan McDuck is a fictional Scottish clan of cartoon ducks from which Disney character Scrooge McDuck is descended. Within the Donald Duck universe, the clan is related to the American Duck family through the marriage of Hortense McDuck and Quackmore Duck, Donald and Della Duck's parents, giving both of them partial Scottish ancestry.
Clan McDuck was created by American comic book author Carl Barks, who also created the character of Scrooge McDuck. Barks' 1948 story "The Old Castle's Secret," in which Scrooge and his nephews search for hidden treasure in McDuck Castle, introduced the backstory of the clan. Other authors built on Barks' work, most notably Don Rosa in his 12-part comic saga The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck which introduced Scrooge's immediate family.
Literary origins
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, including cousin Gladstone Gander and uncle Scrooge McDuck, although the specific relationships between them were still uncertain. To better define these relationships, Barks created a version of the McDuck/Duck/Coot family tree for his own personal benefit, incidentally creating several additional characters.During his retirement, Barks' stories remained popular and gained him unexpected fame. Barks gave several interviews during which he answered questions about his stories and the characters he had created. In 1981, Barks described his personal version of Donald's family tree, which was used by amateur artist Mark Worden in drawing the family tree and including portraits of the characters mentioned. Worden's tree was first published in several fanzines, and later in the Disney-licensed Carl Barks Library, a ten-volume hardcover collection of Barks' stories in black-and-white.
In 1987, Don Rosa, a long-time fan of Carl Barks and a personal friend of Mark Worden, started creating his own stories featuring Scrooge McDuck. His stories contained numerous references to older stories by Barks as well as several original ideas. After several years he gained a fan base of his own. In the early 1990s, the Egmont Group, the publishing house employing Rosa, offered him an ambitious assignment: he was to create the definitive version of Scrooge's biography and a family tree to accompany it. The project was intended 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, Rosa studied Barks' old stories in detail. Rosa made note of as many clues as he could of Scrooge's past given by Barks – which Rosa dubbed "Barksian facts" – and used them to write new stories. Despite the ambitious nature of the project, Rosa himself stressed in the introduction to the book "...this version of Scrooge's life is not the 'official' version – there's no particular reason why I should expect other Duck writers to adhere to my vision of Scrooge's history. As carefully and authentically as I sought to construct it, it was never intended to be anything but my personal telling of the life of Scrooge McDuck."
Modern family tree by Carl Barks
The family tree below shows the McDuck portion of Donald's family tree according to Carl Barks. The chart is based on a 1950s sketch made by Barks for personal use, which was later illustrated by artist Mark Worden in 1981. According to Barks, Matilda McDuck is married to Goosetail Gander, and the couple adopts Donald's cousin Gladstone. The character Old "Scotty" McDuck does not appear in any stories, but eventually became Fergus McDuck in Don Rosa's stories.Modern family tree by Don Rosa
This family tree is based on the work of Don Rosa.The seat of Clan McDuck
The seat of Clan McDuck is McDuck Castle which is located in Dismal Downs, somewhere in Rannoch Moor, a non-fictional moorland area in north-central Scotland approximately 100 miles north of Glasgow. The nearest village is the fictional MacDuich. The castle usually appears in good condition considering its great age. However, in the Barks story "Hound of the Whiskervilles" the castle is in ruins.The comics continuity does not establish when McDuck Castle was built, but it first appears in 946 when the Saxons laid siege to it. For many centuries the castle served as the home of the clan chief. In 1675, the McDucks were run out of the castle due to the depredations of a "monstrous devil dog" in Dismal Downs, later discovered to be a plot by the rival Clan Whiskerville. At this time, many of the McDucks moved to the village of MacDuich and to Glasgow. Even after their departure, the clan still owned the castle and continued to pay the taxes by pooling their incomes. By 1885, only Fergus and Jake McDuck remain to pay the taxes, but their combined income is not enough, causing the Crown to auction it off. Scrooge then buys the estate, allowing his family to reoccupy the castle. He also hires local dogface Scottie McTerrier as caretaker. Sometime after Scottie's death, Scrooge's sister Matilda becomes caretaker.
In the DuckTales continuity, Castle McDuck was built by Scrooge's great-great grandfather Silas who incorporated the castle into an existing Druid stone circle to save on construction costs. This story would date the castle itself to about the 18th century. The Druids, seeking revenge on the McDucks for taking away their sacred meeting place, scared the clan away using trained phosphorescent hounds. Years later, Scrooge returns with Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Webby and uncovers the mystery. Scrooge befriends the Druids and partners with them to turn Castle McDuck into a tourist attraction. Scrooge plans to give a share of the profit to the Druids as reparations for desecrating their stone circle. The story is loosely based on the Barks story "Hound of the Whiskervilles", which was in turn loosely based on The Hound of the Baskervilles. In the 2017 DuckTales series, the castle is Clan McDuck's ancestral home, as in the comics, and is protected by the spirits of the McDuck ancestors buried there. Scrooge used part of his fortune to purchase and restore the castle as a home for his parents, but because he used discount druid stones, his parents were cursed with immortality and bound to the castle, which appears only once every five years.
The castle appears in the Carl Barks stories The Old Castle's Secret and Hound of the Whiskervilles and in the Don Rosa stories The Last of the Clan McDuck, The New Laird of Castle McDuck, The Billionaire of Dismal Downs and The Old Castle's Other Secret or A Letter from Home. Other comic book authors have also used the castle, such as Andrew Galton, Dave Angus, and Vicar in The Crying Monster. In the 1987 TV series DuckTales, McDuck Castle appears in the episode "The Curse of Castle McDuck". In the 2017 DuckTales series, the castle is the setting of the episodes "The Secret of Castle McDuck!" and "The Fight for Castle McDuck!"
Tartan of Clan McDuck
The fictional McDuck tartan first appears in 1960 in Hound of the Whiskervilles. However, the coloring of the tartan was not Barks' decision but that of colorists working for Dell Comics, which first published the story; subsequent publications showed the tartan having differing colors. When Don Rosa decided to include the tartan in his stories, he used the original coloring of green and orange. Nevertheless, some European publications have still shown variations in Rosa's color scheme. The old clansmen seen on DuckTales wear a green and orange tartan, but of a slightly different design from that of the comics.Ancient McDucks
Scrooge Shah and Prince Donduk
Scrooge Shah was the last king of Sagbad and the earliest known ancestor of Scrooge McDuck. A young King Khan Khan sacked the city of Sagbad in 2033 BC, but Scrooge Shah and Prince Donduk, his heir apparent, managed to escape. Khan Khan lost their tracks, but would much later locate their distant descendants. Prince Donduk also has three unnamed nephews who resemble Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Scrooge Shah features in the story "King Scrooge the First" by Carl Barks and Tony Strobl.Postclassical McDucks
Eider McDuck
Sir Eider McDuck was the chief of Clan McDuck during an Anglo-Saxon invasion in 946. Eider was killed during the Anglo-Saxons' siege of McDuck Castle after his serfs abandoned him. He had refused to buy them arrows because they were too expensive, and only paid his serfs, collectively, 30 copper pieces an hour. Eider McDuck is first mentioned in Barks' The Old Castle's Secret.Friar Juicy McDuck and Sir Smokt McDuck are buried in the McDuck cemetery as seen in the Carl Barks painting Dubious Doings at Dismal Downs.
Eider makes a cameo appearance in the 2017 DuckTales series episode, "The Secret of Castle McDuck!", both as a statue in front of the titular Castle McDuck and as a ghost.
Slye MacDuich
Slye MacDuich who was enlisted as a spy for Malcolm II of Scotland, in 1018, during his conquest of the Angles.Quackly McDuck
Sir Quackly McDuck was clan chief when King Macbeth was killed in 1057. That same year, Macbeth offered Quackly a treasure chest in exchange for his support in the ongoing war for the throne. Quackly agreed and served the king during the war, but became obsessed with protecting the treasure, eventually trapping himself inside the castle walls with it. Quackly and his treasure became a McDuck legend, and it is believed that his ghost continues to protect the treasure and the castle.In 1877, Quackly's ghost saves a young Scrooge McDuck from the Whiskervilles of Dismal Downs. Without revealing his true identity, he suggests to Scrooge that he travel to America and work for his Uncle Pothole, thus serving as the catalyst for all of Scrooge's adventures. In 1885, Quackly again tries to save Scrooge, but his action unintentionally brings about Scrooge's temporary death. In heaven, Quackly is reprimanded by his relatives for interfering in earthly events. Quackly McDuck is first mentioned in The Old Castle's Secret by Carl Barks, and first appears in The Last of the Clan McDuck by Don Rosa.