Commentary: The blazon above is for the unadorned shield, fig. 1.

The Free City of Greyhawk has only been so for about the last 100 years and some uninformed sages believe that the two chains above the castle represent the city’s separation from The Great Kingdom. This, of course, could not be further from the truth.

• First of all the ends of the chains are whole and not broken.
• Second, the original grant of arms by one of my predecessors listed the chains as separate, unfortunately the fall of Raxus makes it impossible to verify and you will have to trust my memory of the document that hopefully may be recovered as some future date.
• Finally the traditional helm and mantling of the arms, see fig. 2, may have contributed to this confusion by obscuring separate nature of the chains.

If the Free City really wanted to symbolically cast off its allegiance to the Great Kingdom the heralds of Greyhawk would have removed the ring that gorges the neck of the golden hawk crest atop the helm.

More interesting are the six roundels, which speak volumes about the foundations of the Gem of the Flanaess, as they symbolically represent commerce and coin.

This brings us to the subject of the Grand Herald of Greyhawk. Most lands have a King of Arms appointed by that realm's ruler (most often a noble in their court). The Directing Oligarchy of Greyhawk has debased this position in name and deed. The title shows the lack of respect for the office and was chosen at the time of the city's independence. The Grand Herald is just another functionary in the petty bourgeois bureaucracy and it is an open secret that gaining the appointment to this position depends on delivering substantial bribes to the Lord Mayor and the Directing Oligarchy. Since its inception no noble of the city has deigned to sit in its office.

This degeneration of the office has allowed commoners and petty bourgeois of conquered lands, lost during the Greyhawk Wars, to claim noble titles and the arms associated with them if they pay the Grand Herald the appropriate "administrative fees." Worse, the office of the Grand Herald also creates arms for individuals and corporations with little regard for existing arms of other realms.

I have given serious thought to having the current Grand Herald assassinated for these affronts to a noble office, but it would be a short lived victory as someone else would pay off the Oligarchs and continue debasement of heraldry in the Domain of Greyhawk. Perhaps I should hire someone to dig up information I can use as leverage against this petty little man. Yes, this bears some thought.

Finally, fig. 3 below is the full arms of city with supporters. Usually supporters represent abstract ideas like valor or steadfastness. Or, they might incorporate an element of some allies arms, or the arms of a conquered foe that has been assimilated. The Free City instead shows the central role that trade plays in the life blood of the city. It is interesting that the land based horse and the water based dolphin in combination with the hawk of the crest create a nice symmetry of air, earth, and water.

In Service,

Saracenus Garasteth, Baron of Trellwood
Radiant Sun King at Arms