We don’t know how many old kings there were, do we?
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As is my mc (although, no he absolutely would not admit so right now). 
As I said I like that from the POV of Marcus (and the other ro’s) most mc’s would be the slow burn romance. 
And I like the mc can let Marcus take the initiative and initiate their first kiss, which is still a rare thing in Cog’s as in most the mc has to initiate and “drive” the romance so to speak.
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We weren’t told any specific number. If I’m allowed to make a guess, and we compare our own history with the world of Pactbinder and believe them to match for the most part (until the 18th century, that is), we could start our count from the House of Wessex in the 9th century CE until James II and his heir’s, Charles III of Scotland, attempt to reclaim the throne(1746). An extremely rough estimate would be approximately 50 Kings, give or take some depending on circumstances. If we take Hightower’s founding as point of reference for the first Old Kings, then we would have to start in the 13th century, more or less cutting in half the number of potential Old Kings.
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For Britain. However I am intrigued by something the Patron can say in chapter 4
Spoilers
If mc posits that they thought the Pact is/was the Kingsgift the Patron will say this: " ```
Not quite. The old covenants no longer serve, save as kindling for the new.
Which begs the questions when did the old covenants still serve in full and for who did they do so? Likely the ancient kings of Britain for sure but I wonder if the Patron’s and perhaps other entities like it, influence go back much further and much wider. To that extent I think it might potentially be worthwhile poking Layla about some possible ancient Egyptian myths, as I can certainly see some of the old Pharaohs as exactly the sort of people who might have made some pacts of their own. Even if modern Britain, chauvinistically, would not acknowledge any (historical) individuals as being on par magically with the ancient Briitish kings. Particularly salient since both the original the mc steals the Kingsgift from and therefore the mc themselves can be quite visibly non-British in appearance. Now of course that could mean they might still have some drop of British blood from a long, long ago ancestor, but intriguingly they might very well not, which means their Kingsgift could potentially be derived from a very different line of ancient kings. As for my mc personally I envision he is white ethnically and could pass for British but that he is actually the son of East European immigrants/EU workers before Brexit but likely born and largely raised in Britain, so effectively second generation.
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I’m hesitant to apply the term “Old Kings” to Britain overall. We are told by Marcus in Chapter 2 that "…they say that the old Kings, who were the first in England to wield magic as we know it…"This sentence doesn’t necessarily exclude Kingsgift bearers native to Scotland, for example, so I’m inclined to believe that the wording indicates that “Old Kings” refers specifically to the English kings. Eventually, of course, a single Crown will dominate Britain, but until then there might have been some others.
On a possibly unrelated note, but Cameron in Chapter 3 makes it seem as if the British Isles only had one Crown: “Our ancestors fought hard to liberate the Isles from the Crown”. Although, this could just be the result of the historical process of conquest by England that eliminated rival Crowns. Or there was one Crown all along. Still, this hinges on how exactly do Kingsgift royal houses work.
I’m glad that someone else picked up on that! I’ve talked myself a bit about the implications of what you’ve described.
The first half of the post is on the more sane side. The other half…it is what it is.
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Well my take on
why the patron chose the mc
Your theory is interesting however my own theory leans more to the ancient adage that fate is a fickle mistress even in many Greek/Roman, Egyptian and other polytheistic myths, for those who supposedly command it. Most often certain gods and goddesses. Consequently I think that the Patron enticing mc into making a pact with it, because they fortuitously are a near doppelganger of the original is the entity improvising to some extent. Likely because the original somehow either disrupted or did not fit into its plans or, because their gift was innate and they lacked a pact, the entity could not control/direct them as it does the mc.
What I find intriguing here is that the original does appear relatively strong and resourceful themselves in the chapter 4 confrontation we have with them when they confront us initially it appears they have briefly slipped whatever leash the entity placed on them. Now imagine if they can do that, even temporarily in the entity’s own realm, what might they in time have done in our world that would very likely have upset whatever designs our patron has for the world? Therefore I think that rather than being part of some grand design the entity approached the mc out of perhaps the closest beings like it can get to desperation especially since its terms to the mc seem rather suspiciously generous.
In terms of the entities grander designs I think the original showing signs of their Kingsgift no longer being dormant was a threat to its original plans, maybe the bloodline of the original was never meant to re-awaken at all or maybe the bloodline was always supposed to re-awaken eventually just not with our original, instead it could have been, in our patron’s design, meant for their far future eventual descendants instead. Or, a last theory, maybe the patron used us to steal the kingsgift of the original to thwart another entity like it, as we do not know for certain if our patron is the only possible patron and therefore the only entity to have ever unleashed the pact/kingsgift on the world in ancient times. I personally lean towards there are or at least once upon a time were others because most of the ancient world was remarkably polytheistic with lots of divine rivalries in the pantheon. In this theory the eventual Abrahamic dominance over polytheism may very well have been a successful plot by our dear patron over their fellows/rivals.
Either way I think its initial use of the mc is a scrambling, relatively last minute reaction that was not part of whatever grander plans it had originally in order to remove the original from the board as a dangerous, uncontrolled variable and replace it with a pawn it could control or at least direct far better. Aka our dear mc’s.
If you want my own very brief theory, I think there were originally British Kingsgift houses as well but that is based on nothing more than indeed trying to reconcile what Marcus says with what Cameron says and both of them are modern young guys who may or may not at least partially incorrectly quote from half-remembered history lessons here. But it would certainly give the War of the Roses and Richard III in my mind a very different implication in the game’s universe.
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Edit 3: Yo disregard all of this 
Sorry if someone has already brought it up, but I noticed in the prologue that all our stats start at at least 20 now, so no one would be able to fail the first stat check when finding a way to to get to the meeting place (because it checks for < 14) meaning you can’t arrive late/not early and you can’t get the +5 stat boost.
Edit: it looks like most stat checks in the prologue haven’t been updated to the new numbers! The talk with Alice will be a walk in the park 
Edit 2: So yeah, I went and checked the other chapters and unless the number displayed is different than the number the stats check for, it’s actually impossib to fail most stat checks in chapter 1 and 2 right now, especially when multiple stats are combined. So playing the demo as is right now, our Pactbinder is basically a god Maybe a quick fix to this would be simply find and replacing your *if stats and their previous number (like I noticed the prologue is *if ((intellect or whatevs > 14) and chapter 1 is 15 or 16 and so on) and replacing them with new numbers might make it more simple than going through and finding each stat check individually (though you’d probably have to do that too just to make sure)
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Thanks! This isn’t an issue - the stat change I did uses a cunning trick in the choicescript menu - the new numbers are illusions, behind the scenes they’re the same numbers that they’ve always been.
Basically the ‘display’ numbers are doubled, but the numbers behind the scenes are the same as ever (so no need for changes to checks). I did this because it makes the bars look nicer / more filled out, especially as the game progresses.
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Omg okay disregard everything I said then. So that means when cheat— CODE DIVING I should just cut my stat in half to make sure I pass the check?
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Correct - if your stat bar says you have 30 in a stat, it means your ‘true’ stat from a code perspective is 15, so you’d be able to pass 15 checks as usual.
The only effect the change I made will have is making an MC’s endgame stats look like the bar is full, which I thought would be more aesthetically satisfying for people.
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Thank you! That makes sense!
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Another fun little snippet from the survey so far - I won’t include this level of granularity in the Wrapped since it’s so data-dense, but I thought it was a fun little illustrative exploration of build diversity in Pactbinder.
Stats (tracks the players’ top 2 stats)
Masteries
Consolidated Builds…
That’s the last preview I’ll share until the Wrapped in a couple of weeks (please do keep the stat sheets coming, all) - but I thought it was a very interesting demonstration of how much embedded complexity and build variety the game actually has under the surface.
I’ve tried very hard to keep the game feeling extremely simple to actually play, but that’s a bit of a magician’s trick…
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Huh, seems like I am in fact playing the most popular build
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So am I, it seems. We have quite a few cerebral Pactbinders, don’t we? Perhaps it’s the story itself that makes “brains over brawn” a preferable choice.
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Int/Cha Mind/Spirit gang rise up!
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I’m both surprised and unsurprised! I expected from the beginning that CHA and INT would be popular stats - INT is basically the archetypical stat for both wizards and student prodigies, so it was always going to be the outlier. And going off what I see people discuss when talking about other stories about magical students (and my own feelings), I think there’s often a feeling that people would rather be playing the smart side character (given a protagonist’s agency and centrality) than the classical ‘hero first, ask questions later’ lead.
Similarly, in a game where relationships, both feigned and genuine, are at the forefront, I expected the appeal of persuasion and deceit to make CHA popular.
What did surprise me a bit was that the combination of both those two stats in CHA/INT cleared the others. I expected it to be a top-tier pick, but I also expected a lot of people to go for one physical, one mental stat.
So I figured FIN/INT, MIG/CHA, CHA/FIN, MIG/INT to all be up there too. And I wasn’t wrong, going off the runners-up, but I definitely underestimated the appeal of being both charming and smart, despite still having high expectations of it!
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If we consider Intelligence to be “book smarts”, and Charisma “street smarts”, then being in possession of the two would make one Supremely Smart. Having a high IQ and a high EQ is a terrific combo. And if we take into consideration the potentially supreme power a Pactbinder can have, then world domination is not so far away.
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I guess it makes sense when you consider that it’s established relatively early how magic can compensate for physical weaknesses (thanks Gojo Julian). Being able to deadlift 500 pounds is cool, but a fireball from the matter school solves almost all the problems that much strength could; being able to sneak around and dodge blows is nice, but learning to teleport, summon a spirit to scout for you and heal injuries from spirit and life means that it doesn’t matter as much. Plus you can’t really make up for either INT or CHA with magic since most of the benefits are in social situations, exams or for research, making both of them indispensable depending on your priorities.
That being said, I’m sticking with CHA/FIN as my foremost stats since being a sneaky/agile smooth talker is still fun and still allows me to stab people and most importantly, do so without blowing my cover when we’re sitting on a mountain of lies.
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As promised, I have done my part in preserving Adelais’ pre-eminence.
Stat report
Might: 10 Finesse: 18 Charisma: 20 Intellect: 31 Reputation: 8
Personality
Sec/Dar: 48 Rat/Pas: 67 Cru/Emp: 33 Out/In: 47 Dbt/Cnv: 56 Inf/Fam: 43
AntiochRels
Adelais: 66 Eleanor: 68 Finlay: 68 Layla: 56 Marcus: 67
DancePartner: Adelais ChristmasDate: Adelais
Friendship: 4
OtherRels
Julian: 62 Hawthorne: 50 Fausett: 44 Silas: 31 Lizbet: 36
Plot Notes
Murderer?: false
mistsOutcome: 1 C4 Clock: 8
ChosenMastery: Mind secondMastery: Spirit
Society: Explore soc1Outcome: 29
worldScore: 0 dormScore: 1 aScore: 7 tScore: 5
gTotal: 29 gramTotal: 15 logTotal: 11 rheTotal: 3
Other
-Growing increasingly convinced that necromancy is real.
-Met the Revenant. -rScore1: 30 -rScore2: 57
-Bartered with the Spirit Cliona.
For the sake of fairness, I’ve attempted to recreate my original run as faithfully as possible, while removing unfair outcomes that relied on modified stats (such as winning against the haunted suit).
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Funny enough, one of my first theories about the story was that the PB and the Transplant were identical twins. Separated at birth (or at least young enough not to remember, though considering the uses of mind magic, we could’ve had our memories of a twin/sibling wiped) and being played against each other by the Patron. It’s funny how the Transplant seemingly knows who we are and that we’re almost completely identical (much like how identical twins are in RL). There’s also the whole twin swap trope, in which twins take the other’s places.
Also give pause as to how the PB was able to steal the Kings Gift. If the Gift is tied to bloodline, then the perfect host for someone else’s gift would be their own sibling.
Considering all the Christian motifs as well, I’m reminded of (also twins) Esau and Jacob. Esau traded the birthright to Jacob for food and Jacob (with the help of Rebecka, their mother) stole Esau’s inheritance by tricking Issac into believing Jacob was Esau (as Issac was blind at the time)
The Transplant is Esau but this time they didn’t trade their birthright/ inheritance willingly (at least from what we currently know)
Pactbinder is Jacob who steals the inheritance from Esau.
Patron is Rebeka (possibly also Jacob when it came to the trade)
Hightower and possibly magical society is Issac. They have no knowledge of the switch (or possibly even a twin) so you can say they’re blinded to it and if my silly theory is correct, the PB and the Transplant were most likely separated because one twin had magic and the other did not. So you can say they ‘favored’ the ‘Esau’ of the situation but was tricked into giving the birthright/ inheritance to the ‘Jacob’.
I could be completely wrong, but I find the parallels with Jacob and Esau pretty funny not to share.
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