Clan McDuck - The Seat of Clan McDuck

The Seat of Clan McDuck

The seat of Clan McDuck is the McDuck Castle. The castle was first featured in the Carl Barks story The Old Castle's Secret in Donald Duck Four Color #189. Barks' only other story to have McDuck Castle was in The Hound of the Whiskervilles.

Don Rosa used the castle in The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, Parts 1, 5, and 9, and in A Letter from Home/The Old Castle's Other Secret. According to The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, the castle is located in Dismal Downs, somewhere in Rannoch Moor (a non-fictional location in Scotland). The nearest village is the fictional MacDuich. The McDuck family (except for a few family ghosts) vacated the castle in 1675, relocating to MacDuich, and later to Glasgow due to the depredations of "a monstrous devil dog."

Other comic book artists have used the Castle too. The most famous use of the McDuck Castle outside of the Barks/Rosa universe is an Angus/Vicar story titled The Sobbing Serpent.

According to The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, the castle was built in 400 AD, as portrayed in the unpublished first draft sketches. It is most probably based upon Andrew Carnegie's Skibo Castle, befitting the character of Scrooge McDuck as a loose caricature of Carnegie. Upon the death of his father, Scrooge McDuck became Laird of The Clan McDuck and owner of the castle and its lands. Indeed, Scrooge had supported the castle financially for many years prior, enabling the McDuck family to reoccupy it in 1885.

In the show DuckTales, McDuck Castle appeared in the Episode The Curse of Castle McDuck where Scrooge, Webby, and the Nephews investigate a crisis in Scotland. That Episode is loosely based on The Hound of the Whiskervilles.