I've seen a lot of people discuss a lot about the mysteries of DD2 lore saying how it's fragmented and dont really give a lot of anwsers/doesn't make sense.specially on it's connection to DD1, I've wanted for some time to put a more detailed discussion on what we can deduce based on factual game clues, so let me get started:
First and foremost the iron crown and the HoD are not the same entity, the way they act is different, while HoD in the first game shows itself as a growing flesh tumor that tries to consume life, the IC is an ethereal source of power. In some sense the IC vs HoD relation would be like Yog-sothoth and Cthulhu while Yog sothoth is clearly more powerful it doesnt exist physicaly in reality and it's power is used for magic, while Cthulhu is an physical titanic threat. And they can be seem as "relatives", thats why DD1 cultists would be helping the HoD while actually worshipping the IC(and a lot of the game monsters may even think HoD is actually the IC), The HoD could even be in some sense a spawn of the IC. The biggest clue for me is the fact that in "lightning the way", you need to activate "Iron crowns", and If I'm not wrong thats the only in game reference to that name, my theory is that in order to "open" the way to the heart you are lending from the superior and "source" deity power.
That bring us to DD2, we know that the protegé used the IC power to bend reality, and make it a reflex of his mind, my personal interpretation here is that DD2 reality is not the actualy DD1 reality, because that would put in conflict the whole DD1 time cycle thing, unless you consider that when the protege breaks the ward everything went back to place. A more interesting solution would be that the whole thing is just a mind world created by the protegé, think off WandaVision or Mabell's bubble, its a Matrix parallel dimension where only the Protegé actualy exists and everything else is a "mind copy", that would explain both the heroes existing and the whole gameplay loop where we keep repeating the same journey to break the cycle, we do know for sure that the whole academic and most of the reality things are a mind projection of protegé conscience after deceasing him, so the WHOLE reality may be a mind projection. Think about the deal, the protegé gets to live in his IDEAL world immortal forever and the IC gets his "devotion power "while he stays in this limbo state, eventualy the protegé gets sick of this immortality(and from denying that this world actually sucks) and his mind send the him the remebrance of academic to make him end that, and the IC makes the cultists as an opossing force. One important thing i that the cultists in DD2 are "Cosmic", while DD1 cultists are "human", the only Cosmic enemy in DD1 is the HoD itself, and the only Cosmic enemy besides cultiats in DD2 is shambler(that we know is an alien. That pushes me to think that the Cultists are not "cultists" but rather either emanations of the IC itself or actual alien race that came to defend and colonize the IC domain
DD1 itself makes very clear that there are more alien secundary forces in the universe(like sleeper and shambler)
The last two main questions that the story puts on us is : who is the protegé? and why are the heroes/estate mobs there in protegé mindscape?
now we enter the actual theory crossroads. Lets discuss some options:
the protegé could be the DD1 Protagonist, that would beautifully explain everything else, but the fact that he met Ancestor would not make sense with DD1 story, so that option is pretty much discarded.
The protegé could be a random who also met the Ancestor and embarked on his own world destruction arc, then how we explain the DD1 references?
My final conclusion, the DD2 ancestor that protegé and academic met is YOU in DD1, after defeating the HoD, that would connect the timeline, if you consider the cycle thing at some point after DD1 You shall become a herald of the heart, you could either consider that what happened when the Ancestor went missing after the first IC ritual in DD2. My best bet is something like : After "defeating" the HoD the Estate Heir in desperate starts to look for an ways to impede the Heart, he ends up falling for the IC power, the only power capable of surpassing the Heart, but that only corrupts his mind and make him become the next ancestor. Then the protegé is an occultist that crossed roads with this Ancestor 2, and embarked on his own parallel storyline that is DD2
Now the final question, where the heroes and the whole suine folk came from? That parts gets undefined from the options in my theory, the protegé could have gotten this knowledge from the Ancestor 2 and met the heroes/visited the state in his deep research about the IC we see in act4, that would explain why things are mostly equal to what we see in DD1, because we know that even after completing DD quests the estate is still corrupt and you can keep playing forever in the same save, or the heroes themselves may have been invoked by the IC in this shit because of their experience with the heart in the estate campaign and their perssonal traumas, in this case they'd be actual persons instead of just the protegé projection, but I think the first option makes more sense, another possibility is that the protegé should have been the "heir" of Ancestor 2, and that the whole thing is an alternate future where he behaves diferently from us in DD1 and uses the IC to stop the heart, because one can argue that the IC ritual looks like a way of stoping the heart.
If I would choose an option is that at some point the protegé met the heroes and/or got some reserach on the estate looking for the IC ritual and the Ancestor 2, that's why we get some of DD1 references but the heroes are the ones that actual remember things related to DD1
If you have any easter egg or reference that's interesting please share so I can improve this whole games connection theory
Source: r/darkestdungeon · by /u/a_random_person97