Lord British (Richard Garriott)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
You named yourself Lord British at twelve
because the other kids in Texas
couldn't place your accent —
British father, American childhood,
and a title you invented
for a country that didn't exist yet
but would
once you taught yourself to program
and built Ultima
on an Apple II
in your father's garage
and sold it in Ziploc bags
at a computer store
and the kingdom
was open for business

[Verse 2]
Nine Ultimas —
each one a world
with its own moral philosophy,
its own virtues system,
its own economy
that the players could break
and you would watch them break it
and learn from the breaking
the way a city planner
learns from traffic:
the system is only as good
as the humans
who refuse to use it correctly
You invented the MMORPG —
Ultima Online,
a hundred thousand people
living in your kingdom simultaneously
and immediately
murdering each other
which taught you everything
about human nature
that the virtues system
was designed to prevent

[Chorus]
Your father went to space —
Owen Garriott, Skylab, nineteen seventy-three —
and you grew up in a house
where the ceiling was optional
So when you bought your own seat
on the Soyuz in 2008
it was not a billionaire's vanity trip —
it was a pilgrimage
the prefrontal cortex
had been planning
since the age of six
when your father came home
and the sky
came with him

[Verse 3]
Britannia Manor — your house in Austin —
is a haunted house
every Halloween
with secret passages
and trap doors
you actually built
into the architecture
because a man
who designs dungeons for a living
does not stop designing dungeons
when he comes home
You collect automata
and space artifacts
and medieval weapons
and the house
is the physical Ultima —
the game made real
in lumber and wiring
and the specific joy
of a man who never stopped
being twelve
and Lord British
and building

[Outro]
The kingdom is still running
in one form or another —
the code has been rewritten
and the servers have moved
and the players have aged
but Lord British
is still the title
and the title
is still the truest thing about you:
a boy who named himself
a king of a country
that didn't exist
and then spent his life
building the country
until the name was accurate