So here's my WMG - William gives up and doesn't try to escape the fortress and the water not just because he's got a code of honor that won't let him renege on the promise that he made in "Annan Water," but also because his beloved and their gestating child are both dead. He's made an enemy of his own mother, and his beloved Margaret is dead, taking with her their hope for a family. He's lost the will to fight anymore. "The Drowned" is William trying to get her to wake up by calling her name, trying to get her to respond. He realizes that she's not going to wake up and he's going to die sometime around when he suggests that they declare themselves married there. The times when we hear Margaret's voice alongside William's is easily explained as her spirit still lingering because he's going to die soon, and him slowly drowning and losing his grip on the mortal world (and sanity).

[[WMG: The crime in "The Perfect Crime" was an elaborate bank heist.]]
It was a massive effort to get the contents of a safe. But they disguised it by kidnapping a businessman's daughter and threatening to assassinate the businessman. While law enforcement was busy dealing with the hostage situation, they robbed the bank. They still got caught, though, if the lyrics are anything to go by.

28th May '11 6:02:37 PM Cogs

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The narrator is callous, handsome, and deluded. He would rather believe that he's in a tragic love affair with a lower class girl than admit that he's a crazy rapist. Now the girl's pregnant, and he's going to push her off a cliff and scarper. He'll do it romantically, of course. (The baby is Leslie Anne Levine, but that's another story.)

[[WMG: The Rake actually killed Margaret before William/his dead children got to him.]]
Now, I'm only going by the album version here, as I've never seen it. But in the last two songs, we only hear Margaret's voice either alongside William's, or as a wail in the background. You'd think that, if she were still alive, she would have something to say during "The Drowned," at least. There are other lines, like "painting rings around your eyes" that make it seem like he's watching her while she's lying still. Too still.

22nd May '11 6:58:30 PM bluepenguin

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The bride on the cover of the album is wearing Manchu-style clothing whereas the groom is wearing a [[{{Salaryman}} business suit]], which, applying the recent history between the two countries, is apt. The crane referred to is most likely a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-crowned_Crane red-crowned crane]], which migrates between the two countries. Oh, and her wedding dress is ''white'' with a ''red'' splotch where the arrow struck her.

[[WMG: The whale from The Decemberist's "The Mariner's Revenge Song" is the ghost of the protagonist's mother]]
The protagonist mentions hearing her after her death; the whale appears after the protagonist hears her and gives her son a chance at taking revenge into his own hands.

[[WMG: The narrator of The Decembrist's "The Mariner's Revenge Song" is on the ''Pequod'' and chasing Moby Dick.]] 
The ship does go down. Along the way, Queequeg nearly dies and orders a coffin to be made by the ship's carpenter, which he then decorates with carvings of his own design. After the ship breaks up, the narrator finds it floating and uses it like a canoe. (Oh, and Ahab harpoons himself to the whale.)

[[WMG: The narrator of "We Both Go Down Together" by the Decemberists is the 'lad of eighteen' from "The Mariner's Revenge Song"]]
The narrator is callous, handsome, and deluded. He would rather believe that he's in a tragic love affair with a lower class girl than admit that he's a crazy rapist. Now the girl's pregnant, and he's going to push her off a cliff and scarper. He'll do it romantically, of course. (The baby is Leslie Anne Levine, but that's another story.)

11th May '11 8:40:33 PM RNA

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25th Nov '10 6:42:23 PM fierystage

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25th Nov '10 6:42:12 PM fierystage

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[[WMG: The Rake in "The Rake's Song" is the same Rake from "The Mariner's Revenge Song"]
*Colin is specific to a fault when it comes to the chronology of both songs, I've figured out that it works very well together: at 18, the Rake seduces the three-year-old Mariner's mother, bankrupts her and gives her a fatal case of tuberculosis before fleeing. Then at 21, he marries and has four children, the last of whom, Myfanwy, is stillborn and her mother dies in childbirth. By this time he'd be about 25, assuming the pregnancies happened in quick succession, although it's possible that Charlotte and Dawn were twins. Presumably, his lack of desire to remain a father after his wife dies causes him to kill his children, and then he kidnaps Margaret. Although his children's ghosts haunt him at the end of The Hazards Of Love, it is never mentioned that he dies, so he could have gone to the sea and eventually become "the captain of [a] ship...known for wanton cruelty." Meanwhile, the Mariner is 18 when he overhears the confession in the church where he works that reveals the Rake's location to him, and he spends 20 months sailing toward him, making the Mariner 19 or 20 when they meet again, and the Rake 34 or 35—and that's where they have the duel to the death in the whale's belly after being swallowed! (copy-pasted from when I wrote it on the Just Bugs Me page)

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