If Bluebear is an Unreliable Narrator, the two stories could fit together relatively painlessly — after all, after Bluebear and Mac save Rumo as a puppy in Captain Bluebear, Bluebear is away at school for several years, then an unmeasured time passes when he's in the dimension hole, he's with the Muggs for a long period of time, spends around two years inside the tornado and then a few weeks in the Bollogg's head before he meets Rumo and Smyke in Atlantis. The events of Rumo could easily have taken place within those years; there's even enough time for Smyke to eventually have moved to Atlantis and made it big there.
From here, there are a few possibilities:
- Events happened exactly as Bluebear describes them, but Bluebear misunderstood or lacked the proper information to get the real story. Hence, he gets a few things wrong — for example, nobody told him that Rumo and Smyke were good friends, so he thought Rumo was just Smyke's bodyguard. When Rumo makes an off-hand remark about his family, he's probably referring to Ralla — except that name wouldn't mean anything to Bluebear, so it's not mentioned. Smyke's villainy is a bigger point of concern here, since Smyke's role in Rumo was that he changed and became a better person, but it's possible he had a relapse when he moved to Atlantis — or, possibly he was not as deeply involved in the crimes as everyone says he were, since we don't actually get his villainous deed confirmed by Smyke himself.
- Events happened more or less as Bluebear describes them, but he changed details around when telling the story, among other things made Smyke more villainous in order to either simplify or make the story more exciting.
- Bluebear never actually met Rumo or Smyke, he just added two well-known figures of Zamonian legend (Rumo does say how Rumo becomes a famous hero, so Bluebear might have heard of him) to his story to garner some interest. It's comparable to an autobiographer in Ancient Greece letting a hero of Greek Mythology appear in his story - and in this case even telling how he contributed to saving that hero's life. Note that in Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures, there is nothing indicating that the rescue mission supported by Bluebear actually ever happened (even though that might be because Rumo was too young to remember).
- This is a common trope for the Zamonia novels: None of the novels seem to tell actual stories that definitely take place in Zamonia in the exact way they are described; in fact, they all seem to be (although in some cases autobiographical) fiction within the world of Zamonia:
- The Alchemaster's Apprentice and Ensel und Krete (not translated) are in-universe fairytales written by Optimus Yarnspinner.
- The City of Dreaming Books and its sequel, The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books, both are autobiographical novels written by that same writer Optimus Yarnspinner, leading to a very similar situation to Bluebear's autobiography.
- Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures might be the only Zamonia novel that actually takes place in Zamonia rather than in an in-universe fictional version of it - but even that is up to debate since this novel is written in a style of traditional epics of literary history, comparable to those by Homer or the Nibelungenlied.
- This is a common trope for the Zamonia novels: None of the novels seem to tell actual stories that definitely take place in Zamonia in the exact way they are described; in fact, they all seem to be (although in some cases autobiographical) fiction within the world of Zamonia:
