Some thoughts on POTC lore, especially for DMTNT
I know that the answer to a lot of my questions are 'it looked cool on camera' and the inconsistences is 'because they rewrote the script several times' but I'm in the middle of writing a fic and I decided to try and make some sense of this messy lore. It's a bit long so its under the cut.
Starting with the gods a bit:
Poseidon:
I think he's dead, from what, we don't know. It seems aside from Calypso that the gods and god-like creatures that once roamed the earth have mostly withdrawn, likely either dead or retreating to realm/realms of their own. (with the 100% confirmation of multiple Greek gods, likely Olympus/the Underworld/etc) With Poseidon dead, Calypso fills the vacuum of looking after the seas until she is bound by the first Brethern court, as she has clearly stuck around and it is said that she and Poseidon are of a similar level in power. Before he died, he created Black Rock Isle, creating the Map No Man Can Read.
Hades:
I think he just vibes in the Underworld, leaving the Locker to whoever is in charge of the Dutchman, and can't be bothered to care much what goes on in the world anymore. He created the Triangle and Curse to protect Black Rock Isle, what I like to think is the last sort of 'godly' thing Poseidon did/made before dying. This is why Hades put his tomb off the coast of the island, that and its very small and remote nature, he knew it would be difficult to find.
Davy Jones and the Dutchman:
The latest iteration of part of the natural order of the sea, bound to an eternal, ever changing vessel that it, in itself, is slightly godlike in its ability to move to and from the Locker. The Locker itself is a part of the Underworld, a special purgatory for those that are not allowed to actually pass on when they die at sea. Jones' curse did not exist before his and Calypso's relationship and breakup, so whoever was on the previous version of the Dutchman was not bound by that rule but understood that they could not ever shirk their duties, and I think Calypso would pick a decent newly dead captain to be the new captain of the Dutchman, and continue the natural order of things. I think of the Dutchman a bit like Charon and his ferry from Greek Mythology.
Note: When I say that the Dutchman changes with the times, I mean that it physically changes. During POTC it looks like a older, sort of late 1600s ship (I know next to nothing about ships, I just noticed that when looking at images) but if we think about as a force of nature, if we jump forward in time, the Dutchman would look like a steam ship at the end/beginning of the 19th/20th century respectively. Today it might look like a fishing vessel, a shipping boat, hell, maybe even a submarine or something, the crew reflecting this change in time.
On the Curse, Triangle, and Trident:
The Triangle:
Once humans started to sail the Caribbean, and started to drift ever so much closer and closer to the island and his brother's tomb, Hades created the curse and the Triangle to house it, (I'm going out on a limb here since we have NO any real 'exact' locations of things other than "the Triangle is in the west of the Windward Isles in the Lesser Antilles." And that Black Rock Isle is just in the Caribbean Sea.) as a sort of wall and gate to deter someone from accidently sailing towards Black Rock Isle. With this in mind, the Triangle is a newer addition to the world, only a few hundred years old at the most when Salazar, The Mary and the crew end up in there in the first decade of the 18th century.
The Curse:
Is likely picky about who it wants to curse, needing something and someone filled with enough murderous intent, rage, or a healthy dose of both for it to curse them. Salazar and his crew aren't the first to be cursed by the Triangle, I would say they are the second. I say second because we know that that chunk of ruby had to make it off the island someway, and my theory/idea supports just the one time the island had been visited by mere mortals before Carina leads them to Black Rock Isle.
The first was a group, likely similar to Salazar and co from, I'm going to say around the early-mid 1500s. They stood there in their hellish purgatory, doing what Salazar did, killing all but one as a warning, creating the legend of the Triangle, and keeping people far away from Black Rock Isle and the tomb. The old cursed ones were destroyed when someone did manage to find the Isle, the Triangle sinking to release them, and they go to protect the island, compelled by the curse to do so. This was not Galileo, as he was not actually able to find the island before his death, but it was by someone else, who managed to get a chunk of a ruby off without dying. (somehow this chunk ends up in Galileo's possession though.) How do they find the island? Maybe they have Jack's compass. Galileo died mid 1600s, so there's at the very least a fifty year gap between Morgan giving Jack the compass and Galileo's death. Since I'm pretty sure we don't know when Morgan got the compass, it's super plausible. (Though, I personally really like the apparent earlier iteration of DMTNT where Jack stole the compass from Salazar, as there is a set photo of an uncursed Salazar holding the compass, either in the middle of shooting a scene or between takes.) They leave, realizing that they can't take anything, (the novelization of DMTNT have a couple of Barbossa's crew on the island, they try to take some gems, and the island swallows them} probably quite a few dead on this crew's side from the cursed men, and sail off. The curse reacts to this, and Hades brings the Triangle back up, and 'resets' the trap, killing the old cursed men since they cannot be outside the Triangle while it stands. Salazar and the crew are just unlucky enough to be the first ones that has what the Triangle needs to curse them when they are tricked into sailing in.
The Trident:
Calypso helps the ancestors of three mermaids in the novel Poseidon's Peak, Morveren, Aquala, and Aquila, steal the gems that Poseidon used in the creation of his weapon. These gems gave him control over the mermaids, the colors corresponding with their tails. The blue tailed mermaids are immune since Calypso gave them a special box to hide them away with. Those same three ancestors steal the Trident away, taking it and using it to rule over all the other mermaids. (Maybe the lack of his weapon allowed him to be weak enough to be be killed?) The Trident is hidden in a place called Poseidon's Peak, where great treasure has been acquired by the blue tailed mermaids. A thousand years pass, and the blue tails realize there is unrest and resistance to their rule, and give the Trident to a human for safekeeping, Captain Torrents. They had a bargain to share control over the sea, but he ran off with it. He commanded the merfolk to leave their island, Isla Sirena, and pillage the seas for him. The blue tails then ask a young preteen Jack to help them recover it. He does, using the power of the Trident to free all the merfolk, and give the Trident to the merman Tonra for safekeeping. I believe that Hades had Tonra place the Trident in the tomb, as he already had security measures in place to protect Black Rock Isle and the tomb. So there it sat, waiting for Henry to come break it. Those present for Jack's short time with the Trident likely spreading the rumor whether on accident or on purpose, claim it is lost now. Legends grow and change through years and word of mouth, and logically, if it was lost, where would it be but in Poseidon's tomb?
Note: 99% of any info not directly in the movies come from the wiki. I haven't read any of the extended media, nor played any games but i think the kinda bad At World's End pc game when I was a child. So if anything is super wrong, that is where I got my info from.
Feel free to add anything! I've been thinking about how to compile and figure out how to connect lore that very clearly wasn't,,,,, really supposed to connect in a very cohesive, linear way. And fic writers, feel free to use any of this! I'd love to see how y'all fit this into your own stories so feel free to tag me!
