Grail Diary (game documentation)

A minimalistic replica of the Grail Diary was given in the package of the game Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Graphic Adventure. It was a part of the game and was never sold or distributed separately.

It represents the notes and thoughts of Henry Jones; we learn that his inexplicable 'obsession' with the Grail started with a 'vision'; the following pages have his memoirs of his travels, research and correspondence with other scholars, until the timeframe of the Last Crusade movie and game. Some references to little and young Indy are also given.

For a more realistic feeling, the text was muddled with strike-outs, scribbles and corrections, ink and coffee stains and other marks of age. Also, some newspaper clippings, tickets, telegrams etc were printed on the pages of the book, to imitate the insets that Henry kept between the pages of the Diary, as seen in the film. The bulk of the text was authored by Mark Falstein and the hand lettering was of Jayne Osgood. Illustrations were made by Lucasfilm artist Steve Purcell and some were directly inspired from those of the original props seen in the movie.

A significant part of the text are the various inconsistent descriptions of the Holy Grail in various legends, texts and references. Basically, this served as a copy protection: clues about the appearance of the Grail were scattered through the actual game. These clues were random from time to time, so the player had to use the 'Diary's' information in order to decide the correct Grail apart in the end.

All in all, the document was not intended to be faithful to the movie prop and the game manual says that it is only a 'part' of the actual Grail Diary. Other parts of the Diary are found within the game, as the player can read relevant pages of the diary in certain parts of the game to solve puzzles.

Entries

 * April 3 1898, New Hawen, Connecticut
 * August 24 1900, Western, Massachusetts
 * November 14 1905, Las Mesas, Colorado
 * July 8 1906, Auberge d’Ecume, Cantaney, France
 * July 16 1906, Gasthof Trubselig, Klasen heim, Austria – Hungary
 * February 22 1912, Las Mesas, Colorado
 * May 22 1912, Las Mesas
 * August 19 1916, Philadelphia
 * June 29 1920, Aboard the steamer George S Pilkington The North Atlantic
 * July 14 1920, Oxford, England
 * July 27 1920, The Purple Dragon, Mochdref, Wales
 * September 4 1920, Sankt-Gallen, Switzerland
 * September 29 1920, Bologna, Italy
 * June 21 1921, Aboard the steamer Atalanta, The North Atlantic
 * June 19 1923, Princeton, New Jersey
 * May 29 1927, Princeton
 * October 2 1928, Cambridge, Massachusetts
 * September 17 1930, Salisbury, England
 * October 1 1932, Princeton
 * December 9 1937, New York

Continuity
The Grail Diary was written three years before the conception of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles series, therefore in that early time, Indy's early life continuity had not yet been expanded. Some of the details on Indy's and Henry's youth therefore, do not 'go together' when the two sources are compared.


 * the Diary's first entry written in 1898 and in Connecticut, mentions infant Henry Jr; according to later canon, Indy was born a year later, and the Joneses were based in Princeton, not Connecticut. Note though, that some later entries are written in Princeton.
 * The Diary has a 6-year gap of entries between years 1906 and 1912; according to the Young Indy pilot, Henry begun his two-year world lecture tour in 1908, therefore the episodes of the "Corey Carrier period" can conveniently fit in that gap, without any inconsistencies.
 * The first entry after this gap is dated February 1912 and Henry mentions his wife's death; later canon confirmed this in the same year, but some months later.
 * In that same entry, her name was given as 'Mary' while the series introduced her as 'Anna'. This was retconned in 2008 with Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Guide presenting her with the full name of Anna Mary Jones.
 * The entries of that same year (which also mention Indy's adventure with the Cross of Coronado), are located in Las Mesas, Colorado, indicating that the old Jones residence is located there. However later canon placed the house in Utah, not Colorado. It is possible that Falstein based the Colorado location on an inside information that the real-life house used in filming is actually located in Colorado. One way to combine these conflicting accounts is to place the house in Utah, but Four Corners University in Las Mesas.
 * The text mentions that Henry Jones was 45 in an entry dated 1921; however according to the later canon, he would be 49 that year.