Theory: Wilbur is Wilba's Father, afflicted with the Curse of the Moon Quay.

[Brewsterpigeon]

Let's look at the evidence in favor of this.

What do we know about Wilba's dad?

She says this when inspecting her Silver Necklace:

"PAPA GIVETH WILBA THIS FOR THE HAIRY TIMES"

Wilba is stated as: "Carries her father's legacy". The developers wrote upon her release: "Wilba has inhereted one of her father's more colourful characteristics, namely, she now carries the same curse that inflicts all of her father's famiuly with dreaded werepigism."

That is essentially the only direct information we are given about her father. Her mom is Queen Malfalfa (MAMA, QUEEN OF HAMLETS acording to Wilba) and their daughter, Wilba, is set to be the next queen. Her father is most likely royalty as well, though it's possible he isn't.

He is NOT the Pig King. When Wilba inspects the Pig King, she shows no recognition and simply says "'TIS A TRADER KING!". The Pig King also, notably, does not turn into a werepig during a full moon.

Now, what makes me think that Wilbur could be the father? 

Wilbur has some strange implications regarding his existence. He has a crown, referred to in-game as the Tarnished Crown. The inspection quotes all comment on how it is a rather tiny crown, and fit for a monkey. You have to give Wilbur this crown within a Shipwrecked world in order to unlock him. He is found, passed out, on a raft in the middle of the ocean. You give him the crown and he jumps for joy, then his raft breaks and he drowns in the murky depths. Why is Wilbur, presumably king of the monkeys, out here without his crown?

What even is a king of the monkeys? We get a big look into what this is with the Curse of the Moon Quay update last year. The Moon Quay island is an island brought about thanks to some accident of Wagstaff - the portals that brought in the Moon Quays will also deposit broken machinery that the inspection quotes of Winona ("This looks like the bossman's... but what was he doing out here?") and WX-78's ("WHERE ARE YOU HIDING OLD MAN"). They have a Queen, whose sole gameplay purpose is to remove Accursed Trinkets from players while commenting on how you're making a bad choice. Seemingly, these monkeys *love* being monkeys.

How do you acquire Accursed Trinkets and turn into Wonkey? By killing Powder Monkeys, and Powder Monkeys specifically. Note that killing Splumonkeys or Prime Apes or Spider Monkeys doesn't come with a curse - the Moon Quay island specifically comes with this curse.

Wonkey is interesting because he is basically exactly what Wilbur is in Don't Starve singleplayer. He starts at the same slow speed and after a short time walking starts running at the same speed as wonkey. They both love bananas, although Wonkey can still speak the original voice lines of his character. 

So, killing 10 Powder Monkeys turns you into a generic Wonkey monkey, who has the same abilities as Wilbur from regular Don't Starve. Does any of that change... if you're royalty? 

Who are the powder monkeys, anyways? They are like Pirates, but they're monkeys. They seem to love being monkeys and will do almost anything for bananas in service of their Queen, who must have some sort of magical ability due to being the only way to remove accursed trinkets from one's inventory.

Since killing powder monkeys makes you into one of them, I think all of the powder monkeys were, at one point, not monkeys and simply pirates. They have killed others with the Curse of the Moon Quay, acquired accursed trinkets, and themselves turned into monkeys. It's kind of like an STD, but instead of S it's K (killing) and instead of D it's C (curse). 

What if Wilba's dad, the king of the pigs, killed either a large number of Powder monkeys, or killed the King of the Monkeys? The royalty of the monkeys obviously has power & the control to at least remove accursed trinkets - what happens when you kill the king or queen of the Moon Quays? Presumably, you might become the King or Queen of the moon quays yourself. 

That's what I think happened. Wilba's dad, at some point in his life, killed the king of the Moon Quays, absorbed the accursed trinkets due to the curse, and became the Monkey King himself. The Queen & the rest of the monkeys know that this King is not a legitimate king but instead the murderer of their leader, and threw him out. He lost his crown and was thrown out to the Shipwrecked world, waiting for someone to come by and reawaken him. 

The concept art for the Moon Quay update gives us some very interesting information about the monkey king. There are multiple drawings of him with different designs, but all of them represent him being much smaller than the Monkey Queen. You can see the concept art at the bottom of [this wiki page](https://dontstarve.fandom.com/wiki/Powder_Monkey).

I'd like to share a few examination quotes that I feel may be hinting at this reality. 

Maxwell, inspecting an unconscious Wilbur before he is unlocked:

"Well, I suppose there's no sending you back now."

What is Maxwell talking about? Where does Wilbur come from, and why can't he return? Is it Hamlet he cannot return to due to no longer appearing as a pig?

Now, this raises the question... why is Wilba's dad out here killing the Powder Monkey's King? What beef does he have with them, or with the King specifically?

This is a harder question to answer. I'm onto something with this, but I think Woodlegs is the key to this. Woodlegs has been locked in a cage within the volcano biome in Shipwrecked when you find him, locked up in an intensely protective cage. The only way to unlock him is to kill the Quacken, in 10% of Watery Graves, and 10% of the time the Yaarctopus will give you one.

There are three different keys - the Bone Key, the Gold Key, and the Iron Key. Something interesting to me is that Wagstaff comments on the Iron Key "Made of iron. Is there iron in this world?"

Important to note is that Hamlet heavily features Iron as an important element. The Iron Hulk is a massive machine that attacks nearby people - there are Iron Hulks all over the wilderness of Hamlet, and all of them are mossy and rusted over as though they have been there a very long time. The Thunderbirds, a prevalent mob in Hamlet, protect their nests fiercely with their lightning ability. However, the only thing their nests contain is a single piece of Iron Ore. Iron is prevalent and commonplace within Hamlet, but Wagstaff finds himself surprised at the presence of iron when he's in a Shipwrecked world. Presumably, Wagstaff went to the Shipwrecked world before he went to the Hamlet world. This means... the only place to get Iron (that we know of) is Hamlet. Whoever locked up Woodlegs had to at least have been to hamlet or gotten Iron from someone who had been to hamlet themselves. What if this was Wilba's dad?

Why is woodlegs so securely locked up anyways? Presumably, Woodlegs' crew was killed by the Quacken. The area surrounding the Quacken is covered in Ship Graveyards, whose locations are haunted by Pirate Ghosts on full moons. Also, the Booty Bag dropped by the Quacken causes Woodlegs to say "Me thought me lost thet!", indicating it literally belongs to him. His crew died, potentially a long time ago, but Woodlegs survived. Walani may be a part of this same crew - when inspecting the Eye of the Tiger Shark (a large eye), woodlegs says "Reminds me o'me ol'first mate, Wildeye Weston." (who notably has a name beginning with W). When Walani inspects the Deerclops Eyeball (a large eye), she says "Aw. Kind of reminds me of the boss.". Both Walani and Woodlegs know the same person, Wildeye Weston. 

Someone wants Woodlegs to be dead, but he seemingly cannot die, perhaps due to the same curse that afflicts all of our playable survivors. The original plan for his character, according to the developers, was for him to turn into a Skeleton at times - the character files for Wilton, as viewable on the [unimplimented characters page on the wiki](https://dontstarve.fandom.com/wiki/Unimplemented_Characters?so=search), are for Woodlegs' skeleton form. WX's quote still seems to reference this - when he inspects Woodlegs he says "THAT CAGE MUST WEIGH A SKELE-TON". Wendy's examination quote implies his soul is no longer with him - she comments "At least his soul escaped." Perhaps Woodlegs was supposed to originally be a skeleton trapped within the cage, turning into a pirate when freed? Maybe Woodlegs cannot be truly killed because of his skeleton curse, and the only way to remove him as a problem is to lock him into a cage so secure, someone would need to travel the entire land of Shipwrecked in order to free him. 

Now, who was Woodlegs' crew? We know he had a chef, a first mate named Wildeye Weston, multiple shipmates, and a pirate named Polly. Interestingly, you can craft a hat in the Curse of the Moon Quay update called Polly Roger's hat - this spawns in Polly Rogers, a bird who picks stuff up for you. Maybe Woodlegs and the Moon Quay pirates have had some run ins before.

A pirate who is cursed with never being able to die because he is secretly a skeleton... is a pretty clear reference to the Pirates of the Caribbean. In that movie, moonlight revelas the pirates to be what they are behind their facade - skeletons. Seemingly the moon doesn't intersect well with whatever magic keeps them looking like humans instead of skeletons. That somewhat increases the connection between the Moon Quay people as well as werepigism, all of which relies on powers caused by the moon. 

There are clearly some missing pieces, and I hope we learn more information soon. But in summary, I'm suspecting the story of Wilba's father is that he left Hamlet for some reason, and has gotten himself caught up in the world of pirates. In doing so, he has turned himself into a monkey by killing the King of the Moon Quay Pirates, and now the Moon Quay Queen would never remove his accursed trinkets and return him to his normal form - so he is stuck like this forever.

Notably, he does not talk at all in human speech with one exception - inspecting bananas, which he refers to as "'Nanas?". Obviously he is a monkey, and monkeys stereotypically like bananas, so the connection could be as simple as that. Or... he knows that the only way to get his accursed trinkets off is to give the Moon Quay Queen bananas, and finding bananas is enough to get him excited enough to talk.

Maybe he can't talk like other Wonkeys because the king cannot talk, or because he was transformed into a Werepig when the curse was inflicted upon him and he is stuck in that form mentally. Additionally, Pigs & Bunnymen are hostile to Wonkey, presumably because of the curse, but are not hostile to Wilbur. Maybe the Pigs recognize, somehow, there's more Pig within this Monkey than other kinds of monkeys?

I will leave with one last interesting piece of evidence surrounding the involvement of Pigs in the world of Pirates and Monkeys - [look at this specific concept art for the Curse of the Moon Quay update.](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dont-starve-game/images/8/8d/RWP_Monkeys_Concept_Art.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20220725041613)

The developer notes this about the flag of the Moon Quay Pirates:

"maybe their pirate symbol is still a pig"

Still a pig? When was it a pig? Why is it feasible to think these monkeys would be fine "still" flying a symbol of a Pig? Maybe... because they were originally a crew of Pig pirates, under the leadership of the King of Hamlet & Wilba's father, who has all been cursed with the Curse of the Moon Quay but still remembers their Pig roots despite their missing leader.

Extra funny things that kinda help my point:

*Wilba and Wilbur are very similar names. 

*Both Wilba and Wilbur are unlocked by giving them their rightful royal crown

*When inspecting her mother's crown, Wilba says "UNEASY LIES HEAD THAT WEAR-ETH THE CROWN". When inspecting Wilbur's Tarnished crown, she says "WHEREFORE IS'T UNEASY HEAD?". While this is a reference to Shakespeare's play "King Henry the Fourth, Part Two", it is a similar quote for both.

*In the final concept art I shared before, there is an image of the Prime Apes (the only Monkeys Wilbur seems to have control over within singleplayer don't starve, but not the first Monkey character introduced within Don't Starve not to mention the Prime Apes not being included within Don't Starve Together unlike Splumonkeys) drawn as a pirate.

*Wilbur's crown is tarnished. Why is it tarnished? From the Oxford dictionary, tarnished is defined as "make or become less valuable or respected". Wilbur's crown was at one point looked at with respect, but no longer holds that reputation.

*Both Wilba and Wilbur have not been included within Don't Starve Together alongside Walani and Woodlegs (and wheeler... poor wheeler... and warbucks...). These characters seem to have lore importance, and more things may need to be set up (like the Curse of the Moon Quay not becoming an update until 3 years after Hamlet dropped) before their lore can be brought to the world of Don't Starve Together. We know they aren't afraid to bar content from Don't Starve Together if it wouldn't serve their current lore as evidenced by Wagstaff's development and inclusion within singleplayer Don't Starve and exclusion from Together.