As Stuart Merriman sips his Stella, he glances over the room. A dimly lit backroom in your local pub with the usual Wednesday crowd. No one knows they’re in the presence of royalty.

Stuart is as West Midlands as they come. Warm, laid back, and unassuming. The only difference between him and his son mezii, seated next to him and sipping from a Coke, is their hair. Well, the amount of it, anyway.

The three of us, joined by our lovely photographer, Sophie, are quite a sight for the people around us. Of course, some strange looks ensue, but what they don’t realise is that the real king of the UK has just walked in, and alongside the man who set him on the path to greatness, he’s about to tell us how he ascended to the throne.

Most people know mezii’s dad, Stuart, as the man behind the cursed keybinds. Originally intended to aid movement in a game called Kingpin, he laughs as he says, “Ironically, in Counter-Strike, it does make movement worse. Will [mezii] probably has the worst movement on his team because of it.”

It’s a comment mezii is quick to rebuff, offering instead that apEX has the worst movement. I’m not going to argue, the English always beat the French.

The family history behind the keybinds is the real story. They’re settings used by all four Merriman brothers, a reflection of not just UK culture, but also their upbringing.

Concerning Merrimans

For many people globally, whether they had a single desktop in their house or not, the introduction to Counter-Strike came at gaming cafes. This isn’t something we tend to have in England, so instead, the introduction to CS came as the brothers would all fight to get onto the PC at any moment they could - which, given the fact Stuart was running a community of “around 150 people and three or four teams when Source released”, wasn’t as often as any of them would have liked.

“One year, we weren’t well off financially,” Stuart says. “We were worried about Christmas, not knowing what we were going to do, but then I got a bonus or a rebate and I bought a PC for the boys to share. That evened the load a bit.”

That Christmas, around the time CS:GO released, was the moment that truly set mezii on the path to now - as he proudly exclaims - “having more trophies than s1mple and NiKo”, even if neither father nor son liked Global Offensive at first, with both preferring Source.

mezii wasn’t initially the best out of his brothers, Stuart tells me, “He certainly didn’t stand out,”, but the competition between the four and the extra willingness to grind soon elevated him, and in 2020, just after finishing his degree, he decided to take a year to try and make it as a pro.

Fortunately for mezii, unlike many of us who made the slightly mentally unstable decision to work in esports and still get derided by our parents for it, Stuart was all for it, and although there was a little push back from his mom and his now-wife, Fiona, no one would stand in his way.

First signing for GamerLegion, Stuart speaks of a “sliding doors” moment where mezii almost signed for North instead.

The Merriman goes international

“They were going to go international, and his first event was going to be at a Dreamhack against Vitality and ZywOo. It fell through, though, because they decided he wasn’t good enough after concerns about his mechanics.”

Great job, North. And, if you’re wondering who they signed instead, it was Kristou. Great job again, lads.

Of course, as things do, it did work out for the best, as Stuart is quick to add that, had Will signed for North, he would’ve missed out on GamerLegion, and ultimately, the Cloud9 Colossus.

“That was the only point where I had doubts,” mezii tells me. “When you’re trying to go pro, it’s hard to think about whether you’re good enough or not, because you just don’t actually know. I’d been playing in some seasons of Advanced and trying to get into MDL, but it all fell apart with VALORANT and all the guys going there, and I said I wasn’t going to rebuild because there just wasn’t enough players.”

Thankfully, despite the lack of players, mezii didn’t join in with the UK CS to VALORANT exodus. He tried it, played on a team alongside ALEX, mixwell, and ScreaM, won events, and even has a callout named after him to this day, but the other game just couldn’t replace CS.

And so, as he impressed on GamerLegion, Cloud9 came knocking.

As we all know, the Colossus project was ultimately a failed endeavour. Partially cursed by COVID, and partially cursed by the fact someone decided that es3tag was a solid star player to build a team around. mezii thought he could have played better on the doomed roster, but noted that analysts said that he came out looking the best out of everyone despite the low expectations due to his rookie status.

The loss of that team, and the seeming setback that came with it, was felt by mezii Sr., too. “I remember at the start, I was so proud and excited,” he says, “I made myself a whole blue inventory with Cloud9 stickers on, we all had so much merch. But then when they closed the team, I scratched all the stickers, sold the guns, and put all the merch in the bin. I was dead pissed off about it.”

Still well inside the year he gave himself to make it as a pro player after leaving Cloud9, mezii would sign for Endpoint in April 2021, although it could have been very different had he listened to GamerLegion’s former coach, Ash.

“He was trying to get me to grind FPL,” mezii says, “A lot of players were doing it and he said I’d get some opportunities, but that’s just not for me. I’m not a big pug or FACEIT player, I just wanted to get back onto a team and stay active so other teams would come in.”

There and back again

Now bolstered by the experience from his short time further up the chain, mezii arrived on Endpoint as effectively a superstar within the UK scene. And, although he would only be on the team for a matter of months, the two-time Major winner is clear on just how important the time he spent on the team was for the rest of his career.

“Endpoint was the best thing for me. Cloud9 was a disaster, so my confidence was at its lowest, but they gave me everything I wanted and, yeah, it was tier two, but they gave me everything I wanted as a star,” he says.

In August 2021, the decision not to pursue his degree and take a year out was vindicated. Despite all the hardships, despite the ups and downs and ultimate disappointment of his first Major-winning organisation, a second one came calling, and mezii would sign for fnatic.

“Do you remember me joking at the time?” Stuart asks, with a laugh from his son in response, “I remember me saying that he was doing really well on Endpoint, and when I was looking at teams he could go to, fnatic was the only one that made sense. They were on a really crap run.”

The move wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, though, as many fnatic fans will know, the team has been in something of an eternal rebuild ever since the decision to go international with the signings of ALEX and mezii.

“It wasn’t easy for you, was it? With the players and the dynamics,” asks Stuart, prompting a shake of the head from mezii, but it was another instance of mezii’s attitude and commitment shining through. Other players came and signed for the team and with better contracts but as mezii said to me in the interview, “I wasn’t about to haggle for money, I just wanted to play for a tier one organisation.”

The road to Vitality

The move, despite fnatic being fnatic, was undoubtedly a success. Not only did it establish mezii as a true tier one star, but it also made his versatility clear, with role swaps aplenty and even a shift to IGLing that would result in his first (and fnatic’s first since the ELEAGUE Boston Major) Major playoffs appearance at IEM Rio 2022.

It also resulted in a legendary moment for Stuart, too, with Sr. proudly sharing a story of the time one of the brothers wasn’t free, so KRIMZ came to pug with Clan Merriman, and how he had then traded KRIMZ in a 2v1 retake on the B site of Ancient.

“That was my best achievement ever,” he laughs, “It’s funny, though, because it wasn’t long after the Premier season began and the second game was KRIMZ’ promotion game. We buggered that one up for him.”

With the shock announcement that Magisk would depart Vitality for Falcons in late-2023, perhaps through the good fortune of it not working out with other targets, mezii would be named as his slightly surprising replacement. A move that would see him win his first two events with the team at BLAST Premier Fall and World Final 2023, Vitality looked to head into 2024 as undoubtedly the best team in the world, but the arrival of donk and issues with team cohesion almost threw everything off track.

Spinx’s lair

It’s often the case now, due to mezii’s uptick in form and Jimpphat’s subsequent downturn in form after Spinx joined MOUZ, that the Israeli gets blamed for just about everything wrong with Vitality in 2024, but mezii also takes some of the blame for their trophy struggles that year.

“I think the thing with Spinx is that the type of player he is means he’s always going to take a lot of space, and as apEX has said before, maybe it was too much space and we couldn’t give him that or it would mess with the balance of the team,” he says, “But I didn’t have the confidence to tell him what I wanted to do either, so of course, it was on me to do that and to play better.”

“I remember when you lost at BLAST London ‘24. The whole team was drinking afterwards with our family, but Spinx wasn’t there. It was probably an all-time low in the team in terms of morale, and XTQZZZ spoke to you all about it there and then, so it was mad you went on to win in Cologne right after,” Stuart adds.

“Yeah, I don’t think anyone was enjoying playing in the team at that point,” mezii says, “Spinx didn’t think he had enough space in the team, so he was looking at his options, and we were looking at ours.”

Ironically, though, despite reports that made it clear Spinx and Vitality were doing this, it was mezii who the community still believed would get kicked as the team entered the Shanghai Major with virtually no expectation to come even close to winning it.

mezii speaks plainly on this topic, saying, “I think both in the Summer and even in the Winter break when we got ropz, there were options to replace me, and it would’ve been completely fair given my performances.”

But, as it happened, Vitality wouldn’t replace mezii, and the rest, as we say, is history.

“It’s become a bit boring now,” jokes Stuart in reference to mezii’s ever-growing trophy cabinet, “Cologne was great and after the first Major I just burst into tears, they’re two of my favourites, for sure. I never expected anything like this, I had a little goal in my head that he’d get one of those little trophies on HLTV, but now you have to scroll through them.”

The king of UKCS

As we come close to the end of our time together, I ask them both how they feel about all of it; from very humble beginnings where fate allowed his father to buy a PC for him and his brothers to share, to now being an integral figure on one of the most successful and dominant teams in CS history. And, for the first time in the interview, mezii looks somewhat at a loss for words.

“I don’t know, this question is always hard for me.” He says.

“I think it’s brilliant,” pipes up Stuart, “You can’t get the Galacticos like in Football, or the ‘one more star’ meme with Falcons, but Vitality have the right players, right roles, and how they get on can lead to all of this. I look back on Astralis in 2019 now, and I say it to all the family, ‘Fucking hell, Will is on a team that’s better than them.’”

It’s still something that, for all of the UK community who has followed him throughout his career and for myself included, is still something that is almost unfathomable. Despite all the setbacks, and the fact that he comes from a nation that has often been the butt of the jokes in the CS world, William “mezii” Merriman has risen to the top of the it, inspiring a nation in the process, and filling its entire community with a pride none of them could ever truly express to him.

But that journey, written here in black and white and captured on endless hours of tournament streams, is also the perfect encapsulation of who mezii is as a person. Still as humble as when I first interviewed him on fnatic back at the Paris Major, he’s someone who took a gamble on himself and never let any of those setbacks hold him back, rising to the occasion every time it’s been asked of him.

Although apEX might be the IGL of Vitality, it’s for these reasons why mezii stands tall as a leader of men. The king of a nation of subjects who adore him, we all hope his reign never comes to an end.

God save the King.