The Painted King List is a text found in varying lengths painted upon more than a dozen Codex-style drinking cups from the El Mirador/Calakmul region of northern Peten and southern Campeche and which lists the accessions of a series of lords of the Snake Kingdom. The longest such text includes no less than 19 such accessions and these have been presumed to list the earliest Snake Kings of a polity that in the Late Classic was certainly centered on the great Campeche site of Calakmul. Evidence from the last two decades has revealed that earlier, at least from the late-fifth century and lasting for perhaps a century or a little more, the Snake Kingdom had its capital not at Calakmul but at Dzibanche, in southern Quintana Roo. In his seminal article on the Painted King List a quarter century ago, Simon Martin tentatively suggested that the early Snake Kings listed in this text may have been the rulers of the Preclassic metropolis of El Mirador, perhaps the largest Maya city ever built. Two epigraphic finds from near El Mirador have been argued to support this conclusion by Richard Hansen and the present author. However, new finds and interpretations from Dzibanche have led Simon Martin and a number of co-authors recently to declare unequivocally that the Painted King List pertains to the earliest kings of that site and that the origins of the Snake Kingdom are to be found here in southern Quintana Roo and nowhere else. This presentation will review both the evidence and the interpretations that have been marshalled to make all of these claims and whether more radical alternative interpretations may not only be warranted but even necessary.