It's a tough problem for sure.

I'm wondering if there's a general solution?

That is, a way to tell ConTeXt to "protect the lettrine" regardless of the
source document text? Nothing can be hard-coded because the setups (take a
look at keenwrite themes
https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite-themes/tree/main/boschet) don't
"know" anything about the source document text.

That's why I stated that nothing between \starttext and \stoptext may
change.

In effect, we don't know if the text is going to be "Kermit Ruffins" or
"Yankee Doodle Dandy" or "We believe these truths to be self-evident." All
we know is that we want the first letter to be a lettrine and the
subsequent paragraph not to overlap the lettrine.

Cheers!


> \setuphead[chapter][
>   after={\placeinitial\vbox to 1cm{\relax {K{\hskip 2pt \lower 5pt
> \hbox{ermit MUffins \vbox to -0.055cm {\hskip -2.8cm \raise 1pt \hbox{meet
> me at the second
> line}}}}}}},
>   page=no,
> %]
>
> \starttext
>
> \startchapter[1]
> \stopchapter
>
> \forgetinitial \par
>
> \startchapter[2]
> \input knuth
> \stopchapter
>
> \stoptext
>
>