Studies have revealed that rheological characteristics and self‐weight stress are nonnegligible during a consolidation process, especially for land reclamation projects or dredged soils. However, they are rarely considered simultaneously in traditional consolidation theories. This paper presents a general solution to the consolidation system of rheological soils that incorporates a fractional derivative model and self‐weight stress. First, the theory of the fractional derivative is introduced to the Merchant model to describe the consolidation behaviours of rheological soils, and the self‐weight stress of soils is simultaneously considered. Based on this model, the governing equation of a rheological consolidation system that considers self‐weight stress is obtained. Second, the analytical solutions of the effective stress and settlement in the Laplace domain are obtained by applying the Laplace transform to the consolidation governing equation. Further, the actual solutions in the real domain are obtained by a numerical Laplace transform inversion method (Abate's fixed Talbot method). Finally, the reliability and correctness of the consolidation theories and the proposed solutions are verified by comparing the calculated results with the degenerate solutions and experimental results in the existing literature. Furthermore, parametric studies are conducted to investigate the influence of rheological parameters and self‐weight parameters on the consolidation settlement and consolidation rate.