#probably no.

Route 1: Using Zhu’s Age for Reference

We know Zhu’s birth year pretty exactly. She’s 10 years old in 1345 and 19 in 1354, making her birth year reliably 1335.

Zhu is 12 years old when Chaghan (then Prince of Henan), Esen, Ouyang, and Baoxaing visit the monastery in 1347. The narrator describes the three boys as “radiant youths” and “young,” though their specific ages aren’t given.

When Ouyang returns to the monastery as a General of the Yuan in 1354, Zhu is 19. She recalls him from their prior encounter in 1347 as “younger than she was now.” Meaning, Ouyang was younger than 19 in 1347. It’s not clear how much younger.

If we assume he was between 16-18 in 1347, that puts his birth year in 1329-1331.

Ergo, during the main canon years of TRE, he is 23-25 at the beginning (1354) and 25-27 at the end (1356).

Kinda gives new perspective to that scene in 1354 when he makes fun of the Red Turbans’ general for being 22, doesn’t it? ;)

Route 2: Using Esen’s Spring Hunt History for Reference

Here’s where things get more concrete—but also more contradictory.

Early in SWBTS, Ouyang has a bit of a rambling internal monologue about his past history with Esen vis-a-vis the Great Khan’s yearly Spring Hunt.

Here’s the narration we get:

“Ouyang had attended once when he was twenty, when he had been the commander of Esen’s personal guards. But the next year the Prince of Henan had retired from campaigning, and since then Esen and Ouyang had always been in the south during the Spring Hunt. This would be the first time in seven years that Esen would be available to accompany the Prince of Henan to Hichetu. And it was all because of Ouyang’s defeat.”

Omg this is so much easier! Seven years ago Ouyang was 20, so now (as of the 1355 Spring Hunt at least) he is 27, making his birth year 1327. Easy peasy.

But here’s the thing. If Ouyang was born in 1327, Zhu’s statement about him being “younger than she was now” (aka younger than 19) in 1347 would be simply incorrect. He would be 20 in 1347 and Esen would be 22—not exactly youths by (TRE’s) Yuan standards.

All told, I’m inclined to go with the second reading, which more directly pinpoints Ouyang’s birth year, and lets him be a bit older, which his ancient creaky ass soul deserves.

What this means, though, is that Zhu’s judgement of Ouyang’s (and Esen’s) ages aren’t exactly accurate. The narrative really sets them up to look and act like teenagers, not adults, in that 1347 scene.

More Event-Dating Wobbliness

So how old was Ouyang when he became Esen’s eunuch slave? Obviously pre-puberty, but when exactly?

During that deeply homoerotic scene (aren’t they all) from SWBTS in which Ouyang helps Esen with his armor, he reflects that he’s served Esen for sixteen years. This is in the first month of 1355.

(But in ~thee murder scene~~, in the second month of 1356, Ouyang says “I was nearly twenty years by your side.” Just some exaggeration I guess—“seventeen years” doesn’t sound quite as satisfying or cathartic when you’re trying to psych yourself up to kill your master/best friend/eternal toxic crush.)

At any rate, let’s assume Ouyang became Esen’s slave sixteen years before 1355, in 1339. If we follow Route 2 (Ouyang born in 1327), he is 12 when he first enters the Prince’s household.

But here’s another complication!!!

Remember this scene?

If Ouyang is 12 when he first becomes a slave, there’s no time at all for the “before picture” this scene paints. No “had always been able” possible. Ouyang has to have been with Esen for at least a couple years prior to Esen turning 14 in order for this dynamic to work out.

So let’s go back to Route 1 (Ouyang born in 1329-1331) for a minute. In that scenario, Ouyang was anywhere from 8-10 when he first becomes a slave. To me this seems a lot more plausible.

A third explanation might be that that “sixteen years” figure might be inaccurate, or not the full picture. It could be that Ouyang really has been “at [Esen’s] side” for something like 20 years, but have only been his specific attendant for 16 of those years. Maybe he did other slave-duties (whatever they might have been) prior to that time. That would allow him to keep his greater age (I don’t think he deserves to start the main narrative at 23 lol) while also preserving a longer connection to Esen and a bit more tragedy.

Anyway. What can we conclude, if anything, from all this. Frankly I emerged from this process more confused than I began it.

For the sake of the childhood fic I’m currently plotting, this is how I choose to proceed: Ouyang comes to the Prince’s residence as a slave at age 8, in 1335. Esen is 10 at the time. The two rather secretly become friends, and Esen demands that Ouyang become his specific attendant slave in 1339, when Ouyang is 12 and he is 14. Thereafter, Ouyang gradually rises to become commander of his personal guard and eventually his general. Then canon events unfold as written. 🥲

When I was a teenager, I was an asshole, I didn’t bully people or anything physical, but I was still terrible. Terrible enough to have my own gang of friends to pull pranks on people at school and outside. Some were harmless, some were pretty nasty and some got us in trouble.

This particular tale is about one of those pranks.

It began with my grandpa telling me about how you could mess with walkie talkies and get on other’s signals sometimes. It had been something he said only in passing but it stuck with me, because you see, at the time I had a little brother. who was only a few months when this all went down so naturally, he had a baby monitor.

I figured that a baby monitor is just a walkie talkie to keep in touch with your kids so I thought you could mess with the frequency and signal in the same way that you should be able to mess a walkie talkie’s up.

Being the shithead I was, I had to try. I told my friend about it, and we decided to save some money to get a high quality one, intent on messing with as many baby monitors as possible.

Weeks went by and between the three of us, we managed to buy the baby monitor.

That same night, we decided we’d try it. And we already had a perfect target; my very own house and my own parents.

Our idea was to get my little brother’s monitor. Talk through it and my parents’ and scare the hell out of them. Of course, I wasn’t planning on doing any talking, they’d notice it was me right away so instead, Hector talked. He had a naturally deep voice, and could easily make it sound deeper, it was perfect.

Before starting our new hobby, Hector cleared his throat, I hit him on the shoulder so he would hurry up, and he started, talking slowly, lowly, almost in a whisper. He pretended to be a ghost, saying some nonsense about being a previous dead owner.

And to my surprise and delight, it worked. From our chosen place to hide, we could see the lights being turned on as my parents rushed to my brother’s room.

We eventually heard an “Asshole!” and knew the prank was us so we ran, and keep doing this in other houses in the neighbourhood that we knew had recently born kids.

Some people realized it was a joke right away, others cursed us, others pleaded, others couldn’t care less.

However it went, at the time I thought of it as a lot of fun.

Until one night, I was doing pranking people on my own as Hector and Franco had grew bored with the hobby. I hadn’t though, just the opposite. I was on the habit of doing it until well past midnight, and that night, it was 1AM when I found a target.

I settled myself behind a bush, invincible for the street I hoped, and started to play with the dial, until I could find the frequency that would work for this particular house’s monitor. Eventually, I did, cleared my throat a moment and breathed into the monitor:

-I am…. watching.-

For a moment, there was no response, except for a static that was similar to the noise a blackboard makes when someone runs their fingernails through it, that is to say, it was a shit sound. But then, just when I was about to walk away annoyed, I heard a response through the device, a quiet voice, raspy, chilling and all around terrible that only said:

-No. I’m… watching you.-

I froze. My mind starting to run and telling me to look up, I did. And I saw a shadow or a silhouette up in the house’s second floor, where I assumed the baby’s room was. Some instinct inside me told me to run. And run I did, I ran faster than I thought I could but it didn’t seem to be fast enough. I could still hear breathing through the goddamn baby monitor. I passed around three people, some guy wearing a guy, some lady on a tracksuit, running (at fucking 1AM!) and a man smoking in an alley.

I thought one of them had to be the person up there in that second floor, having somehow won an advantage over me, as baby monitors, like walkie talkies have limited range which meant, that I was hearing their breathing because they were close.

But perhaps it wa only panic, as I managed to get home safely (otherwise the story would have ended there and then, eh?)

This experience alone wouldn’t have so terrible if not for what happened the next morning.

On the news, I saw while getting ready for school, that there had been a murder in my city last night. At 1AM. In the house I’d be pranking.

A murderer had chased me because I was a potential witness.

Needless to say, I never used a baby monitor to prank anyone ever again.

But today, years later I have a new, as you see, I have a kid of my own now. Everything had been going wonderfully for the last few months. Sure, the baby has cried a lot, like all babies do, but it hasn’t been a problem.

The problem is, just an hour ago I heard something from the monitor, I hope it was another dumb teenager like I was back in my day, because, see, what they said left me terrified, it was that a low, chilling, voice that said: