#timeline problems

Ok so Emily’s canon birth year of 1970 makes no sense. And Emily kind of talks over Reid when he says it so it make more sense that she cut him off from saying the full year.

I just watched the episode where Hotch is cleaning out the garage and finds the pirate hat and he ends of bringing out his high school year book. And we know it is high school because he says Hailey’s photo was in the Grade 10 pictures. But it was the 1987 yearbook. Which would make Hotch between 16 and 18 in 1987.

And if Emily was born in 1970, she would have been 17 in 1987.

Timeline question: How old was Aegon when Volantis was defeated during the bleeding years? It seems confusing since Argilic was said to have slain the king of the reach twenty years after it, Aegon would seem to have been only a boy at the time, since he was born less than three decades before he began his conquest of westeros, how do you make sense of this, could he really have participated at such an age or is this a case of the dates being wrong?

Good question! As one might expect, Volantis’ rise and fall in the Century of Blood was a somewhat drawn-out process. So here’s my best guess of how the timeline works out:

We know that the Doom of Valyria provoked “immediate political upheaval,” with revolutions in Tyosh, Lys (and presumably Myr) against the dragonlords. (This is a bit confusing since WOIAF tells us the Free Cities had bought their right to self-government from Valyria, but it’s possible that this right was somewhat honored in the breach, especially in a crisis, or that the Free Cities acted out of fear that their rights would be taken by the dragonlords in said crisis.) 

We also know that the Volantenes “quickly laid claim to Valyria’s mantle,” which suggests that the war began pretty quickly after the Doom, so probably within a year or two of 114 BC.

We also know how long the ascendancy of Volantis lasted: “a Volantene fleet took Lys and a Volantene army captured Myr, and for two generations all three cities were ruled from within the Black Walls.” (ADWD) Given that a generation is roughly 30-35 years, that suggests that the Volantenes were successful in their expansionist offensive from around 114 to around 53-44 BC. 

Then we learn of a whole bunch of stuff happening in quick succession: Volantis tries to conquer Tyrosh, Pentos joins the war on Tyrosh’s side, Lys and Myr rebel, Braavos finances Lysene resistance, and the Storm King defeats Volantene attempt to retake Myr. This lets us know roughly when Argilac was warring in the Disputed Lands - given his age (Argilac was born roughly 60 BC), and the fact that this campaign is the first campaign after his boyhood that’s mentioned in the text), but also comes after all of the previous events, it probably happened closer to 44 BC. This would place the Battle of Summerfield around 22 BC. 

We then get a bunch of details that give us some hints as to when Aegon was involved. We learn for example that Aegon was “still-young,” that his intervention came “near the end” of the Century of the Blood, and that he joined the war at the behest of Pentos and Tyrosh (which places it definitely after their alliance). Now Aegon was definitely born in 27 BC, which means that he really couldn’t have partaken much before 13 BC - but this is only problematic if we get overly finicky about the “Century” part of the “Century of Blood.” 

So Aegon gets involved very late in the war, burns “a Volantene fleet that was preparing to invade” Lys in what must have been a very last-ditch counter-offensive, and then Dagger Lake and the Dothraki show up and the elephants overthrow the tigers - which we know happened right around 0 AC, since Aegon VI describes the elephants as having “ruled the city for three hundred years” in the year 300 AC. This suggests that Aegon’s intervention must have happened only a few years before the Conquest, at most around 4 BC, when he was in his early 20s. (Which counts as still-young, I suppose.)

Moreover, we also learn that “shortly after his role in defeating Volantis it is written he lost all interest in the affairs of the east...’[and] turned his gaze west,” which are the last words in WOIAF before the account of the Conquest begins. This is further evidence that Aegon’s involvement must have happened only a few years before the Conquest.

If you get murdered on the Iron Throne by parties unknown, I don’t know if you can call that being deposed…

So here’s what happens between AC 44 and AC 48:

45 AC:

Maegor’s first wife Ceryse dies, possibly due to illness (a sudden case of maegorius uxoricidelus?).

The Red Keep is finished and Maegor has the construction workers killed.

Maegor orders the construction of the Dragonpit. 

Maegor begins a new campaign against the Faith Militant, is in the field for most of the year.

46 AC:

Maegor returns from campaign with two thousand skulls.

47 AC:

Maegor has Ser Theo Bolling executed.

Maegor marries Elinor Costayne, Rhaena Targaryen, and Jeyne Westerling in a single ceremony.

Jeyne Westerling goes into premature childbirth, dies not long after. 

Elinor Costayne survives her stillbirth. 

Princess Aerea is named Maegor’s heir apparent until he has a child of the body and Jaehaerys is disinherited. 

48 AC:

Tyanna of the Tower confesses to having poisoned Maegor’s brides, is killed by Maegor’s own hand. 

Septon Moon and Ser Joffrey Doggett rise up against Maegor, are joined by House Tully, then by the Master of Ships Daemon Velaryon.

On the Justman-Hoare conundrum: Is one possible solution simply Qhored the Cruel being a brief resurgence of Ironborn supremacy such that that after his death no Ironborn leader had the capabilities to arrest their decline as he had?

Regarding the ironborn timeline issues, I remember a couple people on Reddit put forward a theory a few months ago that the Andal Conquest happened over the course of around two thousand years (noting the 1-200 years between the (final) conquest of the Vale and the reign of Tristifer IV), and thus didn’t come to the Iron Islands until well over a thousand years after they came to the riverlands. Does this theory hold water for you?

Going to consolidate a couple questions from different people on the whole Ironborn timeline thing: 

W/R/T the Mallisters, since Torgon Latecomer was one of the earliest of the Greyirons, since he was elected at a kingsmoot, and Torgon’s son Urragon came before Urron Redhand, who A. lived five thousand years before the War of Five Kings and B. whose line ruled for a thousand years before the Andals arrived in the Iron Islands, I don’t think Mallister’s conquest of the Cape happened during the reign of the Justmans but significantly before. (For one thing, if Qhored the Cruel was a Hoare, that conflicts with the Greyirons ruling for a thousand years.)

That Qhored solution wouldn’t work, because Qhored is listed as a driftwood king and the height of Ironborn power BEFORE the Greyirons abolished the kingsmoot and the Hoares replaced them and ruled as Iron Kings. I think the better fix is to say that either Aeron and WOIAF were wrong about Harrag and Qhored Hoare being driftwood kings - rather, if Harrag is a contemporary of Theon Stark, and Qhored of House Justman, they were in fact Hoare kings of the “black line” who came about after the Andal invasion (although that creates other problems relating to thematic arcs) - or that the bit about Qhored extinguishing the Justmans is simply not accurate.

it makes no sense to me