[Imperial Historian]

So the big solves all sorts of timeline problems answer from this book is that the founding date of the malazan empire is.... 70 years before it is actually founded. Which solves all sorts of problems with the age of dujek, whiskeyjack, the old guard, the crimson guard etc. I'm not sure it solves everything but it certainly fits better than the 100 year timeline we originally had. This puts Khell's actual reign as emperor as 26 years, and his presence actually ruling the empire as closer to 16. Does this create any new timeline problems? It seems remarkably consistent to me at first glance.

[Gorefest]

It definitely makes it a better fit, I think....

I was surprised to learn that the talon and the claw basically started out around the same time. I always thought that the Talons were an older order and that the claw was a 'younger' or follow-up group. Is that just me having my facts wrong or has it never really been explicitly mentioned before when these two organisations were around? I guess you could say that the Talon had a higher standing because they fell directly under Dancer, whereas the Claw were more of a spying network for Surly in its infancy.

[edit]Just checked the Wiki, clearly it was just me misremembering.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 26 February 2019 - 02:05 PM

[Coltaine -]

This timeline would help with Dujek and Whiskeyjack, as well as some other characters like Duiker.

But it also messes with the history of a lot of other characters. Like the whole Crimson Guard. Their diaspora that ended in RotCG did last 100 years, enough time for the people of Unta to forget who they were and for Iron Bars to have a great-grandaughter in Gris around the same age as Seren.

And Rigga tells Sorry that the Empire has ruled over Itko Kan for more than 100 years in GOTM. The long rule of the empire over other parts of Quon Tali was also mentioned several times in the books, as I vaguely remember. The Seti were under the control of the Empire for three generations or something like that.

This post has been edited by - Coltaine - : 26 February 2019 - 07:20 PM

[No One]

- Coltaine -, on 26 February 2019 - 07:20 PM, said:

This timeline would help with Dujek and Whiskeyjack, as well as some other characters like Duiker.

But it also messes with the history of a lot of other characters. Like the whole Crimson Guard. Their diaspora that ended in RotCG did last 100 years, enough time for the people of Unta to forget who they were and for Iron Bars to have a great-grandaughter in Gris around the same age as Seren.

And Rigga tells Sorry that the Empire has ruled over Itko Kan for more than 100 years in GOTM. The long rule of the empire over other parts of Quon Tali was also mentioned several times in the books, as I vaguely remember. The Seti were under the control of the Empire for three generations or something like that.

Something had to be retconned to make it work. Esslemont chose to retcon the 100 year rule in favor of giving more characters their start during the early days of Kellanved. Otherwise, he'd have to explain why everyone other than the Crimson Guard was living so long. Still its quite a feat he's pulling off to make the Malazan take over of a whole continent into a compelling narrative without having it take multiple generations.

[Gorefest]

He would have had plenty of acceptable narritive devices for age extension though, e.g. the Deadhouse. My concern is that the whole thing starts to feel a bit rushed, simply for the sake of apparent fan pleasing by cramming as many MBotF characters in the prequels as possible. I did enjoy the 'Oh, hello!" recognition at first but I have come to the point now where I spend more time trying to figure out what the true identity of the next seemingly unneccessary character is than the actual story plot. In my opinion ICE shines most when he is telling a focussed tale with a limited number of players, not when he has to juggle loads of POVs and side stories which only seem to exist in order to introduce yet another backstory of yet another future Big Player. It has gradually gone from enjoyable to overused.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 03 March 2019 - 09:00 AM

[Zerv]

Yeah, I feel like this creates more problems than it solves. Obviously ICE created a bit of a problem with not having the Old Guard reside in the Deadhouse in DhL, but he almost certainly did that because he had already decided on this retcon. Even with all of the familiar faces he has crammed into these books it still seems to me that there's only a few exceptions who are not either Old Guard, mages, or future Avowed (or ascendants and gods, obviously). IIRC. if he had kept the Deadhouse thing in there the only ones so far he would need to explain are Baudin, Greymane, Possum, Malle, Heboric (though it wouldn't be stretch if priests with a close connection to a god might have a longer lifespan), and perhaps any OG members who weren't actually in Malaz at the time (Amaron, Nok). All of these either are or will be essential personnel within the Empire (Admittedly provided Heboric plays some role as historian before Duiker shows up, despite his and Kell's..falling out), so it wouldn't be too difficult to come up with something that accounts for all of them. I believe there are mentions of Denul treatments that can increase a person's lifespan in some earlier book? Maybe ICE plans to keep introducing origins for MBotF characters in future books to the point where it gets ridiculous, but so far it seems like it woukd have been somewhat manageable even with the means of increased longevity that we know of (and it probably wouldn't be crazy if there were some we don't know about).
IIRC, Dujek's age is only mentioned in GotM, and can probably be ignored as a GotMism (same as with Tattersail being over 200 years old in GotM, which doesn't cohere with how young she seems to be in DhL even with the 100 year timeline, and this retcon only makes it worse), and you could probably pull something about Dunsparrow not literally being Whiskeyjack's biological sister. Not saying it's neat or pretty, but it might have been preferable to the big mess this retcon makes of references in previous books concerning the history of the Empire and the Crimson Guard, as pointed out by others above. Also agree that the sheer number of MBotF characters appearing in these books feels like a bit much, to the point that every time a new character is introduced we all immediately wonder whether this is someone we know under a different name (so if the desire to be able to continue introducing familiar faces without having to worry about how to explain them being around more than 100 years later is the main motivation for the timeline change, I don't necessarily think it was worth it).

Perhaps he'll pull something in future books that'll convince me that this was all totally necessary, but right now I feel like the good old "the timeline is not important!" mantra is more needed than ever.

[No One]

Zerv, on 04 March 2019 - 03:01 PM, said:

Yeah, I feel like this creates more problems than it solves. Obviously ICE created a bit of a problem with not having the Old Guard reside in the Deadhouse in DhL, but he almost certainly did that because he had already decided on this retcon. Even with all of the familiar faces he has crammed into these books it still seems to me that there's only a few exceptions who are not either Old Guard, mages, or future Avowed (or ascendants and gods, obviously). IIRC. if he had kept the Deadhouse thing in there the only ones so far he would need to explain are Baudin, Greymane, Possum, Malle, Heboric (though it wouldn't be stretch if priests with a close connection to a god might have a longer lifespan), and perhaps any OG members who weren't actually in Malaz at the time (Amaron, Nok). All of these either are or will be essential personnel within the Empire (Admittedly provided Heboric plays some role as historian before Duiker shows up, despite his and Kell's..falling out), so it wouldn't be too difficult to come up with something that accounts for all of them. I believe there are mentions of Denul treatments that can increase a person's lifespan in some earlier book? Maybe ICE plans to keep introducing origins for MBotF characters in future books to the point where it gets ridiculous, but so far it seems like it woukd have been somewhat manageable even with the means of increased longevity that we know of (and it probably wouldn't be crazy if there were some we don't know about).
IIRC, Dujek's age is only mentioned in GotM, and can probably be ignored as a GotMism (same as with Tattersail being over 200 years old in GotM, which doesn't cohere with how young she seems to be in DhL even with the 100 year timeline, and this retcon only makes it worse), and you could probably pull something about Dunsparrow not literally being Whiskeyjack's biological sister. Not saying it's neat or pretty, but it might have been preferable to the big mess this retcon makes of references in previous books concerning the history of the Empire and the Crimson Guard, as pointed out by others above. Also agree that the sheer number of MBotF characters appearing in these books feels like a bit much, to the point that every time a new character is introduced we all immediately wonder whether this is someone we know under a different name (so if the desire to be able to continue introducing familiar faces without having to worry about how to explain them being around more than 100 years later is the main motivation for the timeline change, I don't necessarily think it was worth it).

Perhaps he'll pull something in future books that'll convince me that this was all totally necessary, but right now I feel like the good old "the timeline is not important!" mantra is more needed than ever.

I've been thinking about how it could work and I don't think it can without retcons. The way I see it there are 2, maybe 3 canons now. The canon of The Book of the Fallen and the first ICE series, the canon of Path to Ascendancy, and possibly the canon of the Kharkhanas trilogy. The only other way it works is if people around Kellanved and Surly just randomly start living into their 100's with it being seen as unremarkable.

[Giantblaze]

I swear they explained how they lived so long though. I will have to look it up but I vaguely remember Duiker mentioning something about it when he was talking about how he was made an imperial historian.

[Aptorian]

The death house(Azath) was used as an explanation. But the assumption was also that they were actually living inside the thing.

Denul healing, magic affinity and alchemy can also prolong lige.

[Giantblaze]

Alright I looked it up, in Deadhouse Gates book ch 12 pg 431, of the mass market paperback at least, "Being pulled from the front lines had been the Emperor's reward all those years ago. That and the various alchemies that keep me tottering on well past my prime." So I really don't see the reason for retcon when we had a perfectly good explanation.

[gandrin]

There were two comments in this book that made me reconsider the problems with timeline. First was
“Nedurian watched the slim, vibrant young girl go and wished, for however brief an instant, that he was a hundred years younger.”

Second was
“‘Are you saying that you are less than twenty years old?’ The presumed ancient gaped at him, astonished, only to recover quickly and wave a hand in dismissal. ‘That is not what I meant at all! Absurd! No–what I meant was one hundred years prior to that year, of course!’”

Both of these show that 100 years is not considered to be as large to them as it is to us. These are casual and not sarcastic statements. Nobody would ever use “100” for those two statements in our world, even as a joke. We would use 20-40. So to me this means one or two things.

Either a) people expect to live easily over 100, and probably nearer to 150.
And/or
“years” just go by much faster on this world. Who says a year has to be 365 days? What if it was only 200 days? Maybe one of the “holes” we always worry about is just because a year in this world is just that much shorter than our year?