[Sarnax333]

Long time viewer, first time poster.
I just finished KR so I thought let me take a re-read through GOTM. First page and I see this...”96 year of the Malazan empire” and I’m thinking to myself well if the empire was started in KR then how can the timeline match up considering Surly and Whisky Jack seem to be just a bit older than when at the end of KR.
So I thought to ask this community that question considering some of y’all are way more versed at the lore than me. Could it be just one of those timeline errors we see sometimes in large book series?
Thanks!

[Nevyn]

1) the timeline does not matter.
2) age issues have been explained throughout the series

3) if you read the conversations with heboric in the new book you get yet another possible new interpretation.

[Aptorian]

You should have posted this in the latest book forum. Not the earliest book forum.

No spoilers or discussions of books past Gardens of the Moons release.




MODGOD NOTICE OF AGREED, FIXED.

This post has been edited by Abyss: 15 April 2019 - 02:48 PM

[D'rek]

In general, you can't trust any of the "xxth year of so-and-so" lines at the start of any of the books. IIRC the Genebackis and Lether year counts based on those don't make sense, either. And SE has said himself to ignore them if you want the timeline to make (more) sense.

As for WJ and Surly and the rest of the old guard... yeah, it's weird. One gets the sense from Gardens of the Moon that Dujek, Whiskeyjack, and even Surly have had long careers in the empire but are still fairly "normal" people from perhaps the 2nd or 3rd generation of the empire, that only Kellanved, Dancer, and a smattering of mages like Tattersail have been around since the actual start of the empire. Then House of Chains flips that around and gives an exact list of the "founders" from a century past, including Dujek of all people, which makes him being Whiskeyjack's lieutenant several lifetimes later a bit weird, and also means when Tattersail says Dujek is 76 in GotM that she's either wrong or the empire itself is a few decades less old.

So one way you can try to harmonize it is that the empire is more like 50-60 years old, rather than 100. Another is to "fill in" that many of the "old guard" had access to one or more means to extend their lifespan. For Kellanved, Dancer, Surly, the Crusts, Nok, Hawl, Toc, Amaron, Dassem, Dujek one of these means would be an effect from having lived in the Deadhouse. Another could be Denul rituals that extend lifespan, which are mentioned in Return of the Crimson Guard, they could even have been an empire policy of giving them to the upper members of the empire. Depending on how you want to reconcile various events and mentions, and where you want to place certain wars in the timeline this could apply to Gesler, Stormy, Duiker, Coltaine, Bult, Whiskeyjack, Fiddler, Ullen, Greymane, Choss, and others. And you'll then need to adjust the longevity of the Avowed, too, though for them the cause doesn't change.

It's a lot to reconcile, but that doesn't mean it isn't do-able. There aren't *that* many wars and events in the Empire's history and you can play around quite a bit with how long the conquests of Quon Tali and Seven Cities actually took, while other events like the Aren Uprising the novels have already portrayed in multiple different, mutually exclusive perspectives so you can fiddle with them, too. You can make a setup that "works", more or less, there's just a lot to churn through.

AND THEN you get Kellanved's Reach and it's bizarre sort of "the empire wasn't founded when it says it was founded" ... thing. Which, uh, works pretty well in the mathematics, I guess. But doesn't seem to align all that well with how characters actually speak about the empire in the other novels, does it?

[Abyss]

the timeline is not important the timeline is not important
the timeline is not important the timeline is not important
the timeline is not important the timeline is not important
the timeline is not important the timeline is not important
the timeline is not important the timeline is not important
the timeline is not important the timeline is not important


the timeline is not important the timeline is not important
the timeline is not important the timeline is not important
the timeline is not important the timeline is not important
the timeline is not important the timeline is not important
the timeline is not important the timeline is not important

[Nevyn]

Now that its in the right thread.

In Kellanved's reach Kellanved argues with Heboric who tells him that an empire should be recorded as beginning from the emperor's birth.

Which, depending on which version went down in the books, could account for 20, 70, or some other number of those 96 years.

Of course, there are any number of contradictions between this and House of Chains, which stood as the previous explanation for long life, etc, through residency in the deadhouse.

[Avernite]

Having just finished the book, I am also thinking maybe the HoC kind of version is propaganda - the rest of the stories make clear Quon Tali, at least, has been controlled so long that people don't really remember the before very well (even if they know stories about before), but there are still actively opposing elements there. Meanwhile in 7C, people still seem to yearn for the before.

Now, hanging numbers on that is hard, but I'd give it a minimum 20 years on QT (enough for a generation to grow up knowing nothing else) and maybe max 80 (there are still active opponents from more or less the conquest era, excluding the undying Crimson Guard), but it could be anywhere between 5 and 200 on 7C (nationalist uprisings have looong memories).

My best guesswork is that it's about 40 on QT, 20 on 7C, and the HoC version tries to make it appear as way more.

[Zuzu Bolin]

On a re-read of HoC and I'm at the bit where Kalam thinks"You damned fool, Cotillion. You were at the first chaining, weren't you? You should have stuck a knife in the bastard right then and there."

So when did this first chaining of the CG occur, and is Kalam just mistaken in thinking Cotillion was in attendance?

[tehol1769]

Maybe throwing additional wrenches into the timeline, but should we / could we have seen Fiddler? He was with WJ when they were apprentice masons / knew Dunsparrow so he was probably involved by now