Gendry's age - evidence from different POVs

[Lady Dacey]

Hi, I posted this on the general fórum, but I guess here would be the right place. Sorry, I'm a newbie.

 

I couldn't believe when I saw on the wiki page that it's "canon" that Gendry was born in 284 AC just because of one Arya line... that's absurd. 

First and foremost: I don't mean to state how old he actually is or when was he born. My point is preciselly that we DON'T KNOW, and can't know with the information we have so far. But it's safe to say we is between 13 and 15 when Brienne meets him.

 

And why is that? Well let's go to textual evidence:

1) From Ned's POV: Ned meets him he thinks "he is probably as old as Robb"

- we know that's impossible because Robb was concieved just after Ned married Catelyn and Gendry must have been concieved after the sack of Kings Landing, for before that Robert was nowhere near the capital.

- Ned has that thought BEFORE Mott says the boy is "strong for his age", impling that if Ned thought Gendry was then fourteen, he was sure younger than that.

2)  From Arya's POV: now, this is a nine/ten year-old girl who's quite small, and we get to see Gendry through her eyes 

- we have her saying he's older and bigger than Hot Pie and Lommy, but we don't know how old these two are. They could easely be around ten/eleven and teasing Arya who is a small nine-year-old girl. Gendry would only have to be twelve to be older than they were. At that age an year might mean a lot.

- in a moment of danger, wishing her 'pack' were strong enough not to be captured, she states to herself that Gendry is "several inches taller and five years older" than herself. That's an assumpssion.

- She never again (or before) mentions Gendry's age, they don't talk about it at all to each other or anyone else that we readers know of.

- And we know he looks older than he actually is, even for gorwn-ups. Imagine from a ten-year-old perspective!

3) From Davos's POV: he never met Gendry, but he's got something to tell us about his genetics

- Davos compares Edric Storm with his own son Devan. Devan is currently elevem, "shy of twelve", and is the oldest kid in the room.

-That makes Edric either also eleven but a few months younger (I don't think it likely, he wouldn't say his son was older than Edric than, he'd probably say they were 'of age') or ten or maybe even less. Let us say he's ten. Yet he's "three inches taller and broader of chest and shoulders" then Devan, who by the way already has a "fuzz" around his jaw. One that would shame a peach, according to his father, but no less a sing he's closer to adolescence and the development of secundary sexual characteristcs. And we never hear anyone talk about Davos as a small man, he's probably pretty avarage.

- So, this half-brother to our Gendry is at the age of ten much bigger then another boy who's almost twelve. 

4) From Brienne's POV: we get more impressions of an adult about Gendry's sizs and age

- Before she ever see's Gendry, she hears the voice of a BOY. To me this is very telling, it means he hasn't fully grown yet. We all know how it works when a teen starts to change his "boy voice" into "adult voice". It's very interlink with hormones and it varies from person to person. Gendry is BIG, but he's still a boy. 

- She states he's YOUNGER than Renly was when she met him. Well, that would be his comming of age tour through the Stormlands, when he was sixteen. Ok, that could make Gendry fifteen, but...

- it's not really easy to tell a sixteen-year-old boy apart from a fifteen-year-old is it? Specially since she remarks Gendry is stronger and broader than Renly ever was (she describes him as "lithe").

- That makes me think he's probably around fourteen (going on fifteen) when he meets Brienne. Which would make him twelve by the time Ned met him, which makes sense given how big Robert's sons seem to be... 

5) From real life: we know puberty is an awkard time. My own son is a really big boy - he was born with more than 4kg and has always been much taller than all his peers. My half-brother is actually 1,80m now, and he's twelve and still growing, and pretty much a boy. My own husband was already 1,86m (his current size) at thirteen. He had a beard at the same age! Not a full beard, but visible thick black hair on his jaws and mustache all the same. 

 

But all in all my point is: we can't know for sure. I DO know we can't rely on Arya's information. He could be any age between 11 and 14 when Ned met him in 298 AC, and any age between 13 and 16 when Brienne meets him in 300 AC. My guess is he's probably around three years Arya's senior, a year older than Sansa and two years younger than Robb/Jon. But that's just my impression. My guess goes to him being twelve in september 298 (according to the timeline, that's when Ned met him) and in the end of his fourteenth year or the begenning of his fifteenth when Brienne encounters him in May of 30. 

 

What do you think? 

 

[Rhaenys_Targaryen]

On 30-11-2017 at 5:33 PM, Lady Dacey said:

- in a moment of danger, wishing her 'pack' were strong enough not to be captured, she states to herself that Gendry is "several inches taller and five years older" than herself. That's an assumpssion.

I think it is a stretch so assume that Arya's statement is an assumption. Nothing in Arya's POV suggests that she is guessing at his age. They've known each other for a while by that point, so it wouldn't be strange for his age to have come up in conversation. The fact that his age is not mentioned again, either before or after, means nothing imo.

 

 

On 30-11-2017 at 5:33 PM, Lady Dacey said:

3) From Davos's POV: he never met Gendry, but he's got something to tell us about his genetics

- Davos compares Edric Storm with his own son Devan. Devan is currently elevem, "shy of twelve", and is the oldest kid in the room.

-That makes Edric either also eleven but a few months younger (I don't think it likely, he wouldn't say his son was older than Edric than, he'd probably say they were 'of age') or ten or maybe even less. Let us say he's ten. Yet he's "three inches taller and broader of chest and shoulders" then Devan, who by the way already has a "fuzz" around his jaw. One that would shame a peach, according to his father, but no less a sing he's closer to adolescence and the development of secundary sexual characteristcs. And we never hear anyone talk about Davos as a small man, he's probably pretty avarage.

- So, this half-brother to our Gendry is at the age of ten much bigger then another boy who's almost twelve.

Edric is twelve years old in 299 AC, placing his birth in 286 AC or 287 AC. Devan is older, and known to have been 11 at some point in 299 AC, and 12 in 300 AC. As Devan's possible years of birth are 287 AC and 288 AC (either having been 10 turning 11 in 299 AC and 11 turning 12 in 300 AC, or 11 turning 12 in 299 AC and 12 turning 13 in 300 AC), and Edric is the younger boy of the two, both of them must have been born in the same year, as no other option is possible, given the numbers we have. That means that Edric and Devan do differ months from one another.

Regardless, although they are half-brothers, we cannot simply apply Edric's appearance to Gendry

 

Brienne believes that Gendry, when she meets him, is younger than Renly had been when he came to Tarth, which she earlier on had said was during his coming of age tour (so Renly had been 16 years old at the time). Although Brienne also admits that she is terrible at judging how old a child is, and indeed judges Podrick Payne's age at ten, when he is in fact two or three years older. (Although she usually judges children too young, instead of too old).

 

I'll add Brienne's statement about judging Gendry to be younger than 16 when she meets him in 300 AC, but I must say that her statement still fits with Arya's, so the outcome will remain unchanged at the moment (at least until we get further textual information). That Gendry is 15 (or younger) in 300 AC indicates that he was born no earlier than 284 AC (as he, at most, will turn 16 later that year). Arya's statement about him being 5 years older than her then eliminates the possibility of him being much younger than that.

[Lady Dacey]

5 hours ago, Rhaenys_Targaryen said:

Nothing in Arya's POV suggests that she is guessing at his age. 

I have to disagree.