Timeline

[WelshDude]

Our previous understanding of the timeline was that 10,000 years before present, there was a truce between the children and the first men to end a 2,000 year war. Another two thousand years later (8,000 years before present) the Long Night began and the Others came.

But if the CotF were at peace with the men, why did they create the Others? (As leaf said in the episode they did)

And where does the Night's Watch fit into all this? The Night's King was apparently its 13th Lord Commander, so if he was the first Other, what were the other 12 fighting and why was the Wall built? And does that mean his war against Joramun and the King in the North was the Battle for the Dawn?

The timeline no longer seems to make any sense to me. Is this just because the show is diverging from the book? Or perhaps the histories are unreliable, as they were written by First Men?

 

 

 

 

[WelshDude]

Bump

[dbunting]

This can't realty be answered I don't think. You are melding the book timeline with the show timeline. Book actions and show actions.

[Tucu]

There is no reliable timeline until well after the Andal invasion and the creation of the Maester's order. Even after that facts were lost and distorted by time, war and politics.

My guess is that The Pact was breached multiple times between its agreement and the Long Night. This would explain why The Last Hero found it so hard to find the CoTF; they were hiding and planning a revenge after thousands of years of breaches.

[jet199]

The time line as we have been told so far it is wrong. Hence GRRM having Sam point out the number of Lord commanders is off in the books (and having Jon cut him off before he can say why).

[LadyAlisande]

The story of the 13th Lord Commander being the Night King is told by unreliable narrators. It's possible the story has changed a lot in retelling over and over, especially as it has become a story to scare children. Something probably happened around that time that involved the Lord Commander and the Night King, and somehow the story was changed to equate the two characters.

Also, remember that we're dealing with a medieval-style society that doesn't have carbon dating, archaeology, DNA tests, or even much in the way of historians -- just the maesters, who may have reasons for telling history a certain way. 

Finally, the pact was between the CotF and the First Men. But then the Andals invaded Westeros. According to AWOIAF:

Quote

"It is unknown when the Andals sailed west across the narrow sea from Andalos to Westeros, with some sources dating the Andal invasion to six thousand years ago.^[8] According to the True History, it occurred four thousand years ago, and some maesters claim it was only two thousand years ago."

So, maybe it was more like 8,000 years ago, and that's why and when the CotF created the White Walkers.

[Hangatyr]

On 24/05/2016 at 0:22 PM, WelshDude said:

Our previous understanding of the timeline was that 10,000 years before present, there was a truce between the children and the first men to end a 2,000 year war. Another two thousand years later (8,000 years before present) the Long Night began and the Others came.

But if the CotF were at peace with the men, why did they create the Others? (As leaf said in the episode they did)

And where does the Night's Watch fit into all this? The Night's King was apparently its 13th Lord Commander, so if he was the first Other, what were the other 12 fighting and why was the Wall built? And does that mean his war against Joramun and the King in the North was the Battle for the Dawn?

The timeline no longer seems to make any sense to me. Is this just because the show is diverging from the book? Or perhaps the histories are unreliable, as they were written by First Men?

Let's assume that show didn't screw the intended timeline.

- First Men arrive to Westeros.

- FM attacks CotF.

- CotF creates the WW.

- War eases and a peace treaty is made.

- WW are shut down by the CotF.

- Something goes wrong and the WW attacks Westeros.

- After the Long Night, the Night's Watch is created.

Possible conclusion: There's no relation between the Night's King and the 13th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch.

[Melisandre's Rubies]

I think that either the show is not following the timeline of the books or they have condensed the characters again. The show is using the same actor to play both parts, though they did the same thing for Jaqen in regards to the Kindly Man, but they haven't really built up the same back story for the NK. They haven't referred to him as the 13th LC, they haven't told the story of him being a part of the Night's Watch and falling in love with an Other. By that story in the books, the NK can not be the first other because they had to have already existed for him to fall in love with one. 
The show also didn't not confirm, at this point, that the man who they changed was a member of the Night's Watch. We can only assume that he was one of the First Men. Even if the origins of the White Walkers is the same in the book, it very well could be that while the Children created them as a weapon during their fighting with the First Men, they lost control of them leading them to form a pact and peace with the FM to control this "weapon" that had spiraled out of their control and set into motion the Long Night. Building the Wall became part of the solution to contain them. Then years later the 13th LC became the Night's King. 
So neither has really compromised the timeline because they are not using the same timelines or event markers. 

[Xcorpyo001]

I also think that the timelines are different, both in the book and the show.

At one point in time, the First Men arrived in Westeros and came in contact with the CotF. They fought for a while, a Pact was signed, some FM even took to the religion of the CotF. After all, it was a easy thing to do, because there was tangible proof that the gods were real, or that they have power. I am referring to the magic of the CotF, like warging, greenseeing, plasma grenades, etc.

Later, the Andals came to Westeros. And with them came the real enemy. The Faith and the Faith Militant, the armed faction of the religion. Their gods had no tangible powers, so they saw the CotF and their powers as a real threat. They feared that in time some of the Andals will also start following this religion, because seeing the magic at work would have been a very good point in their favor.

And so the real CotF and weirwood massacre began, the Andals also fighting the FM at the same time. We see this in the history book GRRM wrote with Elio&co. I think that it was at this point in time when the CotF created the WW from a descendant of both humans and CotF. They might have build the Wall as a last line of defense, after the magical rituals of destroying the Arm of Dorne and the Neck both failed and couldn’t stop the Andal invasion.

The children also built in a failsafe in the WW. They made them weak against their own weapons(obsidian), so if they ever rebelled, they could be handled with ease. But they failed to foresee  the wights that the WW could raise, that were immune only to fire, a magic the CotF were not able to wield with great power. They somehow defeat the WW and seal them away, or make some sort of deal with them. The children and the hardcore FM remain north of the Wall, while a fraction of the FM are holding the south side of the Wall, so in case the WW return, the people north of the wall have a secured base south, keeping Moat Cailin as a line of defense against the Andals south of the Neck..

Now, if this is the real order of events, why did the Andals refused to acknowledge that the  WW were real, or that they fought them alongside the CotF and the FM? Simple, because they wanted to protect the Faith. And really hated magic, that had no place in the teachings of their religion. So the maesters in cahoots with the septons make this new trumped up history, saying that it was the FM that did all that, but since they had no written history and it can’t be proved, all these stories are probably false. So if the CotF and the WW are only fairytales, then their gods and their magic is false as well, and the Faith is the one and only true religion in the land. And after a while, people forgot about the real history and only the histories written by the masters remain. History is made by the victor. And the Andals used it to protect their maesters(who think that magic has no place in their new world), and their religion, that had no supernatural events to strengthen it’s set of beliefs, one having to take everything on faith. And claiming that magical beings and powerful old gods are only fairytales made up by the antiquated and misguided First Men would really help in that regard. Until the dragons came, of course.