Dating i can't ignore and the implied picture it paints.

[AlaskanSandman]

There is no better way to do this then starting at present and working backwards. Ill only provide quotes for the "less known dating"

300 years ago- Aegon's Conquest

400 years ago- Destruction of Valyria

600 years ago - Hardhome, only settlement north of the wall on it's way to becoming a city is burned completely. In the Frozen Arctic...

                          Valyria takes Dragons Stone.

1300-900 years ago - Sometime after the Andal Invasion of the Reach and the Creation of the Order of the Greenhand. House Manderly is banished and go North. (multiple dates given for this account.)

1300 years ago - The Starry Sept is built by Lord Tristan Hightower, Great Grandson of Dorian Hightower who welcomed the Andals and married one upon their invasion of Old Town. (No counter dates given)

 

Spoiler

 

A Feast for Crows - Prologue

The Lord's Sept joined in a moment later, then the Seven Shrines from their gardens across the Honeywine, and finally the Starry Sept that had been the seat of the High Septon for a thousand years before Aegon landed at King's Landing. 

The World of Ice and Fire - The Reach: Oldtown

When the Andals came, the Hightowers were amongst the first lords of Westeros to welcome them. "Wars are bad for trade," said Lord Dorian Hightower, when he set aside his wife of twenty years, the mother of his children, to take an Andal princess as his bride. His grandson Lord Damon (the Devout) was the first to accept the Faith. To honor the new gods, he built the first sept in Oldtown and six more elsewhere in his realm. When he died prematurely of a bad belly, Septon Robeson became regent for his newborn son, ruling Oldtown in all but name for the next twenty years and ultimately becoming the first High Septon. The boy he raised and trained, Lord Triston Hightower, raised the Starry Sept in his honor after his passing.

 

 

                            Class Candles brought to Old Town. (No counter dates given)

 

Spoiler

 

A Feast for Crows - Prologue

A hush fell over the torchlit terrace. Armen sighed and shook his head. Mollander began to laugh. The Sphinx studied Leo with his big black eyes. Roone looked lost.

Pate knew about the glass candles, though he had never seen one burn. They were the worst-kept secret of the Citadel. It was said that they had been brought to Oldtown from Valyria a thousand years before the Doom. He had heard there were four; one was green and three were black, and all were tall and twisted.

 

 

                           

                               Falcon Crown first worn by Ser Artys Arryn of the Andal invasion forged. (No counter dates given)

 

Spoiler

 

The World of Ice and Fire - The Reign of the Dragons: The Conquest

The two queens smiled at one another and exchanged courtesies instead. Then Lady Sharra sent for the three crowns (her own regent's coronet, her son's small crown, and the Falcon Crown of Mountain and Vale that the Arryn kings had worn for a thousand years), and surrendered them to Queen Visenya, along with the swords of her garrison. And it was said afterward that the little king flew thrice about the summit of the Giant's Lance and landed to find himself a little lord. Thus did Visenya Targaryen bring the Vale of Arryn into her brother's realm.

The World of Ice and Fire - The Vale: House Arryn

The true tale of House Arryn contains neither giants nor griffins nor huge falcons, yet from the day Ser Artys first donned the Falcon Crown to the present, they have rightly held a storied place in the history of the Seven Kingdoms. 

 

 

 

2000 years ago- Dawn forged. Weapon used during Battle of the Dawn during the Long Night when the Wall was built. (Counter date, legend says it was made during the Long Night, which legend says was 8000 years ago. 

 

 

Spoiler

 

You've mentioned that Dawn has an illustrious history -- is there a ballpark figure for how long the Daynes and/or Starfall/Dawn have existed?

Oh, I'd say Dawn goes back a couple thousand years... and before that, things get a little fuzzy anyway.

http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Category/C91/P75/

 

 

                       

                             Andal Invasion. (One of 3 possible dates given)

Spoiler

 

A Dance with Dragons - Jaime I

Only no one knows when the Andals crossed the narrow sea. The True History says four thousand years have passed since then, but some maesters claim that it was only two.

 

                         

                           Bracken conversion to the Faith? (Assumed by above two dates.)

                           Brackens poison Blackwood Tree? (Question, not fact)

2500-3000 years ago- Beginning of Blackwoods vs Brackens feud during the Age of Heroes. (No other dates given.)

                                 

Spoiler

 

A Dance with Dragons - Jaime I

"… gave her Barba's teats." Jaime laughed. "How did all this begin, between Blackwood and Bracken? Is it written down?"

"It is, my lord," the boy said, "but some of the histories were penned by their maesters and some by ours, centuries after the events that they purport to chronicle. It goes back to the Age of Heroes. The Blackwoods were kings in those days. The Brackens were petty lords, renowned for breeding horses. Rather than pay their king his just due, they used the gold their horses brought them to hire swords and cast him down."-

-"Five hundred years before the Andals. A thousand, if the True History is to be believed. Only no one knows when the Andals crossed the narrow sea. The True History says four thousand years have passed since then, but some maesters claim that it was only two.

 

 

 

Would love to hear if any one has theories involving any of this. I've done my own speculating. These dates counter the popular legends within ASOIAF as well known by me, yet many of these have no counter dates given. 

Before this, there is mere legend. Having to do with the Starks arrival in the North via Brandon the builder and the Ousting of House Blackwood. 
Brandon the Builder being a possible son of Brandon of the Bloody Blade, who is son to Garth the Green, the First High King of Westeros in a time when the Wall didn't exist. Meaning the North (beyond the Wall) was likely ruled by Garth. 

Legends surrounding these times of interest have to do with the supposed curse on Garth's Barrow, preventing any one from rivaling or equaling Garth. Before the Wall, there would be about 9 Kingdoms (Crownlands didn't exist as independent). After the Wall, no settlements allowed to become cities north of the Wall, and no true kingdoms ever form after. Making for a total of only 8 out of 9 Kingdoms rule-able. 

I talk more about this though in an old thread 1 Kingdom, 1 Curse, and 1 Wall. 

Imo Garth seem's like a figure from the East who left the Empire of the Dawn after having kids out there. He then came to Westeros where he had more kids. His kids from the East seem to have arrived in Westeros and warred with his other children. Legends from back then are hard to take parse out obviously, but that's my short take on it. 

These above dates keep coming back to me though when trying to figure out anything in the series. (The only major date from the east that really counters anything is Dany's claim the the Ghiscari war ended 5000 years ago, "if she remembers right.". I've combed over the Valyrian and Ghisacri information and its especially bare. Best to go off of is their expansion in Sothoryos and Valyria's expansion in Essos. These tales come from the East though and even harder to compare to legends from Westeros. As Tales from North of Westeros to South of Westeros tend to vary, Tales from Westeros to Essos likely very to a greater extent.

GRRM's comments on Dawn i think are the most intriguing. Either Dawn was forged once, during the Long Night. Or it's not that magical and been made many times. Considering Ned has seen it in action, we know it's not some mere prop illusion. It's legit awesome and comparable to Valyrian Steel, but different some how. Not impossible that the Daynes know how to make it again, but what would that mean for the story??? Otherwise, it's a one time made sword, and the Long Night ended 2000 years ago. And the Bracken and Blackwood feud began before the Long Night did. 

Again, would love to hear if any one has any theories that work off of some of these dates, and where those theories have taken you. 

I know some people are pretty keen on the general narrative of Long Night 8000 years ago, and Andals 6000 or 4000 years ago and wont like or agree with most of this, but it's worth bringing up imo. 

[Bloodraven's Spider]

The Maesters/Andals are complete liars. They consistently contradict themselves. I don’t have the money text with me now but I’ll post some later. 

 

[Rufus Snow]

2 hours ago, AlaskanSandman said:

   Falcon Crown first worn by Ser Artys Arryn of the Andal invasion forged. (No counter dates given)

 

  Hide contents

 

The World of Ice and Fire - The Reign of the Dragons: The Conquest

The two queens smiled at one another and exchanged courtesies instead. Then Lady Sharra sent for the three crowns (her own regent's coronet, her son's small crown, and the Falcon Crown of Mountain and Vale that the Arryn kings had worn for a thousand years), and surrendered them to Queen Visenya, along with the swords of her garrison. And it was said afterward that the little king flew thrice about the summit of the Giant's Lance and landed to find himself a little lord. Thus did Visenya Targaryen bring the Vale of Arryn into her brother's realm.

The World of Ice and Fire - The Vale: House Arryn

The true tale of House Arryn contains neither giants nor griffins nor huge falcons, yet from the day Ser Artys first donned the Falcon Crown to the present, they have rightly held a storied place in the history of the Seven Kingdoms. 

 

 

I've looked into the timeline of the Vale, by trawling through the various kings and cross-referencing events that occur between different kingdoms, and that 'thousand years' referenced for the Arryn kings is too short to fit everything in. IMHO this very quote shows that a 'thousand years' in the text =/= 1,000 years.

First major contradiction that shows up: Tristifer IV Mudd (defeated by Roland II Arryn, who I estimated to be approx the 7th Arryn King of Mountain and Vale) is regarded in the Riverlands to have lived 'thousands' of years ago.

Roland I Arryn - credited with starting work on the Eyrie - was the 4th Arryn KMV, ruled for 26yrs, and there were two other kings between him and Roland II, who managed 4 yrs and wasn't continuing to work on the castle. His successor Robin I Arryn resumed work, then it was completed 'four kings and 43 years later'. So by my reckoning, the Eyrie took ~100 yrs to build, and it was completed ~130yrs after the Battle of the Seven Stars.

Named KMVs after the completion of the Eyrie include: Osric V Arryn, Hugh Arryn (the Fat), Hugo Arryn (the Hopeful), Alester II Arryn and Matthis II Arryn.

Matthis II brings us to a minimum of 17 and a possible maximum in excess of 23 Arryn kings to date: I've drawn up an 'average length of rule' from various records, and by my estimate, this puts Matthis II approximately 250-350 years after the Battle of the Seven Stars. He is also notable for being the Arryn king ruling at the beginning of the 'Worthless War', which lasted for 'a thousand years' in one account, and another expressly states 'ten centuries' (to my mind this is a closer estimate to 1,000 years, than 'a thousand years' is....) Now, the maesters claim this all began 2,000 years ago.... and it clearly ended long before the Conquest, so if we accept the 'thousand years of Arryns holding the Falcon Crown', there simply wasn't the time to have that Worthless War.

To complicate matters, I also trawled the Riverlands material, and despite the tradition that Tris IV lived 'thousands' of years ago, the best estimate I can make there is that 'centuries' of petty Andal kings (ie at least 200 years, possibly more) passed between him and ser Benedict the Bold and the Justman kings.  Taking the reported lifespans of various dynasties in the Riverlands, and occasions like the '100 years anarchy' and so on, my best estimate for Benedict was around ~900BC. Making Tristifer IV Mudd at 1100BC as his most recent possible date.

It's amazing how well GRRM has dated things to frustrate a complete cross-referencing, but the best estimate I can make for Artys I Arryn is ~1200BC - possibly much earlier, but definitely no later.

(And yes, all this does mean I have made a big spreadsheet.... )

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

One of George's common themes in other stories is the protagonists having a false version of the history on their planet.

In Dark, dark were the Tunnels, Greel thinks his people have lived underground for a million years, but it has only been 500.  Same in In House of the Worm, their sun went supergiant then/and/or went cold, they went underground, most people couldn't read anymore, and real history about the history of their civ is lost, and thus they have no idea what year it is and what happened to their planet.  Pretty much the same with the Kavalaan in Dying of the Light, they lived underground after the Hrangans nuked and attacked them with plagues, and real history was replaced with myth.  In Bitterblooms they don't know anything about their planet having been a colony of a spacefaring civ that was destroyed in the Double War.

So, I think that there is a good chance that much of the "history" in ASOIAF is mixed with myth and dates can't be trusted, but myths--even fantastic ones--are based on real events.  The Kavalaan decorated their holdfasts with gargoyles, and the gargoyles were representations of the slave races that the Hrangans had sent to destroy their civ: the Hruun, the dactyloids, and the githyanki (coincidentally these parallel the Giants, the Dragons, and the Weirwood) even though they had forgotten what had really happened. 

 

Then there is the possibility of outright fabrication of history from the septons and Maesters.  The main source of the Kavalaan history/myth was Jamis-Lion Taal, who rewrote "history" for propaganda purposes.

Quote

Jamis-Lion Taal, wandering the face of the world many generations later, had been so much a child of his culture that he was unable to conceive of a world in which women held any status other than what he saw; and when he was forced to think otherwise by the folklore he collected, he thought the idea intolerably wicked. Thus he rewrote all the oral literature as he cast his Demonsong cycle. He transformed Kay Iron-Smith into a thundering giant of a man, made the Sorrowing Plague a ballad of eyn-kethi wickedness, and generally created the Impression that the world had always been the way he found it. Later poets built on the foundations he had laid.

And we get a hint of that from Sam

Quote

"The Others." Sam licked his lips. "They are mentioned in the annals, though not as often as I would have thought. The annals I've found and looked at, that is. There's more I haven't found, I know. Some of the older books are falling to pieces. The pages crumble when I try and turn them. And the really old books . . . either they have crumbled all away or they are buried somewhere that I haven't looked yet or . . . well, it could be that there are no such books, and never were. The oldest histories we have were written after the Andals came to Westeros. The First Men only left us runes on rocks, so everything we think we know about the Age of Heroes and the Dawn Age and the Long Night comes from accounts set down by septons thousands of years later. There are archmaesters at the Citadel who question all of it. Those old histories are full of kings who reigned for hundreds of years, and knights riding around a thousand years before there were knights. You know the tales, Brandon the Builder, Symeon Star-Eyes, Night's King . . . we say that you're the nine hundred and ninety-eighth Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, but the oldest list I've found shows six hundred seventy-four commanders, which suggests that it was written during . . ."

[AlaskanSandman]

On 8/27/2018 at 6:38 AM, Rufus Snow said:

I've looked into the timeline of the Vale, by trawling through the various kings and cross-referencing events that occur between different kingdoms, and that 'thousand years' referenced for the Arryn kings is too short to fit everything in. IMHO this very quote shows that a 'thousand years' in the text =/= 1,000 years.

First major contradiction that shows up: Tristifer IV Mudd (defeated by Roland II Arryn, who I estimated to be approx the 7th Arryn King of Mountain and Vale) is regarded in the Riverlands to have lived 'thousands' of years ago.

Roland I Arryn - credited with starting work on the Eyrie - was the 4th Arryn KMV, ruled for 26yrs, and there were two other kings between him and Roland II, who managed 4 yrs and wasn't continuing to work on the castle. His successor Robin I Arryn resumed work, then it was completed 'four kings and 43 years later'. So by my reckoning, the Eyrie took ~100 yrs to build, and it was completed ~130yrs after the Battle of the Seven Stars.

Named KMVs after the completion of the Eyrie include: Osric V Arryn, Hugh Arryn (the Fat), Hugo Arryn (the Hopeful), Alester II Arryn and Matthis II Arryn.

Matthis II brings us to a minimum of 17 and a possible maximum in excess of 23 Arryn kings to date: I've drawn up an 'average length of rule' from various records, and by my estimate, this puts Matthis II approximately 250-350 years after the Battle of the Seven Stars. He is also notable for being the Arryn king ruling at the beginning of the 'Worthless War', which lasted for 'a thousand years' in one account, and another expressly states 'ten centuries' (to my mind this is a closer estimate to 1,000 years, than 'a thousand years' is....) Now, the maesters claim this all began 2,000 years ago.... and it clearly ended long before the Conquest, so if we accept the 'thousand years of Arryns holding the Falcon Crown', there simply wasn't the time to have that Worthless War.

To complicate matters, I also trawled the Riverlands material, and despite the tradition that Tris IV lived 'thousands' of years ago, the best estimate I can make there is that 'centuries' of petty Andal kings (ie at least 200 years, possibly more) passed between him and ser Benedict the Bold and the Justman kings.  Taking the reported lifespans of various dynasties in the Riverlands, and occasions like the '100 years anarchy' and so on, my best estimate for Benedict was around ~900BC. Making Tristifer IV Mudd at 1100BC as his most recent possible date.

It's amazing how well GRRM has dated things to frustrate a complete cross-referencing, but the best estimate I can make for Artys I Arryn is ~1200BC - possibly much earlier, but definitely no later.

(And yes, all this does mean I have made a big spreadsheet.... )

Lol Ditto. Its maddening hahah

I try to look at major event's more than specific people as there is not a big enough list yet for any ruling house. It took roughly 1000 years give or take a couple hundred years for the Andals to make if from the Vale to the Iron Islands. In that time is the war of the sisters, ending towards the later half of the 1000 years around the time House Manderly is booted North (some time after the Order of the Green Hand founded by House Garderner and the Andals). The Andals arriving the vale should be well back into the days of the old kings of the iron islands, them arriving should mark the Blacktyde (dont have names infront of me) making rule hereditary. As little to no kings are listed for this house said to rule nearly 1000 years, its prolly not a full 1000. Meaning, if the Andals landed roughly 2000 years before Aegon, took 1000 years to get to the Iron Islands, the 800 years? of Blacktyde rule? Then House Hoare which prolly only lasted for 3-400 years before Harren the Black. 

This would explain the size of the Kings list too. As Arryns have smallest list, followed by the Starks, Durrandons, Lannisters. With Gardeners having the longest list. Iron born a lil hazy as we dont know the time gap between Grey King and First true king. 

This would coincide with the rough dates of the Falcon Crown, Completion of Starry Sept in Old Town, and Forging of Dawn (2000 years roughly as per GRRM).

[Rufus Snow]

My gut feeling now, is that the Andals arrived even more recently than the most recent estimate of the maesters, ie less than 2,000 years before Aegon.

On 8/27/2018 at 5:51 PM, By Odin's Beard said:

Then there is the possibility of outright fabrication of history from the septons and Maesters

although I might put it more strongly than 'possibility'... we've seen it time and again in our own world. Most of the oral tradition of Irish folklore (for one example) was horribly glossed by the Christian scribes who first started writing the tales down. Half the 'native' Irish saints are barely disguised Celtic deities, and other saints wander through the tales in the same way Andal 'knights' wander through the songs allegedly telling of deeds long before the Andal invasion.

Most of the Dawn Age and Age of Heroes, is IMHO, regrettably mostly back-casting to serve the needs of the present. I no more believe in Garth Greenhands founding the Reach than I do in Aeneas (or Romulus and Remus) founding Rome. Sure everyone's entitled to their founding myths, but everyone else is also entitled to laugh at their pomposity

 

[Back door hodor]

The world book says that Nymeria led the exile to dorne somewhere between 700 and 1000 years ago. these dates are from two different sections, in one, the book claims the the valyrians destroyed the Rhoyonar in the third spice war around 1000 years ago, in the other it states that house martel has ruled a united drone for seven centuries.

So, either one or both of those dates is wrong, or Nymeria lived for over four hundred years