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Tentative timeline


Happy Ent

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I will try to keep an updated timeline in this thread for reference, collecting the information that is otherwise scattered through the other threads.

Comments and corrections are extremely welcome. Also, note that this thread in itself is in a state of sin since the author (Mr Martin) doesn't want us to do this kind of thing.

299

November

1 Balon Greyjoy dead.

2-3 The Prophet.

14 Prologue. Pate dead.

16 Red Wedding

December

15 (+/- weeks) Iron Captain

16 Drowned Man. Euron King.

300

January

1 Tyrion VIII. Sansa V. Joffrey dead.

2-3 Jaime VII. Jame arrives King's Landing

4-12 Tyrion IX, X Tyrion's trial

7 Stannis leaves Dragonstone

12 Oberyn dead

February

2 Stannis saves the Wall

4 The Soiled Knight

11 Jaime IX Jaime gives Oathkeeper to Brienne

12 Jon Snow elected Lord Commander

15-16 Brienne I Brienne at Rosby, Old Stone Bridge inn

16 Tyrion XI Tywin dead

17 Cersei I Cersei finds Tywin dead. Sam I...

18 ...Sam I Sam leaves Castle Black. Arya I arrives in Braavos. Lysa Arryn dies

19 Cersei II. Cersei offers council seat to Rosby, handships to Kevan Jaime I... stands vigil

20 ...Jaime I Tommen throws up in front of Tywin's body. Queenmaker Arys Oakheart dead.

21 Sam II leaves Eastwatch

24 Brienne II Brienne in Duskendale.

25 Sansa I: Nestor Royce visits the Eyrie.

March

5 Arya II... hides needle, becomes novice. Lady Bright leaves Braavos.

8 Rape of Saltpans. Brienne III arrives at Maidenpool.

10 ...Arya II... serves Squinter and Fat Fellow.

11 Cersei III Tommen weds Margaery, Hand's Tower burnt

13 Titan's Daughter leaves for Braavos

14 Brienne dines at seedy inn

15 Tyrion Waters born. Brienne's group leaves Maidenpool

16 Sam arrives in Braavos (possibly much later). Septon Meribald speaks about broken men

18 Jaime III Kevan leaves

23 High Septon is killed in the night. Brienne IV kills Shagwell at Crackclaw point

25 Cersei IV. Small Council: Riverrun, Storm's End besieged, Davos dead

April

1 Sansa II Lords Declarant visit the Eyrie

5 Brienne V... returns to Maidenpool.

7 Tommen turns 9

15 Cersei V meets Bank of Braavos, plots Bronn's death

18 Brienne VI at Quiet Isle

19 Brienne VII... Travels from Saltpans...

22 Jaime III... leaves King's Landing

25 ... Arya II leaves temple to sell clams.

28 ...Brienne VII to Crossroads Inn

May

2 ... Jaime III arrives at Harrenhal

3 The Reaver victorious at the Shield Isles

7 Sam III meets Arya

Timeline for final Jaime chapters

I know it is premature, but since it is pretty easy, here is the timeline for the final few Jaime chapters. I number them 1,2,3,... so as to be able to relocate them. Anyway, currently may best estimate for day 1 is 10 May.

1. Addam Marbrand finds hanged men

Jaime V

3. Jaime meets Daven

4. Jaime arrives at Riverrun. Meets Aunt Genna.

Jaime VI

5. Jaime meets with the Blackfish in the morning hours. He then calls a war council, and frees Edmure. Ryman is to leave before next morning. Edmure is released the same day and escorted to Riverrun.

7. (unclear, could be later) in the night, the Blackfish escapes. Edmure "had waited most of the day" before he surrenders.

Jaime VIII

8. The next day, Blackfish's disappearance is noticed. Jaime confronts Edmure. He meets Lady Westerling. Plausible the date of the ambush on Ser Ryman. (this allows three days of travel for Ser Ryman. Robb's Stark host needed 5 day for that journey in heavy rain.)

9. A large host under Forley Prester leaves for the West, escorting Edmure and the Westerlings, Whitesmile Wat. Jaime meets with Black Walder and Edwyn Frey, discussing the news of Ser Ryman's death. (if possible to have news from Fairmarket within a day, possibly using a raven)

10. "By the next morning, little remained of the Frey encampment". Evening training with Ser Ilyn

11. Ser Dermot returns from looking for Blackfish.

12. Next morning, Ser Dermot leaves again.

? "Strongboar was the next to depart"

? "The war was all but won. Dragonstone had fallen..."

15? The Tully garrison departed the next morning

"more days passed"

19? Jaime talks to Tom o'Sevens, dreams of mum.

20? Snow in the Riverlands. Letter from Cersei

Adding this to 10 May leaves us in the first days of June.

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  • 1 month later...

It's impossible for the journey to take six days, I think. It's more than 2,000 miles long, I'd guess, and probably closer to 3,000. I'd say three weeks to a month is probably closer to the actual timeline.

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Our reasoning is laid out on the fourth page of the Sam thread in this subforum. I am majorly unhappy with the conclusion, so I would appreciate any comments on it.

(But remember that the ships are Powered by Mel, so they could sail at top speed all the time. I admit I have no idea how fast that is.)

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Looking at my material further, I see that I confused cruising speed under oar with sailing speed for Renaissance war galleys (the closest equivalent to what GRRM is supposing). I can't find any solid evidence for what a medieval galley could achieve under sail -- some random...

Oh, print.google.com saves the day. Wow, medieval galley fleets were slooow.... A 550 mile journey before the prevailing winds that was considered swift took 8 days (or a speed of about 2.6 knots). In fact, the majority of indicated fleets travel times fell between 1.5 knots and 2.5 knots -- the fastest trip was one that managed a 6.2 knot average over a short 250 miles.

But ... neither here nor there. If we're trying to squeeze the journey into as small a time period as possible, we should just take the speeds the book in question cites for galleys under sail under the most favorable possible conditions: between 6 and 10 knots. Just to get an average, 8 knots would be 9 days (for a 2,000 or so mile journey -- that'd be the journey if Stannis went into the deep sea, sailing the straightest course possible; as we know, Westerosi sailors for the most part do not sail much out of the sight of land ... but of course, that may not hold for the Myrish and Lysene sellsails Stannis mostly had left to him at that point, so who knows?) or 13.6 days for a 3,000 mile journey.

So, it's possible. It takes favorable winds and a lot of luck, but it's just possible to get it at 2 weeks. 6 days is, I think, an impossibility, however. Maybe at a 10 knot average speed and the shortest possible route it could get down to 7 days...

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... that'd be the journey if Stannis went into the deep sea, sailing the straightest course possible...

Ran, thank you for the data. I think we an assume that Stannis' fleet does indeed take the direct route. Look at the Ironborn fleet's journey to the Shield Isles. They left the coast completely, because they had Uber Shadow Magic from Asshai to help them. Melisandre has done the same. (Burnt a man on Dragonstone for it, even!)

To give the journey more time (and I would like to have it take two weeks), the easiest thing is to push Stannis' day of departure back in time, and assume that the news of his departure doesn't reach King's Landing for a week or so. Remember that the news does reach King's Landing via Varys' fishermen spies, and one could argue that it is in Varys' interest to slow down that information as much as possible. (Why? Basically because we can sweep anything under the rug called "it's in Varys' interest".)

To falsify that, we would need to infer something from the last Davos chapter in Storm about what kind of information arrives on Dragonstone before the fleet leaves. Do they know that Joff died?

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Assuming a speed of 6 knots and a distance of around ~2,000 miles, it would take about 13 days to make the journey.

In Davos's last chapter, Davos tells Stannis that Joffrey is dead, according to the report of Salladhor Saan.

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Good. So Stannis leaves no earlier than January 1.

Reports of his departure reach King's Landing before Jaime IX (the last Jaime chapter in Storm). Oberyn died. We have 10 full days of Tyrion's trial and preparation for it in Tyrion IX and Tyrion X; I put Oberyn's death in mid-January (I have the 10th, to be concrete). This allows as a pretty good fix on Stannis' departure: the first two weeks of January. (Closer to the 15th is my feeling, but it depends on the efficiency of Varys' fishermen spies.)

We also have 10 full days at the Wall where the brothers vote. After that, Jon Snow is elected and Storm ends. I have Tywin's death at the end of January (allowing Tyrion to rot two weeks in the Black cells after Oberyn's death—he has lost "all sense of time", and so have we, the readers). This information seems to not have reached Jon in his first chapter, which hence cannot be too far into February.

I am tempted to move Tywin's death even farther into February. Can Tyrion have rotted in the black cells for a full month? This would mean that there is but a single Kings Landing chapter for the period January 15 (Oberyn's death) and February 15 (Tywin's death), namely Jaime IX (wherein Brienne receives her sword).

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Can Tyrion have rotted in the black cells for a full month?

I do think so. Apart from the timeline at the Wall, there are some other clues, in my opinion, that point to Tyrion having stayed in the black cells for a long time. At least two weeks I would say.

Brienne leaves KL after Oberyn's death and only heards news about Tywin's death in Duskensdale. She stays some days in KL before departing, asking there for news about Sansa and Dontos.

Arys chapter, the Soiled Knight, takes place at least two weeks after Oberyn's death (he thinks of a man having been murdered a fortnaight before only because he was from KL); and at that time there are no news in Dorne about Tywin's death.

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I have updated the timeline in the first post to accommodate some of the helpful points made by you all. Basically, I have much increased the timespan between the death of Oberyn and that of Tywin. Not much happens in the King's Landing timeline for those events (a single Jaime chapter sees Brienne off, so it happens at the very end of that interval), but so be it. Poor Tyrion now spends a full five weeks in the Black Cells awaiting his execution. That seems wrong, but he is in no position to complain.

This gives Stannis his much needed three weeks to travel from Dragonstone to the Wall, blunting the harshest criticism of my calculations. What's more important is that it gives the Dorne timeline some time to breathe. Soiled Knight now plays two-and-a-half weeks after Captain, which it needs to given Ashara's observation. (I still would like to see the quote, though!) There would still be two more weeks before Tywin kicks the bucket, ample time for Arianne to hatch her silly plan.

I have tentatively placed Lysa's death to pretty much coincide with Tywin's.

Middle of March! Right now we are already spanning four-and-a-half months between the earliest (death of Balon Greyjoy) and the current events (wedding of Marge and Tommen).

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I have tentatively placed Lysa's death to pretty much coincide with Tywin's.

Does this mean that you think only two days passes between the last Sansa chapter in ASOS and the first in AFFC? I don't have any hard evidence, and I can't check the books at the moment, but my impression is that it was more time. My main reason for this is that Sansa appears to have been tormented by the songs of the imprisoned Marrilion for a longish time, weeks rather than days.

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Does this mean that you think only two days passes between the last Sansa chapter in ASOS and the first in AFFC?

No. Good catch, that was sloppy editing (fixed it now).

I have a week between the two chapters:

18 Feb Lysa Arryn dead

25 Feb Lord Nestor visits the Eyrie

And there is lots of wiggle room still. I guess the letter writing between Cersei and Petyr is one of the few constraints we have to put on this, later.

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Soiled Knight now plays two-and-a-half weeks after Captain, which it needs to given Ashara's observation. (I still would like to see the quote, though!)

The quote is the very beginning of the "soiled knight" chapter :

"It would not do for him to be recognized. A fortnight past, a trader had been butchered in the shadow city, a harmless man who’d come to Dorne for fruit and found death instead of dates. His only crime was being from King’s Landing [...]

Even before Prince Oberyn had died, the knight had been ill at ease whenever he left the grounds of Sunspear to walk the alleys of the shadow city."

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Happy Ent:

Can't we assume that Varys' spies are _very_ inefficient? Recall that as of A Clash of Kings, nobody knew what was going on because Varys' spies had a way of disappearing. And by the end of A Storm of Swords, Stannis is being very quiet, it's well known that he has only a small force left, vastly outnumbered by the Tyrell-Lannister force, and so long as Dorne is (seemingly) allied with King's Landing he doesn't have a lot of places he could go. (The North is something that nobody seems to have considered.)

Tywin would obviously want to know what Stannis is up to, but Varys would presumably have some trouble recruiting new fisherfolk given that nobody knows exactly what happened to the others. Also, it's hard to see Stannis' plans getting all that much attention; Tywin is mainly concerned about the murder of Joffrey and fractures within the governing alliance at this time. So I think it's arguable that a fair amount of time passes until Tywin learns that Stannis has gone.

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The quote from Cersei II, where she thinks about Lysa Arryn's being already dead and Littlefinger facing trouble in the Vale, it is on page 108 UK hadrcover edition:

When he (Gyles Rosby) dies I will find someone else. Perhaps she would recall Littlefinger. The queen could not imagine that Petyr Baelish would be allowed to remain Lord Protector of the Vale for very long, with Lysa Arryn dead. The Vale lords were already stirring, if what Pycelle said was true. Once they take that wretched boy awayy from him, Lord Petyr will come crawling back
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18 ...Sam I Sam leaves Castle Black. Arya I arrives in Braavos. Lysa Arryn dies

8 Rape of Saltpans

Arya was in the inn on crossroads not very long before the rape of Saltpans, if she was there much time before, brienne wouldn't worry if she is killed there.

Arya departed from Saltpans only a few days before the rape and arrived in Braavos two weeks(?) later

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Arya was in the inn on crossroads not very long before the rape of Saltpans, if she was there much time before, brienne wouldn't worry if she is killed there.

Do you have any kind of reference for that?

Ser Gregor leaves his men a few days before Arya meets them at the crossroads. They sure haven't heard of the Oberyn-duel yet. That means Arya is at the crossroads ''before'' Oberyn dies.

The rape of Saltpans is after the Marge–Tommy wedding.

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