How can this be the case if VDT is only a year after PC? And TSC happens in the term just after VDT - just a few months at most. Where are you getting these ages from?PC:
Peter: 14
Susan: 13
Edmund: 11
Lucy: 10
TVOTDT:
Edmund: 16
Lucy: 15
Eustace: 13
TSC:
Eustace: 15
Jill: 15
How can this be the case if VDT is only a year after PC? And TSC happens in the term just after VDT - just a few months at most. Where are you getting these ages from?
Peeps
Those wikipedia articles are inaccurate so far as the Earth and Narnia dates are concerned. The synopses of the story lines may be fine, but Lewis didn't write any dates into the original works, and gave only a few firm timespans (e.g. explicitly stating that a year of earth time, and three of Narnian time, had elapsed between Caspian and Treader.) The only sources with dates on them are non-canonical items like the suspect timeline which was discussed earlier in this thread.
The Earth time between the books:
MN--60 years (approximate)--LWW
LWW--1 year--PC
PC--1 year--VotDT
VotDT--4-6 weeks--TSC
TSC--1-2 years--TLB
Why the narniawiki artucke has such a large gap between PC and VotDt is unknown, but as others have said, it is wrong. It goes against what is specifically stated in the books.
As for the gap between TSC and TLB, Eustace only stated "more than a yeat" so that is why I believe it was between 1 and 2 years, not seven years as the "official timeline" states.
As for the ages, we only know the approximate age of one character, Tirian. He was stated to be 20-25 years of age and slightly older than Peter. Caspian, when he first meets Peter, is said to be about his age.
The ages for the Pevensies are correct in LWW. With Eusatece a year younger than Lucy, we then can work out their ages on my timeline. I just assumed Digory and Polly were about 10 or 11 but I don't care if someone wants to believe Digory is 12.
MrBob
PotW - the description of Peter is not 'beyond the door' but is when Tirian has his vision. Nevertheless, we are agreed that an age around 20 is plausible.
MrBob - where do you get 60 years from TMN to LWW? That would make the Professor in his seventies - not impossible, but unnecessarily old.
Does VDT say that Eustace is a year younger than Lucy? I've always thought he was, but when I looked for it yesterday I couldn't find it.
Thanks for the reminder about TLB being "more than a year" after TSC. If we say, then that there are at most four years from LWW to TLB. The school leaving age in the early 1940s was 14, but raised to 15 in 1944. I don't know what opportunities there were for further education, but let's assume they all left school at the normal age.
LWW is normally assumed to be in 1940. However, it could be at any time during the war. The first evacuations took place in 1939, more in 1940, but apparently many children sat the war out in London and were not evacuated until 1944. The lack of reference to the war in later books may suggest the Pevensies were in this latter category. So let's put LWW in 1944, and PC in 1945. VDT and TSC would be in 1946 and TLB in 1948. Lucy must be 15/16 in TLB (since not at school) and Eustace and Jill must be 14/15 (since still at school). Peter must be about 19/20 in TLB, while Lucy must be about 11 in LWW. However, this means that Peter should be too old to go to school in PC (unless he is in some further education, as might be suggested by his doing exams in VDT, but then he shouldn't be at Edmund's school in PC). Does anyone have any more knowledge about British education in the 1940s that might shed light on this, or is this just a plot-hole in the Narnia series?
Peeps