Lucy was only ten!

What does not make since with that Mr bob is why would all the others be out of school already if Peter was only Twenty. Miraz's men mistaked Ed for a man in PC and Lucy was only a year younger than Ed, it says so in the book.
 
My guess regarding the comment by Eustace about Jill being the only ones at school was that the others recently got off for summer while their school was on a later schedule.

MrBob
 
See, with the LB, I always figured that Tirian was mid to upper twenties, possibly even thirty, Peter was near 23, Susan about 21-22, Ed was between 19 and 20, and Lucy was around 18-19.
 
In LB, Tirian is listed at between the ages of 20 and 25. Lewis didn't give a specific age to him but rather a 5 year range. That's not listed in the timeline but rather in the book itself if I remember correctly.
 
I have always felt the children were quite young in LWW. Lucy was from 7 to8 years old, Edmund 8 to 9 years old, Susan 11 to 12, and Peter is just turning 13. Jill and Eutace are one year younger than Lucy. Now PC happens one year after the ending of LWW. And VDT is just a 6 to 8 months after PC. And SC happens about 4 months after the children come home from VDT. The next 2 book are flash backs, so they don't count. Now LB is a problem book. It is hard to say how much time has pass. Jill and Eutace seem to have matured a great deal since they don't fight like they did in SC. It is likely that at least 4 years has passed between SC and LB. That would but the Jill and Eutace at about 14. That would put Lucy at 15 to 16, Edmund 17, and Peter in his earily 20's. Susan is not a friend of Narnia and doesn't show up in LB. She gets to live into her adult life and probably marries. I am not using Harper's chart here. This is just my own readings.
 
We could pretty much pin-point Lucy's age by trying to find out what the standard age of a girl going to boarding school for the first time was back in Lewis's time. We know that she was off to Boarding school for her first time in PC. I read something last night about a famous boarding school that admitted girls at around age 11.
 
Here is the age of all the friends of narnia in all books:

TMN:
Digory: 12
Polly: 11


TLTWTW:
Peter: 13
Susan: 12
Edmund: 10
Lucy: 9

PC:
Peter: 14
Susan: 13
Edmund: 11
Lucy: 10

TVOTDT:
Edmund: 16
Lucy: 15
Eustace: 13

TSC:
Eustace: 15
Jill: 15

TLB:
Eustace: 16
Jill: 16
Peter: 21
Edmund: 18
Lucy: 17
Digory: 61
Polly: 60
 
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

http://narnia.wikia.com/wiki/The_Voyage_of_the_Dawn_Treader

It's a narnia wiki, really good. It says the Voyage is under 1947-1948 earth years. The Lion was 1940, prince Caspian 1941. that means there is six years between PC and TVOTDT. the website has also articles about Lucy and Edmund where it says that Edmund was born 1930, and Lucy 1932. The website could have wrong still...

I have not read TVOTDT, TSC in a while and does not remember that it says that. :O
But the age of the childrens in narnia is quite a mystery... :/

here are the links to Edmund and Lucy:

http://narnia.wikia.com/wiki/Lucy

http://narnia.wikia.com/wiki/Edmund_Pevensie

Trufflehunter
 
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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.
 
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.

Okay. That wiki is really good, but the ages are not especially good then. But if there is not a gap between PC and TVOTDT it has to be a gap between TSC and TLB. I think I have to re-read The voyage and The silver chair to see that. ;)
 
There is a gap - a seven-generation gap. In Last Battle, Tirian tells Jill and Eustace that he's "seventh in descent" from Rilian. That's Narnian time, of course - we aren't really sure how long it was on Earth, though it's possible it was several years. Silver Chair happened within a year (Earth time) of Dawn Treader, and Last Battle some time after that, but during that time Susan turned her back completely on Narnia and the Friends of Narnia on Earth had time to have at least one banquet together.
 
The normal timeline puts TLB in 1949, more than six years after TSC in Autumn 1942. The text says that Eustace and Jill are the only ones still at school, which means Lucy must be at least 16, one assumes (depending on what the school leaving age then was). If Lucy was 8 in LWW and 10 in VDT then at least six years have passed (perhaps more) before TLB. However, it has elsewhere been suggested that the timeline is wrong and Lucy was older than this in LWW (based on Peter's age in TLB which is described as "hardly full grown, certainly younger than Tirian himself" and Tirian was "between twenty and twenty-five years old". However, Peter cannot have been less than three years older than Lucy (ie. at least 19) and probably five or six (ie. at least 21). The timeline suggests Peter was about 22 in TLB (born 1927, TLB in 1949), Lucy 17 (born 1932) and Eustace and Jill 16 (born 1933).

Peeps
 
Yeah, I always take that timeline with several spoons of salt - too much of it doesn't square with the stories.

Decent speculation, though. Of course, it's hard to judge anything from the appearances of people "beyond the Door" in Last Battle, since those were very special circumstances. I agree that by the time Peter and Edmund had to disguise themselves as plumbers to fetch the Rings from a London garden, Peter was probably in his early 20s.
 
That time line is absolute hogwash!! The Narnia time line is easier to create; the Penvensies: impossible. All we have is an approximate date, the Air war over England (1940). Other than that, there is not much to go by.
 
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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
 
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

Does Eustace states that is it was "more than a year in TLB?
I can't remember that. :O
 
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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

peeps, I think you got it right, everything looks realistic. the only error is if we follow the films where they show the bombings as Germany bombed london in 1940-1942, is 1944 to late. But they never "showed" us the bombings in the books, and the pevensies can evacuate london because of the V1 and V2 missiles that germany used against england, instead of (as they show us in the film) planes that drops bombs on london. Atleast I are going to go after your timeline when i read the books now! :)
 
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