Welcome to my no moon left unturned reread of Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles. This week we’re doing something a little different—we’re looking at Thistlepong’s timeline of all the events mentioned in The Wise Man’s Fear and The Name of the Wind. Unsurprisingly, this assumes you’ve read all of both books. This post is full of spoilers, please don’t venture beyond the cut unless you want them.
The good news is that the paperback of The Wise Man’s Fear came out this week, so if you’ve been waiting for that you can catch up now!
Useful links: The Sleeping Under the Wagon post, in which there are lots of theories. The re-read index. The map.
Zero set at Kvothe’s entrance to the University
Color Key:
Kvothe’s Age
Saicere
Errata
Skill Leveling
Humor
KINGKILLER TIMELINE
-10,000 shepherds begin whistling Bell Weather : :
~Tinker Tanner (the oldest song in the world, not really)
Old Knowers
“these old name-knowers moved smoothly through the world. they knew the fox and they knew the hare, and they knew the space between the two.”
Shapers
“then came those who saw a thing and thought of changing it. they thought in terms of mastery. “they were shapers. proud dreamers.”
Felurian on the walls of Murella
Faen sewn from whole cloth by the Shapers
Each shaper wrought a star to fill the empty sky of Faen
Iax spoke to the Cthaeh
Iax pulls the Moon into Faen
(the land cracks and the sky changes)
The Mortal makes war on Faen
The Creation War (centuries long)
-5500 Chael shapes Saicere
5000 x 31
(#Owners – Finol)
The Empire of Ergen (hundreds of cities
The Empire reduced to Seven cities and one city
Belen, Antus, Vaeret, Tinusa, Emlen, Murilla and Murella
Myr Tariniel, greatest of them all and the only one unscarred by the long centuries of war.
Lanre
Lanre marries Lyra
L&L thwart a surprise attack on Belen
L&L raise armies
L&L make the cities the cities recognize the need for allegiance.
L&L press the Empire’s enemies back
Blac of Drossen Tor turns the tide of the war
Finol holds Saicere
(more people died in three days than are living today)
Lanre dies killing a great beast with scales of black iron
The enemy is set/shut beyond the doors of stone
Lyra resurrects Lanre
War continues, years pass
Lyra dies, Lanre disappears
Lanre speaks to the Cthaeh
Lanre orchestrates the betrayal
-5000
~ 5,000:- Fae language that Bast and Felurian speak
Lanre comes to Myr Tariniel
MT and six other cities ruined.
Selitos curses Haliax and his allies
The fragment depicted in NotW c.28
Most of the ruach choose not to become invloved
Selitos founds the Amyr
Aleph empowers Tehlu & Pals
The Adem
Aethe seeks mastery over the bow
Aethe founds a school
Rethe comes
Aethe & Rethe duel
Rethe dictates nine and ninety tales
The Aethe path founded
The Aratan path founded
The Latantha path founded
-3000 The Loeclos Box
~3000 Yllish knots
Heldred unites the nomads in the hills around the Shalda Mountains
Heldim and Heldar
-2000 The Cealdim introduce standardized hard currency
(Kvothe’s inaccurate Saicere estimate)
~2000 Temic, Siaru
-1500 Sovoy’s blood goes back fifty generations
-1300 Oldest surviving mention of Loeclos family name
-1000 Height of Lockless power
Trapis’s Story (corroborated)
~1000 Tema, Aturan
The Book of the Path
-1000 The Aturan Empire & the Tehlin Church
-1000: Human Amyr founded by the Tehlin church in the early days of the Aturan empire.
-900 variant spellings of Lockless in Caudicus’s book
-600 The Lockless change their name(s)
Lackless (Vint)
Lack-key(Atur)
Laclith (South)
Kaepcaen (Modeg)
(Trapis’s story: disputed)
-400 The Aturan Empire absorbs Vint
-370 Gibea begins vivisection
-350 The Amyr move against the Duke of Gibea (19/23 volumes lost)
-300 Alpura Prolycia Amyr The Pontifex disbands the Amyr
*during Emperor Nalto’s reign
-300 to present Nine cataloguing systems in the Archives
-300 to -200 The Aturan Empire collapses
-200 novel travelogues all the rage in Modeg
-200 Tehlins still burned anyone with a knack (called demon signs)
-150: Antressor (famous instrument maker) lived
-100: Last publicly known case of someone guilty of malfeasance
-80 The Medica removes cataracts
-55 Oren Velciter born
*Abenthy born
-50 Four Master Archivists within five years of one another
3 factions:
Tollem
Larkin
(unknown)
-40 Lerand Alveron born
* Trapis born
* Elodin born
*Abenthy enters the University (18)
-35 Larkin Ledgers burned
ending 15 years of Scriv Holy War
200,000 books effectively lost
*Abenthy knows as much as Kvothe@11 (20)
-30: Manet enrolled at university
-30 Master Archivist Tollem dies
new Master Archivist
new Archival System
-24 Maershon Lerand Alveron succeeds his father (16)
-14 Elodin enrolled at University
-18 Simmon Dalonir born
-18 Elodin gets his gil’the
* Denna Born
-16 Arliden steals Laurian away
-15 Kvothe born
-10/11: Caudicus became part of Maer’s court (a dozen years before Kv in Severen).
-12 Kvothe learns to sing (Age 3)
-9 Kvothe stops believing in magic (Age 6)
-7 Kvothe learns the Lute (Age 8)
-7 Kvothe learns an eclectic smattering of Commonwealth law
-6 Kvothe learns the inner workings of the Modegan royal court from Hetera (Age 9)
Arliden begins collection stories about Lanre
-5 Elodin is Chancellor
-4 Abenthy joins Greyfallow’s Men (Age 11)
I learned how to work the sextant, the compass, the slipstick, the abacus. More important, I learned to do without. Within a span I could identify any chemical in his cart. In two months I could distill liquor until it was too strong to drink, bandage a wound, set a bone, and diagnose hundreds of sicknesses from symptoms. I knew the process for making four different aphrodisiacs, three concoctions for contraception, nine for impotence, and two philtres referred to simply as “maiden’s helper.”
Mental agility exerices, alar, heart of stone, seek the stone, sympathy (90 bindngs)
-4 The Chandrian/University conversation
-4 Kvothe uses sympathy to “call the wind”
(a month before his 12th birthday)
-3/4 Abenthy stays in Hallowfell
Arliden performs 11 lines of /(Lanre)/
(a couple span before Kvothe turns 12)
-3 Kvothe learns: (Age 12)
japing and tumbling from Trip
dancing from Shandi
swordplay for Teren
acting from Arliden
etiquette from Laurian
-3 Greyfallow’s Men massacred
TIME is essentially broken here. The time following Hallowfell, through the massacre, and toward Tarbean is inadequately described, clumsy, and difficult to account for. Kvothe should be well into his thirteenth year by the time he reaches Tarbean, but he says, “That was the first night of nearly three years I spent in Tarbean.” He means roughly twenty one months. In any case he’s still 12.
-3 (under duress) Tarbean
Begging, slitting purses, picking pockets, picking locks, living barefoot, self sufficiency and distrust, being victim to and witnessing assault
– 3 years: Ambrose Jakis achieves the rank of Re’lar (Zolt)
Tarbean Year One:
Pike, Trapis, Hillside (Encanis/Gerrek saves him during Midwinter Pageantry.)
Tarbean Year Two:
Trapis’s Story, attacking Pike
Tarbean Year Three:
Skarpi’s stories (just past 15)
-5 days Kvothe sells Rhetoric and Logic
Shuden, 35 Caitelyn
meets Denna
leaves Tarbean
-4 days
-3 days Kvothe and Denna talk on the greystone
-2 days Kvothe plays Josn’s Lute
-1 day Kvothe arrives in Imre, parts with Denna
0 Kvothe admitted to University
Cendling, 43 Caitelyn
SOMETHING is amiss there, too. Kvothe says, “But if it was the thirty-fifth then I only had five days to get to the University. I knew from Ben that admissions only lasted until Cendling.” Reta and Roent’s caravan travels five days, but eight dates pass. Eight dates are consistent with the weekdays from Shuden to Cendling.
+1-2 years WMF (16-17)
(D3)
+8 years Bast (23)
The Event
People in Newarre did not lock their doors before this.
+9 Waystone Inn (24)
Spring — Levy
Summer — Levy
The roads get particularly bad.
2 span before Scrael — Last caravan passes through
Scrael
+10 Chronicler arrives (25)
Day 1
Shamble Man kills Shep, killed by Aaron
Day 2
Carter and Aaron leave for Treya with the Orrisons
Kvothe robbed by King’s Men
Day 3
Carter and Aaron to return
Chronicler has missed his appointment with Skarpi
*Caluptena
-500 to -1000: The Universty has been around for centuries, while Caluptena was burned by Tehlin Atur.
*Taborlin the Great
“I heard from a boy in Temper Glen that if your arm’s cut off they can sew it back on at the University. Can they really? Some stories say Taborlin the Great went there to learn the names of all things. There’s a library with a thousand books. Are there really that many?”
The name creep issue aside, only a few rare stories survive very long in the Mortal. Taborlin’s widespread contemporary presence coupled with the above quote place him, generously, within five hundred years; if he existed at all.
*Illien
Within a thousand years: his crowning work is about a Tehlin Amyr.
(Jezdynamite’s additions added. And more dates from comments added 13/3/12 ~91)
Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published two poetry collections and nine novels, most recently Among Others, and if you liked this post you will like it. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.
I love this episode, although I think a couple things would have made it a 10. But I adore the idea of an underground market for thoughts and feelings. It’s such an awesome sci-fi premise, and I’m sad we didn’t get to see more of it throughout the series. The idea of telepaths having laws about thoughts makes a certain amount of sense, and it is an interesting look into a society where you are constantly hearing other people’s thoughts. At what point does your right to think what you want infringe on someone else’s right not to have to hear your worst, most graphic, most disturbing thoughts?
That said, I wish this episode had been done as a follow-up to the Year of Hell two-parter. It would have been easy to say that they were there for repairs, since the majority of the episode takes place on the planet, and the parts on Voyager don’t really require the ship to have to do much. Having the emotions that B’Elanna is experiencing be from her experiences with the Kremin, instead of just another “she is angry because she is part Klingon and is always angry” would have made for a much stronger story, IMHO. “Extreme Risk” in Season 5 does a good job of showing her working through her emotions over a very legitimate cause, and I wish we had gotten something more like that here.
And for an organization so devoted to scientific discovery and peaceful contact with other races, you would think that Starfleet vessels would have some sort of legal representative on board. Seriously, between this episode and “Justice” over on TNG it seems like there isn’t any kind of expectation that *someone* on board receives and studies the laws of a culture before they engage with them, in order to avoid this exact kind of thing. Voyager should certainly have one, given that their mission was to apprehend criminals, and you’d think there would need to be someone who made sure their rights were respected and the proper paperwork was filed. Instead, it is apparently just the job of the Tactical Officer, who is also the Head of Security (a pet peeve of mine all by it’s self), to use their free time to sort of skim over local law. It’s downright bizarre to me that random officers are just picked (usually by how high their names are in the opening credits) to serve as legal liaisons, investigators, and attorneys. Tuvok does a good job here, and Tim Russ is excellent as always, but seriously, why is this even his job? He’s neither a lawyer, nor an expert on inter-galactic law, nor a diplomat. Considering how often their officers get themselves into sticky situations, and considering that various Starfleet ships have room for things like historians, personal stewards, and bartenders, you’d think they would at least have some sort of legal aid on each ship.
wildfyrewarning: That is an excellent point. At least “The Measure of a Man” (written by actual lawyer Melilnda Snodgrass) established a JAG office at a starbase, but given how remote and cut off most starships are, they absolutely should have a legal officer on board.
Having said that, Tuvok’s role here isn’t legal, it’s as an investigator — he’s not being a prosecutor, he’s being a cop, which is totally part of his job description as security chief.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Tuvok was beat up by a couple of pacifists. Right.
I’m with Seven during her talk with Janeway at the end. Getting her crew nearly killed or maimed because of bending over backward for laws they were ignorant of is pretty stupid.
No pretext of alien makeup again. I guess that’s better than forehead aliens?
I thought this one was okay. It was an interest concept for sure and it shows Tuvok being an excellent investigator. I don’t feel Nimira is as likable or sympathetic as Krad feels she is. For one, on the professional side of things she comes across as incompetent if she’s not considering all of the possibilities for the origin of or passing around of violent thoughts which is very crucial if she’s going to pass judgment on B’Elanna and scramble her brains. And Nimira also seemed kind of scary in her interrogations of B’Elanna which I get she has to come across as tough but that’s also why I couldn’t say I found her likable. It is nice that she and Tuvok had a rapport though and I thought it was even verging on romantic.
It’s a shame there weren’t more pairings of Tuvok and B’Elanna on the series because I enjoyed their scenes together here.
And I actually agree with Seven’s complaint to Janeway at the end. If Janeway (and the series) are going to do the whole “embrace the adventure” motif that’s one thing. But then the series redirected with Janeway explicitly vocalizing how important it was to get the crew home. She even changes the past in “Endgame” to save Seven and Tuvok and get the crew home faster. So she can’t have it both ways!
The Mari must not get a lot of visitors or they’d make more of a point that certain thoughts are illegal. Sure visitors should be expected to familiarize themselves with local laws but there’s a difference between murder is still illegal and thinking the wrong thing can get you arrested.
And I hope the officers hauling Torres around were inoculated against violent thoughts because she was probably thinking about doing some awful things to them.
I did like how Tuvok going undercover had a rough trade kind of feeling to it. They could have passed it off as a drug deal or speakeasy. Instead it was like Guill was trying to see if Tuvok was into guys and wanted to hook up. I thought those scenes could have come out of a 50-60s clip warning about the dangers of homosexuals. Extending the metaphor gives rise to unfortunate implications so I wouldn’t take it too far but it was still more interesting than passing isolinear chips back and forth.
@2 KRAD. It’s one of my pet peeves on Trek, and Tuvok at the end saying that he would have let B’Elanna face the the punishment if she had been guilty always annoyed me, because it seems like she should still get a lawyer to argue her case, even if Tuvok thinks she is guilty. Tuvok in this episode basically was in the position of being the arbiter of if she would be subject to punishment, which in the real-world military is either a command decision (so, Janeway) or a Judge’s decision (which he isn’t).
It irks me more here than it does in other Trek series, because Voyager really should have come equipped with a legal team, given the purpose of their mission. Even without the Maquis, people subject to Starfleet regulations should still have the right to an attorney if they are facing a court-martial, let alone all the weird alien legal shenanigans that are always happening.
It’s fairly easy to let Voyager off the hook for crew deficiencies since they lost a solid chunk of their crew, but yeah, some sort of crew advocate trained in rhetoric and legal research would certainly be useful. Even more than that, it seems like the sort of a thing a holodeck program could be useful for- upload the local legal code and have the Emergency Legal Hologram help construct the defense.
@3/Austin: I also noted how we have another very human-looking alien species here but it’s happened so many times already on this series and will continue to do so that I didn’t bother remarking on it. You’d think that maybe the show would budget for giving all of the aliens funny hats to wear or maybe bushy eyebrows or a uni-brow!
New on CBS:
Star Trek: JAG – starring David James Elliott as Harmon Rabb XIV
NCIS: Andoria
Articles of the Federation by Aaron Sorkin
(Yeah the bit about a having a legal officer on board set me thinking – I could see given their original brief and proximity to space stations Voyager not needing a full time officer, but I always wondered about it on ships like Enterprise (Archer and Picard versions) etc that were on longer self-contained missions)
@9 In fairness, I could see Voyager not having one normally, but you’d think one would get added to them for this specific mission. The last thing you’d want is to apprehend a bunch of dangerous terrorists only to have to let them go because someone didn’t read them their Space Miranda Rights or mishandled the chain of evidence. And yea, there is really no reason why TNG and TOS shouldn’t have had one on board (I’ll cut ENT some slack, for once, considering they got rushed out of space dock before they were ready). Heck, even DS9 called up a Bajoran Arbiter when they needed Dax’s legal issue to be heard, and Odo had the appropriate credentials (for good reason) to help O’Brien when the Cardassians put him on trial.