Timeline/genealogies of the TFTE

[Arvegil145]

I was wondering, as I have before in previous threads, whether we should have:


1) an all-encompassing timeline (ala Tale of Years in LOTR) of all the legendarium.

Surely, we need some kind of 'Tale of Years' system to organize all this stuff into one consistent timeline?

In regards to the First Age I'll ask Huinesoron (who has done an incredible job of picking out Tolkien's latest writings to compose a speculative 'final' version of what Tolkien might've envisioned as the timeline of the First Age in his 'Round World' legendarium).

Of course, I'll ask him to keep it 'flat-world' friendly!

2) a family tree or set of family trees to encompass every character (connected of course by a familial line) in the legendarium - and as precise dates as possible to accompany them - so if anyone can be bothered: what characters that you know are definitely excluded from the project?

Regardless, I'll still continue working on both 1 and 2.

[Huinesoron]

Oh noooo, don't ask me. A consistent timeline is a very involved project - look how many revisions we've done to the "Final Timeline" already! And every step is a decision - which sources do you accept, and how should they link together?

Just one example: the "arising and fall of Men" (NoME VI.B) is said to take place 10 Valian Years (1440 sun-years) after the Finding of the Quendi, 90 VY after the Awakening of the Quendi, and after the Captivity of Melkor begins. But in later sources the Awakening and Finding of the Quendi are only 14 Valian Years apart. Should the "arising and fall" still be 10 VY later, or should it be scaled accordingly (to about 1.5 VY after the Finding)? And is the "arising and fall of Men" the same event as the "awakening of Men", or - as in the slightly earlier VI.A - does the Fall take place after Melkor is captured, and the Awakening of Men before?

For the Final Timeline, I've resolved that one to my own satisfaction; but that doesn't mean the Project would agree, and any change in one date can move any number of others around. Don't even get me started on how to handle birth-dates when the whole growth pattern of the Eldar has completely changed multiple times.

(I will say, though, that the Final Timeline - while listing "sun-years" to keep a continuous count - doesn't make any reference to the Sun and Moon, so is just as valid for a flat world as a round one.)

hS

[Arvegil145]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

Oh noooo, don't ask me. A consistent timeline is a very involved project - look how many revisions we've done to the "Final Timeline" already! And every step is a decision - which sources do you accept, and how should they link together?

Just one example: the "arising and fall of Men" (NoME VI.B) is said to take place 10 Valian Years (1440 sun-years) after the Finding of the Quendi, 90 VY after the Awakening of the Quendi, and after the Captivity of Melkor begins. But in later sources the Awakening and Finding of the Quendi are only 14 Valian Years apart. Should the "arising and fall" still be 10 VY later, or should it be scaled accordingly (to about 1.5 VY after the Finding)? And is the "arising and fall of Men" the same event as the "awakening of Men", or - as in the slightly earlier VI.A - does the Fall take place after Melkor is captured, and the Awakening of Men before?

For the Final Timeline, I've resolved that one to my own satisfaction; but that doesn't mean the Project would agree, and any change in one date can move any number of others around. Don't even get me started on how to handle birth-dates when the whole growth pattern of the Eldar has completely changed multiple times.

(I will say, though, that the Final Timeline - while listing "sun-years" to keep a continuous count - doesn't make any reference to the Sun and Moon, so is just as valid for a flat world as a round one.)

hS

The pain only begins when you try to square the 'early legendarium' with the very round 'later legendarium'.

In actuality, the adjustment to the YS altogether only involves abandoning certain events. And the birth dates should be kept as they were in the AAm, at least in spacing.

[Findegil]

First of all, not be misunderstood: I am greatly interested in a time line and in the genealogies and will, if I can, contribute to the discussion of them! I as well think they can be great help for this project.

But (and that is a big BUT) I do not see how the result can be part of the final result of this project and I have greate doubts that under the strict rules this project has given itself, any meaning full version of either Time Line or Genalogie can be produced.

Form the start the project was one of editing text's not writing them. Our editorial additions were small and most often just single words of gramatical necessity. I can not imagin how that could be true of a Time Line that we could create. We don't have the necessary sources for that! And if we had the Tale of the Years of the first age completly, I doubt that an updated version would satisfy Arvegil145's wishes: There would be lots of dates we could not enter, so we would be decently sure of their placment, because we would not have an apropirate source text to work with. Look at the Tale of the Yeas of the second and third age as found in the Appendix of LotR. Are they what you would wish for? Probably not, but that is about what we could get under the rules of the project.

Time Lines and Genealogies do state very acurate facts. There is not much space for ambiguity in them. But facts are hard to come by in Middle-earth! The project could navigate around many hotly discussed issues only by leaving the decission to the reader. And I don't see how that could be done in Time Linies or Genealogies.

Respectfully
Findegil

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Arvegil145

The pain only begins when you try to square the 'early legendarium' with the very round 'later legendarium'.

In actuality, the adjustment to the YS altogether only involves abandoning certain events. And the birth dates should be kept as they were in the AAm, at least in spacing.

The "Final Timeline" is taken entirely from sources after the Annals of Aman, or the Annals themselves (other than Maitirussa); it's all post-LotR 'late legendarium'.

Abandoning certain events is probably the only way you could do it; for the pre-Beleriand era, I would recommend discarding everything which is sourced to the Annals. The Noldor can arrive in Beleriand, and then leave 2500 years later; what happens between is a mystery.

Originally Posted by Findegil

Form the start the project was one of editing text's not writing them. Our editorial additions were small and most often just single words of gramatical necessity. I can not imagin how that could be true of a Time Line that we could create. We don't have the necessary sources for that! And if we had the Tale of the Years of the first age completly, I doubt that an updated version would satisfy Arvegil145's wishes: There would be lots of dates we could not enter, so we would be decently sure of their placment, because we would not have an apropirate source text to work with. Look at the Tale of the Yeas of the second and third age as found in the Appendix of LotR. Are they what you would wish for? Probably not, but that is about what we could get under the rules of the project.

If you allow simple calculations, a mostly-complete timeline of the pre-Beleriand days can be gotten by combining NoME 1.XIII.1 (the latest "Key Dates" timeline, running down to the Great Debate) with NoME 1.VII (the latest timeline of the Great March); both are written on a 1 VY = 144 sun-years timescale, and both are in something close to the "Tale of Years style", or somewhere between that and the Annals. But as you say, the further you get into relative dating, the less it becomes just editing what Tolkien wrote.

hS

[Huinesoron]

Looking through the sources, and ignoring the question of dates for a bit, the full "Tale of Years" would consist of:

- Annals of Aman (years before the Trees)
- Annals of Aman (Years of the Trees, through to Awakening of the Quendi)
- NoME 1.XIII.1 (Awakening to Debate)
- A little from Annals of Aman and NoME 1.XIII.3 (fall of Angband and Utumno)
- NoME 1.VII (the Great March)
- Annals of Aman (end of the March to creation of the Sun and Moon)
- Grey Annals (full text)
- First Age Tale of Years (the fragments in WotJ, to fill out the end of the First Age)
- Tale of Years (LotR version, or from PoME if it is more complete)

There will be minor absences, but by stealing sentences from random texts you can fill them in with genuine Tolkien words.

But it still won't be what I think Findegil is saying, which is a Tolkien work. The Annals are not a Tale of Years - they go into way too much detail, often becoming the primary source for a story. The 20 years of Turin's shenanigans occupy 20 pages - the entry for FA 499 alone runs to 6 pages. You would need to pick out a sentence or two from each to capture the key events of the year, which is a very heavy editorial hand.

hS

[Arvegil145]

Evidently I haven't elaborated on what exactly I meant to achieve with my proposal (I'm not completely sure myself), but what I roughly had in my mind was this:

1) For us to adopt the 'Tale of Years' of both the Second, Third and Fourth Ages as per the Appendices (+ as Huinesoron said, maybe including some entries cut from the published Appendices but found in HoME XII) - this is pretty straightforward

2) For us to adopt the Grey Annals + the Tale of Years timeline of the last 6 centuries of the First Age from HoME XI (+ again, some emendations as needed)

3) Maybe add some speculative dates from Fourth Age onwards? - of course, this is much more controversial, but I feel adding a few rough dates after the last entries to the 'Fourth Age timeline' shouldn't be too terrible, if only to convey to the readers that time went on, and things happened after the 'New Shadow', and that in the imaginary world of Tolkien's, 'we still live in the year 1960 (or rather 2024 or something) of the 7th Age'...

4) And finally, which is why I asked Huinesoron to participate in this - to try and keep the old AAm timeline (in the 'flat-world', 9.582:1 SY to VY conception) while attempting to incorporate as much as possible from the NoME and other later texts



I fundamentally disagree, however, that the style found in AAm or GA/ToY (First Age) is incompatible with, say, ToY from the Appendices - after all, even in the Appendices, the years 3018/3019 TA are overflowing with entries/events, even though previous entries might be sparce (because of course these years were far more eventful than any in the TA).

Regardless, I think a timeline is a must for this project - otherwise, how would people even orient themselves temporally, especially given the complexity and literary 'thickness' of our project.


EDIT: In regards to genealogies, they are far simpler than you might think - you just give me the names (not literally, I already know most if not all of them) of characters included in the project, plus their relationships, and I can do it in a jiffy.

EDIT 2: Speaking of orientation, does this project have any ambition towards maps?

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Arvegil145

4) And finally, which is why I asked Huinesoron to participate in this - to try and keep the old AAm timeline (in the 'flat-world', 9.582:1 SY to VY conception) while attempting to incorporate as much as possible from the NoME and other later texts

On reflection, this is actually *really easy* (in principle): you just have to ignore 2 statements. The first is that there were 3100 years between the arrival in Aman and the end of the First Age; the second is that the Trees died in 888.

Ignore those, and you can just put AAm, XIII.1, XIII.3, VII, and AAm together in order. Use the VY used when each one was written, calculate out a SY date for everything, and then convert into either XIII.1 or AAm VYs (ie, 144 or 9.58 SY).

This approach takes basically every other decision out of play: about the only one left is whether the March begins 20 or 288 SY after the Debate (ie, do you use the relative or actual dating in XIII.3).

If that's of any interest to you, I can pull together a calculation spreadsheet and give you "aligned dates" for the whole period in a day or two. Even if you don't end up using it, I'm not precious about spreadsheets.

EDIT: It was less than 1 day. This calculator takes a date in VY/SY format, and when that date is counting from, and outputs a running count of "Years of Arda", plus converting that date into various systems. Edit the columns left of the yellow line; the columns in blue are running the calculations. Elessar dies in the 169,055th year of the world's existence. ^_^

If you want to make use of it, you should be able to make a copy of the spreadsheet on your own Google drive (and maybe download a copy, I'm not sure). As it's quite fragile, I'm keeping the original as view-only so it doesn't break.

Fun fact: when the AAm timescale for the ages before the Trees is used, the dates used in NoME XIII.3 & VII require the Days of Bliss to begin before the world was created.

hS

[Arvegil145]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

It was less than 1 day. This calculator takes a date in VY/SY format, and when that date is counting from, and outputs a running count of "Years of Arda", plus converting that date into various systems. Edit the columns left of the yellow line; the columns in blue are running the calculations. Elessar dies in the 169,055th year of the world's existence. ^_^

If you want to make use of it, you should be able to make a copy of the spreadsheet on your own Google drive (and maybe download a copy, I'm not sure). As it's quite fragile, I'm keeping the original as view-only so it doesn't break.

Fun fact: when the AAm timescale for the ages before the Trees is used, the dates used in NoME XIII.3 & VII require the Days of Bliss to begin before the world was created.

hS

Damn, you weren't kidding about your love of spreadsheets!

But, as someone who doesn't speak spreadsheet all that well - any chance you could put the actual or calculated AAm YT vs later NoME VY side by side? I.e. the Awaking of the Elves in the AAm is YT 1050, but (depending on the text), say, 850 VY in the NoME, and the death of the Trees is YT 1495 in the AAm but VY 888 in the NoME - adjusting for the difference in the Valian years (144 in NoME vs 9.582 in AAm), how would the adjusted ('flat-world') AAm timeline look like?

[Arvegil145]

@Findegil - can I make a giant family tree incorporating everything not discarded? Because I really itch to do so...





EDIT: is there any list of characters I'm supposed to exclude?

[Findegil]

What does stopp you from doing it?

If it has a chance to become a part of the final product of this sub-forum is another question. But considering how the goal has changed over all these years and that we are not really near to what is supposed to be the final result. I would not care much about that.

I don't see that we have a list of execluded charchters. The General change list might help a bit to find the form of the name that we used. But that is mostly true of the prominent charachters that saw some development of their names.

Respectfully
Findegil

[gondowe]

Hello everyone, I still come here from time to time. And if I can contribute something I will try to do so.

As for my opinion on this matter, first of all, like Findegil, I think that creating a "coherent" chronology is something highly desirable. But, I also think that to do so, both in a general way and much more so if you want to highlight many events, it would be necessary to "invent" some dates. Because, as you say, trying to adjust Aam and ToY with the outlines of chronologies started by the Professor and published in NoME is a task, I think impossible, unless something is "invented" by "filling in" or "supposing."

In this case it would not be enough to just "adapt" (e.g. NoME XIII VY850--> Aam 1050, 854-->1054... birth of Ingwë 865--> 1065 and so on) because, independently of the equivalence of the VY with 9.8 or 144 SY, which would be another matter, Tolkien already leaves us a suggested interval of 4 or 15 years, etc, so it can be adapted.
The same would happen (another example that comes to mind) with the year of the entry of the houses of the Edain in Beleriand, in which he made notes in the text but not in the chronology, so this could be "adapted" with something suggested by Tolkien himself.
I think that has already been discussed here, the issue of the implausibility of, for example, the duration of the Noldor's journey from Aman or Maedros' stay hanging on Thangorodrin, which, lasting each VY 144 solar years (even if you push me 9.8) is not very plausible. And that is a major handicap in my humble opinion.

So it occurs to me that it should be left, for the purpose of these projects, just for edit text, ambiguosly as a matter of mixing traditions and indicative dates.

But this is my opinion and it is not an obstacle to the task of elaborating said chronology as a coherent timeline.

Greetings