The Age of the Third Age

Before I begin, most of the evidence from this theory comes from "The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time", more commonly called The Guide. It's written by Robert Jordan and Teresa Patterson, ISBN 0-312-86219-9, and I can highly recommend it. If you don't have it, well, you'll just have to take my word for it. Anyway, onto the theory.

Now, what do I mean about the Age of the Third Age? I'm trying to work out just how long it has been since the sealing of the Dark One's prison in the Age of Legends, which I will define to be the end of the Age of Legends. You might say the Third Age only began after the Breaking, but the definition is rather arbitrary anyway, so :Þ.

Well, how do we go about this? There isn't much information of the books, mainly vague references to "three thousand years and more" since the Age of Legends. Fortunately for us, RJ is quite a mastermind, and wanted to show off in The Guide. He leaves us a trail of clues that the keen observer can use to puzzle out the correct date. How does he do this?

It all revolves around Ishamael, who, as we know, may have been "only partially sealed" in the Bore. Let's have a look at some of the first clues.

There is one big quote that opens this all up, on page 52 of the hardback. On the subject of page numbers I realise there is now a paperback version of The Guide, so the pages might be a bit off, but, well, you can trust me :). Onto this quote. I've snipped out the unimportant parts, but the sense is the same as was intended.

The Guide, page 52
Ishamael may have been only partially trapped by the seal of the bore
There were sightings of Ishamael after the bore was sealed... as much as forty years after
it seemed possible that Ishamael might well be thrown out of his prison holding the others and drawn back again on some regular cycle.

From the above, it's plain as pi that RJ is trying make contact with the intelligent reader here. We have "a regular cycle" and Ishamael free from the bore for 40 years. Just in case we didn't get that, a bit later on the same page:

The Guide, page 52
[An ogier writer] made observations made on various cycles of forty years without discovering one of the Forsaken was loose in the world at those intervals
The last pages of the manuscript suggest Aran [the ogier writer] had become doubtful of his own thesis, but we have evidence that he may have been right
It seems entirely likely that Ishamael could have been free in still earlier times, and that the cycle was merely longer than Aran could observe.

So, it seems that Ishamael's cycles are based on multiples of 40. But why couldn't Aran work it out? Well, he was only born in 50AB, and even accounting for Ogier lives he wouldn't lived long past 550AB. The cycles are probably a lot longer than that.

To have any hope of finding the magic number, we need to know just when Ishamael was free. Luckily for us he was happy to blab all about it through book 1. In Rand's dreams, he boasts that he lead the Trollocs in the Trolloc Wars and set up the Black Ajah, and whispered in Hawkwing's ear and brought down his empire. I don't have the exact quotes here, but the exact wording isn't really important. Any cycle we make has to land on those dates.

Unfortunately for us, all those wars created a bit of difficulty in the calendars. We have three calendars, and we don't even know how long the Breaking lasted, or exactly how long the Trolloc Wars lasted for. But let's have a closer look at Hawkwing and search about for Ishamael.

Now that we're on the lookout it's easy to find Ishamael. The important passages are pages 113-4, (the last 2 pages of chapter 12). We read earlier in that chapter that towards the end of his life Hawkwing develops a bitter hatred for Aes Sedai, and that his empire crumbled. A popular theory that accounts for his unusual behaviour towards the end of his life, The Guide informs us, is the "Jalwin Moerad theory."

The Guide, pages 113-4
In 973 FY he appeared at Hawkwing's court, making his first entry into history
It is on that proximity of dates (late summer, Moerad became a counsellor; early autumn, Hawking dismissed Aes Sedai from his service) and the startling fact that Moerad seemed openly contemptuous of Aes Sedai that all the theories concerning him rest
the writer [of a manuscript dated 23 years after Hawkwing's death] claims that Moerad never aged from the day he first appeared to the day he vanished, abruptly, some 40 years later

The last sentence in particular makes us certain we have found him again. Also, he has once again vanished 40 years after he arrived, so we can be certain that every cycle starts with 40 years of freedom. So we are certain that 973 FY - 1013 FY was one cycle.

We also know he was out and about around the Trolloc Wars. It took Ishamael only 2 years to bring Hawkwing's empire to ruin, so we can presume that the beginning of the Trolloc Wars was close to the beginning of another of Ishamael's periods.

To get over the whole calendar issue, I will define the term AS for "After the Sealing", in years. So the sealing happened on January first, 0AS. Now I will load you up with the rest of the evidence needed to find out his cycles.

1) Page 52, Ishamael was last sighted forty years after the sealing.
2) Page 83, the period of the breaking is defined as 10 years after the sealing (when every male was mad)
3) Page 84, the period of the breaking was known to last from 239 to 344 years
4) The end of the breaking is considered 1AB
5) Page 96, 1000 AB Trolloc Wars begin,
6) Page 96, "The Trolloc Wars spanned approximately 350 years"
7) The end of the Trolloc Wars was 1FY
8) Page 118, FY 1135 = 1NE

From the top, we know his first cycle was freedom from 0AS to 40AS. Now we need to find 1AB in terms of our AS dates. From (2) and (3), 1AB was 249AS or 354AS. Adding (3) and (5) Ishamael's second cycle must have started around 1248AS to 1353AS. Taking away 40 for his freedom from 0AS to 40AS, he is trapped for between 1208 and 1313 years.

But, we know we are working with multiples of 40 years here. That limits us to 1240 and 1280. Note how cleverly RJ has set this up - he has narrowed it down to only 2 options, by making 1208 and 1313 just inside multiples of 40 (1200 and 1320 that is).

Now, Ishamael's second freedom ended in 1040 AB. From (5), (6), and (7), 1FY = c.1350 AB. So Ishamael's entrance in 973 FY is 1282 years after the end of the second freedom. Almost exactly 1280 years!! Note in (5), which is a direct quote, that the 350 is approximate, so the 2 year error could be taken into account here.

So, let's put this all together. In a normal cycle Ishamael gets 40 years of freedom, then 1280 years trapped. After Moerad disappears in 1013FY, the year must be 2680 AS (3 periods of freedom, 2 periods trapped). Now, from (8), 1135FY = 1NE, so 998NE (the start of Wot series) is 1119 after his third freedom, which is 3799 AS.

3799? So close, but yet so far? Don't worry, it gets better. RJ, being the learned man he is, would realise that in human history, the first calendar year is year 1. This is because the concept of a zero number was not invented until centuries after the calendar was! We can see that RJ is aware of this, because all the calendars have no zero year - it's either 1AB or 1FY or 1NE.

So, if we take this into account, the AS calendar should start on 1AS, and the events of book 1 begin on the year 3800 AS! Sensational, RJ!

Before I finish up, a few notes. Firstly, because of the inaccuracies in both the time of the breaking and the time of the Trolloc Wars, and the fact that we don't know exactly when Ishamael's second cycle began (i.e. how many years before the beginning of the Trolloc Wars), we can't be exactly sure how many years they lasted. Assuming that Ishamael was freed on the year 1000AB, the Trolloc wars lasted 348 years, and the breaking 321 years. For each year before 1000AB Ishamael came (assuming he needed time to plan the whole operation) the breaking lasted 1 more year, and the Trolloc wars lasted 1 less. But knowing that it only took Moerad 1 or 2 years until he was Hawkwing's chief advisor and had sparked his hatred of Aes Sedai, there cannot be more than 2 years in this error.