Ascendance trilogy spoilers below:
Do not read if you haven’t read the False Prince and The Captive Kingdom. Unless you don’t care about spoilers, in which case, welcome!
Thinking about Erin and Eckbert and how Jaron couldn’t even see his parents after they had died, not at the funeral - because it was most definitely a closed casket.
I don’t think we ever get confirmation on when exactly the royal couple died, but we do know their deaths were hidden for at least two weeks - the span of the first book - and they weren’t actually interred in the royal crypt until a month after that.
So, the soonest Jaron possibly could have seen them in their coffins was when he was crowned - two weeks after their deaths. By the start of Runaway King, when their funeral was held, the two of them were dead for at least six weeks, about a month and a half.
Which made me curious about how recently they died, at the start of the False Prince.
Working off info in the books, Erin and Eckbert were dead for at least two days at the start of The False Prince.
Conner meets Sage at the orphanage, buys him for indentured servitude, he and the other boys selected camp for the evening, they get to Farthenwood the next day and Conner breaks the news of their deaths that evening. There were already dead - two days.
They’d have been dead before that, though. Their bodies are hidden far below the palace, likely the entire palace had to be shut down to prevent the news from spreading even as rumors did, etc- plus, Conner likely picking out boys to be a fake Jaron before hand, similarly to situation with Edgar Strick.
From Jaron’s flashback, we know that he met his father at a church come the last day of every month - though Jaron never approached him.
As Sage, he was blindsided by his family’s death - meaning that the last time he saw his father, nothing seemed amiss and that the next time he was supposed to see his father hadn’t come by yet.
Additional information: - Sage states he is nearly fifteen at the start of The False Prince. His birthday hasn't passed yet. - Mrs. Nielsen mentioned on Goodreads that he does turn fifteen near the end of the book. - Also according to her answers on Goodreads, Jaron/Sage’s birthday is May 7th.
So:
The end of The False Prince has to fall somewhere in late April/early May, on or around Jaron’s birthday. His birthday has to fall somewhere during the two weeks spent at Farthenwood, or at the very latest, on the day he was crowned.
This is where things get even trickier, because Jaron never actually mentions the passing of his birthday throughout The False Prince. This is most likely because Jaron just didn't have an actual concrete birthday yet, and it had little actual bearing on the plot itself.
Looking at it storyline-wise, though...
My two possible placements are:
His birthday was one of the two nights he spent in the dungeon. it's also the earliest placement I think to be feasible for reasons I'll explain below.
The second possibility is, at the latest, his birthday falls on the day of his coronation. the absolute cut-off point.
Jaron's (Possible) Birthday In the Dungeons
We know that Jaron was in the dungeon at the end of his first week at Farthenwood, because Conner states he only had a week left to prove himself (the deadline was two weeks).
To the best of my abilities, I actually tried to mark down the passing days, and I think Sage was put into the dungeons on 5th day he’d known Conner. He spent the rest of then night, the next day, and the following night in the dungeon - the rest of the 5th and the 6th day.
Jaron then is brought to Conner on the seventh day, marking it the end of his first week. He spends that day resting.
So, if May 7th fell on either of the two days, it'd look something like this:
Which means, if his birthday passed in the first week, Jaron learned his family was dead on the 2nd or 3rd of May - just two/three days after he’d last seen his father.
Since Erin and Eckbert were already dead and Jaron did not know, it is entirely plausible to assume that Conner had poisoned them both on April 30th, same day Sage last saw his father.
Also, as Sage already states he's nearly fifteen at the start of the book, Jaron's birthday could not have passed by before this - which leads me to believe that April 30th is the closest possible time for their deaths at the book's start. He would have known something was wrong if his father hadn't shown up at the church, otherwise.
If we move Jaron’s birthday to anywhere in the next week, they could have been dead even longer. Jaron wouldn't have seen his father since March 31st if that were the case, and Conner would have nabbed him a few days before he was supposed to meet his father at the church.
At the latest, if the 7th of May was on his coronation day, that means the book would have started on the 23rd of April. He would have last seen his father on 31st March, giving a range of roughly three weeks between the 31st of March and 23rd of April, at the most, for their deaths to have been hidden beforehand.
Furthermore, we learn in The Captive Kingdom that Darius had survived the poisoning of his parents, having in actuality been drugged in sent away by Conner so that later, after he had no use for his fake Prince Jaron, he could return Darius to the throne.
To take the place of Darius’ body while he was presumed dead, Conner had chosen an orphan boy of decent resemblance to Darius - a Prozarian boy named Edgar (which comes back to bite them all in the ass later), who had also resided at Mrs. Turbeldy’s orphanage, and briefly at Gelvins.
In TCK, Jaron meets Edgar's mother and tells her that he had disappeared several weeks before Conner had begun his False Prince plot in full. Presumably, Conner hadn't yet killed Erin and Eckbert when he first took Edgar, but he was already intending to do so if he was choosing a body double for Darius. It lines up well enough, if Jaron's birthday falls in the second week.
Edgar was kept alive for time, otherwise Conner would not have learned of Belland or the Devil's Scope which in turn sets the events of The Captive Kingdom into motion, but we don't know for how long he stayed alive.
For the sake of simplicity, I'm assuming Conner bought his servitude three weeks prior to the start of the book, and killed him shortly afterwards.
Two/Three days is the smallest span of time for Erin and Eckbert to have been killed, and three weeks - nearly a month, not including the two spent at Farthenwood - is the longest potential span of time, when looking at the start of The False Prince.
Either way, whether they'd only been dead for a few days, or a few weeks - what Jaron had to go through, sitting at Conner's table and hearing they were dead? Ugh.
This also means that by the end of the book, they could have just been dead for the aforementioned two weeks - or as long as five or six weeks. I think Jaron does get a brief glimpse of them in their coffins at least once, since when the question of Darius survival pops up, he's trying to think who was in the coffin instead if his brother was actually alive, but the state of their bodies - wouldn't be pleasant.
which now is making me morbidly curious on the preservation of bodies for burial in real life medieval times.
You are doing the lord's work in mapping this out gracias🙏🙏🙌🙌
