these last 3 chapters more than ever have left me wondering about the timeline of spy x family and in particular,
donovan's age.
i'm not going to go too deep into the full timeline because i simply don't think we have enough info to make a real robust timeline, BUT i do think we can very feasibly approximate donovan's age with our current info.
I also won’t be using any precise years like 1964 or whatever bc at this moment in time I find that to be kind of useless, bc the only years we have happen very early in the story in background details and for a lot of those ones, I noticed endo had a tendency to just carelessly put whatever so long as it looked fine from afar, which includes news that were happening around the time of that chapter's release. SO unless he decides to explicitly highlight actual years, I’m not gonna be like “this happened in 1964 and that happened in 1953” and anything of the sort.
now, i shall partake in my least favorite activity.
✨math.✨
so uh buckle up my fellas and feel free to correct me anywhere where i might be wrong bc i am more than aware that math is NOT my strong suit!
SPOILERS FOR CHAPTERS 97, 98 AND 99!
gonna start with the facts!
according to the spy x family EYES ONLY fanbook, henry henderson is 66 years old at the time of the current events of spy x family! in the past three chapters we have learned that there is a 3 year age gap between him and martha, so that would make her 63 years old currently.
as of the events of chapter 99, he is 22 years old (and martha is 19), assuming there wasn't any years-long time gap that was not mentioned within the chapter! which, it doesn’t seem like there were any MASSIVE time gaps, so I’ll be using those ages for calculating.
so, what all this means is that we are (roughly) 44 years into the past at the moment! previous info about the war of loid and yor's childhoods puts it at around 20 years old, so from where we are in the backstory, we still have roughly 20 more years before Luwen is attacked — clearly, because this first war has already ended with donovan still in school.
while we don't have loid's age, we do have yor's, who is 27 years old — meaning she was born around the time of henry being 39 years old, aka clearly neither loid nor yor have been born yet as of the events of chapter 99. too into the past for now!
now, how am i gonna get donovan's age out of all this?
simple! henry's his teacher and has a talk with him after his jail time.
like I mentioned previously, I shall be sticking to 22 for henry’s age here. it may not be fully correct, it may be a year or two off because we aren’t given concrete details on exactly how long he was in jail, so just take it with a grain of salt! it's only going to remain as a rough estimate until we get a definitive answer on donovan's age.
so! henry has a talk with donovan, but the conversation itself, while very important for the plot and especially for our understanding of donovan’s character, is irrelevant for this conversation. no, what's crucial here is what henry is holding. endo even highlights it by focusing an entire larger panel on it!
it's a history textbook for year 7 students!
it being a history textbook is very poignant for the conversation they're having, but the reason this is important to me is because it's very clearly a year 7 textbook.
now, i don't know how much of eden academy's curriculum is based on the uk! but because pretty much all of the architecture of it is based on eton college and endo has literally just returned from a london trip where he showed us he visited a kindergarten, so i think that's grounds enough for me to assume eden academy's year 7 is generally populated by children between 11 and 12 years old. luckily for me, that seems to be the general age for germany's secondary school year 7 too, so even if it's not the british one, it's still close enough!
with all that being said, if donovan is, say, 12 in that moment and henry is 22, that means there is a 10 year difference between the two of them, which, drum roll please, means donovan desmond is 56 years old when our story's events take place! assuming the war of loid's and yor's childhoods took place exactly 20 years ago (when yor was 7 and henry was 46), this would make him around 36 years old when he became ostania's prime minister! it would also mean he had damian at 50 years old, and if demetrius is 12 right now, that would mean he was born when donovan was 44 years old (and his birth would’ve been in the last years of the war).
so, rough events timeline based on all that, focusing on ages!
66 years ago: Henry Henderson is born.
63 years ago: Martha Marriott is born.
~56 years ago: Donovan Desmond is born.
49 years ago: Martha (14) transfers to Eden and meets Henry (17)
47 years ago: Henry (19) graduates Eden.
44 years ago: Henry (22) joins Eden as a teacher, in the same year becomes Donovan Desmond’s (~12) history teacher. Martha (19) graduates Eden and joins the Women’s Defense Auxiliary.
~44 years ago: Martha (~19) is presumed dead. Henry (~22) faces jail time. The war ends, and he marries.
27 years ago: Yor is born. At that time, Henry is 39, Martha is 36, and Donovan is 29.
~27 years ago. [REDACTED] is also born. Same as above, just approximate this time!
~20 years ago: Second war begins. Yor and [REDACTED] are ~7, Henry is ~46, Martha is ~43, Donovan is ~36. Yuri is born.
~12 years ago: Demetrius is born. Donovan is ~44, Yor and [REDACTED] are ~15, Henry is ~54, Martha is ~51, Yuri is ~8.
~10 years ago: Second war ends. Demetrius is ~2, Donovan is ~46, Yor and [REDACTED] are ~17, Henry is ~56, Martha is ~53, Yuri is ~10.
6 years ago: Damian is born (and most other kids in his and Anya’s grade). Demetrius is ~6, Donovan is ~50, Henry is 60, Martha is 57, Yor is 21, Twilight is ~21, Yuri is 14.
5-4 years ago: Anya is born. Damian (etc.) are 1-2, Demetrius is 7-8, Donovan is ~51-52, Henry is 61-62, Martha is 58-59, Yor is 22-23, Twilight is ~22-23, Yuri is 15-16.
1 year ago: Yuri (19) becomes part of the SSS. Anya is 3-4, Damian (etc.) is 5, Demetrius is 10-11, Donovan is ~55, Henry is 65, Martha is 62, Yor is 26, Twilight is ~26.
I HOPE THAT HELPS PUT THINGS INTO PERSPECTIVE?? melinda is not included bc we have nothing to go off of for her age outside of purely subjective things like her appearance.
super glad endo included the year 7 thing JAKLSDFKLSD
