ok ok ... I actually lay awake over this :D I am sorry
Eolair says he is ~45 and Benigaris ~37 years old.
Maegwin says that Eolair is 42 years old.
Camaris says that Benigaris must be older than 40 years. He was alive before Camaris vanished, which is forty/two score years ago as expressed by several characters throughout the whole story and by Josua’s age.
So which version is the most likely I have come to wonder...
(because I am sick at home and have nothing to do -.-)
Eolair certainly knows his own age and that is 45. He might err about Benigaris’ age though and thus believe himself to be 8 years older than the other when the age gap is in fact not that much.
TBH I don’t see any possibility of ignoring all the evidence concerning Camaris’ “mental exile”. In the first chapters (first 1½ year of the story) it’s always “almost 2 score years/almost forty years”, then it changes to “two score years/forty years” in the year Isgrimnur happens to stumble into a certain inn in Kwanitupul. Several characters use this precise wording.
Plus there is Dinivan telling Miriamele “I am nearing forty years–not much younger than your Uncle Josua”.
So for Eolair to be correct about Benigaris’ age, everyone else would have to be vague (by ~ 3 years) about the years Camaris was missing and Dinivan would be incorrect about his own age and that of Josua.
I am sorry Maegwin, but she is definitely completely wrong, because there is no way she knows Eolair’s age better than he himself :D.
Eolair is 45 but will let you know that he is in nice shape :D
Benigaris is ~41 and still mommy’s boy (fo Varellan! ^^)
Camaris is more than 70 years old and beats up people nicely.
"Benigaris was taller than when he had last seen him, but the duke’s son had then been only seventeen or eighteen. Nearly two decades had passed, and Eolair was not displeased to see that despite his being a good eight years the elder, it was Benigaris who had thickened around the waist, not he."
(The Dragonbone Chair - ch. 22, 'A Wind from the North')
"Eolair had seemed so young that day, slender and bright-eyed as a fox, nervous, but almost giddy with pride. Seemed young? He had been young: scarcely more than twenty-two years old, full of the suppressed laughter of anxious youth.
(The Stone of Farewell - ch. 16, 'The Unhomed')
"His son Benigaris I knew only as a bawling infant."
(To Green Angel Tower - ch. 24, 'A Sky Full of Beasts')
