Trying to Solve an Unsolvable Puzzle: The Characters and their Surprising Canonical Ages
I did some math. It hurt very much but Becky have to do it. This timeline has been haunting my nightmares for years and I finally snapped. I decided to look at canon evidence to determine the ages of the characters. It is not possible for all characters and I've attempted this before but last time I took my own theories into account. I've already posted these thoughts on another site and this time it's using canon as a basis, with some, I think, reasonable inferences made where necessary. And all I can say is:
TL;DR (ph indicates what their physical age should be and ps indicates their past self. It's a little adjusted for the months of their birth)
Emma: Present day season one - 28 | Henry met Ella - 37 | Lucy's Birth - 50 | Present day Hyperion Heights - 60 | Coronation - 37 (ps) ~
Snow: Present day season one - 55 / 27 (ph) ~ | Henry met Ella - 65 / 37 (ph) ~ | Lucy's birth - 78 / 50 (ph) ~ | Present day Hyperion Heights - 88 / 60 (ph) ~ | Coronation - 65 / 37 (ps) ~
Regina: Present day season one - 63 / 35 (ph) ~ | Henry met Ella - 73 / 45 (ph) ~ | Lucy's birth - 86 / 58 (ph) ~ | Present day Hyperion Heights - 96 / 68 (ph) ~
David: Present day season one - Present day season one - 55 / 27 (ph) ~ | Henry met Ella - 65 / 37 (ph) ~ | Lucy's birth - 78 / 50 (ph) ~ | Present day Hyperion Heights - 88 / 60 (ph) ~ | Coronation - 65 / 37 (ps) ~
Rumple: Present day season one - 200 ~
Original Killian Jones: Present day season one - 180 ~
Henry: Left for adventure - 18 | Met Ella - 19 ~ | Lucy's birth - 32 | Present day Hyperion Heights - 42
Ella: Met Henry - 51 ~ | Lucy's birth - 64 | Present day Hyperion Heights - 74
Zelena: Present day season one - 65 ~ | Henry met Ella - 75 ~ | Lucy's birth - 88 ~ | Present day Hyperion Heights - 98 ~
Alice: When Henry met Ella - 37 | Lucy's Birth - 50 | Present day Hyperion Heights - 60
Robin: Lucy's Birth - 18 | Present day Hyperion Heights - 28
Drizella: Ella met Henry - 49 ~ | Lucy's birth - 62 | The s7 curse is cast - 70 / 62 (ph), Present day Hyperion Heights - 72 / 64 (ph)
So let's start with the thing that has kept me awake for damn near 5 years: Alice Jones' age makes absolutely no sense.
So, Alice was said to have been born just a little after the curse was cast (so a little after Emma). If we're to go by what is stated several times in the show, this is before her father or his realm even existed lol. in s6 we are told that the Wish Realm was created via a wish made by the Serum Evil Queen on Emma's behalf. But in s7 we learn that a younger Wish Hook travelled to the New Enchanted Forest and fathered baby Alice with Gothel years before the Wish Realm was supposedly created. We could write this off as a fake memory, implanted by the wish, if not for the fact that Alice is living proof that the Wish Realm existed long before Serum Queen's wish.
The only way this makes sense is if the Wish Realm was not created by a wish, but was only assumed to have been. But then were Wish Snow and Charming raising a non-existent daughter? Did the original Emma replace Wish Emma when the wish was made? You would think a Wish Emma had to have existed to have given birth to Wish Henry.
I've seen theories that suggest Alice's ageing temporarily ceased in Wonderland or in any/several of the other realms she travelled to in search of a cure. It's also possible that her ageing is much slower than average due to her Nymph blood (just look at 1,000 + year-old Gothel).
But regardless of the rate of her physical ageing, the major problem is, however much you age up Alice, you have to age Ella up by approximately at least another 14-15 years. This is going by how old young Ella appeared to be in 7x09. And I refer to this because Gothel was not imprisoned in the tower until Anastasia fell into the frozen lake. So, if we're being generous, we could say that Wish Hook found the tower and was tricked by Gothel very shortly after that event and then, of course, Gothel gave birth the next day.
If Alice was the same age as Emma, which is what the show wants us to believe, Alice would be at least 37 when Henry was 19. That, in turn, would put Ella at around 51 at the time, if we assume she was about 14 when Anastasia fell through the ice. The reason for this is that Emma gave birth to Henry when she was 18. We know he spent his 19th birthday in the Crimson Crow in the NEF with Jack, which was before he met Ella and 18 + 19 = 37.
We see Henry's 18-year-old cousin Robin arrive at the NEF when Lucy is a newborn. We can infer that Henry was approximately 14 when Robin was born. So when Henry was 19, Robin was 5. I have to add an extra 13 years to each character, to account for the time it took for Robin to turn 18. So Alice was at least 50 when Lucy was born! Henry was 32 and Ella was at least 64! It's possible they were lovers/married for 13 years or fewer before Lucy was born.
It's most likely that Henry was closer to 19 and Ella was closer to 51 when they met because the S7 Hyperion Heights gang went back in time to when Robin was 5. Henry had just graduated and was set to leave before Emma was visibly pregnant. He was 18 when he left for his adventure. At Regina's coronation, Prince Neal looks to be around 6 or 7. He is around a year older than Robin. Emma couldn't have fallen pregnant too long after 18-year-old Henry left, if not pregnant already because Prince Neal hadn't aged much since before Henry left, and Emma and Hook have a presumably newborn Hope at the coronation.
Then 10 years passed until we found ourselves in present-day Hyperion Heights with a 10-year-old Lucy. That would imply that Alice was 60, Henry was 42 and his wife Ella was 74 in Hyperion Heights!
Regina and Zelena were likely over 90 at this point. For this, I had to make an estimation of their ages when the 1st curse was cast. In the companion canon book 'Regina Rising', Regina is 16 when Snow is 8, so Regina is 8 years older than Snow. In 3x01, Emma states that she and Mary Margaret are the same age. Mary Margaret had just had a birthday, so if we take Emma's statement literally, then Snow would have been 27 when the curse was cast. This is because Henry turned 11 in August and Snow was born during the winter. Emma's October birthday has to have passed since she decided to stay in Storybrooke. Both Emma and Snow are presumably 29 physically by 3x01.
Regina would have been 35 when the curse was cast and Zelena 37. The casting call for young Regina said 'to play age 10' and for Zelena was 'to play age 12'. Given their February and April birthdays, Zelena is 1 year, 9 months and 17 days older than her sister.
I had to add 18 years for Emma's age when giving birth. Then I added 19 years for Henry's age at the Crimson Crow, then an additional 13 years to account for the time it took for Robin to turn 18 and finally, I added 10 years for Lucy's age in Hyperion Heights.
35 + 18 + 19 + 13 + 10 = 95
Regina is 95 in present-day Hyperion Heights and Zelena is 97. But physically Regina is around 67 due to the frozen 28 years.
Where are these people getting their skin creams? I guess the sisters are probably using magic and Alice's Nymph heritage could account for her youth, but there is just no explanation for Ella, or even an 80-100 y/o Rapunzel Tremaine who wasn't a magic user. Heck, even Drizella, who was about 12 when Anastasia fell through the ice would have been 62 before she ever learned how to harness her magic properly. She was turned to stone for 8 years after that, which would have stopped her ageing but still! Is there just something about the Tremaines? Is it something to do with the source of Anastasia and Drizella's magic? It would have to be from Rapunzel's side, given her slow ageing. But Ella is related to them via marriage, so perhaps there's just something about their house.
For me, I just have to believe that Alice was simply not born so closely after Emma. Either that or there was some wild time travel that would make my head explode if I tried to figure that out again. Wish Henry's age could be an indicator of how time works in the Wish Realm. He should have aged up into adult Henry by the time we see him in the finale, given that Emma had given birth after telling an adult Henry about her pregnancy.
And I'm not even accounting for the fact that Zelena implies that time moves faster in the New Enchanted Forest and that Robin would have been younger than 25 had she stayed in Storybrooke. I refuse to make them any older because it's already wild!
As for Rumple, Hook and Baelfire, they have all claimed to be 200-300 years old. We are shown Big Ben in the Land Without magic when Baelfire is about 14 (before Neverland froze his ageing). Big Ben was completed in 1859 (around 152 years before season 1 Storybrooke). We don't know how old Rumple was before he was separated from Baelfire, but it's possible he was around 50 years old and therefore over 200 when he made this claim. It's unlikely Hook stopped ageing due to Neverland in his late 40s (unless he made use of enchanted ye old magical monthly juice cleanses!) and Baelfire was definitely not over 200 at the time of his death. The only explanation is that they rounded up or simply lost count.
Thanks for reading! I hope my calculations are correct. Please let me know if I've made a mistake or if I've missed any canon evidence in regard to this. It's pretty fun to try and work out this timeline but woah, does it hurt my head.
