#trout rants

[angry-trout]

checking my phone at work and seeing an atrocious take on The Characters and trying not to fly into a gamer rage in front of my boss

[angry-trout]

want worldbuilding about how the never kingdoms work…

like, most never children are going to be illegitimate. that’s fine. but we have monarchies explicitly mentioned (frostplains and ravenbow off the top of my head)- how do heirs work? do people just take random pregnant women’s word that they’re carrying the king’s son?* is it like a concubine system? are royal titles just passed down through women since it’s easier to confirm who the mother is? or titles could just not be inherited at all, but aric’s “lord” lesso, so that’s not true in that case. and, what about marriages for political alliances? does the concept of marriage exist, or is it like “okay your son and my daughter are going to conceive an heir and then that’s that”?

*you would think this would result in paternity test magic existing which would have helped in tcy lmao

[angry-trout]

Rhian and Japeth are 16 in book 4 (Rhian states his seventeenth birthday is in a month)

They are 21 in book 6 (In book 5, Rosamund says that the boys went off to school when they were 10. In book 6, when asked something about Japeth, Dean Brunhilde says she doesn’t remember because it was “over a decade ago”)

They are 10 or younger in book 2 (Evelyn is working at the School ~10 years before the events of book 2, and Rafal changes her butterflies from red to blue. When we see Rhian and Japeth as newborns in book 6, Evelyn’s butterflies are already blue.)

Books 2 and 4 take place 8 or 9 months apart and books 4 and 6 take place 1 or 2 months apart (depending on if you take Agatha saying at the beginning of book 4 that the wedding on October 14 is in two months as canon or if you keep track of the number of days that pass explicitly in the book, which would put book 4 as starting on September 12, only a month before. I assume you’re meant to take Agatha’s word for it because otherwise in book 2 when they say Christmas is coming it’s already January)

Trust me guys, this is NOT a mistake and in his next novel Soman will explain how Rhian and Japeth actually grew up in the Caves of Contempo (get it guys it’s a parallel to Aric it’s THEMATIC he’s actually such a genius you don’t understand)

Anyway if y’all want my complete timeline of the main series let me know (spoiler alert they complete their four years of school in less than two years)