Tellings of the Wheel: The Chronology of The Wheel of Time

"Surprising what you can dig out of books if you read long enough, isn't it?" -- Rand al'Thor, The Shadow Rising

The Main Sequence Novels

This timeline attempts to arrange all of the events of The Wheel of Time into a consistent chronology. The information is displayed in a table, which looks like this (this example is a small section from the timeline for The Eye of the World):

30	Adar-10	Apr-22	29-30	Perrin and Egwene take refuge in an abandoned stedding. They are captured by Whitecloaks led by Geofram Bornhald. Hopper is killed. Elyas escapes. Full moon
30	Adar-10	Apr-22	31	Rand and Mat work and stay the night at Grinwell's farm.
31	Adar-11	Apr-23	31	Rand and Mat arrive at Arien at dusk and play at the inn.
32	Adar-12	Apr-24	31	Rand and Mat get a ride from Arien in Eazil Forney's cart.

The meanings of the table columns are:

The left-hand column simply numbers the days sequentially, with day 0 being the start of chapter 1 of The Eye of the World. This makes it easy to determine how much time takes place between two events -- simply subtract one day number from another.
The next two columns give the date in the Randland calendar, and the equivalent date in our real-world calendar. Note that dawn is considered to mark the start of each new day.
The fourth column shows the chapter number(s) applicable to the events described in the fifth column. For events which are part of the main narrative of the series, the chapter numbers will appear in boldface if you are using a stylesheets-capable browser. Events which are told in flashback (like those of chapter 31 in the example above), or which we only learn about indirectly, will have their chapter numbers in non-bold type.
The final column shows the phases of the moon, which I found to be a very useful tool for unravelling the chronology of The Wheel of Time. Jordan makes lots of mentions of the moon during the story, and it's possible to deduce a lunar calendar which fits the storyline. After a lot of experimenting, I found that the lunar calendar for 1997, 1998 and 1999, when shifted back by a day, fits very well the phases described by Jordan for the Randland years 998, 999 and 1000 respectively. I've used small graphics (such as the full moon on day 30 in the example above) to indicate the phases of the moon according to this calendar, and in the list of events I've included all of the mentions of the moon in the story, so you can judge for yourself how well they match.
Note: Unfortunately, from about half-way through A Crown of Swords onwards, the moon seems to go crazy. None of the mentions of the moon in the books 8 to 10 fit the previously-established lunar calendar, or in some cases any lunar calendar -- for example, The Path of Daggers has ten days occurring between a gibbous moon and a full moon, and Crossroads of Twilight has five days between a "waning sickle moon" and a half moon, both of which are impossible. These anomalous moon references (as well as a couple of oddities in the earlier books which are probably just typos) are noted in the table with a somewhat cryptic "[???]".
Update: With Knife of Dreams, the situation seems to have been quietly rectified -- the (few) moon references within the latest book agree with the lunar calendar Jordan was using in the first seven books.

Unfortunately, it is not always possible to exactly nail an event in the story down to a particular day. This applies especially to the first three books -- I'm confident that what I've constructed is pretty close to "what really happened" (i.e. what Jordan had in mind when writing it), but in most cases there is an element of uncertainty, ranging from no more than a day for events in The Eye of the World and the first part of The Great Hunt, to perhaps a week or so, in some parts of The Dragon Reborn.

On the other hand, from The Shadow Rising onwards, there is enough information to construct an exact timeline. Even in the later books, though, there are cases (usually in the minor storylines) where events cannot be precisely placed. These are noted with "(?)" in the table.

Because of the length of the timeline, I've put each year covered by the story (according to the Randland calendar) on a separate page.

Or you can jump directly to the start of the book you're interested in:

(Note that each of the last five books overlaps the previous one to some extent. Because of this, the links for these books will take you to the start of Chapter 1 for the appropriate book rather than to the start of that book's Prologue.)

The Prequels

RJ has said he intends to write three short prequels to the main sequence of Wheel of Time novels, of which one has so far been published, New Spring: The Novel. I will be creating timelines for these novels as they appear, organised along the same lines as the one for the main series. For New Spring: The Novel, I have set day 0 of the timeline on Danu 2, 978 NE -- the day the Battle of the Shining Walls ended and Rand al'Thor was born.

Timeline for New Spring: The Novel

Last updated: November 21, 2005.

Steven Cooper

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