A question about duality of time on Westeros

duploelabs

Apologies if this has been answered before but I can't find an accurate answer to this as I'm just starting on the books. So, using Earth as a facsimile, how do they measure the passing of years on westeros? If Dany, when discovering of her pregnancy, is on her 14th name day, how do they measure the passing of years in westeros if the seasons take many 'years' to change?

Nody

You have to seperate seasons and seasons; there are the normal four seasons of the year and there are the mega trend seasons which take a lot longer. So they would have the normal year's season within the mega trend seasons; there's a comment in the first book along the lines of "The young people in the south has never experienced a true winter" or similar hinting at while they have experienced a mega summer winter they have not experienced a mega winter winter.

xper

Nody wrote: »

You have to seperate seasons and seasons; there are the normal four seasons of the year and there are the mega trend seasons which take a lot longer. So they would have the normal year's season within the mega trend seasons; there's a comment in the first book along the lines of "The young people in the south has never experienced a true winter" or similar hinting at while they have experienced a mega summer winter they have not experienced a mega winter winter.

Is this correct? I've just started reading book 7 having read all the others for the first time over the last year (which has been great!) and the question of how a year is measured and how the seasons work did hit me very early on too. I cannot recall even a hint of explanation as to why this world has these very long season's that vary in length - and its the latter aspect that is rally difficult to explain. And I didnt pick up any hint that there are regular short seasons within the calendar year. There is mention of mutliple harvests within a (long) summer and of summer snows in The North but these don't appear to reference seasons as we would know them. There is also mention that the maesters can confirm that a season is changing through reading certain signs without revealing what those signs are.

So basically I have just accepted that GRRM has decided to just describe this world without offering rational explanations for why absolutely everything is the way it is. Which is fine and puts you in the same mindset as the characters who go about their lives informed by a hodge podge of religion, magic, folklore, tradition, story-telling, skills, education, alchemy and the merest veneer of scientific inquiry.



It short/long season setup reminds me of the scenario put in the Heliconia trilogy by Brian Aldiss although in that case the long seasons last centuries and a full scientifically sound explanation is revealed.

Nody

Never seen any explanation listed of why it is that way; there comments about the youths only experiencing summer winters in the first book as I recall; that's what I built it on but there's no source beyond drawing the comments further as such

nibtrix

xper wrote: »

Is this correct? I've just started reading book 7 having read all the others

??? Time machine?? Secret insider knowledge??

Dial Hard

I was just about to ask this, as I look in puzzlement at the six books on my shelf.

Duckworth_Luas

I recall reading that Martin will give an explanation in the last book and that it involves magic.

xper

nibtrix wrote: »

??? Time machine?? Secret insider knowledge?

Alas, I do not own a DeLorean. I'm reading A Dance With Dragons II: After the Feast. Its a Harper Voyager paperback and even has a '7' printed on the spine. I do indeed have seven paperback volumes on my shelf. I take it A Storm of Swords or A Dance with Dragons was first released as one volume in hardback.



or, if you prefer, I have a preview copy of The Winds of Winter and I've just gotten to the bit where Jar-Jar Binks turns up.

tringle

At any stage are we given the age of anyone in years? Isnt it described as how many winters they have seen. (though reading the first post we have a name day, I didn't remember this). I just assumed they still count days as we do but not years and the seasons come and go but over a much longer time frame.
Though now I think of it, do the tell us that winter will last so many years.

Argh, guess Ive confused myself more.

And what about the other lands, will they have a winter at all?

nibtrix

xper wrote: »

I take it A Storm of Swords or A Dance with Dragons was first released as one volume in hardback.

Both of them, there are only 5 books in my collection.

duploelabs

tringle wrote: »

At any stage are we given the age of anyone in years? Isnt it described as how many winters they have seen. (though reading the first post we have a name day, I didn't remember this). I just assumed they still count days as we do but not years and the seasons come and go but over a much longer time frame.
Though now I think of it, do the tell us that winter will last so many years.

Argh, guess Ive confused myself more.

And what about the other lands, will they have a winter at all?

Nearly every character chapter the central character is given an age.

Mr. Incognito

As I understand it Seasons are not uniform.

They can have a Season that lasts for a year or two or several.

This summer is the longest in living memory having lasted in or around 10-12 of our earth years.

I would simply take it that the planet it is based on has an irregular rotation. This does not require magic. This could be caused by planets in a non uniform solar system having interacting orbits and gravitational pulls.

In other words if you take Westeros as an earth like planet in an earth like on a circular orbit of its sun- you could have a number of Jupiter Sized Planets with an Ecliptical Orbit exerting gravitational pulls that speeds up or slows down the rotation casusing different length seasons.

This is happening in our own Solar System with a newly rediscovered ninth planet having a gravitation pull on Neptune by using mathamatical models designed to disprove its existence.

https://www.caltech.edu/news/caltech-researchers-find-evidence-real-ninth-planet-49523

xper

I don't think you could come up with any sort of realistic orbital mechanics that resulted in the massive changes needed in the angular momentum in the planet's orbit and/or the tilt of its axis to vary seasons by the magnitude, frequency and unpredictability experienced in this world without catapulting it into deep space or into its neighbours or sun at some stage.

If you wanted a natural explanation, I'd be more inclined to consider some aspect of the planet itself that influences the climate in a frequent but slightly irregular and unpredictable manner. Consider a gigantic active volcano somewhere off in uncharted Sothros erupting large quantities of dust into the upper atmosphere every few years. Or some sort of hugely exaggerated El Niño effect.

Or maybe the giant turtle the elephants are standing on turns around .... No, wait, wrong fictional universe.

Or magic.

astrofool

I believe there was a paper done on it involving an orbit in a 2 star system that fit the books (or magic).

Jofspring

I reckon George R.R.Martin thought it would be cool to have these big long winters that everyone is afraid of and has no way of explaining why.

stevenmu

The fact that they measure regular years separate to the seasons suggests, to me at least, that it wasn't always that way, and that they perhaps had regular yearly seasons in the past.

I've always suspected that it was due to the Doom of Valeryia. It could possibly either be due to ash causing large scale weather pattern changes, or possibly a wobble imparted to the planet. I'm not sure how realistic the second one might be.