Blame The History Monks: The Discworld Timeline Part Two

 Whew!  So I finished reading all 35 of the adult Discworld novels, and I'm going through the various non-novel materials (the guides and year diaries, and so forth), so it's a good time to continue with sorting out the books.

First, let's tackle two of the later books not included prior.  But first, let's discuss the Discworld Almanak.

One of the Year Diaries published during the time, on the surface it presents a problem - it is said to be for the "Common Year 2005" and the "Year of the Prawn".  We've seen that year designation before - it's from Thud!.  The issue is that there's no way to make that book set in 2005 - it's part of the "Sam Junior" timeline, and it's two years after The Fifth Elephant, which is firmly in the prior century.  

But that's okay!  The year is clearly just a nod to it being usable in 'the real world' for that year.  The other dates within the Almanak are clearly on the normal AM calendar.  But here's the reason why it's a good thing - because we really only need it for the relative date.  Officially, there are assigned names to all years since 2005... and the one for 2009 AD is "Pensive Hare" - the year that Unseen Academicals is set in.  So, setting it 4 years later than Thud! gives us... AM 2003!

(Outside of the novels, two Discworld guidebooks mention the Year of the Reciprocating Llama, which was assigned to 2014 AD by the calendars)

Our other outlier is the only Watch book that is difficult to place, Jingo, in between the two periods of books (the early Watch and the Sam Junior era).  It seems to be just prior to The Fifth Elephant - Buggy Swires joins the force in Jingo and is said to have joined 'months' prior in the latter - but there's a number of inconsistencies.   The events of the early Watch books are alluded to happening recently; there's a noticeable lack of clacks towers, which should be all around the city at this point; and then there's the reference to the events in The Truth, where we learn William de Worde's brother was killed during the events, and that his estrangement from his father began then, which seems to have been for at least a number of years by the time the book starts.

There is one reference, though, that can offer a specific date - the disappearance of Leonard of Quirm.  It is said to have happened 5 years ago in Jingo... and a 'couple of years ago'  in Men At Arms, implying a 3 year difference - placing this book in 1989, which seems to fit better for the times (even if there's a gap of 8 years to the next Watch book).

Next time, we'll wrap this up with tackling the big ones - sorting out how the Death and Witch books intertwine with the rest, the Big Gap of Time that happens in both those sub-series, and also addressing the biggest dating controversies (the largest being about which Patrician was celebrating his 10th anniversary in Mort)