Collection of Ranger's Apprentice Theories

Duncan, Halt and Crowley's Age

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Assuming that when characters estimate the ages of other characters Flanagan is actually telling the age, it can be used as a decently accurate gauge of ages.

In The Tournament at Gorlan Halt makes two 'guesses' at Duncan's age.

One is not a guess, but more of a comparison. Halt decides in his mind that Duncan is not much older than himself, so they are either the exact same age with a few months difference or the prince is a year or two older.

The second one of them is an approximate age, low twenties. Duncan in that book is therefore about 20-23, making Halt in about that same range but a bit younger.

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Crowley is a bit more difficult. Flanagan, oh so helpful Flanagan, loves to be vague with dates or is surprisingly not vague and then not precise. He'll either round to the nearest five or ten (the low twenties), or he'll give numbers and forget what he had the last time and make up a new number.

It's traditional for Rangers' apprentices to be apprenticed at fifteen and then spend five years training and it is confirmed by The Hibernian that he spent five years as an apprentice, although the only age indicator of when he did his apprenticeship was that he was described as a young boy. Pretending fifteen is a young boy (by then the term can be young man) then he would have been twenty at graduation and now all that has to be done is figure out how many years Crowley was a full fledged Ranger. Easy, right?

Wrong.

In The Hibernian it is mentioned that Pritchard disappeared three years previously, shortly after giving Crowley his Oakleaf, making Crowley exactly twenty-three.

Except, Halt supposedly has four years of training under Pritchard to his name by The Battle of Hackham Heath, and Halt doesn't get more training from his mentor in Araluen. It's impossible numbers if Pritchard had left three years prior. Even with really sketchy rounding, there would be travel time, so it would be more like two years and quite a few months of Ranger training for Halt.

Even more confusing is that in The Tournament at Gorlan it is said Crowley graduated a year or two prior to when Pritchard was dismissed and it's been several years since then, cancelling out the beautiful exactness of the three years.

And, in the same book Lewin has been a Ranger for only two years, seeming to be the last to graduate, yet Crowley is supposed to be the youngest Ranger excluding Halt in The Battle of Hackham Heath which muddled everything up to a dangerous extent.

In addition, there's the story of a young Ranger who turns a man into a mill pony for five years, told in The Sorcerer of the North.

This probably happened at the start of Crowley's career, and depending on whether he was there to supervise the town's usage of the human mill pony, Crowley might have been in Hogarth Fief for five years.

(Alternatively, Crowley might have just told the town to use Arndor of Crewse for only five years and left at any time after that, or this takes place in Araluen Fief after he becomes Ranger Commandant which in turn is after the Gorlan tournament shenanigans, the Hackham Heath brouhaha and between going on a bunch or campaigns with Halt, including the Moondarker one.)

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