Guild Wars 2

Soo. . .

“A simple memorial marks the final resting place of Ascalonian hero and Ebon Vanguard commander, Gwen Thackeray—loving wife of Lieutenant Keiran Thackeray and great-grandmother to Captain Logan Thackeray.”

This statement is important because for anyone trying to figure out how many generations have passed between your Guild Wars character and your Guild Wars 2 character this could solve all your problems. . . except one thing.

For Gwen to be Logan’s great grandmother that would be:

Gwen,
Her kid (grandparent)
Their kid (parent)
Logan.

That. . . doesn’t make sense.

The average American has a kid around 25-30.

According to the timeline on the wiki, Ebonhawke was established in 1080AE. Gwen was a part of that (she was 20 years old). The current day in GW is 1327. That’s 247 years ago. Even if Gwen had a child super late in life, like age 40, and that child did the same, and their child did the same, that’s still half the time until Guild Wars 2.

See math:

Gwen is 40
Kid is 40
(80)
Say parent is 40
(120)
Logan is … 20-30
(150)

150/250. We’re missing 100 years.

10 generations is approx. 250 years.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_years_are_in_10_generations

So here lies a problem:
It makes no sense.

To go through 250 years in 3 generations makes no sense.

Solution: it could be changed to great-great-great and so on grandmother, or. . .

“A simple memorial marks the final resting place of Ascalonian hero and Ebon Vanguard commander, Gwen Thackeray—loving wife of Lieutenant Keiran Thackeray and ancestor to Captain Logan Thackeray.”

Thoughts? Opinions?
./confused.

Since Logan seems to have been a direct descendant from her, they probably wanted to make a strong connection by using grandmother. The use of “great-grandmother” is probably just a shortened version to save space. Plus, it would have looked better than…

“A simple memorial marks the final resting place of Ascalonian hero and Ebon Vanguard commander, Gwen Thackeray—loving wife of Lieutenant Keiran Thackeray and great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother to Captain Logan Thackeray.”

I agree that it saves space, but at the cost of accuracy. Great-grandmother does not mean the same thing as great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother- otherwise nobody would bother with the needlessly long version. Great-grandmother means “grandmother of the parent of” and cannot mean any other relation.

As to the OP: I sincerely doubt they’d go back to fix something so minor. Unless they surprise me, we really have no choice but to either dismiss the line as an inaccuracy or attempt to bend probability to make the line work (i.e. maybe one of those in-between descendents was one of those incredibly long-lived mages). Which each of you ends up doing will have to depend on your own personal preference.

Just read “great-grandmother” as a sloppy term for “ancestor”. Don’t go looking for a conspiracy and try to prove that 100 years of Tyrian history have been invented by the powers that be, since it will only give you a headache.

~MRA

Well . . . Okay.
Why would they put that she was the great-grandmother of Logan Thackeray ANYWAY? I mean, Logan might be a contemporary heartthrob, but that’s no reason to go changing some distant ancestor’s tombstone. Did they change all the other tombstones of all his other distant relatives from the past two centuries as well? Why don’t they just chisel in every relative these guys have ever had on this tombstone?

So either we can handwave this as gamemakers being sloppy (boring and lazy option), or we can come up with a working lore solution to this (you know which one I’m going to go for).

I would like to put forth the notion that Gwen really did have a great-grandson named Logan Thackeray, and that he is not our modern, handsome hero. Instead, perhaps this Logan Thackeray was someone very very dear to Gwen—perhaps she even helped to raise him— and perhaps he was an individual of note in the Ebonhawke community as well. When Gwen died, his ties to her were such (and his own notoriety in the community was such) that it wasn’t -such- a painful stretch to put his name on the tombstone.

Our modern Logan Thackeray may be named after Gwen’s great-grandson, or the naming might be a coincidence (Logan is not a hugely uncommon name for the Ascalonian naming scheme). Perhaps, even, his parents heard the name at some point but forgot about it, so when they were thinking, ’what’s a good name that goes with Thackeray?’ Logan popped up in their heads and they went with it. I know I’ve inadvertently named characters after pop stars and people from books this same way, so it’s possible!

@Mint: You forget that Tyrians don’t share lifespans as the “average American.” Adelbern was in his 70s by the time of the Foefire, but in Ghosts of Ascalon he is described as middle-aged.

However, I’m going to sit in the boat of “shortened rather than accurate” – though I don’t know why they didn’t do “ancestor”.

But on the other hand, we see a similar case in Iron Marches, a Priory scholar Aimee Testibrie looking into her “great-great-grandfather,” Kilnn Testibrie. Kilnn was dead even by the time of GW1, and he’s given an additional great than Gwen to Logan.

Slap on a numerous other cases of odditities in this regard and you get “maybe Tyrians age slower than us Earthlings”. (The curious case of Dan Marriner, being one other example).

@Aaron: Well, they fixed the Statue of Grenth in DR’s inscription nearly a year after release (it was fixed sometime in late spring/early summer of 2013). It was originally quoting Malchor, not it quotes Desmina.

@Ladybug: I don’t think that this is meant to be the epitaph on the gravestone. Reason I say this is what we see in-game:

A simple memorial marks the final resting place of Ascalonian hero and Ebon Vanguard commander, Gwen Thackeray—loving wife of Lieutenant Keiran Thackeray and great-grandmother to Captain Logan Thackeray.

This is a description of the object, not what’s carved onto it. Compare to other gravestones:

Captain Ander Greywind
1038 – 1112 AE
The greatest teacher and leader
Ever to have graced this land

See the formatting difference? Gwen’s Grave is perhaps the only gravestone that doesn’t follow this format of Name (new line) Dates of Living (new line) Inscription.

According to Lore of the Rings, they simply call people “Son Of”.

E.g. Tony, Son of Bob.

Bob maybe from a few hundred years ago. So Tony isn’t actually Bob’s son. But Tony is from the same bloodline.

@Konig: I was (reluctantly) preparing to buy into the prolonged lifespan theory until I remembered this little tidbit from an interview, in which they discussed the lifespans of asura:

“Asura live for slightly longer than a human – perhaps 5-10% longer (an exceptional lifespan for an asura might be 120 years).”

Source: http://m.incgamers.com/2010/02/guild-wars-2-developer-interview-2/

As for whether the little popup info box is, in fact, a popup info box and not what’s written on the tomb . . . Maybe. It’s a solid enough theory, based on the points you raised.

That line doesn’t really discredit the different-maturity-rate concept. Exceptional human lifespans would be roughly 110 from that line, so you can probably expect most to live until 90-100 if dying of old age. But consider this:

• Dan Marriner is 7 years old, but mistaken for being three years old.
• Look at all the “grandmothers” and other old women in the game. They don’t look like your typical grandmother in reality – lacking wrinkles and all that. There is, iirc, only 3 “old wrinkly human women” in the game. (And a sexist note: the same isn’t so for human men; old men are wrinkled.)

Even then, that doesn’t prevent having children at later ages than for reality, due to magical healing and how even compared to GW1, magic is more potent in Tyria.

I’m not really sure what the bulletpoints actually show, other than that Dan Marriner looked very young or someone was bad at judging age. Can you elaborate more?
I suppose it’s not utterly impossible that humans in Tyria reproduce around the age of 70-80 (which is about the age at which Logan’s predecessors would have had to have been when their offspring were born for the timeline to work), but I’m sure if that was the point a-net was trying to make they would have said something. I mean . . . Really?

Edit/addendum/thing: If reproducing around the age of 70-80 -were- common and Adelbern was, as you say, in his 70s at the time of the Foefire, why was his son, our strapping young Prince Rurik, fully mature and leadership-worthy and engaged years before that, and already saying King Adelbern had grown old and foolish? Shouldn’t King Adelbern have just barely been making his way into his prime reproductive years at the time? I mean, I know kids say the darndest things, especially when they’re upset, but still . . .

Additional edit: I won’t discount the notion that with the aid of magic, reproducing late in life might be possible. When all else fails, you can always blame magic. Or so I’ve been led to believe.

You account for female fertility, but not male fertility. Maybe a 70 year old man did it with his 20 year old wife and had a baby. Then this male baby had children at 70 with his 22 year old wife. Etc.

I agree ‘ancerstor’ would be better wording, though.

I guess ‘great-great-great-…great ^ n grandmother’ was a bit inconvenient to put on a headstone.

There’s bigger fish to fry, since when on your grave you can see the name of your great great great… grandson?

Now, we can stop over thinking and just come to the conclusion someone wanted to make it clear that she was his ancestor.

This is important. A friend of mine mentioned earlier that he wondered how Logan’s mother died. I asked him how he knew she wasn’t still alive, and he said he remembered seeing either her or Logan’s grandmother’s gravestone in Ebonhawke. I thought he just read it wrong, but if what you say is true then it needs to be clarified in some way.

Isn’t Gwen’s grave a skill point? That automatically means the dialogue would be different then the tombstones actual wording.

Anyway, it has been confirmed people can use magic to prolong their life.

It’s quite simple really, Gwen is actually a cyborg sent from the future to destroy char.

Or because Gwen is a Mesmer, she is actually alive and disguised as Anise. Every once an a while she gets together with Livia for tea and crumpets.

DarcShriek.5829:

It’s quite simple really, Gwen is actually a cyborg sent from the future to destroy char.

I find it quite funny you mention that since tomorrow there’s another “anniversary” of the day we “saved” Gwen’s mother, Sarah, from a golem sent to the past by charr.

I’m calling upon you, Bane.