Turtledove

1666?[]

Why are we so sure that this takes place in 1666? I don't see any specific chronology in the story. The ages of Mary Carleton and Michel de Grammont might be more palatable if the story was set in 1677 or so.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 21:49, December 28, 2018 (UTC)

Bump. I'm curious to know.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 08:12, April 1, 2019 (UTC)

The main thing is the fact that England and the Netherlands have fought only two wars within a generation. Given how history tracks with otl, we can guess the second war ended in the mid 1660s. You'll note we say ca 1666, but don't dogmatically pronounce that to be the case.

Making Carleton and Grammont's ages "palatable" is a non-starter. HT plainly used historical pirates freely and without much worry about consistency with OTL. TR (talk) 16:28, April 1, 2019 (UTC)

There is a reference, the in the story's last few pages, to the House of Orange being in control of Holland. In OTL the Oranges lost control of the country in 1650 and didn't get it back until 1672. Either we have a Dutch leader to add to Unnamed Fictional Heads of State and Government, or the story takes place in 1677 (when Mary Carleton was 35) and we can restore the article for William III of England as a contemporary head of state. If we keep the 1666 date, we'll have to change Mary Carleton's birthdate to c. 1631 and reclassify her as fictional, a la Stede Bonnet et al, except this would only be a 12-year adjustment, a bit closer to Richard Trevithick (A Different Flesh).JonathanMarkoff (talk) 04:18, April 2, 2019 (UTC)
Or you can knock it off with the false dichotomies in your quest to create more minutiae. Your arguments do not take into account the fact that the Orange reasserted itself in the face of the Third Anglo-Dutch War and the Franco-Dutch War, which was fought between 1672 and 1674.
So here's what we know: We know there were two wars between England and Holland in a generation, and that the Dutch did well both times. We know that that the House of Orange is in power. We know Charles II is King of England. In The United States of Atlantis, we learn that the pirates were stopped "a little more than a century before", that is, before 1775. So the window is really between 1666 and 1672. 1677 is just right out. TR (talk) 05:04, April 2, 2019 (UTC)