Have you ever wondered about how age works in the Wings of Fire universe? Maybe how dragon ages translate to human ages? Well, keep reading to find out!
If you are a casual Wof enjoyer (or you don’t overthink everything like me), you may be asking why the age range is so important, or why this article is necessary. That’s a valid question; let me try to answer it. For starters, age is a bit inconsistent (I will elaborate on this in a second). Just because two dragons/dragonets are the same age, doesn’t guarantee that they will act the same or have the same characteristics, at least those related to aging such as size or mastery of language.
Second, we don’t really know how long a year is. In my hours of research and days of reading Wings of Fire, I have yet to find any solid evidence that Pyrrhia has a 365-day year. There are mentions of four seasons, but we don’t know how many days long they are. Furthermore, we don’t know how long a day is either. Saving the best for last, we have the conundrum of relating the dragons’ age range to that of humans, as we know that they age differently.
Let’s examine one of the most egregious examples of the age inconsistency: Anemone and Mink. If you are unfamiliar with these characters, Anemone is one of the SeaWing princesses and attends Jade Mountain Academy. Mink is quite similar, being the youngest IceWing princess. They are both two years old (born in 5,010 A.S.), yet I don’t think anyone would initially think that.
Despite being the same age, Mink appears much younger than Anemone. While not everyone acts the same at the same age, Anemone acts like and is treated like someone who is getting close to finishing primary school, maybe even older, while Mink is definitely portrayed as much younger, maybe still in kindergarten. A less shocking, but still relevant example of the age inconsistency is that all of the arc three protagonists (Blue, Cricket, Sundew, Snowfall, and Luna) are all the same age as well. Members of this group like Blue seem to be younger than, say, Queen Snowfall, in my opinion.
Now to answer the age-old question: how does one convert a dragon’s age to its human equivalent? Well, we know that a dragon matures at age 7 and a human at age 18, so the easy answer is that a dragon year is equivalent to about 2 and a half human years. Great, so the Dragonets of Destiny are currently 18, Peril is 20, Deathbringer is in his early 30s, and Queen Scarlet is at least in her 80s. Perhaps this is sufficient for you, but I’m not satisfied with the accuracy of these ages; there is no way Queen Scarlet is 80.
Maybe we take the average human lifespan and compare it with the average dragon lifespan? The average human life expectancy is about 80 years, while for dragons it is around 140 years. So doing some sketchy math we get the Dragonets of Destiny being in their early teens, Peril is 14, Deathbringer is around 25, and Queen Scarlet is 56. I think that that method is worse (or my math is wrong). In the end, there is canonically no dragon-to-human age conversion, so in the end, there is no real formula one can use to compare a dragon's age to a human.
Tui has done a very strange thing with the age range in Wings of Fire, and for people like me it is very frustrating. While character ages might be inconsistent, the age number doesn’t really have much impact on how old the character is meant to be. In the end, a good character is not determined by their age, and similarly, a good story is not determined by the age of its characters.