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Dragaeran Reckoning of Time

• The Clock
• The Calendar

The Clock

The Dragaeran minute has 60 seconds, and the hour 60 minutes [FHYA 307]. Beyond that, nothing's the same as ours.

The day has 30 hours [TPG 212], reckoned from midnight and noon: e.g., "the ninth hour" [TPG 90], "the tenth hour of the morning" [FHYA 516], "the eleventh hour past noon" [TPG 93,Jrg 233], and sometimes also in our style, as "thirteen o'clock" [Orc 135] or (in writing) "13:00" [FHYA 71-73]. The day begins at midnight [FHYA 161]. This diagram shows our 12-hour half-day (clock face) on the inside and the Dragaeran 15-hour half-day on the outside, to show how each hour of the Dragaeran clock relates to our concepts of time of day; but remember that the hours are about the same length as ours (see below), so it really is a thirty-hour day (day + night).

A couple of times we read "24 hours" to refer to a day and a night. See my discussion in the Cracks area.

Actually, we haven't seen any Dragaeran clocks. One of the Orb's many functions is informing any inquirer of the correct time according to the Imperial Clock [Yen 17,27], which may be just a name for that function of the Orb. (So the whole Empire must function on Imperial Standard Time.) And every citizen of the Empire, down to the lowliest Teckla, even an Easterner who buys a Jhereg title (such as Vlad's father) or inherits one (such as Vlad), has a link to the Orb, so they have no need of mechanical clocks. (The Serioli, however, have water-clocks [Phx 94].)

I think the Dragaeran minute and hour are about the same as ours. First of all, they feel right in terms of the time things take, and I don't think Brust would deliberately confuse us with these terms without a good reason, which I don't see. Note that four meals a day seems standard [TPG 205,433,FHYAxxx].

Second, the year seems to be about the same length: Noish-pa is 70, "which is a very impressive age" for an Easterner [Yen 206]; and remember that most Easterners in the Empire live in poverty, which shortens lifespan. And the Dragaeran year (see below) has 17*17*30 = 8670 hours, while our Terran year has about 365*24=8760 hours, a difference of just over 1 percent.

Brust has Dragaera so carefully and consistently laid out that I wouldn't be surprised if he chose the 30-hour day specifically to make the hours and the 17²-day years both come out about equal to ours, so he could use them without confusing his readers. Otherwise, why not use the ubiquitous mystical number and give the day 17 or 34 hours? It's easy for Brust to bring out the difference between the Dragaeran week and ours: just make the Eastern week the same as ours, seven days, and have Vlad remark on it [Yen 18]. But the lengths of the day and year are the same on both sides of the mountains, and how would Vlad know about our world at all to express the contrast?

The Calendar

• 1 week = 5 days [TPG 203,Jrg 145,Yen 18,39], called
  • Firstday [Orc 143]
  • Skyday [Orc 143]
  • Homeday [Tek 7]
  • Farmday [Tek 7]
  • Marketday [Orc 82]
  • Endweek [Yen 17]
  That's six; maybe one of them is an alternate or regional name, or Marketday is not a day of the week but whatever day market is held. It's a safe bet that Firstday begins the week and Endweek ends it, but we have no general guidance for the order of the rest.

  [2003-03-31] We do have at least one small clue, and there are probably more clues waiting for anyone willing to track the days through each book. Vlad's order for cleaning and repair that precedes chapter 1 of Teckla is dated "Farmday" and concludes "Expect delivery by Homeday next", so Homeday probably doesn't come right after Farmday, or he would have said "tomorrow".

  James R. Orr contributes two interesting theories: [2004-05-07]

  Six Names, Five Days. My two theories:

  1) All the days end in "day" with the exception of Endweek. Endweek could simply be their equivalent to our vernacular: Weekend, or the last day(s) of the week. This theory would maintain a 5-day week and would probably name "Homeday" as the Endweek (weekend), or the day you can stay home if the boss allows.

  2) As you have theorized, Marketday could be a floating day. But entertain this (and I know it is a serious stretch): Perhaps Marketday is a floating extra day that happens two times in a Dragaeran month. 5 days a week, plus 2 extra "Marketdays" a month equals an even and neat 17 day Dragaeran month.

  Of course this second theory could use any of the days as a substitution for the two floating days.

• 1 month = 17 days [TPG 87]
• 1 year = 17 months [Tlt 96]
• 1 Turn = 17 years []
• 1 Phase = 17 Turns []
• 1 Reign = 17 Turns to 17 Phases [Tlt 96-97]
• 1 Cycle = 17 Reigns []
• 1 Great Cycle = 17 Cycles [TPGix]
  (Also called "complete Cycle" [TPG 22].)

Vlad tells us of the powers of 17 that define the Dragaeran calendar. He doesn't tell us the names of the units between a year and a cycle, but Paarfi does, on his title page to Five Hundred Years After (page IX: it follows Brust's page of acknowledgements, although the page numbers aren't printed till page XVI).

Unfortunately, the apparently reasonable way of interpreting the date on that page doesn't work out. Alexx S. Kay has made an excellent analysis of the problems.