July 23, 2014, 02:00 PM

lyannas: I’ve been racking my brain over this maths ever since I found out about R+L=J (which is a long time ago), but who do you think is most likely older: Robb or Jon? If I remember correctly The rebel houses met up in Riverrun for the weddings after The Battle of the Bells, and Cat likely got pregnant on her wedding night. We also know Ned found Lyanna after the war “in a bed of blood” shortly after giving birth to Jon (assuming that her screams were that of childbirth).

Now when Ned returns to Riverrun after the ToJ, Robb is already born. So again: who’s older? Of course they’re very close in age, and may only be separated by a few months (or days, even), but I’m trying to figure out as definitively as I can and I hoped you could help!

I never thought about it before. I don’t think I cared, to be honest. (And I still don’t.) And we can’t know for sure, by the way. Because to be certain, we need to know precisely how long the Rebellion lasted.

Robb was conceived the first time Ned and Catelyn had sex, and I’ve seen people suggest that Robb is older because he was born nine months into the Rebellion (which lasted, roughly, a year) whereas Jon was born after the Rebellion ended, in ToJ. This is false. The Rebellion had already started when Ned and Cat got married. I’m pretty sure the battles of Summerhall and Ashford had already taken place by then.

I always felt like Robb was older, but it was probably because everyone else (the characters) thought Robb was older as well, since they think Ned is Jon’s father. I think it all depends on this: Was Robb born while the war was still raging (or when it was over and Ned was going to ToJ, it makes no matter) or was he born when Ned retrieved Jon and was journeying back to the North? 

As I said, we need to know exactly how many months the Rebellion lasted before we can come to a 100% correct conclusion. They’re both born in 283AC and that’s good enough for me.