#been trying to pin this down to figure out how fast Thorin would age in a He Lives AU

[bitterseaproduction]

The Hobbit’s official movie books really push the original timeline as the film one (despite 0 aging of characters in flashbacks pfft) BUT they also present Balin as the most ‘aged’ of the Company in both appearance and description at 178, despite Thorin — visibly far younger — being 17 years older than him.

It’s a conundrum, but I got an idea when I noticed Dwalin in the books supposedly lives to 340, even though a dwarf living to just 300 is supposed to be as rare as a human making it to 100! There’s been arguments that that was just a ‘typo’ on Tolkien’s part, but what if it wasn’t? What if we roll with that? Dwalin did look shockingly younger than Balin even though he’s just 9 years younger! That’s just 3 if you take it in human years!

So, using that 340 as inspiration and a base line, what if we say the direct line of Durin the Deathless plus the occasional offshoot like Dwalin just age slower than the typical dwarf? That their max baseline is closer to 300-350 or even 350-400 versus the usual 250-300? Because, if we go with, say, 400 as Thorin’s base max, suddenly we go from ‘Thorin should look older than Balin’ to ‘he’s in the human equivalent of his late 40s,’ and that seems much closer to the slightly aged up Richard Armitage we got in movies, doesn’t it?

This would also mean Thorin IS older than Balin despite their dynamic, but hey—sometimes your younger cousin is just wiser than you. 😂