> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://elarakincaid.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Timeline & Map Reference: Twenty-Two Years of Fallen Hearts - URL: https://elarakincaid.com/fallen-hearts-timeline-map/ - Published: 2026-07-07T19:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-07T02:16:57.000Z - Description: The reference readers have asked for since book three: twenty-two years of Fallen Hearts chronology, the Stormborn dynastic chart, and the regional map. - Author: Elara Kincaid - Tags: Behind the Scenes, Fallen Hearts, #ElaraKincaid This is the post readers have been asking me for since book three. A consolidated reference: the chronology, the geography, the dynastic chart. I keep my own copy in a leather folder on my desk, dog-eared and over-annotated, and what follows is the cleaned-up version. Print this if you reread the series. Bookmark it if you are mid-reread now. The series spans twenty-two years of in-world time and three generations of warrior queens, and even I have to check the chart sometimes when a reader writes in to ask whether Marcus is older or younger than Elena. (He is younger by five and a half years. I get this question every other week.) --- ## The Chronology I date the series from Year 0, which is the year of *Stolen Hearts* — the year Aria reclaims her throne. Three years before that is the West Wing coup that killed her family and put Varen on the stolen throne. Twenty-two years after that is the constitutional signing in *The Weight of Legacy*. The full timeline: | Year | Event | Book | | ---------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------- | | Y -22 | Aria Stormborn born to King Edmund and Queen Liana | — | | Y -3 | The West Wing coup. Aria's parents and brothers killed. Aria, age nineteen, escapes by accident. Varen takes the throne. | — | | Y -3 to Y 0 | Aria's three years in hiding in the Eastern Marches, building the alliance | — | | Y 0, spring | Council of Seven vote. Three seats present. Miriam dies. Aria and her army of 2,500 march on Millbrook. | *Stolen Hearts* | | Y 0, summer | Trial of Endurance at Ironpeak. Aria named Mountain Clan-sister. | *Stolen Hearts* | | Y 0, autumn | Valley of Sorrows campaign. 8,000 warriors. The cliff assault. The Iron Ring taken. Varen defeated. Coronation. | *Stolen Hearts* | | Y 1, late winter | Aria and Darius privately wed at Stormgate. | *Fractured Crown* | | Y 1 | Lord Thane's conspiracy. Crownhaven falls. Aria flees pregnant into the forests. Guerrilla campaign through the Eastern Marches. | *Fractured Crown* | | Y 1, late autumn | Princess Elena Stormborn born at Blackstone Keep during the duel campaign. | *Fractured Crown* | | Y 2 | Thane executed at the Crownhaven trial. Reform reforms. Cassian Varen's redemption arc begins. | *Fractured Crown* | | Y 6 | Five years of peace. Korrathi Empire invades the coast. War declared. Marcus Stormborn born seven weeks early during the siege. | *Iron and Flame* | | Y 6 | Riverside Keep falls. Darius captured. Three weeks of Korrathi captivity. The rescue. The Crownhaven siege. | *Iron and Flame* | | Y 6, late autumn | Treaty with Emperor Marius. The Korrathi withdraw. | *Iron and Flame* | | Y 7 to Y 11 | Five-year peace. The kingdom rebuilds. Lord Castor's coalition. Elena's tenth birthday. Castor's assassination plot foiled. | *Iron and Flame* | | Y 11 | Aria poisoned with shadowbloom at the harvest feast. Falls into mortis vinculum coma. Elena, sixteen, claims regency. War with Valdris. | *Shadows of the Crown* | | Y 11 | The Death Lord Malachai revealed at Morthaven. The binding marks on Aldric. Elena leads the strike team. The phylactery shattered. | *Shadows of the Crown* | | Y 11, winter | Elena's coronation. Six months of correspondence with Aldric. | *Shadows of the Crown* | | Y 12 | Elena's reign begins. Vivienne Petra's necromantic murders. The Truth Tribunal. Aria dies. | *Echoes of Vengeance* | | Y 13 to Y 15 | Adrian Terrence's reform conspiracy. The Justice's Vengeance faction. The Festival attack. Marcus wounded. | *The Price of Trust* | | Y 15 | Elena and Aldric reconcile. Constitutional draft begins. | *The Price of Trust* | | Y 19 | Twenty years from book one. Celeste Harwick's democratic proposal. Elena begins constitutional reform. The Eastern Province pilot. | *The Weight of Legacy* | | Y 19 to Y 21 | Elena and Aldric formally separate. The democratic experiment continues. Brennan's coalition. The Lake Mirren disaster. | *The Weight of Legacy* | | Y 21 | Constitutional signing. Twelve generations of absolute monarchy ended. | *The Weight of Legacy* | | Y 22 | Aldric returns. Elena and Aldric reconcile, on terms. The series closes. | *The Weight of Legacy* | A note on dates: I do not give specific calendar dates in-world. The Valdorian calendar uses sixteen named seasons rather than twelve months, and committing to those names in-text would have triggered a worldbuilding cascade I did not have the room for. If a reader presses me, I will say *Stolen Hearts* opens in early Storm-tide (roughly equivalent to our late February) and closes in deep Wolfwake (roughly mid-November). The rest you can extrapolate. --- ## The Stormborn Dynasty (Three Generations) ``` King Edmund Stormborn — Queen Liana | +-----------+------+------+--------------+ | | | | Two sons ARIA [other sister, died Cousin Darian (Y -3, (Y -22 — y 11, in childhood] Stormborn ages 11 poisoned coma (off-page, and 14, Y 11 to Y 12) Monastery of the died in | Eternal Vigil) the West | Wing) | + married Darius Blackwood | +---------+----------+ | | ELENA MARCUS (Y 1 — onward) (Y 6 — onward) | + married King Aldric of Valdris | +---------+----------+ | | ARIA (no second (the granddaughter, surviving Y 7 onward) child on-page) ``` Two specific notes for new readers: - **Marcus is named after Aria's advisor Marcus Kensington**, not after the Stormborn line. Aria insisted on the name in *Iron and Flame* against Darius's quiet preference for Edmund. Marcus the advisor died in the Korrathi war defending the western flank; Aria named her son for him while her grief was still fresh. - **The granddaughter Aria** is named for her grandmother. She is fifteen at the events of *The Weight of Legacy* and almost the same age her grandmother was when the West Wing fell. The series's structural symmetry runs partly through these naming choices. --- ## The Map of Valdoria and the Region I am not going to render the map in ASCII. It would not survive translation. What I can give you is the spatial relationship between the major locations, walked through as a tour: **Valdoria (the kingdom):** A roughly diamond-shaped kingdom with the capital, **Crownhaven**, at the central crossroads. The royal seat is **Stormgate Castle** in the inner city. Crownhaven sits on a major river (the Stormwater) navigable to the southern coast, and the harbor is the kingdom's primary trade port. The market quarter — Aria fights an assassination attempt in the Spice Quarter in book seven — is a half-mile north of the castle. **The Eastern Marches:** A long, forested, hilly territory east of Crownhaven. Aria spent her three years in hiding here. **Thornfield Crossing**, where Darius was born, sits in the middle of it. **Blackstone Keep** — where Elena is born — is in the northern Marches. **Greymarsh** is a coastal estuary town in the southeastern Marches; it figures into book two as the staging point for the Lyra rescue. The Marches border Valdris to the east through a contested mountain pass. **The Mountain Clans (the Northern Reach):** North of Valdoria, across the Ironpeak range. Thorald Ironheart's people. The Clan capital — though they would not call it that — is the great hall at **Ironpeak Hold**. The Trial of Endurance takes place in the high caves above the hold. Mountain Clan territory extends north into open tundra that the series never crosses. **Valdris:** Valdoria's neighbor to the east. A roughly equivalent kingdom in size, more rigidly traditional. The capital is the **Valdris Keep** in the city of Valdris-on-the-Bay. Aldric Aldarin's home. Valdris and Valdoria share a long mountain border with two passes — the **Redrock Pass** in the south, the **Ashling Pass** in the north — both of which figure into the Brennan campaign in book two. **Morthaven:** A ruin in the deep eastern mountains, at the upper edge of Valdris territory. Malachai's stronghold. After the events of *Shadows of the Crown*, the place is left to decay. By the end of the series, it is being slowly reclaimed by forest. **The Free Cities:** A federation of democratic city-states south and east of Valdris. They never feature on-page in a major scene, but their judiciary is the model Celeste Harwick eventually proposes for Valdoria's constitutional reform. The Free Cities are where Cassian goes in book three to chase Grey's network. **Kethara** — the amber-walled harbor city — is the largest of them. **The Korrathi Empire:** South across the Narrow Sea. Their capital is **Korrath**, a tidal-terrace city of great age. The empire's territory continues south and east beyond any borders the series defines. They invade Valdoria's coast in book three through a fleet landing at **Riverside** and pushing inland toward Crownhaven. After the treaty, they withdraw and do not return. **The Monastery of the Eternal Vigil:** A six-day ride west of Crownhaven, on the headland above a fishing village. Cousin Darian Stormborn is in holy orders here. The monastery is mentioned in every book of the series and visited only once, in a scene that ended up cut from the published edition of *Stolen Hearts* but survives in my draft folder. --- ## A Reader's Quick-Reference Card If you are reading the series for the first time and want a single page to keep beside you: - The kingdom is **Valdoria**. The capital is **Crownhaven**. The royal seat is **Stormgate Castle**. The dynasty is **Stormborn**. - The first three books follow **Aria** and her partner **Darius** (called The Raven). - The middle two books follow **Elena**, Aria's daughter, and her partner **Aldric**, prince and later king of **Valdris**. - The seventh book bridges generations and brings in **Aria the granddaughter** as a fifteen-year-old who watches the throne be set down. - The Korrathi Empire is the major external threat in book three. The Death Lord Malachai is the major external threat in book four. Internal political conspiracies — Lord Thane in book two, Vivienne Petra in book five, Adrian Terrence in book six, Lord Brennan and Thorne in book seven — drive the rest. - The series ends with the kingdom transformed into a constitutional government. The throne, in the final scene, is a chair in a museum. The Stormborn line continues in the people, not the title. That is the whole map. Walk it gently if you are heading back in. ## Related Fallen Hearts reading For the story behind these choices, see the [writer's commentary](https://elarakincaid.com/fallen-hearts-writers-commentary/). Meet the family this chart maps in the [character dossier](https://elarakincaid.com/fallen-hearts-character-dossier/), and open the [Fallen Hearts world lore](https://elarakincaid.com/fallen-hearts-world-lore/) for Stormborn magic and the seals. — Elara