How Old is Rincewind?

[MrsWizzard]

So, I've often seen many interpretations of Rincewind through fan art, book covers, and the like. One interpretation that seems to irrationally bug me is when people depict him as particularly old with the long white beard, like the old Kirby cover art. (Then there's Sir David Jason, but that's another matter entirely).

I think it bothers me so much because there's just no way Rincewind's that old at the time of CoM, especially since the Paul Kidby art, which PTerry in the Art of Discworld describes as "spot on," shows him relatively young. Even in the book itself implies he's not that old. On page 151 (of my slightly foxed copy, at least), when Rincewind jumps briefly to our world on the airplane, he's described as "Dr. Rjinswand, 33," so I can only assume our Rincewind is around the same age at the time.

So, I'm wondering about how old would Rincewind be around now-ish, I guess around Raising Steam where he's last mentioned? Do we have a reference for about how much time has passed since CoM? Sybil mentions Young Sam showing interest in trains, so I'm pegging him around 5-8ish years since Night Watch. I think they mention CoM and LF happen over six months, and Rincewind mentions at least a couple years having passed in Interesting Times.

My guess is he's around 45-50ish, but what do you all think?

 

[Tonyblack]

Well, considering that he was at the beginning of the Universe, he's possibly billions of years old.

 

[Molokov]

I think your guesses are kind of correct. In my head, he was early 30s in The Colour of Magic, but he did spend some time in the Dungeon Dimensions between Sourcery and Eric, so there's no real way of knowing how much time actually passed for him during that period, or how much he actually aged. My guess would be that by the time of Rincewind returning to UU at the end of the Last Continent, he would have been maybe 15 years older than at the beginning, so mid-40s, and so perhaps 50 by the end of the series?

Although around 30 of our years passed between The Colour of Magic (1983) and The Shepherd's Crown (2015), this doesn't necessarily correspond 1 to 1 with Discworld years, as a) depends on if you're counting rotations of the disc or agricultural years (two per rotation) and b) depending on where people live on the Disc, they might fudge year counting anyway and c) magic.

Terry was generally fairly vague about this because he wanted to be

 

[TheAnts]

I figure RIncewind has an uncountably aged body on account of his strange travels, and the mental age of an extremely canny 15-year-old.