The Timeline of RWBY

All of this is based on what the Blacksmith tells RWBYJ at the end of Volume 9. There is no mention of how long ago this was, or if there was anything before this point. The tree must have existed before, but nothing else is known about this time before the brothers.

This must have all happened before The Lost Fable, because by then the brothers had already made Remnant, the Grimm, and humanity.

For thousands of years, I've walked the surface of Remnant, living, dying, and reincarnating in the body of a like-minded soul.

There is some slightly conflicting information here, though it is very vague so it doesn't really matter that much.

You see, centuries ago, I sacrificed a great deal of magic to four young women, who I hoped would use my gift for good. They were the first Maidens.

The Maidens have existed for thousands of years.

Though the war itself lasted around ten years, the century leading up to it was filled with so much tension, you might as well lump 'em together.

There are a couple of ways to find the end of the war:

In V2, Oz tells us it ended "nearly 80 years ago":

On this day, nearly eighty years ago, the largest war in recorded history came to an end.

The Vytal Festival was created just after the war ended, happens once every two years, and the festival during V1-3 is the 40th, meaning the war must have ended at least 78 years ago (39 x 2 years, the 40th 2 years start with V1-3).

(Note that the "annual" part of that screenshot is an error.)

The Vytal Festival was created to serve as a celebration of peace between the Kingdoms. Every two years, a Kingdom would be chosen to open its doors to the world, allowing citizens from every corner of Remnant to meet and indulge in one another's cultures.

Yang was 17 at the start of the show, and Raven most likely didn't have her until after they graduated from Beacon, since being pregnant while fighting giant monsters doesn't seem... ideal.

Huntsmen graduate from Beacon after 4 years:

That being said, the first person you make eye contact with after landing will be your partner for the next four years.

Blake was 17 at the start of the show.

Weiss was 17 at the start of the show.

Yang was 17 at the start of the show.

The first... was my mom. He wouldn't tell me everything, but I learned that the two of them had been on a team together with Summer and Qrow, and that she'd left me with him right after I was born.

Ruby was 15 at the start of the show.

Jaune waited for RWBY to show up for 10 to 20 years in the Ever After. RWBY fell into the Ever After at the end of Volume 8, which was roughly 2 years after V1C1. (See below)

Ruby was 15 at the start of the show, and Summer disappeared while Ruby was still very young.

Her name was Summer Rose, and she was, like... Super-Mom: Baker of cookies and slayer of giant monsters. And then... one day she left for a mission and never came back. It was tough. Ruby was really torn up, but... I think she was still too young to really get what was going on, y'know?

Yang describes Ruby as a toddler when she was out looking for Raven, which she only started doing after Summer disappeared:

There we were: A toddler sleeping in the back of a wagon and a stupid girl too exhausted to even cry for help.

She later mentions that Ruby still couldn't even talk yet when Summer disappeared:

My mom left me. Ruby's mom left too. Tai was always busy with school and Ruby couldn't even talk yet.

In V5C1, Leo says that Spring disappeared over a decade ago:

She was determined, at first, when she inherited her powers, but the weight of responsibility proved to be too much for the child. She... ran. Abandoned her training, everyone. That was over a decade ago.

Both Qrow and Raven mention/imply that she was picked up by Raven's bandit tribe after she disappeared:

I did some digging around. Looks like, after Spring ran away, she was picked up by bandits, specifically the Branwen tribe.

She was scared when we found her! Weak. No matter how much training I put her through, she never learned! She wasn't cut out for this world! And with those powers, she would've been hunted her entire life!

Miles mentioned that the cutoff age for becoming a maiden is around 30 years in an AMA on Reddit. It's not really an official rule, but if they're writing the story with that age in mind then it might as well be.

No such thing as "too young" to be a maiden. As for "too old", we don't like having super hard-fast rules for certain things, but we've sort of unofficially figured that 30 is probably around the cutoff point to become a maiden.

With all of that in mind, we can figure out roughly when Spring must have died. First of all, it must have happened after Raven left Tai and Yang and returned to the tribe, because she says "when we found her". Raven returned to the tribe soon after having Yang, and Yang was 17 at the start of the show.

I learned that the two of them had been on a team together with Summer and Qrow, and that she'd left me with him right after I was born.

So, Spring must have died less than 17 years before V1C1. For the minimum time, we'll have to look at Raven's age. She most likely didn't have Yang until after graduating from Beacon. Huntsmen start at Beacon at 17 (see Yang's age) and graduate after four years.

That being said, the first person you make eye contact with after landing will be your partner for the next four years.

That means Raven was, at the very least, 21 before she had Yang and returned to her tribe. Since Yang's 17 in V1C1, Raven must have been at least 38 at that time. That means it's been at least 8 years since Raven was young enough to get the maiden powers.

Ah, how old are you?

Ten.

Cinder was confirmed to be in her early-mid twenties after Volume 4 ended.

Note that this is roughly 10 years before V1C1. It could be off by a couple of years.

Weiss was 17 at the start of the show.

When I was ten, my dad finally admitted to my mom that the only reason he married her was for the family name. It was actually on my birthday.

Then, five years ago, our leader stepped down, and a new one took his place.

So I stepped down, and Sienna Khan was appointed as my successor.

There is no exact time for when Cinder kills Rhodes, but in the scene before, he explains that she only has to wait a few more years to be free.

Just a few more years and you won't need your guardian's permission. You'll be free.

This is when he gives Cinder the sword that she kills him with, so we can assume it's not that long before she kills him. At the start of Cinder's training montage, when she's ten, he mentions she has seven years to train for her huntsman exam, so that is likely what he's refering to in the later scene as well.

Then we've got about seven years.

For what?

To train you for the Huntsman exam.

Gray says he thinks this happens 6 months before the show starts, and then more confidently says "less than a year" in the V3 crew commentary when Cinder tries to hire Adam.

(Thanks to Changyuraptor for the audio clip)

The school year for huntsman academies start during fall. There are multiple ways to figure this out, here is one:

Ruby is 15 years old at the start of the show, and she is still 15 in V3C3:

Ruby Rose. 15. Hails from Patch. Leader of Team RWBY. Status: Questionable.

Ruby also gives us the season for the end of the school year:

Look guys, it's been a good two weeks and between more exchange students arriving and the tournament at the end of the year, our second semester is going to be great!

I mean it is fall, so, eh, it's probably colder.

Ghira later confirms that there is a "fall semester":

Their plan is to strike on the last full moon before the beginning of the fall semester, roughly two months from today.

For Ruby to be 15 in both V1C1 and V3C3, the school year must start after Ruby's birthday, and end during the fall, but before her birthday. If the school year started during spring, the school year would be about 6 months in total and there would not be a fall semester, so it must start during fall.

For the Yellow Trailer:

We see Roman leaving Junior's club after hiring the goons for the Dust robbery in V1C1 in the trailer. Junior also mentions it in V2C4:

I haven't even seen him since the night you first came in here. He paid up front, I lent him my men, and none of them ever. Came. Back.

For V1C1 to V1C10 taking place over 3 days:

After the class in V1C10, Ozpin mentions Ruby has only been a team leader for one day:

I mean, it's only been one day.

The first day is RWBY arriving at Beacon and meeting each other, the second is the day of the initiation, and the third is the first day of classes.

For V1C11 and V1C12:

Pyrrha implies that there has been at least a couple of weeks since the start of the school year in V1C11:

Jaune, Cardin's been picking on you since the first week of school!

For V1C13 and V1C14:

Cardin mentions Jaune wrote an essay for him the week before V1C13, meaning there must have been at least one week since V1C12, since that is when Cardin started blackmailing Jaune.

Now, according to one of the essays you wrote for me last week, these nasty things loooove sweets.

Blake was 17 at the start of the show.

Glynda mentions the Vytal Festival is a few months away in V1C11, which takes place a couple of weeks after the start of the school year:

Remember, everyone, the Vytal Festival is only a few months away!

In V1C15, Ruby also mentions it has been a few months since she tried to stop Torchwick:

Besides, the police never caught that Torchwick guy I ran into a few months ago...

Note that this most likely happens very close to the end of their first semester at Beacon, since V2 starts 2 weeks after the end of the first semester and the day before the second semester starts, and Sun came to Vale for the Vytal Festival, but new students are still showing up in V2C2.

Look guys, it's been a good two weeks and between more exchange students arriving and the tournament at the end of the year, our second semester is going to be great!

Ooh! You're here for the festival!

Ruby also mentions Penny has been gone for weeks in V2C3, meaning it takes place from 2 weeks to a bit over a month after V1C16:

Penny! Where have you been? It's been weeks!

For the events happening during a weekend:

Yang mentions it's a Friday afternoon at the start of V1C15:

Remind me again why we're spending our Friday afternoon visiting the stupid docks?

Ruby also later mentions Blake ran away on a Friday:

She's been missing since Friday.

Ruby also mentions Blake has been gone all weekend at the end of V1C15:

She's been gone all weekend...

And Sun later confirms Blake has been with him for nearly two days in V1C16:

Nearly two days and you gave me nothing but small talk and weird looks!

V1C16 ends later the same day, since Weiss spent 12 hours that day looking for Blake:

Do you have any idea of how long we've been searching for you? Twelve hours.

Weiss was 17 at the start of the show.

Look guys, it's been a good two weeks and between more exchange students arriving and the tournament at the end of the year, our second semester is going to be great! But, classes start back up tomorrow!

Yang was 17 at the start of the show.

Look guys, it's been a good two weeks and between more exchange students arriving and the tournament at the end of the year, our second semester is going to be great!

I mean it is fall, so, eh, it's probably colder.

Ruby was 15 at the start of the show.

Snow has started falling before Ruby leaves home in V3C12, indicating that it is winter.

Blake was 17 at the start of the show.

Weiss was 17 at the start of the show.

Yang was 17 at the start of the show.

Scenes in V4-5 don't always happen in chronological order, and this relies a bit on that, so this date might be slightly off. However, it does seem to line up with other related scenes pretty well:

Ghira gives us a rough date in V5C3:

Their plan is to strike on the last full moon before the beginning of the fall semester, roughly two months from today.

We can assume that the last full moon before the fall semester is pretty close to the actual start of the fall semester, at the very most a month before it, but likely much closer than that (see the notes about the battle at Haven and Ruby's 17th birthday).

Ghira mentions Adam's plans to take over the White Fang in the same speech:

With this, we have been able to ascertain that Adam Taurus has plans to overthrow the current leader of the White Fang, Sienna Khan, and take over the reins himself.

A bit later, Fennec has recieved the news about Sienna:

We finally received a message from the Mistral brotherhood: the operation was a success. Adam Taurus has claimed his place as the High Leader of the White Fang.

The Menagerie parts of V5C5 happen very soon after Ghira's speech in V5C3, because that is when Blake and Sun start trying to get people to sign up for helping Haven. Keep in mind that global communication is still down after the Fall of Beacon, so the message about Sienna must have taken a while to get from Mistral to Menagerie.

To sum up, Adam must have killed Sienna roughly around the time of Ghira's speech, which was a bit over 2 months before the fall semester.

RNJR and Qrow arriving in Mistral happens very close to their meeting with Leo, since it's clear from their dialogue that RNJR still haven't had time to really look at the city yet when they are on their way to Haven.

Qrow goes to get a drink after the meeting with Leo, and Oscar finds him in a bar late at night, so this most likely happens on the same day.

Oz gives us an approximate date in V5C3, which happens just after Oscar and Qrow gets back to RNJR:

We have approximately one month before classes resume at Haven.

For Weiss' V4 scenes:

Weiss most likely escapes Atlas a day or a couple of days after the charity concert, given that she decides to escape the night of the concert.

Jacques gives us a rough date for Weiss' first day in V4:

Which is why the Schnee Dust Company will be holding a charity concert in the coming weeks.

This means all of Weiss' scenes in V4 happen over only a few weeks. To place these weeks on the timeline, we need to look at what happens after she escapes:

From V6C13, we know Atlas is only about a day away from Argus by airship. However, Weiss was going to the city of Mistral, not Argus, and her route was not direct:

No more stops from here to Mistral. Sorry for the long trip. Keeping us off the radar's been harder than I thought. Lots of air traffic around northern Anima.

So, we can assume it took them a couple of days to get to Lake Matsu. However, Vernal reveals that Atlas has closed its borders already when Weiss wakes up at Raven's camp:

General Ironwood closed the borders and recalled all his little troops and tin cans.

And Ironwood said he would be closing the borders a week from when Weiss escaped:

By this time next week, the Kingdom of Atlas will be officially closing its borders.

It is possible Weiss stayed in Atlas for a couple of days after escaping the Schnee manor and before getting on the airship, but it's also possible the trip lasted about a week. Anyway, it's roughly a week after Weiss escaped.

From Lake Matsu, it is only a couple of days until the attack at Haven, which is close to the start of the fall semester, which places all of this in the month and a half leading up to the fall semester.

For the White Fang attack:

We have about two weeks before Adam's attack on Haven.

Keep in mind Ghira knows the attack will happen on the last full moon before the fall semester, so two weeks + the time between the full moon and the fall semester would put the attack pretty close to the other events here.

All of Weiss and Yang's scenes in V5 actually take place in just a couple of days.

Weiss figures out she can probably break out of Raven's camp using summons just after she wakes up after crashing and getting kicked in the head. Her attempt at breaking out is when Yang enters the camp and distracts everyone, so it must have been the day after the crash.

For the villain meeting at Raven's camp:

The meeting happens roughly around noon and Weiss and Yang have already left, meaning it must be at least the day after, since Weiss and Yang left during sunset.

And the fact that your daughter will be a part of all that?

And Watts mentions the attack is in 2 days:

In two days, Haven Academy will be destroyed by the White Fang.

The first day is the day of the meeting, Raven visiting Leo, Qrow and Oscar talk about how bad things look and Ruby, Weiss, and Yang drink coffee together early in the morning. The second day is the day of the attack, which happen at night.

It was Leo, says he had a breakthrough with the council. Thinks he might be able to get together a small raiding party for the bandits. He wants us to meet up at the school tomorrow night to walk us through it.

This puts the villain meeting the day after Weiss and Yang leaves the camp.

For the date of the attack:

Their plan is to strike on the last full moon before the beginning of the fall semester, roughly two months from today.

For Ruby's birthday:

Ruby was 15 at the start of the show, and this is very close to being exactly 2 years after that.

Lindsay has also said Ruby turned 17 between V5 and 6 multiple times. VAs don't always know specifics like that about the timeline and story, though, so see the previous note which just confirms it.

RWBY's story in V6 is only 4 days:

1. At the train station in Mistral, the train derailing, learning about Jinn, Ozma, and Salem, reaching Brunswick.
2. Fleeing from Brunswick, arriving in Argus.
3. Meeting Cordovin, telling JNR about Jinn, Ozma, and Salem, Oscar disappearing, searching for Oscar, coming up with the plan to steal the airship.
4. Executing the plan, arriving in Atlas.

Some argue that there must be some extra time between the 3rd and 4th day to plan the heist. However...

• The plan is honestly very simple and should not take them days to figure out.
• They are in a hurry to get the lamp to Atlas.
• Blake and Terra are still going through details while Yang is driving Blake to the tower, which they wouldn't have to do if they had days of planning beforehand.
• There is nothing indicating that a day or multiple days were skipped.

All in all, it is easier to believe they only needed a night to figure out the plan than it is to think they needed days to figure it out, while they were in a hurry, and they were still going through details the day of the heist, and the show did nothing to tell us this time period existed.

RWBY's story in V6 starts just 2 weeks after the battle at Haven:

It's been two weeks since the attack on Haven.

We get a date from the poster Cinder walks by in V6C2, placing her V6 story about a month after the attack on Haven.

Lil' Miss tells Cinder to return in a week:

Give us a week, we'll find your travelers.

For Hazel:

That big guy asked about 'em last week.

It's safe to assume they meant Hazel here. There aren't many "big guy"s looking for information about RWBY out there.

For Volume 7:

If Maria hadn't offered to help me these past weeks, I'd have likely collapsed by now.

Note that Pietro says weeks, not days or months, but weeks, meaning this was a few weeks, probably close to a month, after Maria (and RWBY and the rest) arrived in Atlas.

There isn't a solid date for V7C8 to V7C13. It all happens the same night, but they don't mention how long it is between Ironwood getting the invitation and the actual dinner. However, RWBY and Oscar are discussing the dinner earlier the day of and it seems like they just got the news, so it's safe to assume there was at most a day between the invitation and the dinner.

Well, no one knows your dad better than you, and out of everyone going tonight, I'd say you're the only one who could snoop around the house and not be questioned.

Volume 8 starts just hours, if not minutes, after Volume 7 ends, so this could really be part of the point above, but there are a lot of details to go through for just Volume 8, so they have been separated to keep things a bit more organized.

Day 1: Volume 7 ends with the sun rising, starting the first day of Volume 8. This day ends with Oscar being captured, Yang, Ren, and Jaune spends the night at the outpost, Ruby, Weiss, Blake, Nora, and May at the Schnee manor, and Penny, Pietro, and Maria at Amity.

Day 2: The global broadcast happens early the next morning, just before the sun rises. This can be seen in the last scene of V8C5. Yang, Ren, and Jaune react to the broadcast stopping too soon, and then run outside to see the Grimm river. The shot of the river going towards Atlas and Mantle shows the orange glow of the sun starting to rise on the horizon.

This is where time gets a bit weird. It seems like the this day just skipped right from sunrise to sunset. At the end of V8C5, the sun must be just about to rise, because throughout the rest of the episode, it was night. Then, in the next episode, Yang, Ren, and Jaune gets picked up by Winter and the Ace Ops while on their way back to Mantle. Mantle was not that far from the outpost, they managed to ride way past the outpost from Mantle while chasing the Hound, and they didn't spend the entire day on that ride. However, when they are picked up by Winter and the Ace Ops, the sun is already setting.

It's possible they needed the day to fix the hoverbike, but there isn't any indication of this. In fact, Yang said she found what she needed to fix it at the end of V8C4, the night before the broadcast.

If anyone cares, I found a part to fix the bike. So, yay. Good news.

Jaune literally said they need to hurry to do something, so they didn't spend any more time at the outpost than they had to.

Did you hear our message? It's right there. We need to hurry.

The only explanation I can see for this is that this day was just forgotten. We don't know what Ruby, Weiss, and Blake did at the Schnee manor during this time, and we don't know why Yang, Ren, and Jaune hadn't reached Mantle yet, it's like this day just didn't exist.

The "day" ends in V8C7 with Monstra having landed on Atlas, Yang, Ren, and Jaune are released to try and save Oscar scout ahead for Winter and the Ace Ops, and Penny crashes into the ground outside the Schnee manor.

Day 3: All of V8C8-9 takes place during this night, with Oscar's explosion killing Monstra happening just before sunrise. In his ultimatum in V8C10, Ironwood gives us a boundary for the end of V8C11:

You have one hour to respond.

The time for the rest of the volume is really fuzzy, however. It could all take place that same morning, all within the same hour or maybe couple of hours, or the whole day could have somehow passed again and it's sunset at the end of the volume.

The first option seems more likely based on what's happening in the story. Ironwood gave RWBY a short deadline for them to respond, so surely he would also want Penny to meet him very soon after that response. However, in V8C14 we see the sun in the west (it sets in the west), and it's clearly not night time in Vacuo, which it would be if it was morning in Atlas. So, based on what we can see, the end of the volume takes place during the evening, while the sun is setting in Atlas, but that would mean Ironwood was fine with RWBY waiting the whole day just to send Penny to the academy entrance, which seems very unlikely.

It's possible that the ultimatum happened later in the day, instead of the morning, even though there isn't really anything showing that the day has passed again. If it really did happen later in the day, it means that Winter and the Ace Ops needed the whole day to fly from Monstra to underneath Atlas and take the elevator up to the academy. So, again, it seems like a day has just gone missing.

One interesting thing here, assuming Ironwood didn't let RWBY wait the whole day before sending Penny, is that Cinder must have gotten really lucky. Her meeting with Neo to ask Jinn about RWBY's plan must have happened after the plan was made and before the portals to Vacuo appeared, because Jinn can't tell the future, and Cinder was ready to ruin their plan when the portals appeared.

The Lamp cannot tell of events that have yet to happen, and it will only ever answer three questions every one hundred years.

Jinn shows everything RWBY planned, from when Ruby first got the idea to the gang sitting at the dinner table discussing the details. This means that Cinder must have asked Jinn the question after the entire plan was figured out, but before they actually started executing it, which must have been just minutes apart.

This is right after Volume 8, and is again separated just to keep things organized.

Jaune's story in Volume 9 both starts and ends here, but most of it happens before due to the stopwatch sending him 10 to 20 years back in time.

RWBY's story in the Ever After lasts two Afteran days, which I will assume is roughly the same as a day on Remnant. The first day is Team RWBY waking up and finding each other, getting Yang's arm back from Jinxy, going to the Red Prince's birthday party, meeting the Curious Cat, the Herbalist, Jaune and Juniper, and finally going to the Paper Pleasers' village and spending the night there. The second day is the village being flooded, Ruby running away, going to the Tree, and returning to Remnant.

There's no way to know how much time has passed on Remnant while they were in the Ever After right now. Amity and airships from all nations have had time to gather above Vacuo, so a few days have passed, at least, but likely a bit more. The Blacksmith said the portal would take RWBYJ to when they were needed most.

Not where. When you are needed most.