The Time Traveler’s Dilemma: Getting Ancestry Right (So No One Has Kids at 10)

Time travel in fiction is tricky—especially when a character meets their own ancestors. One wrong date, and suddenly, someone’s having a child at age ten. Oops.

That’s exactly what I ran into while mapping out my main character Ron’s family tree. Since he travels back in time to meet his ancestors, their birthdates, ages, and major life events all need to line up. Otherwise, the entire timeline collapses.

I spent the day making sure everything made sense—when his ancestors were born, when they emigrated, when they had kids, and how old they were at key points in history. After much number-crunching, I finally have a solid timeline:

It took some effort, but now Ron’s journey through time makes sense—without any impossible parenthood scenarios.