A Most Parsimonious Timeline...

[Panpardus]

So earlier in one of the other threads (http://www.mylionking.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1390159#p1390159) I discussed the ages of the main characters of the first movie based on real-world biology, which to the credit of Disney, the cartoon franchise seems to generally follow (with obvious caveats). Here in this thread that I'm probably going to make a multi-part just because I don't have the time to write out everything all in one sitting -- plus the fact that I cannot get a good timeline template from any online program -- I'm just going to write out the general series of events based purely on the characters' ages and the evidence I use to support my theories. Once I eventually manage to find a good template, I'll post that to sort of bring everything together into a nice, single, synthesized graphic.

I figure the best way to start is just to establish what I'm considering canon. I'm trying to be as parsimonious as possible, which means looking at what's shown in the films and generally taking that as literally as possible, thus my own ideas are few and far between. In doing these kinds of projects, I like to live by the creed that if I've properly followed the evidence, the results will surprise me even after double checking my work. That said, here's what seems to be canon, as indicated by Disney:

The Lion King, The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, The Lion King 1 1/2, and The Lion Guard.

Now, I like all of these movies, even Timon and Pumbaa's thing, mostly because it adds a bit of levity to a fairly heavy story arc and there was a point during my childhood where I didn't really like thinking about Mufasa's death all the time. Do I think it was a wasted opportunity and made a bunch of weird retcons for the sake of getting a bunch of jokes in? Yes, and I'm not considering those conflicts canon as a result. That said, it does flesh out some aspects of the story.

What about Kopa and those books? Disney says they're not canon, so they're not canon as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure I angered a bunch of people with that assessment, but the overall story arc of the televised films/programs is already convoluted enough what with all the plot holes and such. I'm not one of those people who gets heated over Kopa, not to mention that I had no idea of his existence until around the time The Lion Guard was announced, so I'm neither attached to, nor vehemently against the character. Thus, for the purposes of this little project, I'm only going with what's onscreen.

So, here's the overall layout of events as seen onscreen.

Day 1
Timon leaves his colony and meets Pumbaa later than night.

Day 2
Simba's presentation ceremony occurs, which Timon and Pumbaa witness before settling into that little pond area nearby Pride Rock.

Month 3, Day 1
Mufasa shows Simba the Pride Lands, "I Just Can't Wait to be King" happens, Timon and Pumbaa leave their little home for whatever reason, the elephant graveyard scene happens, and Scar sings "Be Prepared".

Month 3, Day 2
The wildebeest stampede happens, Timon and Pumbaa find their new jungle home, and Scar ascends the throne while Simba runs away into the desert.

Month 3, Day 4
Timon and Pumbaa find and rescue Simba.

Month 8
Timon and Simba have a snail-eating contest.

Month 10
The adolescent Simba we see walking across the log in "Hakuna Matata" in the first movie.

Year 3, Month 3, Day 1
The end of the "Hakuna Matata" musical number; that evening Scar and the hyenas have their talk about the state of the drought and food shortage while Simba, Timon, and Pumbaa have their stargazing conversation.

Year 3, Month 3, Day 2
Rafiki finds out Simba is alive, Nala hunts Pumbaa and reunites with Simba, "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" (they mate and conceive), Simba sees Rafiki and has his 'talk' with Mufasa before leaving, not quite knowing the way back home.

Year 3, Month 3, Day 3
Nala and Pumbaa head off back to the Pride Lands, while Timon stays until convinced otherwise by Rafiki.

Year 3, Month 3, Day 4
All four meet up in the Pride Lands that evening, the final battle occurs, Simba takes over as King.

Year 3, Month 7
Kiara (as seen in Simba's Pride) and Kion's (as seen at the end of The Lion King) presentations. Kiara's happens early in the morning as she receives the fruit juice mark on her head, customary for the firstborn and future ruler; Kion is brought out later in the day as Timon and Pumbaa are seen cheering, happy that Simba did indeed have at least one boy after their earlier freakout over Kiara being a girl.

Year 3, Month 10
Kiara has her adventure in the Outlands and meets Kovu; "We Are One" and "My Lulluby" is sung.

Year 4, Month 1
Kion assembles his lion guard.

Year 5, Month 7, Day 1
Kiara goes off on her first solo hunt, 'rescued' by Kovu from the fire; Kovu is cautiously accepted into the pride.

Year 5, Month 7, Day 2
Kiara and Kovu have their outing and fall in love (unrealistically quickly).

Year 5, Month 7, Day 3
Simba takes Kovu to talk, gets ambushed by Outsiders; later that evening Kovu returns to Pride Rock but gets exiled; Zira and the Outsiders invade and a battle is waged overnight.

Year 5, Month 7, Day 4
The battle ends, the two prides reunite in peace.

This is just the timeline of onscreen events -- not counting any of the The Lion Guard episodes; I'm waiting for the first season to end before attempting to figure out any sort of chronology with those -- which means that I haven't really addressed the ages of the various other characters since this is chiefly based on Simba and Kiara's ages at various points throughout the story. I also haven't covered various offscreen details like when various characters were born or when Zira and the rest of her group were exiled, as well as seasonal events which could help to better pinpoint how much time passes when time skips are a bit more ambiguous (such as figuring out more precisely how old Kiara is in the latter half of Simba's Pride), but such things will be addressed and updated in additional posts to this thread, so if you're interested in seeing what I have to say, be sure to check back at some point.

What do people think of this for a start?

[zerodix]

that is, indeed, very parsimonious. i prefer, though, to think by a timeline in human years, that makes the switch to this animated universe easier, since i lack a certain amount of imagination. but I understand the parsimoniousness of the timescheme.

[Panpardus]

So, here's another installment of the timeline based on the ages of the characters. This time I'm going to look at the characters in The Lion King II: Simba's Pride and the main cast and recurring characters from The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar.

Kiara and Kion
Most of the second movie hinges on Kiara, so she's my metric for how much time passes here. As with before, the film starts with her presentation, and based on the same reasoning established for Simba's presentation age, she too is about 2-3 weeks old at this point.
As a cub, she seems a little younger than Simba was shown in his cubhood stage, if her size relative to Nala is any indication. As such, she's about 2-3 months old. (There's really only one shot of her as a cub next to her mother; Nala is so underused in this franchise.)
Towards the end of Return of the Roar there's a brief moment where Kiara is standing next to Nala, and based on that size estimate she -- and by extension Kion, since they're clearly litter mates -- is about 5-6 months old in the show. I know the characters are a bit oddly proportioned and drawn in this series, and a lot of people are like "Why are the cubs so big/Simba and Nala so small?" but they don't seem to be considering the fact that the cubs are just older than other cubs we've seen in the franchise. Additionally, the new sizes and the behaviors we see in the show -- Kiara learning to hunt and Kion's growing mane -- generally do still match up fairly well with real lions.
After the time skip to adolescence, next portion of the movie shows Kiara going off on her first solo hunt, and she's about 3/4 her mother's height and still has a cub-like expression, so she doesn't strike me as being as old as her parents were during the second half of their movie. As such, she's somewhere between 2-3 years old; I'll have to do a little more in-depth research into the weather patterns to determine a more precise age.

Tiifu and Zuri
We have no idea who these two are in terms of relationships to the pride, and I'm tempted to think that'll never be elaborated upon, unfortunately. Still, I'm assuming they're about the same age as the other lions of their generation, so about 5-7 months old in The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar.

Kovu and Vitani
Assuming they're litter mates and Zira's biological children, they seem to be about 3-4 months old when first introduced as cubs. I'm pushing the ages up a bit (within realistic boundaries) to account for potentially stunted growth as a result of living in the Outlands, as well as to account for Kovu's already-present beginnings of a mane.
(Seeing as "Lions of the Outlands" is officially going to be a thing next month, we'll see if Disney kept the aging consistent and what more we might be able to learn about these characters.)
After the time skip they're both about 2-3 years old, slightly older than Kiara and Kion.

Nuka
Figuring out Nuka's age is a bit more complex than just looking at his anatomy, but taking into account that the average litter interval for lionesses who manage to successfully raise their cubs to adolescence is 20 months (and the range according to a study of Serengeti lions is 11-25 months) this means that Nuka can be anywhere from 1.25-2.5 years old in the first half of the movie. Now that we have a range we can look at Nuka and better pinpoint his age here, which seems to be a bit on the younger side, which seems to be roughly 20 months -- or 1.6 years -- old.
Given that, he is about 3.6 years old after the time skip, so about the same age as Simba and Nala at the end of the first movie.

Zira
There's something of a multi-step process I took to gauging Zira's approximate age, since she's stylized a bit differently from the other main character lionesses. Basically, I added Nuka's approximate age(s) to the typical age of first conception for lionesses, which is about 3 years; this means that when we first see her, Zira is minimally about 4.6 years old. However, she was described as -- and consistently has the vibe of -- a "mature woman" in her 40s-50s by human standards, so that could put her up by about a year or more in terms of age, so for my purposes of being parsimonious to what I see onscreen, Zira's about 6 years old at the start of the film and ~8 years in the second half.

Bunga
Honey badgers are single parents, and mothers usually care for their young for about a year before she and the cub part ways, at which point male cubs might be adult size. Since it's hard to age honey badgers beyond that point, I'm assuming that based on his childishness, Bunga is still only about a year old when we first meet him, and probably close to 3 months old when he met Timon and Pumbaa.

Fuli
Based on her overall appearance (lacking the mane that a lot of fan artists like to redesign her with) and behavior (living alone and hunting for herself), Fuli is clearly an adolescent king cheetah of about 2 years.
(I offhandedly researched to see if there was any possibility for a leopard-cheetah hybrid in an attempt to explain the stylized rosettes and lack of 'tear marks' in a way other than just chalking it up to faulty genetics/poor design choice, but no such hybridization has been reported and I already didn't think it was likely. Even if they (or lion-cheetah pairings, for those Kion-Fuli "shippers") are genetically compatible enough to produce more or less healthy offspring, there are too many barriers to reproduction, especially in the case of female cheetahs who'd have to carry unusually large foetuses that would probably be born prematurely as a result.)

Ono
The only thing I could find about cattle egrets (Ono's stated species) with regards to their life cycles is that they reach sexual maturity (which ≠ adulthood) at about a year, a point after which their crest feathers turn orangish-gold during breeding season, so that's where I place Ono age wise.

Beshte
Like Fuli and Ono, Beshte is in the adolescent stage of development based on his size. For hippos, their 'teenage' years are from about 5-8 years old, and they can live for at least a decade or two after that in the wild, so I'd put Beshte at the lower end of that spectrum. (You'll notice that makes him older than Simba and Nala.)

Janja and the Bachelor Hyenas
It's well-known that spotted hyenas have a very female-dominated social hierarchy, but during their adolescence (about 2-3 years old) males will typically leave their birth clans and occasionally gather in so-called bachelor groups during their wanderings, which is clearly what Janja's all-male group is.

So that's where most of the main characters fall at this point. Next post on here from me will probably be a much more heavily detailed timeline that covers births, deaths, and major events, and points out various interesting things that are implied by the onscreen events. You may be surprised by what we discover...

[Panpardus]

Okay, so I finally have the free time to do this, so here goes; my more or less 'definitive' timeline for the cartoon canon, including all the characters discussed in previous posts. (Once the first season of The Lion Guard ends I'll go back and fine-tune some things and add the less significant recurring characters.) Edits will be made eventually, but might as well put the bulk of my theory down while I have the time.

Seven Years before The Lion King
Mufasa and Scar are born. Rafiki may very well have been the one officiating their presentation ceremonies; he's certainly old enough. Zazu as well may have been present, though it's unclear whether he'd have been involved in the Royal Family at this point.

Six and a Half Years before The Lion King
Scar first uses the Roar of the Elders and is tasked with assembling his generation's Lion Guard, presumably under the guidance of the current Guard. (This is the same group of lions who saved Nala's father when he fell from the tree as shown in Rafiki's paintings, although when this occurred is unclear.)

Six Years before The Lion King
Sarabi is born. Mufasa and Scar are [presumably] both training for their respective roles.

Five Years before The Lion King
Sarafina is born. Mufasa and Scar are both [presumably] still training for their respective roles.

Four Years before The Lion King
The hyena trio is born. Mufasa and Scar are presumably readying to eventually take over their mantles.

Three Years before The Lion King
Mufasa and Scar are now King and Lion Guard leader, respectively. At some point during the next year or so, Scar attempts to usurp Mufasa but ends up "destroying" the Lion Guard and losing the Roar. Also, Timon is born.

Two Years before The Lion King
Zira and Pumbaa are born.

One Year before The Lion King
Beshte is born.

Four Months before The Lion King
While unclear when she became queen, Sarabi becomes pregnant with Simba, solidifying Mufasa's position as king. At around the same time, Nala is also conceived.

Two weeks before The Lion King
Simba (and Nala) are born.

One Day before The Lion King (as seen in The Lion King 1 1/2)
Timon leaves his colony and meets Pumbaa later than night.

The Lion King - Day 1
Simba's presentation, which Timon and Pumbaa witness before settling into that little pond area nearby Pride Rock. Later that day Mufasa confronts Scar about his absence from said event.

The Lion King - Month 3, Day 1
Mufasa shows Simba the Pride Lands, "I Just Can't Wait to be King" happens, Timon and Pumbaa leave their little home for whatever reason, the elephant graveyard scene happens, and Scar sings "Be Prepared".

The Lion King - Month 3, Day 2
The wildebeest stampede happens, Timon and Pumbaa find their new jungle home, and Scar ascends the throne while Simba runs away into the desert.

The Lion King 1 1/2 - Month 3, Day 3
Rafiki meets Timon's mother and tells her about his instructing the young meerkat to "look beyond what you see". She then [presumably] leaves to find her son.

The Lion King - Month 3, Day 4
Timon and Pumbaa find and rescue Simba.

The Lion King 1 1/2 - Month 8
Timon and Simba have a snail-eating contest.

The Lion King - Month 10
The adolescent Simba we see walking across the log in "Hakuna Matata" in the first movie.

Offscreen during The Lion King - Year 1, Month 6
Janja, Jasiri, and the other hyenas in The Lion Guard are born around this time.

Offscreen during The Lion King - Year 1, Month 11
Zira conceives Nuka. Elsewhere, Fuli is born.

Offscreen during The Lion King - Year 2, Month 2
Nuka is born.

Offscreen during The Lion King - Year 3, Month 1
Bunga and Ono are born.

Offscreen during The Lion King - Year 3, Month 2
Vitani and Kovu are conceived.

The Lion King - Year 3, Month 3, Day 1
The end of the "Hakuna Matata" musical number; that evening Scar and the hyenas have their talk about the state of the drought and food shortage while Simba, Timon, and Pumbaa have their stargazing conversation.

The Lion King - Year 3, Month 3, Day 2
Rafiki finds out Simba is alive, Nala hunts Pumbaa and reunites with Simba, "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" (they mate and conceive), Simba sees Rafiki and has his 'talk' with Mufasa before leaving, not quite knowing the way back home.

The Lion King - Year 3, Month 3, Day 3
Nala and Pumbaa head off back to the Pride Lands, while Timon stays until convinced otherwise by Rafiki.

The Lion King - Year 3, Month 3, Day 4
All four meet up in the Pride Lands that evening, the final battle occurs, Simba takes over as King.

Offscreen during The Lion King - Year 3, Month 4
Upon word of Simba's return, the herds (led by the old elephant Aminifu) begin to return to the Pride Lands. Bunga meets Timon and Pumbaa, who adopt him.

Offscreen during The Lion King - Year 3, Month 6
Vitani and Kovu are born, but their mother and her followers are soon exiled from the Pride Lands when Zira attacks Simba. Around this time, Janja and his bachelor pack split off from their main pack, and Fuli (assuming she's had a normal upbringing) moves away from her mother and begins her life of independence as the light rainy season begins.

The Lion King II: Simba's Pride/The Lion King - Year 3, Month 7
Kiara (as seen in Simba's Pride) and Kion's (as seen at the end of The Lion King) presentations. Kiara's happens early in the morning as she receives the fruit juice mark on her head, customary for the firstborn and future ruler; Kion is brought out later in the day as Timon and Pumbaa are seen cheering, happy that Simba did indeed have at least one boy after their earlier freakout over Kiara being a girl. Tiifu and Zuri are also born around this time.

The Lion King II: Simba's Pride - Year 3, Month 9
Kiara has her adventure in the Outlands and meets Kovu; "We Are One" and "My Lulluby" is sung.

The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar - Year 4, Month 1
Kion assembles his Lion Guard. (The Lion Guard series presumably takes place entirely during the ensuing 20-month time skip, and the events of Return of the Roar and Season 1 take place in the first 3 or 4 months of said skip during the midst of the "long rains".)

The Lion Guard: The Rise of Scar - Year 4, Month 3 or 4
Scar's spirit returns to haunt the Pride Lands in the heat of the long dry season.

The Lion King II: Simba's Pride - Year 5, Month 10, Day 1
Kiara goes off on her first solo hunt, 'rescued' by Kovu from the fire; Kovu is cautiously accepted into the pride.

The Lion King II: Simba's Pride - Year 5, Month 10, Day 2
Kiara and Kovu have their outing and fall in love (unrealistically quickly).

The Lion King II: Simba's Pride - Year 5, Month 10, Day 3
Simba takes Kovu to talk, gets ambushed by Outsiders; later that evening Kovu returns to Pride Rock but gets exiled; Zira and the Outsiders invade and a battle is waged overnight.

The Lion King II: Simba's Pride - Year 5, Month 10, Day 4
The battle ends, Zira dies, the two prides reunite in peace.

So there you have it. Like I said at the top, this post will be edited and worked on as more information comes out via hints or clues dropped during the rest of The Lion Guard's run. (I'm really looking forward to seeing what "Lions of the Outlands" presents us with, if anything.) I probably won't write my own fan fiction about this to fill in the gaps, but those more skilled storytellers out there can use this timeline as you wish.

Edit 1 on 7/20/17: Based on when the long dry season takes place on the Serengeti and the statements that most of Season 2 of The Lion Guard will take place during this period, I've added a rough point of events for when The Rise of Scar occurs. Based on this and the climate/weather patterns shown during the end of The Lion King, the start of Simba's Pride, and The Lion Guard, this means that the entirety of Season 1 would have to take place in a roughly 2-3 month time period during the heaviest part of the wet season.

Edit 2 on 8/31/2017: Added the scene from The Lion King 1 1/2 where Rafiki meets Timon's mother and she decides to leave and find him. Mind you, this means that unless she made multiple trips, she and Uncle Max would've been looking for Timon for nearly 3 years. The things you do for family...

[Squeely]

I disagree with Beshte being that many years old. TLG pretty clearly paints him as a kid, and he seems to not know much about events that happened before Kion was born. He's mature beyond his years, but still a kid nonetheless.

[Panpardus]

Well the problem there is that realistically speaking, Kion's the youngest member of the group; he's not even a year old at this point. Dealing with aging The Lion Guard's characters is that virtually everyone in the show acts more childish than they are visually shown to be; it's part of the downside of this being a preschool-aimed program. For Beshte to be as large and strong as he is (plus he sounds like a teenager) he's already going to be at least as old as Simba and Nala.

I think part of what throws a lot of people off is that real animals age at different rates depending on the species, and it's hard for folks less familiar with zoology to grasp how quickly some animals mature relative to others. But overall, the Guard here is clearly a bunch of kids who are nearing adolescence, and insofar as their designs and behaviors (Beshte's size and strength, Fuli's hunting alone and lacking a mane, Ono's feathers and being able to fly, etc.) go, this is still more or less the simplest, most parsimonious solution. (Hence the title of the thread.)

[Squeely]

I'm being parsimonious as well. Beshte has always been in the dark in terms of events prior to Simba's rule. It's always been Rafiki who had to fill us in, which would imply that Beshte was born not long before Simba took over. As far as the deep voice, that could be a hippo thing. In fact, the hippo that sings during "Not One of Us" has a very deep voice!

The only other solution I see here, is if Beshte and his family only came to the Pridelands recently. But that would be non-parsimonious, as there is no evidence to suggest that Beshte was born outside of the Pridelands.

[Panpardus]

True; maybe hippos just don't care all that much about things outside of their immediate purview, or Beshte's parents kept him in the dark about certain things going on in the kingdom because of the whole "You're not ready to deal with/hear this" thing that a lot of movie parents do. I just chalk it up to a continuity error on part of the writers and we're just overthinking it anyway; I mean, if go by my purely biology-based "field researcher" method, then Fuli, Ono, Bunga, and most of the other characters we meet on the show would've been alive during Scar's rule and old enough to remember it had they lived through it, had they all been Pride Lands residents their entire lives.

[Squeely]

I agree that is a small oversight on the part of the writers. Though we do have various bits of evidence that the animals age closer to humans than their real-world counterparts. First of all, there's the fact that Pumbaa doesn't seem that old during the end of SP. Second, there's the fact that Kovu was born before Kiara and Kion, yet still retained a cub-like appearance in the recent "Lions of the Outlands" episode. Which, the episode also paints it like Kion was born after Kiara was: Kion had never heard of there being lions in the Outlands and didn't know Kiara had met Kovu. Had Kiara and Kion been littermates, there's no way Kion would have avoided Simba's "stay away from the Outlands" lecture, or at the very least, Kiara would have told him about Kovu. Kion being either not yet born or a new born in the first half of SP also explains why he wasn't in said first half.

How the characters age exactly is difficult to determine and kinda all over the place, lol.