- He turns 30 in Batman Begins, which came out in 2005 and takes place in a presumably contemporary setting.
- There are conflicting reports about the exact date of his birthday, but February 19 came up more than once, and it happens to be my mom's birthday, so obviously we have a winner.
December 1983: Thomas and Martha Wayne murdered
- Though his age is never said in the beginning of Batman Begins, according to the comics/just about anything else you can find about Bruce Wayne's childhood, he was eight years old when his parents were killed.
- In the movie, it's clearly winter when the murder takes place. Bruce and his family are wearing coats, and I believe there's even a little swirl of snow in the alley when they leave the theater.
- I would bet that it was around holiday time when Bruce and his family decided to take their ill-fated trip into Gotham City. Bruce's father shows him the pearls he's going to give Mrs. Wayne as a present, probably for Christmas. Though a night at the opera might be a normal outing if you're a Wayne, they decide to take the train, which Bruce is obviously unfamiliar with, so maybe this is another holiday perk. Alfred doesn't drive them and he doesn't show up at the police station afterward, so maybe he was away visiting family for the holidays.
January 30, 1984: Valencia Carter born
- She had to be born after Bruce's parents were killed so that he would have no memory of her living in Wayne Manor. The precocious Bruce we see playing with Rachel around the grounds would surely have noticed and taken interest in a new baby in the house.
1984-1994: Bruce attends boarding school
- I went out on a bit of a limb and guessed that Bruce had a boarding school education. In the U.S., boarding schools are largely concentrated in the East Coast region. As Gotham City is traditionally located somewhere between New York City and Atlantic City, I don't think it would be too much of a stretch that he would be sent away at a relatively young age for schooling. The majority of boarding schools are for grades 9-12 or high school age, but there are a good number that take children as young as kindergarten age. Bruce would have been around grade 3 or 4.
- Of course there's Alfred to consider, and though I don't think Alfred would have wanted to send a young Bruce away, he might have made the decision to do so based on how difficult Bruce was finding it to move on, especially while living in Wayne Manor. As we see in Batman Begins, this still troubles Bruce well into young adulthood.
- Lastly and most importantly, it served the purpose of my story to have Bruce pretty much absent from Wayne Manor as Valencia was growing up, since they had never met before.
1994-1997: Bruce attends college
- This is purely guesswork, but I figured Bruce was probably a junior (third year) in college when he was expelled from Princeton. If he had been on track, he should have been graduating college by 1997. I'm going with the theory that Princeton was not the first Ivy League school he was kicked out of, and expulsion does tend to mess up one's credits, so he was probably a year or at least a semester behind.
- This also would explain why Rachel is presumably out of college and already working at a law firm when he returns, assuming they are the same age.
1994-1997: Valencia attends Brentwood Academy
- This is the elite private school Valencia's mother gets her into when she's 10 years old. In the comics, it's a high school, but I turned it into a junior high.
1997: Joe Chill's trial, Bruce disappears
- This year I figured out retroactively. The end of Batman Begins is 2005, the year of Bruce's 30th birthday. That takes place a few months after his return to Gotham, meaning he came back from the dead in 2004. He was missing for seven years, which means he ran away from Gotham in 1997.
1997-2004: Bruce roams the world
- Basically seven years of what Bruce tells Ra's Al Ghul: he was pretty much a vagabond, stole for food, got involved in international smuggling, and ended up in a Chinese prison. Somehow, somewhere he learned how to fight seven men at once.
1997-2000: Valencia attends Gotham Prep
-Gotham Prep, my creation entirely, is an elite, private, college preparatory school located in the Palisades. Though Bruce did not go here, it is where most of Gotham's wealthy send their kids to be educated. I guess it could be a boarding school that accepts day students as well.
Fall 2004: Bruce trains with the League of Shadows, returns to Gotham
- This comprises a relatively short part of Batman Begins, but I imagine that Bruce was there for several weeks, if not months, mastering their techniques and earning the trust of Ra's Al Ghul.
- When he returns, Bruce lays low for a couple weeks, then shows up at the Wayne Enterprises board meeting as Bruce Wayne, the billionaire playboy.
- Again, this is very fast in the movie, but it probably took a few months for him to set up his operation as Batman, so that would take care of the rest of fall 2004 and bring him to his birthday in February 2005.
February 19, 2005: Bruce defeats the League of Shadows (end of Batman Begins), Wayne Manor burns down
- Bruce's 30th birthday. He saves Rachel from Scarecrow, insults everyone at his birthday party, burns the Manor down, and keeps the League of Shadows from destroying Gotham via a very fancy form of biological warfare.
August 2005: The Dark Knight, Rachel Dawes dies
- The Dark Knight is set six months after Batman Begins. Though so much happens in that film, all the events happen right after one another. Not a lot of time passes, and my guess puts it at a month at most.
January 30, 2006: Valencia turns 22
February 19, 2006: Bruce turns 31
April 2006: Valencia returns to Gotham (GC Ch. 1-3)
- The Return: Bruce comes back from a business trip to London and fires his secretary, Wayne Manor is finished
- The Interview: Interviews are held for the position of Bruce's secretary, Bruce interviews Valencia
- The Disappointment: That night, Alfred tells Bruce all about Valencia
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