James Delaney Age Is 27

Published February 4, 2017 · Updated July 6, 2022

Greetings Fellas! You hooked me with Westworld and now I happily blame you for making me an amateur TV scholar. For most of the same reasons as Gene, Taboo is a show right up my alley, with it’s macabre nature, plot intrigue, and historical setting. I’ll get right to it…

Taboo starts with James Delaney’s return in 1814.

In Episode 1, Mr. Wilton reports that “at the age of 11, his exhausted father and new bride” committed James as a cadet to the East India Company Military Seminary in the Year Of Our Lord 1798.

This makes his birth year 1787.
Of note: James tells the East India Company that his father bought Nootka “some 30 years ago”. 1784.

James is an Exceptional “company boy” until the year 1800. Making him 13. Then he turns rebel with a litany of murderous and destructive behavior that exhausts Mr. Wilton’s mind just in the telling of it.

In 1802, he “took himself off to Africa”. He is 15.
The show mostly provides us with broad years and not the exact month of events, so there is the real possibility he is 28 but no more than that.

James Delaney is gone 12 years. I think the characters just round down to 10 years for the most part. There is a reference to Zilpha saying he’s been gone for over 10 years.

James knows about the Dead. He can clearly divine information from the dead and has a working understanding of the laws in which he does so. During the autopsy of Horace Delaney, James is assaulted by the spirits of the dead within his vicinity. He garners the nature of their deaths, “Suicide. That will teach you not to steal,…” and combats their intrusion by denouncing them with “No. No fear to feed you with.” Further, he had “no guilt” for the slave that didn’t belong in that morgue. Lastly, he threatens the doctor after the autopsy that his father’s remains were not to be disturbed again because, “I know things about the dead.”

Bloody Tinfoil theory: Blood is the foundation of the Delaney family mystic nature. When James confronted the slave in the morgue, he points a blood covered hand/finger at the slave to vanquish the spirit. James bites the neck of his “would be” assassin in order to consume his blood and therefore have power over or protection from the spirit of the assassin.

Recall the scene of Zilpha doing needlepoint. She pricks her finger and puts the bloody finger in her mouth. Immediately after, she is argumentative with Thorne and holds her own in that verbal exchange in a way she normally does not. Lastly, we cannot dismiss Thorne’s tirade at the dinner table about her blood and that is all he gets.

Zilpha is a contradiction to me up to this point. I don’t claim to have her figured out so I believe there is profound information yet to be revealed. My gut says she is barely keeping her proper social facade in check. But why? She has a diamond… she doesn’t need Geary for financial reasons. There has not been one scene of true affection between her and Thorne. Is she protecting James? The church scene revealed a strong powerful woman. I think that scene showed James and the audience that she has passions as strong as his, but unlike him, she can control them….for now. Ok, I’m off on a tangent will. Enough.

Great stuff guys! I’m all in!

Stacey

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