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We know from The Illustrated Guide that Victoria originally began forming her newborn army as guards, not as an offensive force. But if you're right about the timeline and Riley would have had to have been created before James was killed, then I have no explanation for the discrepancy.
You're absolutely right about the sheer number of human victims of the newborn army in Seattle. There's no way that level of carnage goes unnoticed by the public (or by the Volturi) for even a month.
The timeline is approximate, based on the impression I got that it would take about a year for a newborn to gain control of themselves. We never got a firm declaration of that duration from SM (except for Bella skipping it, which I also thought was horseshit) so I could be wrong.
I also read Victoria's backstory in the Guide, and I have some reservations about it. Not just the timeline caught my attention, but the way that Victoria handled her newborns in Bree Tanner didn't strike me like they were intended to be guards. She took great pains to hide from them, only having Riley deal directly with them. She stays in a cottage in the woods away from where the newborns were concealed. And she keeps them unaware of their purpose until almost time for the attack.
This doesn't sound like a security force to me. A security force that doesn't know it's purpose is to guard someone, or who that someone is, isn't going to be a very effective security force. If Victoria were truly in fear of her life, I think she would have the newborns standing guard around her cottage 24/7, not hidden away. It just doesn't jive with what the Guide says.
On the other hand, it does sound like a group that is being groomed as an attack force for the Cullens. By keeping them in the dark and unaware of their purpose, she keeps them from making decisions that might tip off Alice. By keeping her identity a secret, Victoria would be able to keep Edward from figuring out she's involved if he reads the newborns minds. That makes more sense with a strike force, than a security force.
The Guide was published after both Breaking Dawn and Bree were published. In my review of the Guide, I point out where SM is using the Guide to perform retroactive continuity to make the baby more plausible. So my suspicion is that she's doing the same thing with the write up on Victoria's story. Trying to plug the plot holes after the fact.
The Alice one can slightly be explained by the fact that she's actually never seen a werewolf, at least when they're in Voltera. When the last set of wolves phased and the treaty was made Alice and Jasper weren't with the Cullen's yet and because she can't see them in her visions she has never seen one first hand which means all the information she has about them is hearsay. Plus I'm guessing with an ability like Aro has he has learned to focus on specific things otherwise he'd be muddling through probably a lot of thoughts on "which outfit should I wear", so to block meaningless things like that (which the treaty stuff was probably in that category for her) he focuses on specifically what information he wants.
Also with James she saw the end result but not the how because Bella hadn't quite figured out the how she was getting to James until last minute, but even last minute Alice should have at least been able to catch up with her at her house before she ended up at the dance studio.
As for the rest, it became very apparent with the anticlimactic endings of all her books that SM was a big fan of conflict and apparently with all her exposition she couldn't find a logical way out of the things she clearly spelled out, so we're stuck with this robotic ending that focuses more on just ending the series instead of plot and character development.
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We know from The Illustrated Guide that Victoria originally began forming her newborn army as guards, not as an offensive force. But if you're right about the timeline and Riley would have had to have been created before James was killed, then I have no explanation for the discrepancy.You're absolutely right about the sheer number of human victims of the newborn army in Seattle. There's no way that level of carnage goes unnoticed by the public (or by the Volturi) for even a month.
The timeline is approximate, based on the impression I got that it would take about a year for a newborn to gain control of themselves. We never got a firm declaration of that duration from SM (except for Bella skipping it, which I also thought was horseshit) so I could be wrong.I also read Victoria's backstory in the Guide, and I have some reservations about it. Not just the timeline caught my attention, but the way that Victoria handled her newborns in Bree Tanner didn't strike me like they were intended to be guards. She took great pains to hide from them, only having Riley deal directly with them. She stays in a cottage in the woods away from where the newborns were concealed. And she keeps them unaware of their purpose until almost time for the attack.
This doesn't sound like a security force to me. A security force that doesn't know it's purpose is to guard someone, or who that someone is, isn't going to be a very effective security force. If Victoria were truly in fear of her life, I think she would have the newborns standing guard around her cottage 24/7, not hidden away. It just doesn't jive with what the Guide says.
On the other hand, it does sound like a group that is being groomed as an attack force for the Cullens. By keeping them in the dark and unaware of their purpose, she keeps them from making decisions that might tip off Alice. By keeping her identity a secret, Victoria would be able to keep Edward from figuring out she's involved if he reads the newborns minds. That makes more sense with a strike force, than a security force.
The Guide was published after both Breaking Dawn and Bree were published. In my review of the Guide, I point out where SM is using the Guide to perform retroactive continuity to make the baby more plausible. So my suspicion is that she's doing the same thing with the write up on Victoria's story. Trying to plug the plot holes after the fact.
The Alice one can slightly be explained by the fact that she's actually never seen a werewolf, at least when they're in Voltera. When the last set of wolves phased and the treaty was made Alice and Jasper weren't with the Cullen's yet and because she can't see them in her visions she has never seen one first hand which means all the information she has about them is hearsay. Plus I'm guessing with an ability like Aro has he has learned to focus on specific things otherwise he'd be muddling through probably a lot of thoughts on "which outfit should I wear", so to block meaningless things like that (which the treaty stuff was probably in that category for her) he focuses on specifically what information he wants.Also with James she saw the end result but not the how because Bella hadn't quite figured out the how she was getting to James until last minute, but even last minute Alice should have at least been able to catch up with her at her house before she ended up at the dance studio.
As for the rest, it became very apparent with the anticlimactic endings of all her books that SM was a big fan of conflict and apparently with all her exposition she couldn't find a logical way out of the things she clearly spelled out, so we're stuck with this robotic ending that focuses more on just ending the series instead of plot and character development.
Bree Tanner's story takes place in Seattle, beginning several months before the newborn attack in Eclipse. That makes it roughly March or April. Bree is a 3-month old newborn, Diego is an 11-month old. Riley is even older, for him to have enough control that he doesn't eat Charlie when he steals Bella's shirt. According to the discussion the Cullens had, Victoria didn't get the idea to make an army until Edward was chasing her through the South, some time after Bella's birthday in September. But for the ages of her newborns to make sense, Victoria would have had to start building an army BEFORE James was killed. Way before she got the idea to build an army.
The body count in Bree blows big holes in continuity as well. Bree complains one human is never enough. She's feeding about every three days at that point. The final count for the army when they attacked was about 20. So let's do the math. You have the inital 20 people turned into vampires. You have an unknown number of people killed to replenish the one's killed off when they're still in hiding. 20 vampires killing 2-3 people every 3 days (maybe longer for the older vampires) over a period of 3-4 months. That's roughly 1800 missing people, almost as many casualties as in Hurricane Katrina. And that's without counting the passenger list on the ferry they massacred and sank. Bella reads about the Green River Killer in Eclipse, but he only killed 48. The homicide rate for Seattle in 2011 was 20. TWENTY. 1800+, dregs or no dregs of society, people would notice. This would have been a natural disaster, but there's no mention of anything of that scale during Eclipse.