OK, so I'm brainstorming to make sure my timeline makes sense. I have a character who was pretty important but died before the current story started. (my MC's mother). She was a member of a medieval-style army, in a fantasy world. So a rough-and-tumble, very active lifestyle. We're talking sword fighting, staff fighting, archery, riding (not horses but hippogriffs, pegasus, gryphons, unicorns, and some others I made up, both land and air beasts). Wars and skirmishes and patrols and fights against rogue mythological beasts. In my timeline, there was a big war with a demon-like race. I don't have my year numbering system decided yet so lets just say the war was in 1948-1950. MC's mom was the captain and killed in a battle in 1950. It's now 1965, so 15 years later. Given that there was a big war 15 years prior to this story started, and that it's a very active and tough lifestyle, I'm trying to figure out how many soldiers from that army would still be around (AKA still in the army) who knew MC's mom. They recruit 18 year olds and up. MC's mom was 24 when she joined and 33 when she died. I'm thinking in wartime they would have recruited young and trained them fast. So those who were recruited during the war would only be 32-33 now, and feasibly still in service. Yet they would have been noobs, and MC's mom was the captain, so they probably wouldn't have known her well. Her peers (aka, the rank of the army, those that would have known her the best) would be around her age, so 15 years later would be about 44-48. Do you think they would still be actively serving? Thing is, I don't want there to be a lot of people who remember her very well currently serving, bc the plotline centers around her daughter joining this group and trying to learn more about her mother to understand certain things she did. So, I just need to make sure there's no plothole in NOT having these women around (yes, it's an all-women army).
It would be possible for them to still be actively serving at that age. The retirement age in our military is around 55-62, with 20 years service required for active duty retirement pay.
First thing that comes to mind: WHERE IS THE MEN??!! An all-woman army? Who is making and raising the babies? There's an extremely simple reason why this exists only in myths: tribes of all-women armies failed to reproduce (and raise those children to reproductive age) enough to compensate for the loss of fertility that comes with sending women to their deaths. An all-woman medieval-style army is even more absurd; women are generally far weaker than men, such an army would have to be composed of Junoesque giantesses to compensate for the lack of upper-body strength (and shortness) common of ordinary women. Realistically the whole scenario is so absurd that a question about the retirement age of female soldiers (who are apart of a country where the army is entirely female, to be clear) is made obsolete by the plot-hole of how such a race of people could come to survive natural selection in the first place (can the men breastfeed? Can they become pregnant?).
Thank you, @Irina Samarskaya for going on a rather rude tangent addressing nothing about what I asked in the original post. If I wanted your opinion on that particular point, I would have asked for it. However, I did not, and I find your post calling my ideas and plot "absurd" and unrealistic uncalled for and quite rude. I deliberately simplified my explanation of my plot in order to ask my specific question about ages. But by all means, go ahead and assume that this is the be all and end all of my plot and I don't have any other well thought out ideas for how this works. The Wild Roses are the only female company of an elite Beast Rider element of the main army of Valaria (their country). There are, in fact, SEVEN OTHER male - only companies, plus a regular standing army that does not ride Beasts (mythological creatures, in case you misinterpret that too) but regular horses. BUT my question pertained to the Wild Roses specifically, and I understand that lifespans and lifestyles affect the genders differently, so I simplified my plot in order to ask the question that was pertinent to the problem. Next time, instead of bashing my plot, perhaps it would behoove you to ask for clarification, or just answer the question I asked, and not one you assumed.
I think that you can probably choose which way you want this to go. Random thoughts: - If everyone had survived and they were all still in military service, how many would there be? - Are there any other female military units that they could be in, thus leaving them alive and well but less accessible? - Do women in this profession have kids? That will, in a lowish tech world, kill a lot of them. - Do they raise their kids, thus probably retiring to another profession? - If you want to kill most of them off, can you just declare a battle that went really really badly?
I feel like you're forgetting the insanely famous and successful comic book character, Wonder Woman, who was birthed from an all-female military nation. (I'm not exactly a comic book fan so don't know the details - this is just what I got from watching the film) And then I'm also pretty sure there's at least one episode from Xena: Warrior Princess where they faced some all-female army. The female army's solution re fertility was they went and raped men in nearby camps. Brutal, but does certainly resolve the problem, and all baby boys were simply killed. It's clearly been done before and accepted well enough.
