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Fictional Author Theory

The theory that a character within the ELotH:TES literature wrote the cycle himself.

This theory is interesting in that it increases the maximum number of stories-within-stories within the Elemenstor Saga to five. We begin with the real life Tycho Brahe himself, who creates the aforementioned Fictional Author. The Fictional Author "writes" the entire canonical Elemenstor Saga as we know it. Then, of course, there are certain stories which are fictional within the context of ELotH:TES - fairy stories, genuine legends (as opposed to legends-which-really-happened), and so on. Several examples of these can be found in the main Elemenstor Cycle; certain pieces of fan fiction such as those relating to the (non-canonical) Forlorn Era also fit this bill. Finally, there is a brief moment within the first Forlorn Era fan novella (also called "The Forlorn Era") in which several of the characters gather around a campfire and tell stories to pass the time, thus creating the fifth and final layer of fiction.

The concept of a Fictional Author is not original, but does have interesting implications. Firstly there is the question of who this individual is who somehow has intricate knowledge of over 110,000 years of history taking place across an entire planet, and his motivations for writing down everything he knows, and so on. Secondly it resolves within the context of the saga any and all contradictions between canon and other canon; there is (or was) a single real, consistent ELotH:TES saga, but the Fictional Author is fallible in his retelling of it.

The best evidence for the existence of a Fictional Author is the Anonymous Third Person Observer in chapter 14 of Book 3.