As for how long Rumple was the dark one, based on several pieces of evidence, I have his becoming the Dark One in 1860. Yes, yes, I KNOW that’s not 300 years. Guess what? They play fast and loose with the timeline a LOT.
But Baelfire fell into OUR WORLD (Adam was quite insistent about that) and looked up and saw Big Ben. Big Ben was not completed until 1858. Having him go in 1861 works.
And what I did was, before that point, I’d assumed 300 years as Rumple’s age. When I made his age 200 years at the point that Emma comes to Storybrooke…it fixed things so that Baelfire could go to Victorian London in our world without too much hassle.
So Rumple was the dark one for 150 years, give or take, though 28 of those years he was just Mr. Gold and time wasn’t moving for him. That still allows comments about “centuries” and “a couple hundred” for Neal’s and Killian’s ages to be close enough to correct. They have never said IN THE SHOW that Rumple was 300, though that was clearly their initial estimate. In the show, I’ve only caught references to his being centuries old or having been the dark one for centuries. 150 is more than one, 200 is a couple (and I assume he was around 50 when he became the DO, based in part on Bobby’s age and in part on some logical reasoning about Bae’s age in relation).
Yes, it’s a mess, and I’m not sure what to do with the timeline markers in this episode right now. I’m eager to see what Adam might say to clarify the 200 years one…because while I’ll buy that Zoso’s life as DO was fairly brief, Nimue would have had some time and there is the suggestion of a LOT of other DOs in the episode. I don’t buy that they all squeeze into 50 years.
The problem still is that Merlin clearly states in the Nimue portion of the flashbacks that it had been 500 years ago that he drank from the grail. They said that Merlin finding the grail took place 1000 years before Arthur, meaning that there should be a difference of 500 more years between when Nimue became the Dark One and when Arthur became King, not 200.