The most important thing should be ensuring our characters not only fit into the timeline, but are also connected to the events that led to the exile. That is what the RP seemed to be about, and what we all felt would be the driving force behind it all. I don't understand why you are willing to blow off three character sheets (of trusted players that you've relied on in the past for feedback, no less) just because you want to keep some unimportant detail where the war takes a character-breaking amount of time to end. So far, none of the characters would find it beneficial to their story/history/anything for the war to have lasted so long. Quite the opposite - just about every character right now would be destroyed by it. All because you are unwilling to own up to the fact that things were unclear, and change one minor detail that, as of now, would not negatively affect any character. It would, however, positively affect three. 

I would argue even the RP would benefit from the change, considering how many doors making the major events a relatively recent thing would open for our characters. Making it a thing of the distant past takes away from the theme of the RP itself. It should be recent enough that it's personal and people have memories of having participated in it in major ways. It chips away (no, hacks way) at the potential when you make this a story of people who just happen to be related to more interesting (and now dead) characters that participated in the events that lead to the exile in some significant way, instead of allowing some of those characters to actually exist in the roleplay and, among many things, offer an insight into what caused them to be exiled in the first place.