You can get the queried date from the query vars in the `$wp_query` object:

    if( is_date() ){
    	if( isset( $wp_query->query_vars['year'] ) ){
    		echo 'queried year is ' . $wp_query->query_vars['year'];
    	}
    	if( isset( $wp_query->query_vars['monthnum'] ) ){
    		echo 'queried month is ' . $wp_query->query_vars['monthnum'];
    	}
    	if( isset( $wp_query->query_vars['day'] ) ){
    		echo 'queried day is ' . $wp_query->query_vars['day'];
    	}
    }

or just via `get_query_var()`:

    echo get_query_var( 'year' );

Does that answer your question?


**EDIT**

You can check if the site is using pretty permalinks by checking for the presence of the permalink structure option. In that case, you can fetch and parse the `m` query var instead of `year` / `monthnum` / `day`:

    if( get_option('permalink_structure') ){
    	// using pretty permalinks
    } else {
    	// not using pretty permalinks
    	// note that month or day may be empty
    	// test for their existence before trying to use!
    	$year = substr( get_query_var( 'm' ), 0, 4);
    	$month = substr( get_query_var( 'm' ), 4, 2);
    	$day = substr( get_query_var( 'm' ), 6, 2);
    }