#SHE'S GOING TO RHUIDEAN HELP ME

[markantonys]

WoT Up had a new video which is of course take it with a grain of salt as with most of his videos however this one was super interesting. It's about the Choedan Kal and how supposedly in the show they're getting renamed to Sarkanen (which is a sa'angreal Demandred uses in River of Souls I guess?) and in s3, Moiraine finds one of them in Rhuidean and is sucked into using it outside of her control.

Which sounds very interesting but of course there's the Rand stans who are like "Here they go again taking things away from Rand and giving them to other characters!" Rand doesn't even use the Choedan Kal til Winter's Heart. Like calm down lol

Plus I definitely feel like like this will would be to show/foreshadow for the audience that they're dangerous to use for whenever they do the Cleansing. And even getting into the differences between Saidar and Saidin?

re: the name change. To avoid people on the show saying "chode" is my guess. Which is a slang term I didn't even know about until today 😂

thank you for bringing me the TLDR so i don't have to watch a 10-minute video for 2 sentences of "news" haha when it comes to WoT Up i'm taking it with a bucket of salt rather than just a grain, but that aside, let's engage with this hypothetical show change!

name change: no issue for me! lmao it's very true that the show might change some terms here and there to avoid running into slang that has developed in the time since the books came out. no discussions of the dark one's taint here!

if those rand stans had their way, he would be the only character in the entire show. yes moirane is likely transitioning into a more supporting role in s3 (just as she was less in the spotlight in s2 compared to s1), but she's still a main character and needs something to do besides just hanging around in the background giving rand advice. us getting to actually witness moiraine's rhuidean trip onscreen feels like a no-brainer, and her having a mini-adventure with a dangerous sa'angreal is a neat idea for giving her a good story beat! AND in doing so we get a preview of how dangerous sa'angreal can be for even a channeler as disciplined and highly trained as moiraine, which would be very useful for us to see. it's important to set up stakes & risks early on so that the audience will already be conscious of them when the time comes to challenge those stakes and take those risks!

and there's no reason for rand to already start acquiring a whole hoard of Surprise Tools To Help Us Later that he won't use for 3 more seasons lmao i'd entirely forgotten rhuidean even was where he got the choedan kal until it started coming up in s3 speculation discussions, because it's sooooo far removed from when he actually starts using them. and same for callandor ofc, where just because he didn't get it pre-waste doesn't mean it's cut from the show, maybe he's just going to get it later closer to when he actually needs it (i'd be surprised if the stone is cut since it was foreshadowed twice in s1, but i don't have a strong sense either way about callandor itself just yet).

i really like @butterflydm's idea that maybe callandor could be the only super-powerful male sa'angreal in the show, and rand's Dark Power Temptation is instead the true power rather than supernova levels of saidin via the choedan kal. so in this theory, maybe moiraine picks up the one and only super-powerful female sa'angreal in rhuidean which nynaeve eventually uses for the cleansing, and rand gets the one and only super-powerful male sa'angreal from the stone at a later date. now we're all geared up for the cleansing, we still get the "saidin & saidar teamwork" theme even if the 2 cleansing sa'angreal aren't twins of each other, callandor could still have its flaw but they could reason that it doesn't come into play in the cleansing since he's linked with a saidar channeler (ik it has to be 2 saidar channelers in the book version but we can finagle that) and oh, then that actually sets up a method for them to be able to figure out how to use callandor properly that isn't just "min, who has 0 knowledge of angreal or the power, supposedly figured it out offscreen from reading the wikipedia article on philosophy" haha if rand already did use it successfully once, it would be doable for min or whoever to compare his successful & unsuccessful uses and determine what the deciding factor is.

although maybe there's still a male sarkanen too in the show and rand finds it later in a different location! plenty of possibilities.

re: the differences between saidar and saidin, the show has already very clearly shown how different the channeling experience is for men and women and very clearly established that they are using 2 different halves of the one power. and it's done all this just using generic terms like "the male/female half of the source" to make it easier for show-onlys to learn and understand the magic system. so it's now well-positioned to start dropping in the official terminology saidar and saidin now that show-onlys are very solid on the gender-based magic system and will be less at risk for mixing up two very similar fantasy jargon words (i know it took ME a while to keep straight which was which of saidar & saidin when i started the books, and keeping track of fantasy jargon is even harder in an auditory medium imo). but even if they don't ever use the words saidar & saidin, i will not gaf because the show is so clearly following the book magic system and explaining it accurately to viewers even if it doesn't use the specific fantasy jargon terms for it.

i saw somebody say that cutting the pool of saidin at the eye was yet another example of the show diminishing the importance of rand & male channelers, and i was like...........the pool of saidin? the pool of saidin that is never seen or mentioned again after book 1? the pool of saidin that i'd argue doesn't even fit with the magic system RJ later established more firmly since i don't think it should be possible for there to exist a physical pool of tangible one power? THAT pool of saidin? lmao some people are just being so insane about the show ~diminishing rand~ and ~propping up women~

it always reminds me of that workplace study that found that when men & women each talk for 50% of the time in a meeting, the majority perception is that women dominated the conversation, whereas the perception of an equal conversation was one where men spoke for the majority and women the minority (i forget the exact percentages). this is kinda what we're seeing in the book-to-show translation. in my opinion, in the books, men dominated but the narrative purported it as men & women being equal and readers think so too (some even claim book!randland is a matriarchy which is absolutely laughable), whereas the show is trying to make it actually 50/50 and this is causing the perception that women are dominating and rand is getting shafted. i am now going to make this post unrebloggable because every time i state my personal opinion about the books not being perfectly feminist 100% of the time, somebody inevitably tries to come in and peer-review my personal opinion and booksplain to me how my personal opinion is incorrect lmao (@ everybody who insisted to my early-reader self that i was wrong to be mad about the girls not being ta'veren in the books and that it is actually anti-feminist & agency-reducing for them to be ta'veren in the show and i would understand that once i read farther - guess what, i read all the books and it did not change my opinion by a single iota!)

[iviarellereads]

The Dragon Reborn, Chapter 38 - Maidens of the Spear

(THIS PROJECT IS SPOILER FREE! No spoilers past the chapter you click on. Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For the link index and a primer on The Wheel of Time, read this one! Like what you see? Send me a Ko-Fi.)

(Wheel icon) In which, new friends? NEW FRIENDS!

PERSPECTIVE: Egg embraces saidar before the scream leaves her mouth, and she wonders if the ship they just left will hear their screams and send help, they're only a mile away. Nyn is just standing there, her arms crossed, and Egg notices that the person facing them is a woman, about their age. She doesn't let go of saidar, but El does.

Egg feels a sudden affinity as she looks the woman up and down, and decides it's because she looks like she could be Rand's cousin. But what are Aiel doing here?

The woman introduces herself as Aviendha, of the Nine Valleys sept of the Taardad Aiel. She is Far Dareis Mai, a Maiden of the Spear. They saw the rings, are they Aes Sedai? Egg looks around, startled at the use of "we", but sees few hiding places close enough to be a physical threat. Nyn deliberately doesn't look around for others, but says they are women of the White Tower, what does she want of them? Avi smiles, saying Nyn talks like the Wise Ones do, right to the point. One of their number is gravely injured, can they help her? Nyn says carefully that she'll help if she can, but she can make no promises.

Avi leads her away, as two more Aiel women stand up out of a fold in the ground that Egg wouldn't have guessed could hide a dog. Both are also about Egg's age, and start leading them. El introduces herself, and the two Aiel give their names as Bain, of the Black Rock sept of the Shaarad Aiel and Chiad, of the Stones River sept of the Goshien Aiel. Egg gives her name and origin, and Bain asks if she and El are first-sisters? El explains to Egg that first-sisters are women with the same mother, second-sisters mean their mothers are sisters, and says that no, they're close friends, but not blood kin. Chiad asks why they don't say the words before their Wise Ones? She and Bain became first-sisters.

Egg asks how you can become first-sisters, and apologizes that all her knowledge of them is from the little El has told her. She knows that Far Dareis Mai fight in battle and don't care for men, but no more than that. The Aiel women look puzzled. Bain explains that when they "wed the spear", they pledge to be bound by no man or child. Some will give up the spear, for a man or child, but it can never be taken back again. Chiad adds that if a woman is chosen to go to Rhuidean, a Wise One can also not be wedded to the spear. Bain offers that some struggle against that, though. It has the feeling to Egg of an inside reference.

Bain goes back to explaining Far Dareis Mai. Maidens don't fight each other, even when their clans do, but her clan and Chiad's had a blood feud for four hundred years, so she and Chiad risked retribution from their clans and spoke the words in front of both clans' Wise Ones, to bond them. As first-sisters, they guard each other's backs, and neither will let a man come to her without the other sister present.(1) She smirks a little as she says that it's not that they don't care for men.(2) Has she made the truth clear? Egg is bewildered but says yes, and thanks her. Bain says if they wish to be first-sisters, they should say the words with their Wise Ones. Egg thinks of sharing Rand, and sees a blush on El's cheeks that says she's thinking the same thing, but thinks to herself that neither of them can have him, the way he is. El says that they already guard each other's backs, and Chiad is completely baffled at who would raise a hand to a Wise One that she should require guarding.

Egg is spared having to explain by their arrival at the copse with the rest of the Maidens. Nyn examines the injured one, chiding the rest for having moved her from where she was injured. Avi says if they hadn't brought her to the river, at her own request (to die near water), they would never have found the Aes Sedai.

Nyn mutters and sets about making her herb mixture, and Egg tries to fight the tension in the Aiel by chatting. She asks that they not be offended, but she sees they're all uncomfortable with the water. It's not violent, they could swim in it if they wanted to. All the Aiel look at her blankly. One, Jolien, asks if swimming means... to get into the water? ALL that water? Nothing to hold on to? No thank you.

Egg sighs, and realizes her attempt only made them more tense. She takes saidar, wondering if she could subdue all four of the uninjured ones, but Avi says abruptly that she would never harm an Aes Sedai, whether the injured one dies or not. Egg has the odd feeling that Avi is trying to soothe them. El says she was taught that Aiel never harm women unless they are wedded to the spear. Bain explains that if a woman came at her with weapons, she could teach her the error of her ways. Or, a man might think a woman was wedded if she carried weapons whether she was or not.

El says right, but so long as they don't come at the Aiel with weapons, the Aiel won't try to harm them. All four Aiel look shocked. Avi says not even then. Their legends say that before the Breaking, they served the Aes Sedai, and they failed. That may even be the sin that sent them to the Three-Fold Land. It is said that if they fail Aes Sedai again, they will be destroyed. If they brought their lightnings and balefire, she would dance with that, but never hurt them. Egg asks what balefire is, but Avi says it's just the thing that Aes Sedai used to use to fight. It's said that they've forgotten much of what they once knew. Egg says the White Tower has also perhaps forgotten much.(3)

Nyn works herself up to anger over people stabbing women, and manages to channel a weave that Egg describes as weaving four carpets at once while blindfolded,(4) but when she wipes the injured Maiden's stomach where the wound was, the skin isn't even scarred. She tells them to wash her and be ready to feed her.

=====

(1) Many stories use marriage as the one true way to end a blood feud, but here, it's not marriage, it's something so much more intimate: sisterhood. Not only sisterhood, but something even closer than blood kinship. If you declare first-sisters, you're sharing your entire life with that woman. Even bed partners. Never one without the other. Yep, the Aiel are lowkey polygynous. But it's at the behest of the women, not the men, that a man must take both. There's… a certain amount of empowerment to that, particularly from a man's point of view. (The fandom loves Harriet, RJ's wife and editor, but we also… would like a time machine to go back and ask her, when it was fresh and she wasn't so old, why she didn't question some of these dynamics.) (2) "Don't worry, we're TOTALLY straight, promise!" Robert, Robert please, I beg you from beyond your grave… no. (3) Yeah, there's that funny word again. And, it's interesting that Egg is so young, she's still willing to admit that there are things the Tower doesn't know, and not just things that have been hidden from her. How many Aes Sedai would admit to not knowing something, in public? (4) Nynaeve's use of magic is almost entirely instinctive. She can repeat what she's seen someone else do, but she's been healing, or Healing, by instinct for ten years or more, since her first weaving to Heal Egg. I wonder if she ever got a real chance at healing Rand's side, or not.

[pillowfriends]

The Shadow Rising new reader thoughts: chapters 31-35

(Full disclosure: as I write these, I am on chapter 42. I got way behind in writing up my reactions)

Chapter 31: Assurances

Alanna is a bit scary. Her talk about forcing a bond on the ta'veren boys was... uh... concerning. Verin remains my favorite Aes Sedai after Moiraine, and probably my favorite side character overall. She's so quietly sassy. "An easy manner?" Verin said, blinking. "Moiraine? I never noticed." I love her so much. RIP Owein aka Maksim.

The conversations between Perrin, Tam and Abell were nice. Wholesome dad behavior.

Fucking Whitecloaks again. Also I JUST learned that Padan Fain merged his soul with the Shadar Logoth guy. IN BOOK ONE. Who was going to tell me this???? I had to get it explained and I still don't really understand, but oh well.

Chapter 32: Questions to Be Asked

I have approximately zero thoughts about this chapter. I just don't find the Two Rivers reunions all that compelling. It's funny that Perrin still isn't suspicious of Faile's backstory even though the narrative has a blinking neon sign going "SHE'S SECRETLY A NOBLE."

Chapter 33: A New Weave in the Pattern

Lord Luc is 1) tall and 2) has red hair. Who does that sound like? RAND. I really can't be bothered to figure out that family tree, though. The book will tell me when it tells me.

Intrigue! Verin says to watch out for Alanna... I think there's at least a 30% chance Alanna tries to force-bond Perrin by the end of this book. I hope that doesn't happen because I like Alanna but at this point the possibility has been mentioned too many times for it to be nothing.

Every time I read the name Lewin, my brain just goes to Lews Therin and it's extremely unhelpful.

Chapter 34: He Who Comes with the Dawn

"Mat was a great complainer at small discomforts..." This is the most I've ever related to Mat. "Great complainer at small discomforts" should be my tagline.

This chapter actually fucks hard. The description of Rand's dragon tattoos was badass, and we got a lot of exposition on Rand's biological parents. Shaiel is a cool name for a cool woman, and I'm pretty sure Janduin was ta'veren.

MOIRAINE LAN CONTENT - Lan being worried for Moiraine in the arches, and then running down to scoop her up as soon as she came back! We got three whole paragraphs, I'm living. [Also then I read this missing scene fanfiction by that's very good.]

Chapter 35: Sharp Lessons

This chapter title is so good. Also Egwene seeing Elayne shirtless in Tel'aran'rhiod is very sapphic.

I want to slap Egwene at the end of this chapter. She's like "Oh, Moiraine looks upset from what happened in Rhuidean, I should check on her." Then when she checks on her and Moiraine spouts some frankly concerning sentiments about the Pattern and her life, Egwene is like "Wow what a bitch."

“The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, and we are only the thread of the Pattern. I have given my life to finding the Dragon Reborn, finding Rand, and seeing him ready to face the Last Battle. I will see that done, whatever it requires. Nothing and no one can be more important than that.” Shivering despite her sweat, Egwene closed her eyes. The Aes Sedai did not want comforting. She was a lump of ice, not a woman.

This is fascinating because what Egwene hears is that Moiraine would sacrifice anything to help the Dragon's cause, but she completely skips over hearing that Moiraine has already sacrificed her entire life and everything she holds dear. This happens again and again with different characters and I feel feral every time I think about it. But I'm always feral about Moiraine so what else is new.

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[apocalypticavolition]

Let's (re)Read The Great Hunt! Chapter 28: A New Thread in the Pattern

If I were one of those Net Troll Aiel, you'd never see my spoilers coming unless I wanted you to. Perhaps I am one and do want that, or maybe I'm an incompetent, but either way. There are spoilers for the whole Wheel of Time series under the cut.

Perrin watched the mountains of Kinslayer’s Dagger uncomfortably as he rode.

Hey, Perrin's back! And we've got a wolf icon. Because it's a Perrin chapter! It's not complicated.

The wolves said there were people in the mountains. Perrin wondered if they were some of Fain’s Darkfriends.

Not everyone is a Darkfriend, Perrin. You of all three boys have least reason to be this universally paranoid since you didn't actually run into any Darkfriends on your journey except maybe a couple of the Children.

Mat, his bow slung across his back, rode with seeming unconcern, juggling three colored balls, yet he looked paler than he had. Verin examined him two and three times a day now, frowning, and Perrin was sure she had even tried Healing at least once, but it made no difference Perrin could see.

Verin already being just a good person by trying to help Mat since she's here.

“Tell me again! Anything I may have missed, anything that will help me find the Horn. . . .” Ingtar drew a breath and let it out slowly.

Rand must not be able to think about the glory of the horn because Lanfear and Ingtar are hogging it all. Dude is getting a bit monomaniacal.

The wolves call him—or it—Shadowkiller; I think it was a man, but they wouldn’t go close enough to see clearly.

Ingtar's immediate leap to shadowspawn under the circumstances only enforces how corrupted his time made him.

“He flaming wanted me to see him, or I likely wouldn’t have.” Uno sounded disgusted at admitting it.

Uno, you're a great guy. I don't know that you're Horn great exactly, but you're a great guy.

He was a tall man, with skin dark from the sun and red hair cut short except for a tail in the back that hung to his shoulders.

Someone please tell the Aiel that the 80s are long gone and that their hairstyles didn't look good when they were contemporary, let alone thousands of years after the fact.

“Maybe Ingtar’s right,” Mat added quietly. “Maybe Rand is an Aiel.”

Perrin nodded. “But it doesn’t change anything.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Mat sounded as if he were talking about something beside what Perrin meant.

What are either of you talking about? Mat, are you planning on betraying Rand or something? It feels like what you'd be considering that now since the Portal Stones push you off that path for good.

But you have the look of those who have made the journey to Rhuidean and survived.

Urien must be suffering from excessive hydration and hallucinating as a result, since Verin very much does not have this look.

“You call it the Waste,” Urien said. “To us it is the Three-fold Land. A shaping stone, to make us; a testing ground, to prove our worth; and a punishment for the sin.”

Oh hey, here's another mention of sin - though of course this particular sin was really more an offense against Aes Sedai than the universe.

I . . . can tell you only what is known to all. Rhuidean lies in the lands of the Jenn Aiel, the thirteenth clan.

Since there apparently still are some Jenn (How? Why? Etc?), one wonders if perhaps they really do live there. Maybe underground? They've got to be somewhere, and Aiels are quite good at finding people, so...

“What would I not give,” Verin murmured, gazing up at Urien, “to have you in the White Tower. Or just willing to talk. Oh, be still, man. I won’t harm you. Unless you mean to harm me, with your talk of dancing.”

I like to think that Verin's whole life has been a series of events like this one where she almost gets to learn something astounding by the standards of the Tower but doesn't really get to focus on it because of the gravity of her real mission.

“He Who Comes With the Dawn. It is said there will be great signs and portents of his coming. I saw that you were from Shienar by your escort’s armor, and you had the look of a Wise One, so I thought you might have word of great events, the events that might herald him.”

“I cannot tell you where he is, Urien,” she said, “and I have heard of no signs or portents to guide you to him.”

Urien had a good instinct since these people absolutely could tell him about Rand.

They won't though. This is another great Aes Sedai tier lie. She can't tell him where Rand is at the moment and she doesn't know of any particular omens that would be relevant to Urien's quest. She knows plenty about the subject of course. She's just not sharing.

Of course, as much as I love Verin, I must admit that even she has her blindspots and biases, being willing to consider the possibility that the Aiel are nothing more than a Shadow's corruption of prophecy. Dang girl, that's cold and wrong.

Softly, as to herself, Verin spoke, still staring at the ground. “It must be a part, and yet how? Does the Wheel of Time weave threads into the Pattern of which we know nothing? Or does the Dark One touch the Pattern again?”

Speaking of, next time: It's bigger! It's badder! It's Texas!

[cannoli-reader]

That stupid show ought to be classified as a mental disorder. You see what it does even to people who have read well into the books and understand the plot?

In Wheel of Time, chest hair is almost always a pejorative reference to simplistic thinking, and falling back on raw force or brute strength. It is not a compliment, not even an ironic one put into the mouth of a buffoon.

The irony of this cartoon is that the show prefers thinking with the hair on its chest and values force and violence over all other attributes.

And the mindset bleeds over into the kind of uncritical audience member who thinks pants are an improvement on Moiraine's characterization so that they utterly fail to recognize important themes of the story (in the books, of course; the show has no themes or morals or even values, other than subversion & sanctimony).

Moiraine was the one in tSR thinking with the hair on her chest, going for the simplest course of action, which was closest to her preconceived ideas and which would have required a lot of raw force and violence to accomplish. Rand's plan was longer, it took a lot more effort to accomplish, but in the end, it got him the crown of Illian, freely offered, with a lot less bloodshed and death. And he got it through feeding people instead of killing them en masse for being victims of Sammael's secret coup. And not only Illian, but he had Cairhien all but offering him their throne, and gained the support of the Aiel as well.

And that leads us to another use of chest hair as a character attribute in WoT - the presumption of one's own superiority, and fitness to handle situations over people who are more involved. It's the idea that you can just jump in and mansplain away all the problems someone else is dealing with. And that is absolutely Moiraine. She tells Rand "you have no need to be an Aiel chief" as if anyone and their infant could not clearly see why a leadership position over the deadliest warriors in the world would not be useful. Moiraine is not dumb, she fully understands the implications of Rand becoming an Aiel chief - it would be something he achieved without her help, it would be a resource she cannot control or withhold and it would be a success she cannot take credit for.

A large part of the superiority of Rand's course of action over Moiraine's is how many issues it covered that she or both of them did not know needed to be addressed. Couladin blurts while waiting for his brother to emerge from Rhuidean that they have big plans. Sevanna, in her PoV, notes that she was stringing along both brothers as part of her agenda to get power, and Faile believes that she is actually the real driving force behind Couladin's invasion of the wetlands and destruction of customs and laws. She is active and plotting in the Three Fold Land and is rather adept at spinning whatever happens to her narrative to encourage her followers. If Rand does not go to Rhuidean, Couladin would have been leading a jihad of malcontents anyway, except with no corresponding faithful Aiel force following to check him. Rand was woefully unprepared to match his channeling abilities against one of the Forsaken, and Moiraine was counting on Callandor to make up the difference (raw power can beat skill, training and years of experience? Sounds like hairy-chested thinking to me). Except Callandor is flawed and causes collateral damage. Interestingly, the chapter before Moiraine lays out her plan to the Wondergirls, Nynaeve & Egwene are arguing with Joiya Byir about the viability of the Black Ajah plot to raise another false Dragon to discredit Rand, and they cite Moiraine's assertion that it would be impossible. Joiya's response is to point out that Moiraine is hardly the definitive authority, and her career has not allowed much time to research these sorts of issues.

And right after that, Moiraine storms in fuming about how Rand is being stubborn and toxically masculine, and the reason for all this? He is trying to do research and get as much knowledge as possible before acting, instead of taking the path of least resistance and pander to the base prejudices of the Tairen aristocracy by attacking the most geographically convenient enemy.

Moiraine in the cartoon says this is the path laid out by prophecy, but it clearly is not, it is Moiraine trying to hammer the plan she decided on months, and two books, ago, into the prophecies. She decides Illian is the city referred to as lost and forsaken, because Sammael = Forsaken, but what is "lost" supposed to mean? Also, it says he will lead the spears to war once more, and she interprets that as Tairen spears, but the prophecy he will lead the spears from the lost & forsaken city! She hasn't the faintest clue what "breaks the spears and makes them see" means, just claiming that "the truth long hidden in the ancient dream" refers to the ancient dream of the Dragon Reborn, and omitting everything that's not convenient to her plan, like the logistics and implications of chaining Sammael to his will (or why that occurs prior to leading the spears to war in the prophecy's wording).

A significant theme of WoT is that the world is a complicated place and simplistic or obvious solutions will not get the results you want. The fight against the Shadow is supposed to be a collaborative effort and Rand's mission is to get everyone voluntarily pulling in the same direction, not to dominate and compel their service in the fight. To lead people, not drive them. The prophecies are laying out exactly what Rand needs to do, and does, in tSR. The complications that result in the cartoon map are the realistic outcomes of trying to carry out a world-wide movement.

And for the record, the origination point of Rand's journey to "lose V-card" was in Cairhien, not Rhuidean.

made by u/acactis21

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 26

Aviendha gets a promotion, Romanda has a barbecue, and I lose it at any mention of Rhuidean because I am a parody of myself.

Chapter 26: A Crack in the Stone

Hey Aviendha, worked out the meaning of your punishments yet?

The Aiel brought only what they could carry, and their war band included only soldiers and Wise Ones.

Have the Aiel ever referred to themselves as ‘soldiers’ before? It strikes me as off, a little, but it could be that Jordan used it as well and I’m just misremembering.

Aviendha’s moving water from one bucket to another with her finger, one drop at a time, and I never thought I’d say this but right now I’m glad my university went with boring old paper examinations.

Actually I’d probably be okay at the Accepted test. And the Aes Sedai one, even. And those would certainly be more fun than written exams, for a given definition of ‘fun’…but this last Wise One test? No thank you.

It made her angry. Then that anger made her ashamed.

Anger leads to shame? Well at least she’s not turning into a Sith.

The Last Battle would be a test unlike any her people had ever known.

Will it? It’s shaping up to be one hell of a bigass battle, sure, but beyond sheer scope and scale and stakes…the Aiel know battle. The greater test, it seems to me, is everything else. Their history and their tests have been ones of identity and survival, and I would argue that’s the greater test that’s facing them now – maintaining a sense of identity as everything changes around them, as they leave their home and face the truth of their history and the uncertainty of their future.

After that, a battle – even if it is potentially world-ending – against a known or defined enemy would be almost a relief. What comes afterthe battle, though…‘The great battle done, but the world not done with battle’. What comes next for them, once they have left this chapter of their history behind? What do they become now, now that they have left the Three-fold Land and taken up their place as the People of the Dragon? ‘He will take you back, and he will destroy you’. That’s already begun; it started back at Alcair Dal. The Aiel have already begun to be scattered and broken and changed, and while Tarmon Gai’don itself will likely claim plenty of lives, I think Rand himself is more of a catalyst here. And the Aiel themselves, as it has always been in their history.

Anyway, Rhuidean still haunts me, news at eleven.

“Are you all right?”

Min! I almost can’t believe Min is on the askingside of that question, but it’s Min, so of course she is. Still. Are you okay, Min?

She wore a scarf at her neck.

Maybe…maybe she and Mat can start a trend? Exchange tips on How To Accessorise Your Asphyxiation? Bit of a niche market but I’m sure there’s some business to be had…

“I thought I could talk to you,” Min said, still looking out at the camp “I’m not sure who else I could approach. I don’t trust the Aes Sedai, and neither does he. I’m not sure he trusts anyone, now. Maybe not even me.”

Oh, Min. She tries so hard, and she just keeps going and keeps trying even when everything turns to an absolute literal horror show around her, but…what now? What can she do, when he no longer trusts her? The one person he still trusted, the one who almost convinced him he had gone too far…until that backfired in the most spectacular way possible. So now he can’t let himself trust, and he can’t trust himself with her, and Min tries so hardbut what can even she do, now? Where can she go, when there’s no one left who can reach him? He’s alone now; he may not have truly driven away all those who love him, but he has shut himself off from the last of them. It’s the culmination of a long, long process, and now…what more can they do, that they haven’t already tried?

Not to mention, Min was just nearly killed by someone she loves, and she’s still looking for a way to help him, and someone please just pull Min aside for five minutes and give her a cup of hot chocolate and a hug and maybe the business card of a really good therapist for when this is all over.

Aviendha had heard about the events the night before

What did she hear, exactly? What are the rumours? How much is actually known? Because that’s the sort of thing that can look so very different depending on how it’s being told, and by whom.

Rand al’Thor had fought and won.

And that is certainly one way to look at the sequence of events, if you strip it down.

Which is…kind of the point. If you strip away all context and emotion, if you write it out like a logbook or an accounting…that’s what you get. At the base level of life and death, Semirhage attacked Rand and he killed her. So he won, didn’t he? That’s victory, isn’t it?

It is, in miniature, a perfect illustration of the whole concept that if Rand faces the Last Battle as he is now, victory and defeat will be indistinguishable. He has done to the idea of Tarmon Gai’don what ‘Rand al’Thor had fought and won’does to Chapter 22. Stripped it of all meaning, of all context, of all purpose and consequence, of anything but a body count.

It’s how he has forced himself to see things, over this long course of hardening himself against everything he fears he cannot endure if he is to reach the Last Battle. It’s how he himself would likely describe what just happened with Semirhage, because the rest doesn’t matter. It’s the cold, spare harshness of the Void, in which everything is stripped down so far as to become…meaningless. It’s the state of mind in which he could reach out and touch the True Power, Shai’tan’s power, the power of chaos and entropy and oblivion. Which is maybe an indication that this is Hashtag Not Good.

Rand al’Thor had fought and won.

And the thing is, it isn’t just Rand’s internal mindset that this highlights. The fact that we’re getting this through Aviendha also shows something of how things can look so different from the outside, and thus how much of this is internal. Or, how much the internal actually matters.

His fight had left him scarred in ways she did not yet understand.

Aviendha can feel this and even if she can’t understand the exact nature of those scars, she can understand that they exist, that there is pain and that something is wrong. Whereas the rest of the world… the world doesn’t see Rand as human, really, and Rand no longer even sees himself as human, and it’s so easy to let that spiral.

Aviendha had raised the alarm, but not quickly enough. She had tohto him for her mistake

Oh Aviendha. Nothing you could have done would have changed it, I don’t think. This was a long time coming, in one form or another.

“Rand al’Thor will deal with his problems,” she said, dripping more water.

“How can you say that?” Min asked, glancing at her. “Can’t you feel his pain?”

“I feel each and every moment of it,” Aviendha said through gritted teeth. “But he must face his own trials, just as I face mine.”

I’m maybe with Aviendha on this one. At some point, some of it is going to have to come from Rand. He is at war with himself, and has been for, oh, eight or nine books now at least, and while Min and Aviendha and others are there for him, and can try to help him, they can’t do it for him; at some point it’s going to come down to him. To accept that help or not. To trust or not. To let himself feel things that hurt, or to shut them away. To fight himself or to accept who and what he is.

“You are not what I expected,” Min finally said.

“I have deceived you?” Aviendha said, frowning.

“No, not that,” Min said with a small laugh. “I mean, I was wrong about you, I guess. I wasn’t certain what to think, after that night in Caemlyn when…well, that night when we bonded Rand together. I feel close to you, yet distant from you at the same time.” She shrugged. “I guess I expected you to come looking for me the moment you got into camp. We had things to discuss. When you didn’t, I worried. I thought perhaps I had offended you.”

“You have no toh to me,” Aviendha said.

“Good,” Min said. “I still worry sometimes that we’ll…come to a confrontation.”

“And what good would a confrontation serve?”

“I don’t know,” Min said with a shrug. “I figured it would be the Aiel way. Challenge me to a fight of honour. For him.”

Aviendha snorted. “Fight over a man?”

Who needs love triangles when you can have honest adult conversations? I like this because it provides a contrast to the rapid friendship between Aviendha and Elayne (or Elayne and Min) without going the ‘they hate each other because women who like the same man must despise each other on principle’ route. Min and Aviendha are still strangers in many ways, and they’re still not entirely sure what to make of each other, and so…that’s what you get. It isn’t pushed towards an extreme, or played up for drama, it’s just…something they both know needs to be addressed at some point, and so they talk to each other about it. And maybe they won’t resolve everything right away, but they also aren’t going to be at each other’s throats about this. What a miracle.

“What honour would there be to be gained in fighting one with no skill?” Min flushed, as if Aviendha had offered her an insult. What a curious reaction.

They also come from very different backgrounds, and without an immediate or near-immediate friendship to help smooth some of that over, it’s going to be another thing that they have to learn to work around. But again, while Min may feel insulted and Aviendha may not understand (much like how Aviendha felt somewhat insulted or shamed by Min talking to her while she’s serving a humiliating punishment), it doesn’t turn into some kind of catfight.

It’s nice to see.

It’s one of the ways in which WoT benefits simply from having such a large cast of female characters; by numbers alone it allows for more kinds of relationships and interactions between women, so that any one dynamic doesn’t bear all the weight. That then allows for so much more freedom in writing relationships between characters that are simply true to the characters. Some of those relationships are friendly, some are antagonistic, some are neutral, and because they’re all different none of them feel like a (deliberate or accidental) generalisation.

“I would not fight with you unless you gave me grave insult. My first-sister considers you a friend, and I would like to do so as well.”

“All right,” Min said, folding her arms and looking back at Rand. “Well, I guess that’s a good thing. I have to admit, I don’t much like the idea of sharing.”

Aviendha hesitated, then dipped her finger into the pail. “Neither do I.” At least, she didn’t like the idea of sharing with a woman she didn’t know very well.

“Then what do we do?”

“We continue as we have.”

And that’s that. There are other things going on, and there isn’t really a whole lot else that can be done about this right now. But they’ve both been upfront about where they stand, and they’re more or less on the same page, and YOU GUYS IT’S JUST SO GOOD TO SEE CHARACTERS GET TO ACT LIKE ADULTS IN SITUATIONS LIKE THIS.

Anyway.

Oh, Aviendha is pissed off. Not at Min; Min mentioned the water thing in parting but that seems almost to have been a catalyst more than anything else. Aviendha is just fucking done.

She stalked up to the Wise Ones, fuming.

FINALLY.

“Not learning quickly enough?” Aviendha demanded. “I have learned everything you have asked of me! I have memorised every lesson, repeated every fact, performed every duty. I have answered all your questions and have seen you nod in approval at each answer!”

Forget written exams, any system in which graduation is determined by stalking up to your instructors and telling them to get fucked is clearly the way to go.

“I have left behind the spears, and I welcome my place among you.”

Joking aside, this reminds me of the scene from the Rhuidean sequence: “I am Aiel!” There’s very little in common between the two scenes, except for the fierce affirmation of identity, but that’s what stands out. Self-declaration and self-determination are an important part of who they are.

“Child,” Amys said, meeting her eyes. “Are you rejecting our punishments?” “Yes,” she said, heart thumping. “I am.”

It’s a testament to how well-constructed the Aiel are as a fictional culture that this feels absolutely right. It doesn’t seem to come out of nowhere, and not just because it’s been foreshadowed recently but because it fits seamlessly with what we’ve learned about the Aiel over the last several books, as they’ve gone from mysterious unknown outsiders to a familiar nuanced culture.

“I am ready to join you.”

She gritted her teeth, waiting for an explosion of furious incredulity. What was she thinking? She shouldn’t have let Min’s foolish talk rile her so. And then Bair started to laugh. […] Amys’s expression was uncharacteristically soft. “Welcome, sister,” she said to Aviendha. 

Aviendha blinked. “What?”

“You are one of us now, girl!” Bair said. “Or soon will be.”

“But I defied you!”

Or you asserted yourself. It’s all a matter of perspective. I like the way this rewards ambition and self-confidence. Also it’s kind of a sweet scene, even if Amys’s relationship to Aviendha is now rather complicated: she’s Aviendha’s mother by ceremony, and now sister by vocation…

“But there is rank among Wise Ones,” Aviendha said. “Is there not?”

“Rank?” Amys looked puzzled. “Some of us have more honour than others, earned by wisdom, actions, and experience.”

It’s set up as a contrast to the Aes Sedai’s system of rank-by-power or the Kin’s rank-by-age, but I have to wonder how well this would actually work in any kind of emergency situation. I suppose they do acknowledge certain informal ranks amongst themselves; they’ll all defer to Sorilea, and most will defer to Amys, and so on…and if they do not by tradition take part in combat (or didn’t) then it’s less of an issue because conflicts can be resolved through discussion. And honour is a much less abstract quality to the Aiel than it is to others. And to be fair, there are going to be problems with pretty much any system of rank, because people, so okay.

“A punishment is not a true punishment unless you accept it, Aviendha”

Alright, Eleanor Roosevelt. But once again it’s a philosophy that fits well with what we’ve learned of Aiel culture. Punishment and honour are tied closely together, and while they’re codified in some ways, there is also a great deal of choiceinvolved in both. How to meet toh. What your honour is worth. Who you are.

And so this was not about punishment, but about Aviendha needing to change her own self-perception. To see herself as a Wise One because she believes herself to be, because she believes she has earned it, not because they’ve told her she has. She has to accept this as her identity before anyone else can accept it. It’s internal before it can be external.

“Oh, she’s still a girl,” Bair said. “Until one more thing is done.”

Wait…

What would have happened if Min hadn’t riled her? She would have to thank the woman, although Min didn’t realise what she’d done.

That’s weirdly sweet. And again, rather…mature, I suppose, to acknowledge the help Min has given her, even if it was entirely unintentional. It’s something a lot of people struggle with.

“What must I still do?” Aviendha asked.

“Rhuidean,” Bair said.

WHAT.

ARE YOU—

IS THIS—

ARE YOU SERIOUS. RHUIDEAN.

I mean…I should not be surprised? This is the final step in becoming a Wise One, and the tradition for clan chief hasn’t changed so why would this, but at the same time I was WHOLLY UNPREPARED FOR THIS IN EVERY WAY.

Even though we’ve already seen the history of the Aiel, and Aviendha already knows it.

So it probably won’t take place on-screen, because while I would gladly just reread those two chapters I think publishers might disagree, but I hope we get something. Even just a reaction gif.

Also because it would be so different, to see that history through the eyes of one actually born and raised among the Aiel. It’s known to all of them now, but even so…for someone like Aviendha to watch some of those scenes play out, to see the truth of their origins and their honour…

I’m sure you will all be surprised to see that yes, I am once again Emotionally Compromised by Rhuidean.

“Things will be different, now,” Melaine said. “Rhuidean is no longer what it once was.”

YOU SHUT THE HELL UP.

“We will turn our backs on you now, Aviendha. We will not see you again until you return to us as a sister returning from a long journey.”

“A sister we had forgotten that we knew.”

HELP ME. SHE’S GOING TO RHUIDEAN AND I’m fine, this is fine, everything is fine.

I know, I know, that it makes no actual sense to show her journey through the glass columns, and that either something will go horribly wrong or else we’ll just cut-scene to when she comes out or returns to the Wise Ones, but. I want it anyway.

“I suggest Travelling to Cold Rocks Hold and walking from there. You must spend time in the Three-fold Land to contemplate your journey.”

Okay, that’s promising. Maybe we don’t see her go through the columns but we see her thinking over her people and their history and their uncertain future as she walks to the city that for so long stood empty, holding the secret heart and truth of who they are, and now is an oasis in the desert, open to all, no longer shrouded, no longer hidden. A walk of contemplation through the land that has been theirs for all living memory but is only a part of their exodus, a walk through history until she reaches the glass columns and sees the full truth of the history she has come to know through rumour and proclamation. It wouldn’t be a surprise that she then has to come to terms with, the way it once was for other new Wise Ones, but instead would be a way of gaining…certainty? Or of answering questions and affirming truths. It would become something of a bookend rather than an opening – she knows the history now, and so then this is the final step in seeing it in full and accepting it, so that now she can help them move on. Or something.

Listen. Let’s be honest here. If Rhuidean is involved I don’t even care about the specifics of how it’s given to me I just WANT IT.

That’s a lie, I do care. I care way too much.

HELP.

“Remember this time and the shame you felt, for it is the shame any da’tsangwill know, should you consign them to their fate. And they cannot escape it simply by demanding release.”

That’s an excellent lesson, and an important one. It’s empathy, really, which is often…underrated in positions of power.

Ah, so that’s how Sevanna ended up a Wise One. Every system has its flaws, after all.

“Once you reach Rhuidean, travel to the centre of the city. You will find the pillars of glass. Pass through the centre of them, then return here.”

There is no reason at all for me to quote this, I just…needed to.

“Spend well your days running to the city. We pushed you hard so that you would have this time for contemplation. It is likely the last you will have for some while.”

Aviendha nodded. “The battle comes.”

The calm before the storm, except it’s…more than that. I’m trying to figure out exactly how to phrase what I like about this. It’s the idea not just of pausing to breathe before everything explodes, but of taking time to think. Taking time for quiet contemplation. And it’s more than that; there’s a layering here of…they’re approaching the Last Battle, the end of an Age, something that will force the world from now into what comes next. Soon it will be about surviving the present and saving the future, but these last few days, this last time for contemplation, is then about the past. About going backto the Three-fold Land, about spending time there to think, about walking back through the history of her people and thinking on that. It’s a…grounding, an anchoring. A focus on identity and origin. A farewell, perhaps, but also a remembrance.

“Go,” Amys said, “and return.” She put emphasis on the final word. Some women did not survive Rhuidean.

But it’s also a variation on “forward. And back in time.” It’s the push-pull of who they were and who they are, of going back at this moment when they prepare to face the coming battle.

Also…okay bear with me here because we’re going on a semantic adventure. First of all, there’s a double-meaning in ‘go and return’ because ‘go to Rhuidean, and return to our past’. But the way ‘go’ and ‘return’ are emphasised, and the places they refer to, are also interesting here. ‘Go’ is ‘leave’ is ‘from here, to elsewhere’; but ‘return’ implies…home. It implies the status quo. She must goin order to get to Rhiudean, to get to the Three-fold Land, which was once the home of the Aiel…but from that home she must return. To here, to the wetlands, to this place in space and time and identity where the Aiel now are, because that place has changed. The Aiel have changed.

She has to go back to see what they once were – not just through the glass columns, but now the Three-fold Land is a part of that past; even the trip to Rhuidean is a part of that past. As Melaine said, Rhuidean is no longer what it once was. That’s the first step in the history now, even if it is outside of the ter’angreal.  And then she must return, not just from the columns, or to Chaendaer, or to her own hold, but to where the Aiel are. To who the Aiel have become. She has to see their full history, and they have taken their next step now; a new scene has been written.

All of that makes perfect sense in my head I swear.

From Wise Ones to Aes Sedai. Appropriate, I suppose, especially as we’re starting off with Shemerin.

Shemerin, who was demoted to Accepted and the change stuck because, according to Silviana, Shemerin allowed it to. She believed it, accepted it herself, and did not fight it or claim her place as Aes Sedai. She let her status be defined by someone else and could not stand up for herself against it. So it’s pretty much an exact inversion of what we just saw Aviendha do. I See What You Did There.

Romanda had not forgotten Siuan’s crafty nature, even if so many others in camp seemed to have done so. Lesser strength in the Power did not mean decreased capacity for scheming.

Except you still fell for it, Romanda. Hook, line, and sinker, as Siuan might say.

Sheriam had been withdrawn lately, and barely maintained the dignity of an Aes Sedai. Foolish woman. She needed to be removed from her place; everyone could see that.

Romanda’s on a roll here with expelling or trying to expel Black Ajah. Even if in this case she has no idea.

Romanda had rarely seen a woman as determined to punish herself as this poor child.

Not a child, Romanda thought. A full Aes Sedai, whatever she says.

Yeah, Shemerin is a rather perfect foil for Aviendha in this specific moment.

“You are Aes Sedai,” Romanda said, trying to keep the edge out of her voice.

Being told she is Aes Sedai, rather than claiming the title for herself. And because it does not come from her, she does not believe it. She sees herself as Accepted �� as an apprentice – regardless of what status she was once accorded, or should still have. It comes back to identity, to how you see yourself. Shemerin accepts her punishments and her given status; Aviendha decided not to anymore.

“Tell me about this watergate,” Siuan said

Well, Siuan, Watergate is the name of a hotel that has become synonymous with political scandal ever since—oh, not that watergate. Gotcha.

“Where would we find it?”

You had better not be contemplating a rescue mission, Siuan.

“How is it that Elaida could think that demoting a sister was wise?”

You’ll be happier just…not thinking too hard on questions like that, Magla. All you’re going to do is give yourself a headache. Elaida decided wisdom was a dump stat and we’re all living with the consequences.

Something small was creeping beneath the canvas floor of the tent, moving from one corner toward the centre of the room.

Um? I can’t think what that could be but I doubt it’s anything good.

“You didn’t plot against her? You didn’t contradict her?”

Shemerin shook her head. “I was loyal.”

Good thing that’s in the past tense, though Shemerin’s still referring to Elaida as ‘the Amyrlin’. Still, the rebels have needed something like this – firsthand accounts of all the fresh steaming bullshit happening in the Tower on Elaida’s watch. They’ve had Egwene in Tel’aran’rhiod up until recently, of course, but it’s different when it’s coming from those who were on Elaida’s side.

“I suspect she used poor Shemerin as an example, acclimating the White Tower to the concept of demotion. That will let her use it on those who are actually her enemies.”

Repeat after me: THIS IS NOT NORMAL.

Man, some of this feels so very…relevant.

The conversation hit a lull. The Sitters who supported Egwene would likely head the list of those to be demoted, if Elaida retained her power and the Aes Sedai reconciled.

Excellent: a perfect selfish reason for them to make sure that doesn’t happen. That’s not even sarcasm; it’s a good way to keep them motivated to achieve what they came here to achieve. They could just toss Egwene to Elaida as a scapegoat and reconcile with her – and the more time that passes, especially without Egwene able to communicate with them, the more appealing an option that becomes. But it becomes far less of an option if they know they’d go down with her.

Oh cool it’s a giant cockroach. Yum.

Nope, lotsof giant cockroaches.

I had a good laugh at the image of the Warders standing there with their swords drawn, ready to face the threat, and just looking at the flood of cockroaches like ‘…I do not get paid enough for this’.

“Is there anything in the tent that is dear to you?” Lelaine asked, looking back at the tent.

Why Lelaine, I’m surprised you care! It’s an almost sweet moment; the two of them momentarily united against a greater – or in this case at least more disturbing – enemy. Which, I suppose, is precisely the point. They’re not enemies; they should be helping one another and working together against the Shadow, rather than spending their time and energy trying to outmanoeuvre one another.

Romanda spared a thought for her journal, but knew that she’d never be able to touch those pages after her tent had been infested this way. “Nothing that I’d care to keep now,” she said, weaving Fire. “And nothing I can’t replace.”

It’s a good attitude to have, especially as they all stand at the brink of a battle that will change quite possibly everything.

And it’s even another small link back to the previous scene, with Aviendha. A slight inversion, perhaps, but again the issue of looking back, of the past and letting it go or remembering it, moving forward.

Romanda thought she heard the insects popping and sizzling inside.

Mmmmm, dinner.

Light, she thought. Egwene is right. It is coming. Fast.

[…]

The Tower needed to be whole. Whatever it took. Would she be willing to bow before Elaida to make that happen? Would she put on an Accepted dress again if it would bring unity for the Last Battle?

She couldn’t decide.

It’s not an easy choice, in part because the question isn’t simply unity but what sortof unity. And whether there can be unity at all under Elaida, after she has already split the Tower and then shattered her half of it.

It’s not an easy choice because, in Romanda’s position, there’s no way to know. There’s no way to know if Egwene will prevail, and if she’ll be able to heal the Tower in time. There’s no way to know if Elaida would be able to hold them together, or if she might at least be better than nothing.

And there are the questions of pride and identity and selfishness, and Romanda acknowledges those, too.

There is no time left, and they have to make some of these decisions now; they have to put so much behind them and let go of so much, and move forward, but there’s not necessarily any way to know which path will be the right one. They just have to choose, and hope they choose correctly.

Next (TGS ch 27)

Previous (TGS ch 25)

[butterflydm]

Seanchan question; memory of light spoilers

(spoilers through book 14: a memory of light below)

okay, I had assumed that the Seanchan deal* HAD to be from Jordan’s notes because it was treated as such a huge turning point (like, it’s implied it’s the whole reason Mat had to go through his Ebou Dar trauma), but I read on someone else’s post that apparently BOTH Veins of Gold (big character turning point) and Aviendha’s Rhuidean vision (shows horrors of the future) were entirely Sanderson and not Jordan-notes based at all so...

...is there any info on whether the horrible “you get to keep all the women you/your empire abducted, enslaved, & tortured” deal Rand makes with Tuon because otherwise she won’t help save the world was in Jordan’s notes? Because they were apparently quite a bit less extensive than I thought they were.

.

.

* a deal which I hate on so many levels:

a. “you get to keep your slaves and steal their free will” undercuts the entire “free will matters” conclusion at the end of Rand’s encounter with The Dark One.

b. retroactively makes me inclined to completely write off Tuon as a character, because it feels like she hasn’t grown or changed worth a damn thing since Winter’s Heart, though I will... try to keep an open mind during my reread lol.

c. makes me absolutely despise Mat and Tuon’s relationship as a whole and that Mat has talked himself into giving it his 100% effort when Tuon has now made it clear that she considers her defining trait Being A Slaver (getting to Be A Slaver matters more to her than whether or not the world continues to exist). I want to take him by the shoulders and gently remind him that this woman would happily torture his sister (and several of his female friends) while telling him the torture was for her own good.

d. it’s treated as this huge concession by the narrative when it actually sucks. But, in general, from what I remember, the way the Seanchan’s slavery gets handled in the final books bothers me, though I’ll talk about it more when I get there in my reread.

[highladyluck]

WoT AU: Perrin’s Cursed Shadar Logoth Ax

Concept: WoT AU where Perrin is the dumbass who keeps a shiny cursed ax from Shadar Logoth, while Mat drops the dagger before leaving Shadar Logoth and ends up getting wolf powers instead, so they get each other's powers and story paths. Their personalities are the same.

What's really interesting about this is how much it highlights that the individual ta'veren struggles are actually at root the same; all of the boys struggle to accept both the responsibilities and the violence that the narrative pushes on them.

However, the boys don't struggle with the same issues to the same degree! So if you give responsibility-avoidant Mat the plotline that incentivizes responsibility, and violence-repulsed Perrin the plotline that incentivizes violence, they hit their growth points quicker and get over their internal conflicts faster. XD

I’ll put the plot and characterization details under the cut. Also, shout-out to @adurna0, ßætåñŵå£k€r ßùprëmê, and Pexitron for contributing enthusiasm, questions, and ideas to this nonsense.

Mat’s Path: Beloved Culture Hero With Daydreaming Superpowers

In the original universe Mat's internal struggle is to come to terms with responsibility (with his spelled-out fate as catalyst), and his external struggle is about leading battles and revolutionizing warfare. In the AU, he'd be put in a position of responsibility after saving everybody and he'd behave better because he was being appreciated and trusted, and the only struggle would be to stop him from using the Wolf Dream for literally everything, including battles somehow.

I think Mat would likely be kind of uneasy about the wolf powers at first, but he'd LOVE Tel'aran'rhiod, he's always daydreaming, and that's a place where your daydreams become real. He'd test out all of his fun wolf powers and Dreamwalking abilities immediately. Hopper would still be exasperated but for completely different reasons. Mat would also go back and rescue Emond's Field from Trollocs and Whitecloaks and turn it into a trading empire. At some point when Perrin returns from Rhuidean, Mat would go on a special mission to steal Perrin's hat, because frankly Perrin wouldn't keep wearing it after leaving the Waste anyway, and it looks better on Mat. This is my only concession to the original storyline’s aesthetics.

Unlike Perrin, Mat would not hesitate to rescue people from Masema, and he'd be good at the political stuff. He'd love being viewed as a hero, though he'd possibly have some of the same struggles Perrin did re: taking on leadership, because it implies responsibility. But with Mat, it's more that he'd pitch in during a crisis automatically and then bitch about it after, and I think after people started giving him positive attention for helping them, he'd act out and complain less.

He and Faile wouldn't be into each other but they'd be bros (a little like him and Birgitte in the original universe) and have a good working relationship; Faile would be his work wife (but not his actual wife) in his role as Lord of the Two Rivers. Mat's love interest in this situation is Berelain, but it's a very slow burn. (I can’t imagine anything but a slow burn romance for Mat, he’s just built for it.)

He'd be freaked out about Berelain at first (due to getting the Min advice about running from the most beautiful woman you've ever seen) but eventually he'd be like 'wait, hang on, I do not take advice' and he'd court Berelain and even more eventually succeed. Probably Berelain is the one who gets kidnapped by the Shaido in this version? Also, he would absolutely kick Lanfear's ass in Tel'aran'rhiod, with or without the power of love.

Perrin’s Path: Luckily, I’m Very Qualified For This Job

Ok, so on to Perrin. In the original universe, Perrin's internal struggle is to come to terms with his capacity for violence (with his wolfman destiny as catalyst), and his external struggle is about taking on political and social responsibility. In the AU, Perrin would now have actual stakes for the hammer vs ax issue, so it would get resolved sooner. Also, Perrin's issues with responsibility aren't 'I don't want to work hard', they're 'I'm not the right man for the job'. Once Perrin has the thought "The Pattern has specifically prepared me to be really good at killing people, that's my job now", he'd just go do his job.

Again, I like to think that Perrin still has the hammer vs ax dilemma, but now has rather different stakes, and Perrin might be a lot more concerned than Mat ever was about the lingering darkness in his soul. I think that's what prompts him to go through the stone doorway in the Stone of Tear, in this universe. Unlike Mat, he knew specifically what he was going to ask for in the Rhuidean doorway, so he asks for them directly (I haven't quite worked out what his accessories would be in this universe, but I bet one of them is a hammer. Maybe the ashandarai becomes a war hammer?)

His big internal bugaboo is whether all of his new battle memories make him a bad person and whether he’s tainted forever by the ax, so he spends way more time than Mat ever did feeling bad about being really good at war. However, once he decides, 'Well, I'm working for the light, this is clearly my job now, and I have the tools for it, so I should do my job and take pride in my work," he's fine.

I also think that, being a blacksmith, he would be more familiar than Mat is with metalworking and would invent cannon way earlier. He would invent cannon so early that I also think he would have time to invent guns. That's right, in this universe, Perrin has a gun. He probably forges a gun with the One Power. He'd also make it out of *Finnland earlier than Mat, and with all of his body parts, because a) Perrin would absolutely bring guns to fairyland, b) Perrin doesn't give a shit about the delicate rules of fae bargains and c) Perrin would have obsessed over the puzzle of the gift he didn't specifically ask for, and would have known before he entered *Finnland what it was for, so once he found Moiraine he'd be able to escape immediately.

Perrin and Tuon get married somehow, but there's no love there and by the end of the series they're both fully intending to kill each other. (Tuon doesn't trust him and is pretty sure he's going to be a huge threat to her rule; she doesn't flirt with him by threatening to kill him, because when Tuon wants you dead, you are just dead, she doesn't telegraph her intentions.) Perrin feels bad about having to kill his wife, but the Seanchan are evil and there's no way in hell Perrin's leading their armies after all this is over, so she's gotta die. Perrin might manage it first, since Tuon would wait till after the Last Battle, but then Selucia or literally any other Seanchan party would immediately kill Perrin. So. Hopefully everybody stays their hand till after the Last Battle, because otherwise the Light is screwed in this scenario.

[bornitereads]

The Shadow Rising - Robert Jordan

Wheel of Time Book 4

Reread: Nov 2021

Here we are at book 4 and shit is starting to get so real. This book deals a lot with the Aiel, their culture, their land, and their past. It's an amazing amount of world building. The Aiel to this point have been kind of a mysterious force. But now we get to pull back the curtain. I especially love it because through them we get a glimpse into the Age of Legends. It's very, very interesting. We also deal with Rand learning more and more about channelling. Especially in the Stone of Tear in the beginning of the book. That whole thing with the little girl? Yikes. Speaking of channelling, the women get a big surprise in this book. Wise Ones? Windfinders? Oh boy, have some certain people in a certain white tower been deceived haha. The mystery with the darkfriends seems so transparent to me now, but I guess it's not that fun when you know the answer. One of my most hated characters is here in this book, Couladin. He's a giant Aiel cunt. At least he gets shown up a lot haha. The stuff with the Aiel is the main plotline, but there are two other that I really love. Perrin's return to the Two Rivers, which is amazing; and Elayne and Nynaeve in Tanchico, where Nynaeve is proved to be a badass. I really love it, just her facing down the Spider. Ugh, it brings me so much joy. Also Perrin gets married in this book! Which is cute, but like boring? Jordan didn't want to waste a lot time with marriage customs I feel. The ending with Rand's wince-inducing, rolling-in-dirt fight in Rhuidean is kind of hilarious. Plus Lanfear in this book? It's like she doesn't know what she's going to do really. Impulsive and kind of blind. But she ends up helping, which is kind of strange. Lots of very interesting things happen in this one. Just makes me so hungry to keep reading.

Info: Tor, 1992

[cannoli-reader]

Dividing Robert Jordan’s “A Memory of Light”

A couple of times in recent months, the topic of Sanderson’s changes to the series has come up, and given me cause to think over his mistakes in how he divided the finale. Jordan clearly intended the story he laid out to be a single story, in one book, so I was dividing it, I’d do it into three volumes, intended to run together, without prologues and conclusions and the wind rising at the beginning of each. 

But if f the finale had to be in three separate books, it should have been, in my opinion, as follows (beyond the cut):

Book 12: The Breaking Storm 

(because “Gathering” is so trite and not really fitting this late)

Rand’s arc climaxes with the Dominion Bond incident, more use of the warder bonds to leave all three women horrified, Min traumatized by the incident, Aviendha fuming impotently at her separation from them and the Wise Ones’ harassment, Elayne dealing with a negative feedback loop of political fallout, as she tries to deal with Andor & Cairhien together, with a vague awareness of Rand’s deteriorating state shading everything for the worse.  Andoran problems should prevent her from giving Cairhien the attention it needs, Cairhienin issues drag her attention away from Andor just in time for more trouble to rear up, while she scrambles to find food for both countries. 

Mat should be having issues with managing the larger, reunited Band, maybe with some PTSD as alluded to at the end of KoD, when he says he no longer sees battles as gambling. He should struggle with a lot of setbacks and problems as he and Elayne try to get the cannon project going. His presence with the Band should cause her political difficulties, and his departure at the least convenient time for her. Maybe taking out the gholam at greater personal cost, and he’s freaked out, and can’t go after Moiraine yet. 

Perrin should have the Whitecloak conflict and reveal of Morgase, right away, get it over with, and then the Slayer thing comes up, and the Trolloc threat. His position at the end of the book should be impotence with the problem of the Berelain rumors blossoming among his people, remnants of Maseema’s people attacking and blaming him for the Prophet’s death, Perrin having developed an interest in saving the Children of the Light, but they aren’t about to cooperate and everything is going to get picked off by the Shadow, and Elayne is out for blood over his “rebellion” because so many other political problems have boxed her in and she can’t let another thing like this go.  There is just enough communication between his camp & Caemlyn to raise the stakes, not enough to be the basis for understanding.

Egwene’s story should see the Tower deteriorate more, with more splits and dissension in both the rebel camp and Tar Valon. Romanda and Lelaine’s conflict should come to a head, driving the older sisters back to the Tower, even while disgust at Elaida sends some loyalists out to the rebels.  More people should be listening to Egwene, only to find all their efforts uselessly stirring the pot, and the Seanchan attack destroys what unity is left.

The 13x13 plot should be out there and threatening Logain’s loyalists, with more interplay between Pevara’s group and Myrelle’s. Lan’s gathering of an army should be played less humorously and with more of a sense of ‘too little. too late’ and witnessing problems in the Borderlands, like political infighting, with lords the readers, but not the heroes, know are Darkfriends making their move more widespread than just Ituralde’s OTL problem at Maradon. 

Book 13: Towers of Darkness (or Shadow) (or Towers IN\AT Midnight)

The point is, that there should be some sort of sense of disaster and doom with the White Tower, Black Tower and Ghenji.  Maybe there could be scenes of Lan arriving at Malkier so the ruins of the Seven can play a part in the horror atmosphere. Groups and alliances discussed using metaphors of crumbling or toppling towers. That kind of thing.

Rand plunges deeper into Dark Rand, climaxing with his confrontation with Tam and beginning his sojourn among the Seanchan.

Egwene should be raised in the aftermath of a Seanchan attack that hits both the Tower and the rebels, maybe the groups coming together as they flee a literally burning White Tower.  It should be made abundantly clear that she’s only a compromise candidate, that all the sides are still fighting over who did what in the split. All they can agree on is that Elaida was bad and they have to work together, but blame each other for leaving so Elaida ran wild, or staying & supporting her administration and both sides expect the other to do more compromising, and this is just a shitty thankless job she has to shoulder.  The physical reclaiming of the Tower and cleanup efforts should be a recurring background issue, with emphasis on the destruction and now-crummy living conditions, but Egwene is making them stay in the battered shell of the Tower, rather than split up in the city, which would invite dissent. She’s trying to present a strong face to the rest of the world, but running into problems with the nations, both because of the Tower’s long neglect of the rest of the world for their own squabbles and because the Tower’s old habits of supremacy stumble against new bases of loyalty centered on Rand or other institutions.  Egwene can make things worse for Elayne and vice versa.

Rand and Egwene’s encounter should be in this book, when he’s still Dark Rand. His Merrilor notice should be more of an ultimatum, with Egwene’s efforts to gather the rulers and armies to have the sense of a last-ditch effort to confront him when he needs to be stood up to, and to try to salvage something if Rand goes full evil or insane. That way it seems less like a wrong-headed mistrust of her old friend. She also is fighting Mesaana and the Black Ajah, with more of an ongoing guerilla thing, rather than one big battle in one night. 

Perrin should be having all the Slayer conflicts in this one has he tries to bring all his people back together to fight the Shadow threats and hold off a war with Andor or the Children of the Light.

Mat should be stalling on the Moiraine thing out of accumulated trauma from the gholam and recent campaigns, belated loss of self-confidence from being Tylin’s Toy. He goes to Tuon, and even that turns bad when he realizes how things are with Rand and that his wife is getting ready to go to war with his best friend and maybe hears plans as well to go after Perrin and the Whitecloak “deserters”, maybe he encounters some damane he recognizes from the White Tower or even Elaida herself.  His moment of getting back on track should be deciding to go to Ghenji with Thom & Noal, and the climax should be the adventure there, with him losing his eye, and they get out in a less than awesome state, just sitting there in the Mountains like ‘now what’. 

Elayne’s political difficulties escalate, though she manages to get the crown of Cairhien settled, only for the Trolloc attack on Caemlyn, and Talmanes and Aludra barely escaping while the city burns. 

The Black Tower breaks into open warfare, Ituralde’s situation in the Borderlands deteriorates, there is a schism among the Aiel, maybe the siswai’aman start getting a little more Maseema-like in their beliefs, turning against the Wise Ones and clan chiefs for lying about Rhuidean all this time.  Aviendha plays a role in that, decides she’s a Wise One, goes to Rhuidean, has the bad future visions, where the current Aiel conflict is shown to come to fruition in the successive generation, and the world is a harsher, most nasty place in the wake of Rand’s victory, because he did it wrong. The alliance that won Tarmon Gaidon is falling out and the Aiel are taking sides with or preying on different wetlander factions, before the Seanchan crusade becomes their new unifying element. There should be a sense that the Raven Empire is doing what the original conquerors did in Seanchan, unifying a broken and conflict-ridden land and the Aiel are only exacerbating the conflict. 

Everything sucks, but a few people are still determined to keep trying. Lan, Perrin, Egwene, Nynaeve, Elayne, Tuon, Logain.  Mat, Moiraine & Thom have a technical win under their belt. That’s as good as it gets.

Book 14: A Memory of Light

Rand’s vision is failing as he spends more time wandering among the Seanchan and Tinkers with more of a “I’m done with all your bullshit” tupe of mindset.  He hears about problems going on in the rest of the world, sees collared Aes Sedai and even recognizably Aiel captives, and can’t care less, he’s going here and there weaving preparations for something big that’s going to kill everyone in the area in one dramatic burst of the Power when he triggers it with the Choedan Kal, and he’s doing the same thing in Bandar Eban, around Far Madding and the Borderlanders, in Tarabon and maybe even the Black Tower. But eventually something cracks and we get Dragonmount. 

Perrin finally makes some headway in getting people together, winning back trust, and he’s on the verge of rescuing the Whitecloaks, when he forges the new hammer, which is closely tied in with Rand on Dragonmount, even inspired by his witnessing of it. 

Mat and Moiraine’s recovery is likewise tied to Rand’s epiphany. Maybe Rand comes looking for them thanks to ta’veren vision, and helps them get over their ‘Finn trauma. A symbolic first act of Healing. He goes with Mat to make amends with Tuon, reunites with Tam, goes to the rescue of the Borderlands & Lan.

Perrin & Galad come to the rescue in Andor, Elayne is dealing with the mess of Caemlyn, and small armies start showing up, the results of her campaigning as seen in CoT, and a massive relief force comes from Cairhien, with commoners and craftsmen saying “You fed us, now we’ll feed you”. Food comes up the rivers in Zaida’s ships.  Elayne brings the Borderlanders from Far Madding to help contain the Trollocs.  She ends up as the focal point of a large cooperative effort, with the Kin as the One Power muscle for her group. Needless to say, the turning point of this stuff should be tied into Dragonmount. Elayne’s & Perrin’s peace agreement is based more of cooperation, rather than who is entitled to what. 

Egwene defeats Mesaana, thanks to Perrin bringing the dreamspike on his way to Dragonmount to back up Rand, and now people are cooperating more afterwards.  Likewise with Logain’s victory at the Black Tower, which more of a group effort with Logain as the public face, and not the Androl’s Big Adventure we actually got. Loial should also succeed in persuading the Stump after Dragonmount.

And then, just when things are looking up, the attacks begin. The scheduled meeting at Merrilor is much more of a “quick, let’s get together, there’s no time left” vibe. Moiraine’s return is less dramatic, but she does move Rand & Egwene past a minor sticking point. Rand meets the Borderland rulers for their little test thing.  Elayne’s ascension as supreme commander is more of an organic thing, because of the connections she’s forged among so many groups, that she’s the only major leader known to the Borderlanders, the Aiel, and the Sea Folk, is related by marriage to the King of Tear, rules Andor and Cairhien, who are now buddies from fighting together, and the fact that she’s been fighting this whole time.  That way the political storylines mean something, rather than Rand just appointing her because his old Aes Sedai friend said so, and the rulers are all standing around wondering what these people are talking about but going along because the protagonists said so. 

[ivanaskye]

WoT reactions: book 4

Okay, I may be super tired, but I finished The Shadow Rising last night, and I HAVE A DUTY TO THE PEOPLE

(That duty is reaction posts.)

Once again, going character-by-character, because it’s a really convenient way to organize my thoughts in a series as sprawling as this.

[[MORE]]

Rand

Rand’s POV is BACK baby, and he has now ACCEPTED RESPONSIBILITY

But his next hurdle is comprehending the concept of trusting people

He does a pretty alright job in this book, using Lanfear’s suggestion as a jumping off point for both fucking with her and getting one of the Forsaken as a teacher

God I hope he tells SOMEONE that’s who his teacher is

Also really sad and ironic how he keeps thinking “if only I could trust Moiraine” when like, at this point, he totally could.

That’ll become ESPECIALLY true once news of the coup at the Tower reaches them; Moiraine literally cannot leash him to the Tower if the Tower is 100% full of people who want to kill him

Meanwhile, a lot of what he does this book has to do with the Aiel, and the big reveal about them—a ferocious warrior society!—actually being an offshoot of the super-pacifist Tuatha’an was fantastically well done, one of the best parts of the series so far. Each successive magical flashback giving you another moment in the slow change in these people. It was really good okay.

Also in those flashbacks: a hint at the Age Of Legends, which looks to be WAY cooler than I thought, and also there were tree people aparrently, but in more of a spirit way than an ent way, and man I want to learn more about THEM-

Anyway, as far as Rand goes, I remain fascinated.

Min

Awww yeah, our first scene was with Min this book, I was so happy to have her back

She doesn’t have a lot of chapters, I’m just putting her second because I love her

Also I love how her plotline went. The Tower falls. Siuan, the former leader of the Tower, is stilled (cut off from her magic permanently.) THEY ESCAPE WITH LOGAIN, A FORMER FALSE DRAGON ALSO CUT OFF FROM HIS MAGIC

Actually that brings me to

Siuan

Oh man I am so excited for where she is going from here

Formerly stately and poised magical leader now cut off from magic forever, likely to become some manner of vindictive avenger to stave off the intense depression that usually comes from being stilled? Count me in

I’m also really interested in where Logain is going but don’t know enough about him to give him his own section

Perrin

This is a BIG book for Perrin, whose ta’veren ability to pull things to him naturally lead to. Him organizing a defense against the trollocs AND WHITECLOAKS in the Two Rivers

Gets married to Faile literally on the eve of battle

Now he might be forced into the position of Being A Lord, lol

He never asked for this but he’s not bad at it either

Faile

Finds out about Perrin’s wolfy nature and is so into it

I wonder how many kinks she has, probably a lot

TRIUMPHANT return after Perrin attempts to send her away for her safety, (which he does right after marrying her LOL), now he will probably not attempt that again

It’s actually funny how much more uhhh un-sexist this series is (with the women fighting being one of the things that turn the tide, with it being narratively clear that Faile’s place is in HELPING THE WAR EFFORT, NOT IN SAFETY, etc) than a great deal of more recently written things lol

Egwene

Okay I’m calling it now, her arc is going to involve her eventually becoming the next Amyrlin Seat

(That was in one of her own visions of her future, and now something very similar in one of Perrin’s dreams, SO)

Mostly this book is her Learning How To Dreamwalk and also as usual Wanting To Know Everything, which is v relatable of her

The chances that she’s going to get with Galad have totally increased now that we know Gawyn is the evil one

Moiraine

What did she see in Rhuidean

I am so worried for her

Mat

He gets the cover image this book, and a weird and cool new weapon

Also a lot of interaction with outside-of-reality orange-and-blue morality... snake people? Who are probably also the Fae equivalent

I wanna know like, everything about this world

Also he thoroughly speaks the Old Tongue now

I’m not sure if he’s become a better person though lol

It took me embarrassingly long to realize that “daughter of the nine moons” as his future wife meant one of the Seanchan, lol.

Aviendha

Pooooossibly gonna be Rand’s third wife, which I don’t really like since I’m not that interested in her yet

Shrug

Elayne

RACHETED up to one of my favs IMMEDIATELY after having one of her first POVs in the series, I’m love her

Absolutely Has Braincells, Everyone Is Astonished

ACTUALLY UNDERSTANDS DIPLOMACY

Filled with competence

Definitely The Friendly One in her part of the plot. Speaking of that...

Egeanin

NEW FAV NEW FAV

Plots about unlearning bigotry are usually pretty boring to me, but hers moves fast and I am honestly feeling so invested right now

COMPLETELY accidentally becomes friends with Elayne and Nynaeve, realizes ability to channel =/= evil

Order-obsessed, stern and *fantastic* in combat. We have two combat-oriented non-channeling women now and I am LIVING

Nynaeve

“How DARE Egeanin make me like her! I hate her so much for the fact that I still like her!” Legendary.

FACES OFF AGAINST A FORSAKEN AND WINS

UNIMAGINABLE RAW POWER

Is now confirmed to only be able to channel when angry because of a mental block/fear of her own power, I am so excited for when that block finally comes crashing down

[iviarellereads]

The Shadow Rising, Chapter 22 - Out of the Stone

(THIS PROJECT IS SPOILER FREE! No spoilers past the chapter you click on. Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For the link index and a primer on The Wheel of Time, read this one! Like what you see? Send me a Ko-Fi.)

(Portal stone icon) In which, oh right, these things!

PERSPECTIVE: Rand leads the procession out of the Stone and eastward. A few hundred Aiel, so few that onlookers assume they couldn't have taken the Stone alone, surely there are thousands still left behind, and then Rand, who's enjoying the illusion of maybe having a little anonymity for once.

The whole remaining gang is with Rand, of course.(1) Rand isn't quite sure why Mat decided to come along, yet. He wonders when to tell them something, thinking that Moiraine will surely think it a bold stroke, maybe. He wonders what if the Aiel refuse. They pass farms in very poor condition and Rand thinks how he has to do something about this, but... he's done what he could in the weeks he's had, and he can't do anything more just yet. He has to go do this thing.

Egg asks Rand if they can talk about Elayne, and she asks why he let her go like that. He says she wanted to go, and she'll be safer away from him than nearby, if they're going ot keep attracting bubbles of evil. Egg says of course she wanted to go, and he had no right to stop her, but why didn't he say he wished she would stay. Rand repeats that El wanted to go, and Egg gives up trying to reason with him.(2)

Moiraine, behind him, tells Rand off for letting Perrin go back to the 2Rs, knowing that the world's fate may rest on their combined support for each other. Rand says he knows his duty, and one of them had to go back to help their home.(3) She asks what his other secret is, then, and he says Portal Stones, if they're lucky.

Mat cusses and then tells Egg off for grimacing at his language. Rand almost killed them all the last time, worse than killed maybe. He'd rather slop pigs the rest of his life. Rand says Mat can go his own way if he likes, but Mat walks back his comments. Rand wonders that he's the one supposed to go mad, but Mat's the one that sounds it already.

Mo says Verin told her of the Portal Stone journey they last took, and not only did it sound like an experience nobody would want to repeat, it took almost enough of the Power to nearly kill Rand, and it was a much smaller party. Rand feels his belt pouch and the small hard shape inside. He explains that a peddler six hundred years ago told a story of a stone he saw near Rhuidean, when trying to sneak a peek at the place against custom. There's nothing else it could have been. Rand asked the librarian, without naming what he was after, and the man pointed at where four such stones had been reported in Tear alone. The stone they're headed for is near an old Ogier grove, making Rand hope that Perrin and Loial got to the Waygate and get through safely. He hopes they can help the 2Rs since Rand himself can't.

Rand asks Rhuarc to have all the Aiel seek out the Portal Stone. He takes particular note of Aviendha, who he doesn't think he's seen guarding his door the way all the other Maidens have been. As they search, Rand thinks of how there are some Aiel from every clan here except the Jenn Aiel, which he can't get a straight answer whether they exist or not. He discusses the clans with Rhuarc a bit, determining that the Shaido are not well-liked, but they all swore an oath to treat each other as if they were one clan on this side of the Dragonwall.

Shortly, Avi's the one to find the Stone. Rand hunts for the lines he thinks represent Rhuidean, though he recognizes the ones for Toman Head along the way, until Rhuarc points to two symbols, next to each other, that were used in ancient writing, when even the name was taboo. Rand knows only one will take them to the right place, and decides to rely on Mat's luck, since Mat's also bent on getting to the place. Mat flips a coin, and before he says which one the flip decided on, Rand chooses one. Mat confirms, it's the one his toss picked too.

Rand takes out the hard lump from his belt pouch, an angreal for male channelers. They all gather on the hill, Rand reaches for the True Source, and as the Power fills him, he focuses on the chosen symbol, pulling as much of the Power as he dares.

The world winks out of existence.(4)

=====

(1) Even their horses’ names are chosen by the author to say something about them. What do you think each name indicates about its rider? (2) Again with this weird gender stuff. Admittedly, it was the social expectation that women wanted to play a little hard to get, or at least had to be seen to do so (see: the disconnect between the subtext of Baby It's Cold Outside in the year it was written vs how we interpret it now by modern standards) but sometimes it's hard to tell what RJ was critiquing and what he was just throwing in because it felt normal/expected in his understanding of gender roles. (3) Besides, they can't stay together for all fourteen books. It's been fun getting split up and reuniting by the end of each of the first three, but things feel a little bigger now than they did back in Emond's Field in book 1. It's time for our lads to grow into themselves. (4) Time to roll the dice and see where we land.

[herenya-sedai]

Top Moments in The Wheel of Time

I’ve been thinking about the idea of “top moments”. Are they the best scenes or your favourite ones? Are these scenes epic or personal (or both)? Significant game-changing developments? Long anticipated events? Powerfully written? Emotional? Funny?

And then how do you choose when there are so many options?

I had a stab at it. So, off the top of my head and without rereading all of my favourite scenes in order to compare them, here is a non-definitive, ask-me-later-and-I-may-give-a-different-answer list of my “top moments”. I like that the Heroes of the Horn bookend it.

The Great Hunt: chapter 47 “The Grave is No Bar to My Call”. Down the billowing fog, as if it were the side of a mountain, rode shapes on horses. Epic. (And I’m still amused that Rand’s reaction to these heroes of legend is “Help rescue my girlfriend pls?”)

The Shadow Rising: chapter 15 “Into the Doorway”. “Go to Rhuidean, son of battles! Go to Rhuidean, trickster! Go, gambler! Go!” This is my favourite of the prophecies, and I love the dawning realisation that Mat spent the whole time speaking the Old Tongue.

The Fires of Heaven: chapter 53 “Fading Words”. “You will do well.” Very poignant, and marks a turning point for Rand, who has to go on without the support of two of his oldest and most trusted advisors.

Lord of Chaos: chapter 29 “Spirit and Fire”. “Tell her I’ve Healed Logain.”  A personal achievement for Nynaeve but also a game-changer.

A Crown of Swords: chapter 31 “Mashiara”. Saidar filled her, not just with life and joy, but this time, with awe. With feathery flows of Air, she stroked his cheeks. "I am not angry, Lan," she whispered. Nynaeve survives an attack by Moghedien, breaks her block and is reunited with Lan!

Winter’s Heart: chapter 31 “What the Aelfinn Said”. “She is my wife. Your bloody Daughter of the Nine Moons is my wife!” Mat’s escape from Ebou Dar (this chapter and the preceding one) is fabulously suspenseful – and then he finally discovers who the Aelfinn meant.

Winter’s Heart: chapter 35 “With the Choedan Kal”. “I am going to remove the taint from the male half of the Source.” A climatic chapter with incredible consequences. The taint on saidin has been the most defining aspect of male channellers’ experience and of how others react to them.

Knife of Dreams: chapter 20 “The Golden Crane”. “The message I want sent is this. My husband rides from World's End toward Tarwin's Gap. toward Tarmon Gai'don. Will he ride alone?“  Such a powerful moment! Always gives me shivers. (Also, Nynaeve is my favourite. You might have noticed.)

Knife of Dreams: chapter 24 “Honey in the Tea”. First Doesine -- a Sitter! -- then Silviana's resignation, now this. The two sisters were far more important than the novices or the honey, but they all indicated the same thing. She was winning her war. Egwene proves what she’s capable of -- even as a prisoner and demoted to novice, she’s still the Amyrlin Seat and she’s good at it.

A Memory of Light: chapter 39 “Those Who Fight”. It was about them all. Another powerful piece of prose. And then Olver blows the horn and the Heroes return.

[nedstarkswhatever]

The Shadow Rising

Another Wheel of Time book bites the dust!  Spoilers beneath the cut.

So... what a book, right?  The Shadow Rising is a major shift in the story as a whole.  It’s the first book where Rand has really and truly accepted that he’s the Dragon Reborn... and it’s also the first book where the world has undeniable proof and has had a chance to react to that.  I’m going to leave my thoughts on Rand until the end because I have a lot of them.

This book is essentially divided into three major plot lines with the White Tower stuff being a minor one that pops up now and again.  Siuan’s deposition is such a world-changing event, but we won’t get to see the ripples of it until the next book... which is pretty common, all things considering, with how these books go.  The Black Ajah has done it’s work exceedingly well, considering.  I actually wonder how much of the overall reputation of Aes Sedai is due to machinations by Ba’alzamon, Darkfriends, and the Black Ajah over the past couple of thousand years.  Being fractured certainly doesn’t help matters.

I had forgotten how emotionally moving the conclusion to Perrin’s storyline is in this book.  The Battle of Emond’s Field is emotionally satisfying in all the right ways.  Of all the characters, I think Perrin has the most definitive arc in this book.  There’s some very real growth that’s reminiscent of Rand’s growth in The Great Hunt, but done in a very different way.  The only unfortunate thing is that I have some issues with how the Faile and Perrin relationship was written while they were still in Tear.  Some of that is fully because of the newness of their relationship while Perrin is dealing with the news of Whitecloaks in the Two Rivers.  They both make some pretty bad decisions at that point and while they do rebound, I remember being distinctly uncomfortable with the relationship at that point.  I think it gets better once they’re in Emond’s Field, though, and ends on a high note, just like the rest of that storyline.

One of the other things that bothers me in this book is the way that Egwene, Nynaeve, Elayne, et al react to Berelain.  It’s definitely a cultural thing combined with Berelain being not at all restrained in pursuing Rand and Perrin, but the attitudes they exhibit made me side eye them pretty hard.

Nynaeve and Elayne have an interesting journey to Tanchico as well.   It’s really unfortunate that the next time the Seafolk become a notable part of the story, they’re depicted much more antagonistically than they are in this book.  I really loved the interactions between Jorin and Elayne while they were going by boat.  Egeanin also played an amazing supporting role, as did Thom, Julin, and Bayle.  The Illian accents are one of my favorite things and the addition of an actual Seanchan viewpoint, specifically one that was discovering things that went against her culture’s beliefs, was amazing.  I also have a deep, deep appreciation for Nynaeve’s reaction to discovering she was Seanchan?  Nynaeve is so used to having to be assertive and angry to deal with people that it makes total sense that she would be furious that she can’t stop liking this person that she knows she should dislike for Egwene’s sake.  And her duel with Moghedien?  Utterly amazing.

And then we come to Rand.  I still remember reading these books for the first time a couple of years ago.  The Shadow Rising was the book that sold me on Rand as a protagonist.  There are a lot of reasons for it, but I think the one that stands out the most is just how clever he actually is.  It’s masked in the books before this.  He’s the one that’s always questioning, sure, but he’s also a country lad out in the world for the first time, so he’s often flat out wrong about things or surprised or just plain unknowledgeable... but then we get to this book and he crafts a plan to capture one of the Forsaken and use him as a teacher.  It’s glorious pay off to see that come to fruition.  There’s so much else I like about him and his chapters: the way he’s trying to harden himself because that’s the only way he knows how to do the things he’ll have to do, how he’s sought knowledge by reading all the various translations of the Prophecies of the Dragons, how he’s already becoming tainted in slight ways by his use of Saidin... there’s so much in this book that elevates him upwards as a character.  It’s not quite an arc on it’s own, in my mind, but... it’s a transformative thing where the Rand in this book is a much different person than the Rand from previous books.   

There’s so much else that I could talk about: I love how Mat’s propensity to just do things continues to get him into trouble, the Aiel form a culture that’s fascinating in so many ways, and Rand’s Rhuidean chapters are utterly gorgeous and one of my favorite pieces of storytelling ever.  There’s so much, but I’ll leave it at that for now.

[wot-tidbits]

RJ’s notes Part 79 by Bain & Chiad

Note. The following text is manually written by listening as most of the notes were only read and not shown on the screen. There are going to be some mistakes from the original text because of it as English is not my native language. I would appreciate if someone can help me to fix the transcription.

FOR USE WITH AELFIN OR EELFIN (COLON) PIXIES/FAIRIES STEAL THE NOURISHMENT FROM HUMAN FOOD. IT STILL LOOKS RIGHT BUT YOU COULD SUPPOSEDLY STARVE TO DEATH WHILE EATING YOUR FILL.

The Aelfinn do not require any bargaining but questions touchning on the Shadow? or your own future? are exceedingly dangerous. What the Aelfinn take in return is emotion, a recording so to speak from the questioner as well as from others who fall into their hands in ways other than coming to ask questions. To the Aelfinn human emotions is like a drug while their answers are true if cryptic they will maintain a contact with anyone they deal with continuing to record their emotions. They can force someone who is their captive to relive memories so as to produce fresh emotions? Anyone who visits them is fitted with a “link” that also feeds emotion to the Aelfinn.

[Rhuidean, Eelfinn] What they get out of it is a recording of the asker’s memories including physical sensation which acts on them as human emotion does on the Aelfinn. Like the Aelfinn they also maintain contact with people with whom they have come into contact and so can continue to record memories from that point right up to the person’s death. They can force someone “relive” their memories again and again. Or can they?

The Eelfinn and Aelfinn sometimes work together especially with captives. For both the snakes and the foxes the repetition of one person’s emotions or memories eventually causes a dulling effect from them. Together however they can force variations in the emotional responses and the memories that are being relived. They must do it together since is the Eelfin who imbide memory who can alter the emotional responses though incrementally in the Aelfin who imbide emotion who can alter their living on memories again incrementally. In this way they can put the victim through variations of their memories with the result that the intensity of the experience and thus of the emotion and memory are heightened. Victims frequently can no longer tell which are true memories of events or their true emotional responses to certain things in their past. It can also damage certain abilities in people such as the ability to channel.

Rhuidean and Ogier stedding are among the few places that cannot be entered in Tel’aran’rhiod. THIS MAY HAVE CHANGED CONCERNING RHUIDEAN NOW THAT THE BARRIER HAS BEEN DESTROYED. RHUIDEAN IS THRIVING, GROWING. ALL CLANS EXCEPT THE SHAIDO HAVE PEOPLE THERE NOW. FIRST OGIER MAY BE BEGINNING TO REBUILD BY END OF FIRES [of Heaven].

Graendal herself is not one to go digging about hunting for things. Whatever she finds she wants to keep for herself and if any sharing is done it will be on her terms.

In the outline for A Memory of Light Egwene does not die, instead she is actually pregnant at the end of the books. And Egeanin does save her which she does in the books but in the outline that’s her end.

In the outline the Horn of Valere is actually retrieved by Mat, Olver and one of Perrin’s Asha’man from the White Tower. It is hidden in a secret panel in the White Tower and only Siuan and Verin know where it is.

Elayne fills the basements [of Caemlyn] with oil and sets them on fire.

Traditionally the Aiel sweat tents are men only and women only and to have co-ed sweat tent would be uncomfortable.

SOURCE

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: Towers of Midnight ch 3

I have been waiting for this reunion for literal years. It did not disappoint.

Chapter 3: The Amyrlin’s Anger

Oh, we’re doing this!?

One thing I can guarantee: I am definitely not ready. Childhood friends turned childhood sweethearts turned near-siblings turned uneasy allies turned near-enemies, perhaps turned uneasy allies once more, with prophecy and opposing institutions and the apocalypse hanging over them?

I’m just. In case you haven’t noticed, I have a lot of thoughts about this whole dynamic, and I have been waiting for this… probably since they last saw each other in Lord of Chaos. Before that, even. Since they were set on their separate paths, but with this thread, strained and near at times to breaking but a thread all the same, of some kind of love between them that might, in the end, be enough to do what their predecessors could not, and face the end together.

Also their stories have been running in this fascinating not-quite-parallel for so long but they haven’t interacted in so long that I’m just! Very excited for this reunion and the pain it will no doubt bring!

I should start reading now, shouldn’t I?

Egwene floated in blackness. She was without form, lacking shape or body. The thoughts, imaginings, worries, hopes, and ideas of all the world extended into eternity around her.

The imagery of that last bit catches my attention here because it plays very close to the position Rand holds: stood at the centre, a force, or a being more than a person, touching all the world or – in Egwene’s case – all the world’s dreams. It’s just an interesting one, in amongst all the other parallels and inversions between them.

Though her feelings for Gawyn were still strong, her opinion of him was muddled recently.

Just break up with him already. Please. You’ve already once decided that actually no, I don’t want a storybook romance with the designated hero thank you very much; you can do it again.

The dreams of all the people here – some from her world, some from shadows of it – reminded her why she fought. She must never forget that there was an entire world outside the White Tower’s walls.

This is her anchor, just as Rand has now at last found his. Or, not even an anchor so much as a reason. Something to fight for, something to remember and strive for beyond the fight itself. And again this places her very much at the centre as well, looking at all the people, all the dreams, the entire world. They just each have their own ways of going about it, and their own reasons for doing so.

Time passed as she lay bathed in the light of dreams.

Just quoting this one because it’s pretty.

It’s sad to see Egwene thinking of the Wise Ones in terms of ‘dealing with’ them, but also not really surprising; there’s been a distance between them ever since she took on this role. They hid the events of Dumai’s Wells from her and she chose the Aes Sedai over them and it is, perhaps, one of the harsher aspects of the way she absolutely embraces her role, the good and the bad.

Ugh, fine, dream of Gawyn if you must.

A more simple life. It could not be hers, but she could dream…

Everything shook.

Or not. I’m just imagining this as the Pattern itself interrupting like ‘EGWENE, PLEASE. YOU CAN DO SO MUCH BETTER THAN HIM.’

(Yes, the Pattern speaks in all caps. No I will not be accepting constructive criticism on this point).

This pleasant dream interrupted by an emergency broadcast: thirteen black towers rising and then all but six falling. In case you weren’t keeping track of how many Forsaken were still alive, I suppose.

And then a follow-up as a reminder, I assume, that Mesaana is still in the Tower.

Unless the eagles-and-snake bit is referring to the Black Tower? Still no idea what’s going on there these days; it’s been a while and I’m very, very curious after that ominous line drop in the KoD epilogue.

She saw an enormous sphere made of the finest crystal. It sparkled in the light of twenty-three enormous stars, shining down on it where it sat on a dark hilltop. There were cracks in it, and it was being held together by ropes.

There was Rand, walking up the hillside, holding a woodsman’s axe. He reached the top and hefted the axe, then swung at the ropes one at a time, chopping them free. The last one parted, and the sphere began to break apart, the beautiful white globe falling in pieces. Rand shook his head.

Innnnnnnnnteresting.

The sphere (and its breaking) sounds – first of all a lot like the Sharom because what, you thought I’d pass up a Rhuidean reference? – like the Dark One’s prison, perhaps. With Rand cutting the ropes like breaking the seals.

Or maybe the Choedan Kal, with all the brilliant light of that enormous power, that he has now broken. Or the world itself, I suppose. I’m going with the Dark One’s prison here, probably.

But what are the twenty-three stars?

Thirteens are common, you can’t swing a cat in this series without hitting a duality, threes and sevens crop up on occasion… but what the hell numbers twenty-three? Except for the graves Bashere once had to dig for oak trees on the orders of the mad general he served, but while there may be no such thing as coincidence, that’s a bridge too far even for me.

Nations? Okay now I’m just curious if I can name them all, so… in the wetlands we have: Altara, Amadicia, Andor, Arafel, Cairhien, Far Madding, Ghealdan, Illian, Kandor, Mayene, Murandy, Saldaea, Shienar, Tar Valon, Tear. Then the Aiel, or: Chareen, Codarra, Daryne, Goshien, Jenn (?), Miagoma, Nakai, Reyn, Shaarad, Shaido (?), Shiande, Taardad, Tomanelle. Then Seanchan and Shara on the edges, the Atha’an Miere and the Tuatha’an, and the dead nations of Malkier, Manetheren, and the Amayar. The Ogier. The even-more-dead nations like Almoth and Eharon and whatnot. But even playing with the obvious ones like how to count the Aiel, or the dead nations, or the city-states, there’s not an obvious 23.

The Hall of the Tower maybe? Three Sitters from each Ajah is 21, so with Amyrlin and Keeper we’re at a much cleaner 23, and there is the whole ‘Watcher of the Seals’ element of the Amyrlin’s role, so twenty-three stars watching could make sense.

Or, hell I don’t know, maybe there are 23 verses in the Karaethon Cycle. Meh.

Well, Egwene’s focused on the Mesaana implications (rather than the Messiah implications; I crack myself up sometimes), which seems fair enough.

“He’s here, Mother. At the White Tower.”

“Who?”

“The Dragon Reborn. He’s asking to see you.”

HERE! WE! GO!

Because you know what this means? It means, once again, that we’re going to get outsider POV of Rand, after a crucial turning point in his character.

Twice. Because first, we got it via Almen Bunt, effectively a random character. We got to see a ‘first glimpse’ of Rand, as it were. But now we get to see through the eyes of one who knows him – or rather, one who knew him. One like him in some ways and so very different in others. An opposing role who once was a friend. There’s just so many potential layers there, through which to observe, and I am inordinately excited for this.

*

Though okay right as I say that we shift POV to Siuan, so I may be pre-empting this.

That said, it’s either going to be some form of outsider POV or it’s going to be Rand’s POV and either way I’m going to be on the damn floor so it’s a win-win situation here.

The Dragon Reborn? Inside Tar Valon?

I mean technically that was the goal all the way back in EotW, so you could argue that he just took a really, really long detour. Across the entire continent, a past life, and near-destruction of the world, but… details.

“He was at the Sunset Gate”

How appropriate. Is there perhaps a Wind Tower for him to climb?

“What is his game, do you think?” Saerin asked.

“Burn me if I know,” Siuan replied. “He’s bound to be mostly insane by now. Maybe he’s frightened, and has come to turn himself in.”

“I doubt that.”

“As do I.”

Harsh, Siuan. But not entirely unfounded – at least on the mostly insane part. He’s not, but first of all how would she know that and second of all, if this were a few days earlier, that would be a much harder one to argue. (For the record, my own interpretation of Rand’s sanity or lack thereof before Dragonmount is a strong vote in favour if It’s Complicated).

Of, course, then there’s the whole issue of ‘how long can you stay sane when the entire world is waiting for you to go mad’ but that is, perhaps, a moot point now.

“Maybe he heard that Elaida was gone,” Siuan said, “and thought that he would be safe here, with an old friend on the Amyrlin Seat.”

Oh no this already hurts. Honestly I think any reference to Rand and Egwene as old friends is probably going to, at this point, but also the way Siuan goes to this idea of Rand needing a place of safety. A refuge. Because in so many ways, for a very long time, she wouldn’t even have been wrong. It’s just that it wasn’t an option and there was no such place and the Dragon Reborn couldn’t afford that kind of weakness, and anyway he was never looking for safety for himself; it was keeping others safe from him that he wanted, back when he was just a shepherd boy holding himself together with determination and fragments of Warder instruction against power(s) trying to claim him from within and without.

But Siuan is remembering that boy, and I’m also remembering Rand in the early days at the Stone of Tear, trying so earnestly to let Elayne and Egwene help him with saidin, and how that, from a certain perspective, is not really so different from trying to find some safety in friends.

“Reports call him mistrustful and erratic, with a demanding temper and an insistence on avoiding Aes Sedai.”

I mean, up until – what, a day ago at most? That would be not at all inaccurate. Especially from the outside.

Really I think this whole scene with Siuan and Saerin is largely to remind us of how Rand comes across to the rest of the world. Because the thing about that Dragonmount epiphany – a crucial part of it, but one that is likely going to also result in some complications – is that it was unwitnessed. Just Rand, alone, thinking. And if the cleansing of saidin was difficult to believe by those not directly involved (and even by some of those who were), how much harder will this be, in its own way?

And just to set the scene even more ominously as far as anyone but the reader is concerned, the floor tiles are now the colour (and sheen, and probably texture, and very possibly actual chemical composition) of blood.

It is interesting to contrast the feeling of approaching this meeting to how it felt in the buildup to Rand’s meeting with Tuon last book. That was just full to the brim of impending doom, of ‘there is no possible way under the sun that this will end well’, of ‘oh no, how disastrously is this going to go?’ because at that point Rand was in freefall and the only certainty was disaster. Now, there’s a sense of lightness in approaching this meeting. I mean, I’m still quite sure it’ll hurt me, but the actual tension is different. It feels like waiting for catharsis, almost, rather than waiting for catastrophe.

So hey, maybe we just look at that meeting with Tuon as a practice run for Rand in terms of how to negotiate treaties with a woman who controls a decent part of a continent. If nothing else, it set the bar about as low as it could possibly be, so this can only be an improvement!

Siuan had harboured a small hope that she herself would be chosen [as Keeper]. Now Egwene had so many demands on her time – and was becoming so capable on her own – that she was relying on Siuan less and less.

That was a good thing. But it was also infuriating.

Oh, Siuan. Siuan’s thoughts about her position in the Tower and how it has changed are always a little sad to read. She’s so strong that it’s easy, almost, to forget just how much she’s gone through – and she can’t even just put it behind her and move on because she’s surrounded, every single day, by constant reminders of all she has lost and all that has changed. And even so, we only get these occasional moments of sadness or bitterness or frustration from her. The rest of the time she just… keeps going.

She wanted to do what she’d set out to do, all those years before with Moiraine.

It really is kind of incredible dedication to a cause. Even if ‘shepherding’ the Dragon Reborn is perhaps not really what is needed, she has paved so much of the way, and even from the sidelines has been instrumental, and this has been more or less her entire adult life. A thankless and often punishing task, one that has gone and will likely continue to go largely unacknowledged, one that has brought her hatred and suspicion and pain, and yet she does not question it, does not falter.

It's… I guess in a way it comes back to the whole idea of those who choose vs those who are chosen, but I like the way we see these characters who aren’t the Chosen One but who still give everything they are, and everything they have, to this world and this cause. Some because they must and some because they choose to and some for reasons in between but it’s again this sense that while Rand stands at the centre of it, there are all these other stories and sacrifices and triumphs and tragedies spiralling out from that centre, all weaving together into this pattern. Or Pattern, as it were.

Also, I would like to strongly second the ‘with Moiraine’ part of that sentence. Can we have her back yet please? I’ve been good, I promise!

Bryne’s here too, which means I also get to reminisce about the first (and last) time he met Rand, even before Siuan did, but another scene of Rand as little more than a shepherd, uncertain and afraid and getting by on determination alone and yet, as with his meeting with Siuan, still surprising those around him by being just a little more than expected.

(As for Rand’s first meeting with Egwene, we have no textual evidence but given their ages it probably involved eating mud).

“You came faster than I’d assumed you’d be able to,” she said.

That is, quite literally, what she said. I’m sorry, I’m twelve.

“She’s what we need now,” Bryne said, “but you’re what we needed then. You did well, Siuan.”

YOU DID WELL

I’m sorry, Moiraine’s letter to Rand really just loaded all variants of that phrase quite heavily and it’s not Moiraine saying it to Siuan but it may as well be, and to have anyone looking at all she has done and all she has been through, looking at someone most Aes Sedai now dismiss as inconsequential at best and to blame for their problems at worst, and actually seeing everything she’s achieved and everything she’s sacrificed and to just acknowledge it outright is… such a small phrase but it means so much. Because how many others would say that? How many others could? So few even know what she’s done and why and for how long. Egwene, maybe, but Egwene is still in some ways her protégé and so not really in a position to give that kind of praise. Moiraine, but she’s still… on holiday. And that’s really kind of it.

There’s a reason these kinds of tasks are called thankless.

“He’s standing below, watched over by at least a hundred Warders and twenty-six sisters – two full circles. Undoubtedly he’s shielded”

My first thought was ‘good thing this is Rand after Dragonmount otherwise I don’t think there’d be a Tower right now’, but then, Rand before Dragonmount would probably quite literally not have been caught dead within balefire distance of the White Tower.

Whereas now… what a stark difference this highlights in his entire mindset and character. Once, the possibility of thirteen Aes Sedai sent him away from a city he was holding, tense and desperate and furious. Once, being shielded was – well, I believe the direct quote was ‘Lews Therin fled screaming’. Once, Aes Sedai so much as touching the One Power in his presence without his permission was like dancing on a minefield.

Now… he stands calmly, shielded and within the Tower itself, the stronghold of the Aes Sedai, of his own free will (and that’s it, isn’t it; that’s what truly makes all the difference in so many ways).

Also a bit of a random comparison but I can’t help but be reminded of Taim walking into Caemlyn to claim Rand’s amnesty, guarded and distrusted and hated by pretty much everyone around him and yet appearing, himself, all but unaffected by it.

“Well, what did he look like, then?”

“Honestly, Siuan? He looked like an Aes Sedai.”

Well. Lews Therin was. In an even older sense of the title.

And if we’re looking at the title itself, and its meaning… servant of all is sort of in the job description of a messiah figure, in a way.

I like how we’re reminded that, because of her Talent for seeing ta’veren, Rand literally glows to Siuan’s eyes. Which means the Dragon Reborn, the chosen one, the saviour, having now fully embraced his role, is walking into the Tower literally haloed in light. There’s just a tiny bit of religious symbolism here, is what I’m getting at.

I also – for all that I’m still hoping for a glimpse of Rand through Egwene’s eyes – am very very happy with the choice to show this through Siuan’s POV. Because in so many ways it is a reflection of that scene in TGH where he is summoned to the Amyrlin, and she gets her first look at the boy who will be the Dragon but does not yet know it, and tells him what his role will be, and he surprises her in his stubbornness and strength but still does not truly accept what she says.

Now, we get the Dragon Reborn calling for an audience with the Amyrlin, having finally and truly embraced the full reality of that role. The first was, in a way, to set his path. This, then, feels almost like closing it. And in between those bookends was that long, fraught journey towards acceptance.

Me? Obsessed with symmetry and reflection in a narrative? Never.

She froze as he met her eyes. There was something indefinable about them, a weight, an age. As though the man behind them was seeing through the light of a thousand lives compounded into one. His face did look like that of an Aes Sedai. Those eyes, at least, had agelessness.

This is one of the things I just absolutely love about outsider POV: the way it allows you to almost re-experience the full weight of what you already know. To be able to almost… soft-reset, and then open your eyes and have the impact of it all over again. None of this is news, really, to a reader who has seen Rand atop Dragonmount, or even in the first chapter of this book. But we get it again anyway, because for one thing it’s fun and for another it just serves to highlight what he looks like to one who does not have the privilege of being in his head (not that that’s… a particularly exclusive list these days, but that’s beside the point).

And it’s also interesting how this doesn’t humanise Rand in the perception of others – he’s still very much in the position of being seen more as a force of nature than a person – but the tone and the effect are so very different to before, for instance when he was lost or in pain or just desperate (or all of the above) and yet perceived as arrogant, inhuman, even monstrous. There’s still this sense of… not being seen as just a person, being seen more in the heroic lines and angles of power and weight of legend, but the difference, I think, is that Rand himself accepts it now. It is now a part of who he is, and a part of him he accepts, and embraces, and steps willingly into.

It also gives him some rather extraordinary weight of personality so making his way through a crowd of Warders is a piece of cake. See, sometimes being the chosen one has its benefits.

“And Siuan Sanche. You’ve changed since we last met.”

Oh. Okay yeah the fact that we get him saying this to her, rather than the other way around, is a really, really excellent way of just subtly shifting the entire balance of power – not even quite power; something else I can’t think of a good word for – of the scene.

It's the way it takes the way this scene is so neatly set up to be a bookend of that first meeting between them, and just… flips the obvious line on its axis. It’s still there, we’re still on script, but it’s ever so slightly not what you expect, and that difference itself becomes the point. Because Rand is no longer the object of the scene; he is very much its subject. The assignment of agency and proactivity has shifted (he has chosen, now, rather than been chosen; a semantic shift that makes perhaps literally all the difference in the world), and this is just a really cool way to play with that.

If that made any sense.

“You once took an arrow for me. Did I thank you for that?”

This… this gentleness is absolutely killing me and we’re only a few lines into his actual appearance in this chapter. The way it’s no longer forced, or agonised, or desperate, or serving only as a sharp contrast to either anger or apathy to remind you of who he once was. Instead it’s just… there. Without brittleness or the aching sense of something lost. There’s just a weird kind of beauty in the simplicity of this, in how it’s just… him, without any of the hundred things waiting to shatter beneath that statement.

Maybe that’s it; the gentleness that doesn’t feel like the precursor to shattering glass. The way this isn’t a veiled threat, or a barb, or a forced admission, or a conversational gambit. Just thanks, remembered honestly and offered freely and that’s… it.

(Moiraine once took a Forsaken for you, Rand. Be sure to thank her for that too).

Anyway, Siuan sings Egwene’s praises as Amyrlin, of course, and apparently everything Rand says or does in this chapter is going to just get me because:

He smiled again. “I should have expected nothing less. Strange, but I feel that seeing her again will hurt, though that is one wound that has well and truly healed. I can still remember the pain of it, I suppose.”

Again it’s just the gentleness that pervades all of this, where once there was turmoil and pain and a rage in him fit to burn the world, or else terrifying coldness and absence and a distant voice screaming. It’s like everything has finally fallen silent and only then do you realise how loud everything was before, and how maddening. Just… Rand being able to smile simply, and feel and express emotions in the normal human range.

And that sense of… wonder, almost, that you get from him at that fact. It’s—there is very much a rebirth kind of feel to a lot of this, because a part of it is that Rand is very, very aware of where he has just come from and where he stands now. That’s the whole point: to get to this, he had to choose it and realise it and open his eyes, I suppose. And so now he’s seeing everything through that new filter (or perhaps without the noise of the old one) and there’s a kind of beautiful simplicity and something like but also entirely unlike innocence to it.

Tiana has a letter for him with a red seal… one of Verin’s, maybe? If so, Rand sure has a track record with Aes Sedai and letters left to him. She did have several, when we saw her with Mat… and I struggle to think of who else would have left one. Cadsuane, maybe?

“Do your best to calm Egwene when I am done,” he said to Siuan. Then he took a deep breath and strode forward

CHILDREN. ALL OF THEM. That, right there, for probably the first time this book, is absolutely 100% a glimpse of Rand al’Thor, Woolheaded Sheepherder, and you cannot convince me otherwise.

Wise, gentle, reconciled to his role, remembering his past life and accepting who he is… and still taking a deep breath and making contingency plans before going to a stubborn-off with his former childhood sweetheart. I’m laughing.

*

OH IT’S EGWENE, WE DO GET TO SEE THIS IN EGWENE’S POV, YES THIS IS EVERYTHING I WANTED.

This was not Rand al’Thor, friend of her childhood, the man she’d assumed she’d one day marry.

Oh no, just start right out with a gut-punch why don’t you. No, Egwene, he is.

Except… he also isn’t, and that’s the sad part. But if this is to work, I still think that’s going to be the key: that they know—knew—each other as people. Except now Egwene is deliberately telling herself not to do that, and while it’s understandable it’s… that way lies the end of the Second Age.

No. This man was the Dragon Reborn. The most dangerous man ever to draw breath.

This hurts me in exactly the way I was hoping it would.

Just as Rand has finally accepted himself, and in some ways come back to himself (not quite, because you can’t go back you can only go forwards as the Wheel of Time turns, but he’s no longer forcing everything about who he was away), Egwene is forcing herself to see him as anything but that. As just the Dragon Reborn, legend and monster and saviour and destroyer. It’s a perfect mis-alignment of timings.

(Egwene is steeling herself, just as Rand has finally stopped trying to become steel).

“Egwene,” Rand said

IT’S! ABOUT! THE NAMES!

She’s thinking of him, emphatically, as the Dragon Reborn… but the dialogue tag betrays her. We are in her POV and as soon as he speaks, he is Rand.

And the first word he says is her name. Not ‘Mother’ or ‘Amyrlin’, not the opening of some request or demand. Just… ‘Egwene’.

He is the Dragon Reborn, come to see the Amyrlin—he asked for the Amyrlin—and she is the Amyrlin steeling herself to face the Dragon Reborn and yet in the first moment, when that silence of waiting is broken, they are Rand and Egwene and—

I just. Maybe I’m reading too much into this but it’s perfect and it hurts and I love it.

(Names are important).

He nodded to her, as if in respect. “You have done your part, I see. The Amyrlin’s stole fits you well.”

WHY DOES THIS HURT ME? WHY AM I EXPERIENCING AN EMOTION?

They’ve both just come so far and through so much and they hardly even know one another anymore, and there’s this almost-but-not-quite uncertainty and almost-but-not-quite familiarity, and yet it feels not like the anticipation before an ‘everything goes wrong’ moment but instead the anticipation of… maybe, finally, finding their way back to something? Or forwards, I suppose. It’s like the tentative formality of meeting someone for the first time in years, unsure of them and of yourself and of everything that’s happened in the interim but there’s something weirdly hopeful about it.

Maybe I’m just so used to liveblogging pain that I don’t know what to do with myself when it’s not there, except in echoes and memories and all the space that has grown between them, but this is like… a hand offered across that intervening space.

From what she had heard of Rand recently, she had not anticipated such calm in him.

I mean. That’s… fair.

Well, or she might have been led to anticipate a very different kind of calm. The calm of ice or cuendillar that could in an instant become, you know, balefiring an entire fortress out of existence.

Maybe save your musings on whether or not he’s a criminal for whatever passes as a Geneva Convention in this world, Egwene. We don’t have time to unpack all of that right now.

“What has happened to you?” she found herself asking as she leaned forward on the Amyrlin Seat.

“I was broken,” Rand said, hands behind his back. “And then, remarkably, I was reforged. I think he almost had me, Egwene.”

HELP.

THIS IS JUST.

I… wow. What do I even do with this?

Just as the first word out of his mouth was her name, and her first thought of him was as Rand… now, despite sitting on the Amyrlin Seat—which we are quite literally reminded of here, and I don’t think that’s accidental—her first words are… call it concern, call it curiosity, call it demand, call it accusation even, but that’s not Amyrlin to Dragon Reborn there. That’s not the opening of negotiations or a summons or a meeting. That’s Egwene, looking at Rand. It’s like Nynaeve in TFoH reaching for him almost instinctively and saying ‘at least let me Heal you’.

And then Rand’s response!

‘I was broken’. Such a simple statement for so, so much more. And yet… that’s what it is. It’s the simplicity, again, that gets me. The simplicity and the self-awareness and the way he can look at it now, with that sense of removal, but this time not because he’s walled himself off from the pain; instead, he lets himself feel it but he has accepted its reason and its source and its necessity. He’s no longer fighting against himself, and that lets him bear so much more, because so much of that pain came from that battle against himself, and from the fear of what he might become.

He spent so long trying to forge himself into steel, but in the end that’s not the reforging he needed. And now he knows that, and sees it, and there’s just something about a character who can stand on the far side of their own breaking and their own agony and speak of it calmly, whole.

It's just an entire situation I’m having here.

And that last bit. ‘I think he almost had me’. The memory of ‘it is HIM’. And the fact that Rand can see that too, now; can see how close he came to the Shadow without ever turning from the Light, and understand that nuance.

But also… there is still one very glaring loose end there: Rand has used the True Power. Sure, he doesn’t seem particularly… uh… compromised by that at this point, but I still just cannot imagine that won’t be brought back in some way.

He spoke differently. There was a formality to his words that she didn’t recognise.

And then it’s lines like this that keep this scene from being… to perfect? Not in terms of execution, but in terms of ‘things going well and painlessly for characters’. Because there is still a sadness to this, to Rand and Egwene looking at one another (and naming one another!) and seeing the person behind the role, and looking for the person they knew, and yet also still seeing elements of a stranger.

Because they have changed. Neither of them is at all the child they were when they left Emond’s Field, and there is so much between them now, and that connection they have is worn and thinned and this isn’t a joyful reunion. There’s catharsis here, and a tentative possibility of peace or friendship, but there’s also this recognition, each to each, of how much of what used to be is now gone. They’ve both been hardened and shaped by their experiences and they both know it and recognise it in each other—perhaps in part because they both also very clearly by this point recognise it in themselves.

“Why have you come before the Amyrlin Seat?” she asked.

And now we get the opening of Amyrlin-to-Dragon. But that’s not where we began. We began with Rand and Egwene, and I’ll shut up about it in a minute but this whole play of naming and identity is one of those little things that gets me pretty much every time it turns up in a story.

“I’ve hated you before,” Rand said, turning back to Egwene.

I’M FINE! THIS IS FINE!

Yes I am quoting pretty much every line of dialogue in this scene but LISTEN, IT HURTS ME.

The thing is, this is a statement utterly without malice. It’s not a threat or an insult—not even the childish sort of insult they might have exchanged last time they met. It’s… really, the only word that comes to mind is a confession.

Which plays into one of the features of Rand’s character that stands out so far in the brief moments we’ve seen him in this book: genuine self-knowledge, and self-knowledge that he fully accepts. There is no longer any remnant of denial.

And that allows him to make statements like this and have them come across as, weirdly, almost benevolent. Nothing he has said is said with the intent to deceive, or to wound, or even really to manipulate. It’s just truth—and truth that he himself fully understands and accepts now.

So he’s not fighting against her out of fear of being caught up in Aes Sedai strings, just as he’s not fighting against Lews Therin’s memories out of fear of being caught up in Kinslayer’s fate. Instead of fighting against everything up to and including himself, he’s just… him.

“It occurs to me that I’ve been trying too hard.”

That’s exactly it. He’s been fighting, when in some ways what he needed was to learn how (and where, and when) to surrender. Though even ‘surrender’ connotes a struggle or a conflict, and I think a lot of this realisation is that it’s not about fighting or forcing or struggling; it’s about accepting, and guiding, and leading. And choosing, of course.

“A fear that the acts I accomplished would be yours, and not my own.” He hesitated. “I should have wished for such a convenient set of backs upon which to heap the blame for my crimes.”

Wow. Okay, that’s… a line.

Um.

Damn.

It’s almost ironic, the way he instead tried to heap all the responsibility on himself and take all that blame and pain, and let it damn him and in doing so tried to pretend it freed him to act as he needed, no longer held back by such trivial concerns as humanity and his own conscience or sense of redeemability. But ultimately it came down to the same thing, in a way: an inability to accept what he was doing, and so trying to find a place to put all that pain.

(Or, as Lews Therin once advised, ‘If it hurts too much, make it hurt someone else instead’).

But now he sees that, too, and so instead of trying to escape the pain or treat it as ‘I’m damned either way so may as well burn it all’, he understands his responsibility but in a more… balanced way, I suppose.

The Dragon Reborn had come to the White Tower to engage in idle philosophy

Moridin? That you?

I do sort of wonder, because I’m me, what impact, if any, Rand’s epiphany might (or could; I don’t really expect the story to go there, much as I might wish it to) have on Moridin, given the link they share.

“Rand,” Egwene said, softening her tone.

And now we get the reflection of the names from the opening of this conversation! It’s about the names! It’s about the dialogue tags! It’s about identity and perception and that thread of friendship that still binds them and might in the end be enough to save them from their predecessors’ fate!

“I’m going to have some sisters talk to you to decide if there is anything… wrong with you. Please try to understand.”

I mean you could not have phrased that less tactfully if you tried, Egwene, but it is kind of understandable. We may know full well that there’s less wrong with Rand now than there has been at pretty much any point since the start of the series, but how in the Light would anyone else be able to be sure of that? He’s certainly not acting like the Rand Egwene once knew, or even the Rand she last saw. Nor is he behaving like the Rand from whatever reports she’s received.

And yes, while I think the world waiting and watching for him to go mad hurt far more than it helped, there’s also the fact that that is what everyone and their mother expects—because up until what, a few months ago, that was inevitable.

So then in walks the Dragon Reborn, acting like… well, this, and what else are you going to do? A bit like the cleansing of saidin, as a reader you want all the other characters to just take it on faith, but the rather sad irony of Rand’s position is that his own word is the one no one is entirely sure they can trust. And the only one here who can vouch for him is himself. Elayne or Aviendha or Min might be able to, but none of them is nearby, and also that bond’s been kept pretty quiet.

So anyway. Yeah, I can see where she’s coming from on that.

To his credit, so can Rand.

“Oh, I do understand, Egwene. And I am sorry to deny you, but I have too much to do.”

There’s the woolheaded sheepherder again. He’s smiling here, and I am quite sure this is a bit of the old Rand dropping by to say hello and needle Egwene just a bit, because that’s what they do.

“A friend rides to his death without allies.”

HE NAMED YOU FRIEND. AND NOW YOU REMEMBER HIM. THIS IS FINE I’M FINE EVERYTHING’S FINE.

“This is the part I regret. I did not wish to come into your centre of power, which you have achieved so well, and defy you. But it cannot be helped. You must know what my plans are so that you can prepare.”

To be able to say that without so much as the hit of a threat in it is… quite a power move, I have to say. Because even here, I think he’s still just being absolutely and even benevolently honest. He doesn’t want to undermine her. He doesn’t even really want to challenge her. He understands where she’s coming from – which itself puts us so, so far from where he was just days ago, that he can meet her uncertainty and suspicion and say ‘okay yeah, that’s fair’.

And if he had time, I wonder if he might actually agree to that particular request.

But he doesn’t have time. Which brings us to the other extraordinary part of this statement: willingly offering up communication. Just. Straight up saying ‘you need to know my plans’. Mark this date in your calendars, friends: a Wheel of Time character just offered, unprompted, voluntarily, to share their plans with another character, so that they can prepare.

I am astonished.

“The last time I tried to seal the Bore”

You know, just the other day.

“I believe that saidin and saidar must both be used.”

I think he’s absolutely right there—it’s a part of what I love about Rand and Egwene, childhood friends for all that they’ve grown apart, holding the roles that they do; the idea that this bond between them, strained as it is, could allow them to do what Lews Therin and Latra Posae could not—but I also… he shall hold a blade of light in his hands, and the three shall be one. I just… wonder.

Egwene leaned forward, studying him. There didn’t seem to be madness in his eyes. She knew those eyes. She knew Rand.

YES!

THIS IS EVERYTHING I WANTED! That she sees him. Looks past the Dragon Reborn, past her role as Amyrlin, and for a moment she is just Egwene looking at Rand and it is by nature such a simple thing—stripping away everything but that simple identity—but it’s also the thing that can give them a chance to do it differently this time. This chance of understanding, this one small thing that could tip them towards cooperation and trust rather than letting them turn away from each other or fall apart.

Light, she thought, I’m wrong. I can’t think of him only as the Dragon Reborn. I’m here for a reason. He’s here for a reason. To me, he must be Rand. Because Rand can be trusted, while the Dragon Reborn must be feared.

Maybe it’s very Sanderson to have this stated outright, but I’m not even going to complain, because it’s… perfect. To allow, in the end, trust and friendship and who they are rather than purely what they are come into it as well, even just in some small way, to bridge that gap. It’s what Lews Therin and Latra Posae couldn’t do, but Rand and Egwene have a chance to try again.

I just… have been spinning around on this EXACT CONCEPT for, I don’t know, several books now, and to see it playing out so plainly here is everything I want and I am never going to be okay again in my life.

“Which are you?” she whispered unconsciously.

He heard. “I am both, Egwene. I remember him. Lews Therin. I can see his entire life, every desperate moment. I see it like a dream, but a clear dream. My own dream. It’s part of me.”

It’s a nice touch, that he speaks of it as a dream, to the one who understands dreams so well.

It’s also just a lot, to have gone from ‘so many parts of him, mind splintered in glittering shards, all of them screaming’ to ‘sorrows and his own suicide’ to a clear dream he accepts as a part of himself. The pain and desperation of it are still there, but he’s no longer fighting them, because he no longer sees it as something he’s bound to. It’s just a part of who he is, but it doesn’t have to define what he will be.

I also like this because Egwene was one of the first to notice him speaking to a voice in his mind. And now she gets this, just an honest and accepting response. It seems fitting, somehow.

The words were those of a madman, but they were spoken evenly. She looked at him, and remembered the youth that he had been. The earnest young man. Not solemn like Perrin, but not wild like Mat. Solid, straightforward. The type of man you could trust with anything.

Even the fate of the world.

THAT’S IT THAT’S IT RIGHT THERE. If they did not know each other, this could be an impasse. Not as disastrous as Rand’s meeting with Tuon, perhaps, because he’s a little… uh… less omnicidal at this particular moment, but likely just as unsuccessful. An Amyrlin who could not trust the Dragon, and a Dragon who could not afford to give her the assurances she needed, and so two powers working in parallel but separately, almost in opposition.

But she knows him. And it’s the youth he had been—it is LITERALLY THE MEMORY OF A SHEPHERD NAMED RAND AL’THOR, the echo of one of my favourite quotes—that tips the balance the other way this time.

It’s Rand. The boy he tried for so long to destroy, because to be him hurt too much.

And I also really love how it isn’t about some Grand True Love between them that does it. They were childhood sweethearts, sure, but the love between them is that of friends, of a shared childhood, of something very much like family. And I like that there’s this implicit importance and weight placed on that; that in its way it’s as crucial to this moment as the ‘veins of gold’ were on Dragonmount

This is what Latra Posae and Lews Therin had. And so instead it falls to Egwene and Rand, to learn from their mistakes, and do what they could not. It is what Rand realised on Dragonmount, and what he is playing out now. A chance to try again.

And it’s because he’s Rand that that’s possible. It’s not Lews Therin, or the Dragon Reborn (but it is also both of those, because he is both of those).

“In one month’s time,” Rand said, “I’m going to travel to Shayol Ghul and break the last remaining seals on the Dark One’s prison. I want your help.”

Well. I mean. Okay. Points for honest and straightforward communication, I suppose. I love that he just walks into the Tower and drops this on her like a grenade, though. It amuses me.

Ah, so she thinks the crystal sphere in her dream represents the seals or the prison as well.

“Rand, no”

Rand: Rand yes!

Sorry, couldn’t help myself.

“I’m going to need you, all of you”

Rand openly admitting to needing anyone or anything, and again just as a statement rather than a threat or an angry demand, is another thing that’s new and kind of refreshing.

“I hope to the Light that this time, you will give me your support.”

Rand to Egwene, remembering Lews Therin to Latra Posae. And if everyone is someone reborn, who’s to say she isn’t? (I’m not… really sure whether I’d want that to be true or not, so I suppose it’s nice that it’s not stated one way or the other, at least up to this point. But it could be a fun one to play with). Either way, those very much are the roles they’re echoing, and I swear I’ll shut up about this but I still just love how, so closely following Rand’s realisation on Dragonmount, we get to actually watch that kind of chance-to-try-again play out. A chance to work together, rather than apart.

“And then… well, then we will discuss my terms.”

Ah well, I suppose it was too much to hope for him to communicate the whole plan right now. Baby steps and all that.

Also, you know, narrative choices and the need to keep at least something back.

“Your terms?” Egwene demanded. “You will see,” he said, turning as if to leave.

So… the way it’s framed puts us into very slightly antagonistic (and much more familiar) territory of lack of communication and demands and terms.

But I wonder what terms he’s referring to, because there is a nonzero probability that he’s talking about Callandor here. In which case, it’s not entirely impossible that the terms he’s referring to are, in effect, those of his own surrender.

I could be wrong. I very probably am. But it’s… an interesting possibility to consider. And it would be kind of fitting, in a way, for that to be the uncommunicated and therefore misunderstood thing here.

Turns out ‘the Amyrlin’s Anger’ is Egwene just shouting at her childhood friend ‘don’t you turn your back on me when I’m talking to you, Rand al’Thor’ and Rand turning back like a boy who tracked mud into the house. I love them, I really do.

“We must talk about this,” she said. “Plan.”

“That is why I came to you. To let you plan.”

He seemed amused.

Oh, he’s absolutely amused. Part of him still is the boy you knew, and this is honestly just classic Rand-and-Egwene, for all that it’s also on an entirely different level. They antagonise one another: it’s what they do. But I don’t think there’s true anger here, on either side. And again, that is what could save them. That ‘anger’ between them is… this, rather than that snapping of tension and dropping of any possibility of a truce and turning immediately to planning their next moves, all thought of alliance or restraint over, between Rand and Tuon.

Anyway. The other thing here is that… it’s easy to be exasperated with Egwene, because just listen to Rand, he’s sane now damn it, and he’s almost certainly right about the seals.

But honestly? In her position? Knowing what she knows—and not knowing all the things she doesn’t know, like the actual state of Rand’s mind—it’s hard to fault her for pushing back on this. He walks in, says he’s fine and that he remembers a dead man’s entire life and also that they need to break the prison of the embodiment of entropy and chaos and evil, okay bye!

Like. As Amyrlin, it’s her job to say ‘okay, right, I’m with you, but also what the fuck’. It would be irresponsible not to.

Of course… I get the impression Rand knows that, too. And is, perhaps, counting on it. He came to her to let her plan, and he doesn’t seem surprised or upset by the fact that she doesn’t just immediately say ‘okay cool when do we start’, and he has a certain respect for the position she holds.

I think it’s entirely possible this is what he wants from her. For her to plan. Because he doesn’t have time to. And because, just as she looks at him and sees someone she can trust with the fate of the world, he looks at her and sees someone he can trust with planning and logistics and getting the Aes Sedai to get themselves where he needs them. A kind of ‘this is what I’m going to do, now do whatever it is you need to do because I don’t need to micromanage and I also don’t have time to, okay see you at Tarmon Gai’don’.

“And so here we come to it,” Rand said.

Yeah, he saw this coming.

“Egwene al’Vere, Watcher of the Seals, Flame of Tar Valon, may I have your permission to withdraw?”

He asked it so politely. She couldn’t tell if he was mocking her or not.

The thing is, I really don’t think he is. It’s like how earlier he said he didn’t want to come into her place of power and undermine her. He’s giving her, I think, an honest gesture with genuine respect. Because now, at peace with himself as he is, it costs him nothing to do so. She is not his enemy, and I do think his respect for her is honest, and I think he still cares about her as a friend, and what does he lose by giving her a small bow and her titles and the opportunity to grant him permission to leave?

And of course Egwene is conflicted, because on the one hand she can’t keep him here like Elaida tried to, but on the other hand…

“I will not let you break the seals,” she said. “That is madness.”

“Then meet me at the place known as the Field of Merrilor, just to the north. We will talk before I go to Shayol Ghul. For now, I do not want to defy you, Egwene. But I must go.’

Ah. And so we have a battleground.

As for the rest… well. It’s not quite accord, but nor is it disaster. It’s not even quite a true impasse. There’s tension now, sure, but it’s a) not even in the same hemisphere as as bad as it would have been if Rand hadn’t had some alone time on a mountain to think, literally, about his life choices and b) not insurmountable.

And c) I still think there’s a very real chance this is all Rand actually needed or wanted out of this. Egwene now knows his plan and his timing and the battleground, and she can take care of the rest.

It’s almost—gasp—as if Rand al’Thor, Dragon Reborn, has truly learned to delegate.

The chamber was still enough for Egwene to hear the faint breeze making the rose window groan it its lead.

The wind, for Rand, against the rose, for the Aes Sedai. (Also, listen, I have not forgotten that Eldrene was the Rose of the Sun).

“Very well,” Egwene said. “But this is not ended, Rand.”

“There are no endings, Egwene.”

IT’S! ABOUT! THE NAMES!

They talk a big game about each other’s titles, and wonder if they’re really the person they each once knew, but they both open and closes with nothing but each other’s names, and it means absolutely everything.

Also, that’s… really not a bad outcome. Honestly, this could have been so much worse. Anger? Try ‘okay um that’s unexpected and I’m still not sure you’re not insane but…sure. Okay’.

Which really is all you need, right? It’s agreement with a bit of hesitation, and at this stage in the game that’s a damn victory.

Again, I can’t help but contrast it with that absolute catastrophe at Falme, and compared to that? This is just friends sticking their tongues out at each other on the way out. Rand knows he can count on Egwene to be there, at least. Will she agree with him when she arrives? Who knows. But that’s a problem for another time. For now, he at least knows she’ll go, and that’s all he can ask. And he can leave the rest of the planning in her hands.

And she knows what he’s planning, and knows he wants her as an ally, and can therefore make said plans.

I don’t think this is ended either, and I’m sure there’s plenty of potential conflict to come, but this was, all things considered, really kind of impressive in its lack of explosions.

(Also, ‘there are no endings’. Now who’s giving Aes Sedai answers, Rand? As well as probably spoilers for the last line of the series. Rude.)

Oh, interesting. So Rand’s ta’veren hyperdrive powers pretty much literally froze all the other Aes Sedai in place. Because this needed to be a meeting between Rand and Egwene. Because of their roles, yes, but also because of that thread of connection they still share. And so it had to be the two of them, because that was the only chance of this working at all.

Egwene frowned. She hadn’t felt it that way. Perhaps because she thought of him as Rand.

I… yeah. Because that’s what he needed: to have this conversation with someone who could see him. Even then, it barely came out to something almost resembling accord. They needed that small weight on the scales, to have that chance. And so she was free, because it was the Dragon Reborn, and not Rand, who was holding the others silent, in a way.

Or at least that’s how I’m reading this because it plays into my entire thing for names and identity and perception, and the importance thereof.

“We need to discuss his words. The Hall of the Tower will reconvene in one hour’s time for discussion.”

Which, really, is exactly what they need to be doing. Now they have the information, and they can figure out… a battle plan, I suppose. Okay. We’re there now. We have a place and a time (this place, this day, which of course is followed by the lesser sadness, yes I remember sequences of chapter titles why are you looking at me like that) and the beginnings of a plan. I’m… it’s been five years and I’m not entirely ready for this.

“And someone follow to make sure he really leaves.”

You’re just afraid he’ll find some way to prank you on his way out, don’t lie.

“Then how? How do we stop him?”

That, Silviana, is not the question you need to be asking. I mean, I get it. I really do. And I’m not sure how they could not think that, at least initially. But… the time for working against each other’s aims, when you are all on the same side, is over.

“We need allies,” Egwene said.

Which, again, I think is precisely the point. That is something it makes absolute sense for Rand to delegate to the Amyrlin Seat, who has the power and the standing to gather allies and play the games of politics, and bring her portion of the Forces of the Light to… the Field of Merrilor, I suppose.

She took a deep breath. “He might be persuaded by people that he trusts.” Or he might be forced to change his mind if confronted by a large enough group united to stop him.

Oh, Egwene, no. You can’t be another Latra Posae.

But perhaps it would be too easy for this to actually just be their only not-quite-conflict. I still think it was more a success than a failure, all told, and I stand by everything I said about the importance of their friendship in letting them see each other, but I think we’re looking at one final testing of that, before the end.

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