#elaidas

[bloomingdarkgarden]

A I D A S + E L A I N

A Prince of Hell + Lady of Bloom

For @waternymphia

[fuckmelifesucks]

Is it just me or does anyone else get a sudden urge to read about elain and aidas? Like it'd be cute...

[cateyesinlove]

Me an avid erislain ( eris x elain) : go girl go!

Others: omg😑 elriels are so tOxiC 😠 if you don't ship Elain with their precious bat, they go bananas😑 who do they think they are, the shipping police?!😡😡

...meanwhile in the elriel break room...

Elriel 1: Dude, have thought about how cute Cass and Elain would be together? 🥺 Casslain owns my heart😫🙏

Elriel 2: Wow 😲, that's is cute! But hear me out: Elain and Aidas! Just imagine her fluffing his fur 🥺🐈

Elriel 1: And how do you call that? 🤔

Elriel 2: Elaidas 😏

Elriel 1: You're a genius, tag me if you write anything😩🙏

Elriel 2: Will do 😙

[scarletkaoru]

I love siuan so much shes like ‘oh im stilled now? Thats fine. I can gaslight gatekeep girlboss my way out of this much better now that I can lie’

shes having a horrible time but wont let herself have a horrible time because that means giving Elaida what she wants. Shes out here picking horses based on angst factor like ‘oh Belas as shaggy and sad as i am and as ready to run you into the ground’

no wonder she and moiraine are girlfriends lol they both take every situation and go ‘welp could be worst. Manipulation time’

[whchwitch]

The usual suspects.

[asha-mage]

Randland World Leaders - Do they know the price of a banana apple?

Morgase Trakand - No, but she could get it in the right neighborhood if asked. Understands the economic influences that affect prices and knows roughly where Andor's sit at any given time.

Elayne Trakand - Pre world travels? Not with a gun to her head. She wouldn't give a false guess though, just avoid the question rather then admit ignorance. Post world travels she knows the prices of most common food stuffs for Andor and all of it's immediate neighbors with scary accuracy.

Rand al'Thor - Yes. One of the first things Rand does after taking over Tear is familiarize himself with tax policies and food production and grain trade. He is a farm boy at heart and has Powerful Opinions on cost of living.

Perrin Abyara - Nope. He thinks he does, but in reality he names the price of apples he paid aka, pre adventure. He knows that prices in general have gone up but if you tried to sell him an apple he would get offended when you wouldn't take the same price he paid prior to half a dozen kingdoms going to war, and the endless summer choking out trade. He wouldn't say anything though and just assume you where trying to squeeze a few coins out of him because he's dressed like some 'idiot lord'.

Faile- Yes. She knows exactly the price of apples grown in the Two Rivers and knows that it's out competing the neighboring provinces apples by a good margin. Does this have something to do with her threatening local officials to ensure they don't try to hard to compete with Two Rivers food prices? Maybe, but it's nothing Perrin can prove she did. HE dosen't know the price of apples.

Siuan Sanche - Apples? No. Fish? Yes. Siuan could tell you the price of every fish in the market at Tar Valon and what will be cheaper next month based on yields out of the south. This is not for economic reasons, it's because she still eats fish for 3 meals out of 4.

Berelain - Nope. She has economic advisers who she pays to know that. Her skill and perk points all went into Foreign Policy and Espionage, not Economics.

Alliandre - The price of apples keeps Alliandre up at night staring at her bedroom ceiling, fearing for her life. It turns out having a religious tyrant running rampart around your kingdom burning down farms and causing skyrocketing inflation by assaulting trade routes and exacting inconsistent 'tithes' on merchants will make you VERY familiar with the economic conditions of the common man. Every time the price of apples goes up a silver mark, Alliandre makes her food taster check her meals an extra time.

Tuon - Yes. Always good to know the price of local cyanide containing fruits, just in case.

Elaida - "It's an apple Alviarin? How much can it cost? 10 gold marks?"

[ofthebrownajah]

[markantonys]

give mat a homoerotic archnemesis 2k23!!!!!!

[toastandjamie]

Elaida in clown makeup: so when Egwene over throws the Armylin she’s a “girlboss” but when I do it SOCIETY- Society calls me evil!

[iliiuan]

Baby Shower Gifts for Elayne Trakand

Elaida: Knitted baby blanket

[sixth-light]

Having a fascinating conversation with @markantonys and @butterflydm in notes about the Tower Coup (& how it will go in the show) and I need to take my thoughts to a post, in roughly this order:

How did it START in the books vs how did it END?

What changed along the way and where did that work/not work?

With the benefit of hindsight, how could the show make this arc more coherent?

How it started vs how it ended

The Tower Coup starts in the books as a pretty clear moral issue: Siuan is deposed on the sketchiest of pretenses, she and Leane are tortured and stilled immediately, a lot of people die, and Elaida dissolves the Blue Ajah (basically all our friendly Aes Sedai up until this point are Blue). That's a lot! Then the Tower faction, on Elaida's orders, also kidnap and torture Rand. By the time Egwene is raised as Amyrlin we're fully ready to get behind her taking names and kicking Elaida's ass. Elaida is doing nothing to help her own cause, instead descending into paranoia and tyranny with nobody at the Tower doing anything to stop her.

And then...from ACoS on it becomes clear that there's plenty of Tower Aes Sedai who are good people (the Black Ajah Hunter plotline), and also that the Black Ajah and the Forsaken are working both sides of the conflict to keep it as amped up as possible. However, at the same time the Tower is collapsing into conflict, the Salidar camp under Egwene is rewriting the rules in a way that the books make clear offer the Aes Sedai as an institution new relevance and scope, by opening the novice book to all who wish to apply. Meanwhile, the Seanchan return and the seams of the Pattern start to fray because the Last Battle is getting real close now. By the time Egwene is kidnapped by the Tower, her mission becomes to negotiate the Tower Aes Sedai as a group (rather than Elaida, who is too far gone) into dealing with the real existential problems the Tower faces - the Seanchan and Tarmon Gai'don - rather than 'winning'. Once we hit the Sanderson books we're fully into 'the Tower is fine, it just needed to have the right person leading it', Gawyn's storyline is revealed (charitable) or mildly retconned (uncharitable) so that the Warders attacked first and he and the other Younglings were arguably justified in fighting them, and Egwene ends up demanding that the Salidar Aes Sedai apologise for their rebellion before the Tower is reunited under her.

Was this a change of direction? How well did it work?

I would argue that in general scope the Tower arc was always meant to end with a reconciliation between the two sides in order to face down the real enemy - Elaida literally Foretells this very early on in the piece, and it's signalled frequently that besieging Tar Valon with an army, even if it feels like the only option, is playing into the hands of the Shadow and supported by Darkfriends within the Salidar camp. There's also a strong theme throughout the final RJ books of our heroes having to make their peace with people they are fighting in order to effectively confront the Shadow. E.g., Perrin is rewarded for his truce with the Seanchan by getting Faile back. So I'm pretty sure the plan was always for Egwene to reunite the Tower by winning the respect and allegiance of crucial people within the Tower faction, rather than military action, and for the conflict between the two sides to be decisively derailed by a Seanchan attack.

HOWEVER.

I also feel pretty strongly that the way that arc finally ends feels like a weird and hard swerve towards 'rebelling was wrong actually' and ignores the extremely real grievances that caused the Blue Ajah and their allies to gather in Salidar in the first place. Despite the Ajah Heads' plotting there is never any viable path to negotiation presented to the Salidar faction - yes, some of this is down to the work of the Black Ajah but like. Tarna Feir wasn't Black! Elaida wasn't Black! None of the non-Red Ajah Heads were Black! The Tower as an institution is pretty fundamentally broken and instead of a renewal and a vision of what it could look like in the future, what we get in the last two books is kind of...a return to BAU except Egwene is in charge now...? and also we stop checking in with all the Aes Sedai we know in favour of charity namedrops, yes I'm still mad forever thanks. I think some of this is exacerbated by Sanderson but I do also think it's the result of RJ having a pretty sketchy idea of how the post-unification Tower was going to look or act except knowing there were crucial plot points to hit in terms of the conflict being derailed by the Seanchan attacking the Tower, and Egwene and Rand clashing before the Last Battle.

In addition, for me personally, Elaida in TGS is also almost a parody of her original self - she's a sexual harasser, she's physically violent - in a way that sure you can write off as the influence of Padan Fain but feels cartoonish. I think this is somewhat of a minority opinion but this makes Egwene's whole Reason You Suck speech very unsatisfying to me! None of it engages with why Elaida was able to become Amyrlin in the first place. It's not a tragedy, it's a farce.

Anyway, it's all a bit unsatisfying and the big question I have is...

How could the show do it better?

The show 100% has the benefit of hindsight and being able to simplify down its story instead of try and tie up ALL the dangling threads - it can just not weave those threads in to start with! - so I think it has huge potential to make this arc more elegant plot-wise and emotionally. For me there's three key ways it could do this:

Make Elaida a charismatic leader (to start with) Largely due to the books/RJ wanting the coup to come as a shock, we have very little insight into how Elaida persuades the Hall to take down Siuan and we never see Elaida as a genuinely charismatic leader people might want to follow. Coming after Siuan, sure - why choose her as leader? If the show can demonstrate why people follow her, it will make the Tower faction seem more reasonable to start with. And there's endless material to mine from the books in terms of her slide into tyranny as a more subtle and tragic arc.

Give the Salidar Aes Sedai a genuine chance to back down I don't think it's bad for readers' expectations to be challenged, but through the books it's really hard to see what other genuine options the Salidar Aes Sedai but particularly the Blue Ajah actually had. Elaida never resiles on her proclamation disbanding them; that's cataclysmically bad given how the structure of the Tower traditionally works. Frankly it should have made a lot more Tower Aes Sedai (and independents) turn against her! For the Salidar Aes Sedai to have any genuine apology to make at the end, they need to have a choice to reunite that they could take...and not take it. I think it's obvious in her later appearances that Tarna Feir was meant to be a 'Worst Person You Know Has A Point' character but that's left on the table for a loooooooooooong time through the Slog.

Show how the Tower has changed for the better Egwene's demand is part and parcel of her fairly sudden change into an Amyrlin who is basically happy with the Tower running as it always has, but with her and her people in charge now. Let's see how the post-reunification Tower is a genuinely different place which has learned from its experiences! Let's see how the influx of novices and new organisational systems, as well as the new engagement with the Windfinders and Wise Ones, are requiring Aes Sedai to contemplate new ways of doing things! Let's see Egwene leave a goddamn legacy that will outlive her. Going out in a blaze of glory is all well and good but that's what makes the Tower Coup arc have meaning. The Tower broke but wasn't defeated.

Anyway, that's enough brain-dumping - interested in what other people have to say about this!

[amemoryofwot]

Virgin Elaida vs Chad Gitara

[deeplyridiculouslyinlove]

Just got to Caemlyn in my EOTW reread and I’m thinking about how Rand suggests to Basel Gill that he could go to Elaida about the Darkfriends, and I’m *cackling* at the idea of Moiraine getting to Caemlyn only to find Rand with Elaida of all people.

Elaida, who is able to sense Rand is important but doesn’t know exactly what his deal is at this point, suddenly being *very* invested in lording it over Moiraine that Moiraine’s little pet came to *her.* Moiraine gritting her teeth to try and be nice to Elaida despite wanting to slap her because she needs her to get to Rand. Rand just totally clueless to the fact he chose the absolute worst Aes Sedai for Moiraine to have to deal with. Like the one sister with whom she has decades-long animosity.

[pillowfriends]

thinking about Elaida's cunty new Amyrlin stole again. she really made a new one without the blue stripe just to be a little bitch. I love her

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

Siuan: No, you can't keep all your stuff. It isn't allowed for Novices. Elayne: Oh come on, please. It'll annoy Elaida. Siuan:...*snaps fingers* Take her suitcases to her room.

[cha-faile]