#galadedrid damodred

[who-do-i-know-this-man]

⚠️Vote for whomever YOU DO NOT KNOW⚠️‼️

[agardenandlibrary]

Galad was his half-brother, the pair of them sent to Tar Valon to train under the Warders. That was another Andoran tradition. Galadedrid Damodred was a man who took doing the right thing to the point of a fault, as Min saw it, but Gawyn could see no wrong in him.

Galadedrid Damodred.....

[amemoryofwot]

“Galadedrid Damodred was Elayne’s half-brother, Elayne’s and Gawyn’s, if he remembered correctly: the three shared the same father.”

But wait! There’s more! (half-brothers)

[wheeloftimepolls]

Welcome to the great Wheel of Time POV poll! Because of the enormous number of characters, this has been whittled down to the 16 most frequent POV characters (out of everyone with 12 POVs Morgase is the only one included as she had the greatest word count; sorry Padan Fain). I'll update this post with links to each poll as they're posted. Polls will last for a day. Remember to vote for your favourite POV which is not necessarily your favourite character! The brackets are as follows:

ROUND ONE (05/03/23, 6PM GMT):

A. Rand al'Thor versus Galadedrid Damodred (X)

B. Elayne Trakand versus Nyneave al'Meara (X)

C. Siuan Sanche versus Perrin Aybara (X)

D. Morgase Trakand versus Egwene al'Vere (X)

E. Moiraine Damodred versus Gawyn Trakand (X)

F. Lan Mandragoran versus Min Farshaw (X)

G. Aviendha versus Faile Bashere (X)

H. Cadsuane Melaidhrin versus Matrim Cauthon (X)

ROUND TWO (07/0/23, 6PM GMT):

I. Rand al'Thor versus Nyneave al'Meara (X)

J. Siuan Sanche versus Egwene al'Vere (X)

K. Moiraine Damodred versus Min Farshaw (X)

L. Aviendha versus Matrim Cauthon (X)

ROUND THREE (09/03/23, 6PM GMT):

M. Nyneave al'Meara verus Siuan Sanche (X)

N. Moiraine Damodred versus Matrim Cauthon (X)

LOSERS' FINAL (11/03/23, 6PM GMT):

Siuan Sanche versus Moiraine Damodred (X)

FINAL (13/03/23, 6PM GMT):

Nyneave al'Meara versus Matrim Cauthon (X)

Have fun!!

[neuxue]

What do you think would have happened if Galad had accidentally found out about Moiraine's quest to find the Dragon and decided that the right thing to do is help her? Do you think that Galad's personality would have drastically changed after spending a few years with his morally ambiguous aunt? And can you imagine his swords skill after spending a few years with Rand?

It would be interesting to watch Galad and Moiraine interact–really, a Damodred family reunion of any kind could be pretty quality entertainment. But Moiraine and Galad are in some ways opposites and yet in other ways rather similar; Moiraine will do whatever she sees as necessary to save the world, regardless of who she hurts, including herself. She does not set out to cause pain, but she does see it as an acceptable price to pay in pursuit of a higher cause. “Blues. Always so ready to save the world that you lose yourselves.”

In that, she and Galad are not entirely unalike; Galad’s version of course being that he will do (what he sees as) the right thing, no matter who it hurts. I think the difference comes in where that kind of absolute dedication is aimed. Galad pursues an ideal: what is Right. Moiraine pursues a cause: enabling the salvation of the world via the Dragon Reborn. And I think a lot of the other differences–even including the way one appears to take a morally black-and-white view while the other comes across as more grey–follow from that. It’s a question of whether your moral compass is internally or externally defined, of whether you’re pursuing a specific goal next to which all else is expendable or whether you’re pursuing an abstract concept to which all else is subordinate, of whether you focus more on the ends or more on the means.

So as to the question of what would have happened if Galad had found out about Moiraine’s quest…I think it depends entirely on the context in which he found out, what else he knew, and what else he didn’t know. 

[veliseraptor]

“I do have a sense of humor, Gawyn, You only think I do not because I do not care to mock people.”

Wheel of Time Fancast: Ben Barnes as Galadedrid Damodred

credit: art by Seamas Gallagher

[emo-mosquito]

Still figuring out their looks 

[wot-tidbits]

Galadedrid Damodred (The Wheel of Time) A Character Examination

[tallangrycockatiel]

WoT B1C40: Rand. Rand, what did you do? Go lie down.

Good lord, Rand. It turned out that the wall he was sat on was the Palace garden wall, and the person who talked to him and startled him into falling off and blacking out was the Princess and Heir. She patches him up, and she and her brother are kind and curious and generally pretty incredulous that this random wall-falling guy has no idea where he is. The palace guard turn up, quite unhappy about the situation, and Rand is brought before the Queen. Despite her Aes Sedai advisor declaring that great evil is following him around, Queen Morgase decides that Rand's story is so ridiculous that it must be true, and lets him go.

Okay, so first point of order: I'm pretty sure Rand got mildly concussed falling off the wall there and only has the very most tenuous grasp on anything that happens in this chapter. This is my interpretation and I'm sticking to it. He spends most of his time attempting to be as polite and nonthreatening as possible, and I think this is my favourite display of "Rand's major life skill is being able to hurtle through bizarre situations with no idea what he's doing while somehow projecting a thin veneer of competence" so far.

Tons of new characters this chapter, so I'm gonna basically focus on them one at a time and see how we go.

Princess Elayne. We get a super long paragraph about her rich and ornate clothing before Rand even notices that she's very beautiful and very ginger. She's very confident and very good at medicine, and in both of these ways reminds Rand of Nynaeve, which seems to set him up with a healthy level of wariness. As the Heir to the Throne, she's used to getting her way with almost everyone, and seems to immediately decide that Rand is both interesting and helpless and therefore she's going to keep him. She was up on the wall to watch Logain too, which it emerges she wasn't supposed to do. Apparently she has a tendency to do exactly what she's been told she shouldn't, which I applaud. She's been trained in everything she needs to know to be Queen and will shortly be leaving to study in Tar Valon, so it seems she's going a little stir-crazy cooped up in the Palace and wants to be Out There Doing Stuff already.

Prince Gawyn, her slightly older brother. Also well-dressed and ginger. More talkative than Elayne, and seems to make more of an effort to sound royal than she does, around someone who literally just fell off his garden wall anyway. He's been studying the realm, to help Elayne rule, and finds Rand interesting because, according to his studies, he looks nothing like a Two Rivers villager and everything like an Aielman. Only a vague idea of what Aielmen are like so far, but I think warlike and living in a desert (?) called the Aiel Waste? I'm sure we'll find out. Gawyn comes off as more personable than Elayne, I think, but it's hard to tell how much of that is current circumstance.

Galadedrid "Galad" Damodred, half-brother to Elayne and Gawyn from their father's previous marriage. Tall, dark, "the handsomest man Rand had ever seen, almost too handsome for masculinity". Okay then. Apparently very honest, very good reputation no matter what people think of the Queen. Sticks rigidly to doing things by the book, and therefore goes and tells the Palace guard that there's an intruder. Gawyn likes him, Elayne hates him. Purely from his position in this very Arthurian family, and his very shiny reputation, I'm extremely suspicious of him. He and Gawyn share a moment of "oh, tch, isn't our little sister so headstrong, she doesn't know what's good for her sometimes, isn't it cute" which is super freaking weird coming from men in a traditionally matriarchal royal family, in a world in which an all-female magical institution is so ancient and powerful that they have become legendary, talking about the Heir to the Throne. Very bizarre.

Queen Morgase. Super freaking gorgeous. Super freaking done with her daughter acting out. "I was just like you at your age so I get it, but also good grief am I glad that you're leaving soon and will be the Aes Sedai's problem for a bit and not mine". She also says that Rand doesn't look like he's from the Two Rivers, and doesn't think it likely that his father, a shepherd, would have had a heron-mark sword to give him. But she also thinks his accent is right for Two Rivers, and ultimately concludes that he must be telling the truth, because his story is far too improbable to be worth trying as a lie. After all the stories we've heard about her temper, she comes off as a fair and reasonable ruler, which is nice. I like her.

Elaida Sedai. Sits behind the throne, looking ageless, knitting. Listening. Interjecting snarkily. She stares Rand in the face and declares, basically, "the pattern is all fucked up around this one, I think we should lock him up". She doesn't say it, but I get the impression that she would happily bump Rand off in order to keep the Queen safe. As far as Rand is concerned, she's even scarier than Lady Rain. She spends most of her appearance this chapter trying to pick apart Rand's story. He does lie to her about which inn he's staying at and when he arrived in the city, and she doesn't call him on it, but I think it will come back to bite him.

We finish the chapter with Elayne flirting at Rand as she sees him out the gate, Gawyn telling him that he looks like an Aielman, and then Rand absolutely scarpering out of the Inner City, deeply confused on pretty much every level of his being. Rand, you have had a Day. Go lie down, have some tea, scream into a pillow for a bit until you're ready to accept that everything that just happened did actually happen.

Chapter highlight: all of it, really, but mainly: Rand (not knowing who anyone is): "does she always expect everyone to do what she says?" The Royal Siblings: "Uh, ya. Duh."

[squirrelwrangler]

Wrestling with just what is my concept for Gadwar’s one-shot going to be (Eighth in the Red Band). The choice is to go with Gawar’s POV or to mix it up and incorporate some or all from Galuven’s perspective. And just how much of the backstory to include of these two brothers. Because without meaning to, (honest!) I created the sort of anti-Fëanor character I would have made on purpose. Sort of. Look, Aglar and all the baggage of his backstory is the Red-Hand-Band character to lambaste the village idiot and spawn. Galuven was a mild accident. 

Let’s backtrack to explain.

When I started to formulate the idea behind this series, it was just as an addendum to the “Place Theon Greyjoy and Jeyne Poole into The Silmarillion”, needing a Robb Stark character with a point where I could say “here’s where that Robb Stark character dies and the Theon character wasn’t there”. Werewolf jokes about Finrod linked up with werewolf slander about the Starks, so that’s where Aglar and Consael came from. Edrahil, Heledir, and Ethirdor came from The Leithian Script. At that point I knew I had to complete the set of ten because I almost had a series. I cast my thoughts out to think of other characters with sad or unjust deaths that I could easily translate over to be elves. Bân and Fân from Final Fantasy VII, because I love Zack Fair and his tragedy (and the Silm allowed a new variation on the Reunited Together in the Lifestream Happy Ending). Now I just needed a few more.

I’d finished reading the last book of Wheel of Time some months before and was still bitter over the deaths of some of my favorite couples: Gareth/Siuan and Gawyn/Egwene. Gareth became Arodreth and thus two of my favorite character concepts: second-gen Cuiviénen and pre-Noldor Conquest Sindar. Which left Gawyn. And if you had Gawyn (and Egwene) you needed Galad and Elayne. And Galad as another older brother was a very useful character, especially for Faron (Theon). 

But here’s the funny thing about basing a character on Galadedrid Damodred. His character has a couple lynch-pins that I would want to preserve if even roughly basing a new character off of him.

First of all, his big character trait is that he sees mortality in strict black and white, enough so that he annoys his younger siblings and most who meet him. He is Lawful Good, emphasis on Lawful. It’s why he joins the Whitecloaks, a ‘Knights Templar’-like organization of hypocritical murderous religious bigots and through force of will and being the third-best swordsman in the series ends up transforming them into a useful, heroic(-ish) group by the climax. He’s also the world’s most beautiful man, bar none, which works for an elf. It makes his position as one of the Noldor rebelling against the Valar inexplicable unless he, like for Idril and what is implied for Celebrimbor, was a young child taken along with his parents during the Exile. Then having this very devout, rule-abiding, lawful-good person finding himself a member of morally grey/dubious groups adds a nice, interesting flavor to one of the Exilic Noldor, and works perfectly for one of the citizens of Nargothrond under Orodreth. 

But here’s the second thing about Galad. His younger siblings? They are his half-siblings. His father married the Queen of Andor. They had Galad, then that queen ran off (prophecies were involved; she had to go have the Chosen One, Rand al’Thor). Galad’s father then married the next queen of Andor, a distant cousin. Together, Galad’s father and his new step-mother, Morgase, had a son and daughter- Gawyd and Elayne-  before Galad’s dad tried to overthrow the queen to become king instead of just the prince-consort. Morgase had him killed. Fun times. Here’s the thing, though. All this happened when the children were infants, and Galad thinks of Morgase as his mother. Not step-mother, just mother. He becomes leader of the Whitecloaks because he challenged the previous leader to a duel to the death because of how his step-mother had been treated- he nearly dies to avenge her ‘death’. This is not the only time Galad will do so. Gawyd adores and admires Galad more than he resents him. Galad always thinks of his half siblings as family and never tries to politically challenge them. Gawyn is the glory seeker. Galad isn’t.

And looking at that, I’m left with this antithesis to Fëanor, Indis, and Fingolfin. Galuven is the anti-Fëanor, and I find that hilarious.

 Now just how overt do I make that?

[amemoryofwot]

I just can’t see Moggy here guys like the vibes are all off. Not Faile either. Maaaaybe Egeanin, imo that’s most likely? But seriously LOOK at this picture and tell me this is not PEAK GALADEDRID DAMODRED

(Plus has any other confirmed or rumoured casting even looked slightly similar to Galad nuh uh non binary Galad it is)

[neuxue]

"I feel like there’s a missed opportunity in Galad’s entire character: what if he could channel? That would be so full of interesting potential." Weeell, about thaaat. :D It is not a spoiler per se but in the early Robert Jordan's plans Galad could channel and also turned into a villain because Rand slept with proto-Morgase (not Queen of Andor). But RJ scratched that "missed opportunity".

Wow, that’s somehow even more Arthurian than what ended up in the books. I would have been very, very interested in this turn of events (the channelling and becoming a villain, at any rate), but oh well. I’m sure he had his reasons.

[randalthorisalive]

Have you had time to talk to Galad much yet? He is your half brother after all.

Regrettably I have yet to see him since I left the Field of Merrilor to begin assaulting Shayol Ghul. From what I hear he is currently still in Mayene with Berelain, but I never went there during my wandering. I’ve been hoping he would visit us here in Caemlyn, but it would be somewhat awkward for the Lord Captain Commander of the Children to visit the first openly Aes Sedai Queen ever, even if she is his sister.

[stillwaitingformyadventure]

I never actually hated Galad for most of the series, I was fairly indifferent towards him except at the end, I'm really glad he got a sort of redepmtion

[moghedien]

Everything Wheel of Time has taught me about men:

all men are wool heads

Galadedrid Damodred is the most beautiful man in existence

[neuxue]

I think it's fascinating how Galad joins one of the most extremist organizations in the world and yet this has zero effects on his personality while Gawyn remains in the city that was supposed to embody stability and order and he is spiraling completely out of control. I don't exactly like Galad(it's hard to like him) but I am kinda envious of just how comfortable he is with himself and his decisions

This is a really interesting observation! 

I wonder if some of it is perhaps due to where their sense of duty/self/purpose originates–externally versus internally. 

Gawyn’s role, and much of what goes with it, was given to him from an external source, and then internalised throughout his life of being raised to become First Prince of the Sword. He was told his duties as soon as he was old enough (or perhaps a little earlier) to understand them, and they subsequently became a core part of his identity. But they didn’t originate with him. So he’s always trying to fill a role that is ‘externally’ defined, measuring himself against a set of standards and often finding himself wanting. He’s striving to meet a bar he didn’t set for himself.

Galad’s role, and duties–and identity–on the other hand, seem to be much more internally defined (or self-defined). After Morgase took the throne, and Gawyn and Elayne were born, as far as I can tell Galad wouldn’t have had a specific role he was expected to fill. (I suppose he could have decided to put in a claim for the throne of Cairhien, but he didn’t). Yes, he would still have been raised in the royal family, and taught a particular set of values and skills, etc, but his actual identity and place were left more to him to define for himself, I think. For some characters that could have been disastrous, but it ended up working for Galad. So he does what is ‘right’ above all else–regardless of the consequences–but he does that because that is how he has chosen to define himself. It isn’t demanded of him, or taught to him as part of a role he is given, but rather forms part of a role he has decided to take on.

So there is an element of choice to it, it would seem. This sort of goes back to something I was looking at with Rand and Egwene, the idea of ‘hero by choice’ versus ‘hero by calling’. Neither one is ‘better’ or ‘worse’ on its own, but they do make for different stories, or different perspectives and therefore reactions to things.