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kinetic-elaboration · 4 years ago

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December 2: 1x26 Errand of Mercy

Errand of Mercy is truly a trip. I’m swiftly losing my ability to be coherent because I need to go to sleep but here are some attempts:

First of all this is, of course, a straight-up, pure, unfiltered Kirk/Spock episode with a tiny bit of unrequited Kor/Kirk on the side. Like, we’re not even going to pretend to find stuff for the rest of the crew today. I see you, Gene Coon.

This is the first Klingon ep. I just... the actual Klingon-centric episodes ARE good, but the Klingons in general are pretty boring and I legit don’t understand why they became the standard Star Trek villain. (DC Fontana apparently thought that it was because their make up was simpler v. the Romulans, acc. to Amazon trivia and....I’ll buy that.)

Is the “cultural scale” called the Richter cultural scale? I seem to recall another scale with the exact same name....

I get why there would be such a scale but they are dead wrong about where the Organians fall on it.

Anyway not to harp on this yet again but @ fanom this isn’t the military right?? Lol

Oh, no, it’s Code One! No idea what that means but the music tells me it’s a big deal and it’s bad!

“Curious how often you humans manage to obtain that which you do not want.” He’s talking about war but I can think of some other things that fall into this category.

I think it’s pretty funny that Kirk records his Captain’s logs in public.

CAPTAIN SULU.

“There’s a war happening, so Mr. Spock and I will just leave the ship... together.”

“You’ll get out of here, Sulu, and leave Spock and I... alone.”

“You’ll fall back to rendezvous with the rest of the Fleet in the Laurentian system.”

Why do these people show no interest in us beaming down into their village? Hmmm, I wonder. If the Organians really were what K and S think they are, beaming down in that way would be uh a bad idea.

Spock seems much less awkward at gesturing than Kirk does.

Finally, by the end of the season, they’ve figured out the context for the Enterprise: Starfleet, the Federation, etc.

I wish the Organians were our alien overlords and taylor.

So the Klingons are a military dictatorship.

Kirk finds them so frustrating. I feel like this ep falls into the genre “Kirk is frustrated by hippies.” All this generic peace talk and faultlessly chill attitudes are just not him.

“I’m a soldier, not a diplomat.” That’s why Spock likes him so much.

The Organians are trying to follow the Prime Directive but Kirk is making it SO HARD.

“Space vehicles.”

I know the Klingons are actually supposed to be in yellow face but you know what it looks like black face to me and I RE-ALLY wish they had not done that.

They look good in those Organian outfits. Love that they kept their command and science colors lol. I feel like this is the sort of outfit AOS Kirk wishes he had in that boring ass closet of his.

Mr. Spock does not look like an Organian.

I MUST know more about these “not uncommon” Vulcan merchants. “Dealing in kevas and trillium.”

KOR IS SO INTO KIRK. This flirting is the least subtle. “You’ll be taught to use your tongue.” “Where is your smile?” “You’re a ram among sheep.” “I need your obedience.” “You seem to be in command.” Is all of this supposed to sound sexual or...?

Right up there with “a stallion must first be broken.”

Whereas Kirk is so not into this. That expression says, “Don’t even think about talking about Spock’s tongue.”

The mind sifter is actually a crazy advanced sci fi machine and STID wanted us to think Klingons don’t have warp usdfsf go fuck yourself.

Kirk is so turned on by Spock’s mental strength.

Every spare moment of this ep is given over to K/S flirting. They legit act like an old married couple. “I thought you were going to fight that guy.” “I just might.” Or whatever.

I love that Kirk’s method of fighting is to literally launch his WHOLE BODY at enemies.

Whereas Spock’s there just running awkwardly in the background. He is Not coordinated friends.

Kirk’s speeches ARE admirable. He is lacking context here but in general if they WERE an oppressed people, this should be inspiring.

“For some reason, he feels as though he must destroy you.”

This Kor and Kirk scene... Kirk literally canNOT stop himself from flirting. His default smile is Charming. “Nothing...inconsequential [was destroyed] I hope...” Flirty smile, wink.

GO CLIMB A TREE I MEAN WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT.

We are the same species...tigers...hunters

Is this not the same cell they always use?

I feel an “and there was only one cell” fic coming on...

The Organians are actually kind of hilarious. They’ll basically let these rando aliens do whatever they want, as long as they do no violence. That’s it, that’s the one rule.”Your captors planned to do violence to you, and to that I said...naw.”

THIS is real Pacifism @ Commander Spock.

Kirk ready to go out in a blaze of fire for a bunch of annoying hippies like “I’m going to white savior you now, ungrateful Organians.”(I say this with love; I love him.)

Can you believe Kirk and Spock are about to die in an unwinnable fight of 2 against Lots of Klingons, and they’re using their last moments to FLIRT AGAIN?

Gene Coon loves writing dialogue in which Spock calculates statistics and Kirk is turned on.

Also can you BELIEVE he just pulls Spock along by the arm? Any excuse to touch him.

Okay the Organians are officially tired of your bullshit.

Too hot! Hot damn!

“We find interference in others’ affairs most disgusting.” Prime Directive! Like I said!

This is basically the plot of A Taste of Armageddon except in that ep Kirk was the Organians.

“People have the right to handle their own affairs.” Is he wrong though??

The Organians are like “okay, we all had our fun here, now get out. Seriously.”

Can you imagine how fucking weird it would be to just randomly see this alien dude materialize in the White House, or, like, Starfleet San Francisco HQ, or wherever the “home world” of the Federation is supposed to be? Just a little throwaway line in there.

By the end Kor is just straight up hilarious. He’s giving off real Ian McKellan in Vicious vibes when he says “I can handle them.”

“I guess that takes care of the war.” Yep! Very efficient!

The “it” in “It would have been glorious” is DEFINITELY not the war lol.

Good game, good game.

“I was furious with the Organians for stopping a war I didn’t want.” I’m sorry but could not THAT have been the plot of STID?

“Spock, your math was wrong the whole time.” And now Spock and Kirk can BOTH sulk lol.

Those were all of my liveblog thoughts and it’s late but.... I had so many additional thoughts on this episode... Like a lot more.

First, I love when humanoids turn out to not be humanoids, that’s one of the best things.

Second, I think this is a very gutsy episode to air at the time, and that it would still be a gutsy episode to air now. I feel like it’s one of the peanut gallery’s favorite criticisms of ST nowadays to say it’s “colonialist” but this ep makes it pretty clear it’s not--that’s the opposite of the lesson of this story.

To attempt to explain better: I completely and unironically love Kirk but I do recognize that like all 3 dimensional characters he has flaws. In this ep, I thought that while his speeches and general point of view and strategic plan were definitely right for situations a population is oppressed--that people do have the power to fight back against dictatorships, even when the odds are bad, and that it is worth it to have the courage to fight back against such oppression--he was ultimately shown to be wrong in this instance because he wasn’t actually coming into that situation. He didn’t understand as much as he thought he did. He thought he was going to be the savior here: taking control for peoples who didn't know better, saving them from oppression, and then gifting them with technology and advancement as he understood it. The Federation wouldn't have enslaved them, but the Federation did want to use them. But the Organians really truly didn't need help--the native people understood their own needs better than the outside people. That's the lesson I took from the episode. Your intentions can be good but if you're coming into a foreign situation looking to control it, without understanding the actual people involved, you’re not being a true friend or ally, and you're likely to do no more harm than good. Opposition to tyranny has to come from the source, the oppressed peoples themselves.

When he refers to “weak, innocent people” standing in the way of superpowers in the beginning--he’s not attempting to derogatory, but that is a pretty demeaning characterization.

I also thought it interesting that the Organians can take any form they want and put their society at any stage of "advancement" they want and they chose a basic agrarian aesthetic. Cottagecore rights.

Kirk really had a confirmation bias when it came to the Organians. He had an image of them--innocent, weak, oppressed--and he only took information that fit with that characterization, rather than listening to them and what they were saying.

My mom and I also discussed whether this was IC or OOC of Kirk. I’m of two minds, myself. I think Kirk at his best is much more open-minded than this. His core morality is good faith, peace, friendliness, and care for all life forms, and there are plenty of examples of this (Charlie X, Mud’s Women, and The Corbomite Maneuver all immediately come to mind.) But he does have a blind spot that I think comes up often enough to be canonically part of his character: if something is threatening or killing his crew, or his people more broadly (the Federation), then ALL he cares about is neutralizing the threat. Rare alien? Possible scientific discovery? Might not have the full details of the situation? Doesn’t matter. I’m thinking The Man Trap, The Devil in the Dark, Arena. He wants to protect aliens, but not if the alien is killing his crew. He wants to make overtures of friendship, but not if the new being has already been aggressive.

I mean like I said... a part of me is like "no he is better than this!" but another part is like... well he does have that 'soldier' side of him, he is intensely loyal to his people. The “evil” Kirk of The Enemy Within. I think he just sometimes gets these blinders in certain situations when he's just sure he's right, which is very human.

Also although he's between McCoy and Spock on the continuum of "an objective right thing exists for all people and in all situations and we should always follow that morality" and "morality itself is relative, we should be respectful of alien ways of living even when we don’t understand them" I think in general Kirk and the show is more like McCoy. There IS a right morality here. (I’m thinking of The Apple or even A Taste of Armageddon.)

I also maintain that to say in 1967 "the very personality trait of being warlike is a common denominator between enemies at war" is a dramatic statement.

My mother suggested that Kirk was “strangely appealing” in his desire to save the Organians, with or without their help, and I do agree... I think that’s the complexity of the episode. The overall thrust of the plot is that Kirk was wrong--he’s left embarrassed at the end. I stand by what I said above. And they certainly go out of their way to show that the Klingons and Federation have something in common--namely, as I said, their very capacity to wage war, and interest in waging war.

BUT, as much as I get the point that they have certain similarities with the Federation--and I think this concept of 'these war-worthy disagreements seem trivial to an advanced and neutral species' is interesting, and even more so in comparison with A Taste of Armageddon which, as I said, is this same scenario from the Organians' POV essentially--at the same time it's a bit irritating to hear the democratic Federation compared to the oppressive dictatorship of the Klingons. Like yeah, okay, none of them are light beings and they both wanted to destroy each other--point taken. But would the Federation park itself on a random planet and kill 200 people the first day? I think not. So in this sense Kirk IS right. The Klingons are an adversary worth fighting, just not over the Organians.

I don’t know what I would think of his position if the Organians were being harmed but were also just...actually sheep. Like I guess I would say "well they have to have a reason.” And in fact they did--their bodies cannot be harmed, so they really don't care if the Klingons pretend to harm them. But I just can't comprehend people being like really honestly okay with that level of oppression, as opposed to too scared or too beaten down or too brainwashed to fight it, which is different.

...And from there we went into a discussion of curative v transformative fandom and yet more on what’s wrong with AOS sdfasfjsaldf it’s past 1 am I can’t be stopped BUT I SHOULD BE STOPPED.

#star trek tos #the year 2020 #2020: fandom thoughts #2020: star trek #omg this is long

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neuxue · 6 years ago

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Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 41

EGWENE!!!!!!! And excellent use of outsider POV! And could Gawyn be more irritating? And EGWENE!!!!!

Chapter 41: A Fount of Power

Ah, the unique and entirely self-inflicted frustration of having to pause for three weeks in the middle of a major battle…

Gawyn continues to exist in this sequence and I am irritated. You’d better impede the awesome, Gawyn.

But we all know what Gawyn’s track record at the Tower looks like, so I’m not holding out a great deal of hope here.

The White Tower itself seemed to burn. It lit a daunting profile in the sky, all white and red, outlined by flames. Smoke boiled toward the midnight clouds above, fires blazed in many Tower windows, and a glare at the base indicated that outlying buildings and trees were also alight.

It’s such a great image, the once-untouchable White Tower burning against the night sky. And on a more symbolic level, it’s as if the truth is finally made visible: the Tower is burning, wounded, vulnerable, and it’s there for anyone to see.

Though right now Gawyn and the soldiers with him are more interested in seeing that there is in fact a secret entrance. And here I was hoping Gawyn might have to resort to banging really hard on the stone wall and shouting for someone to let him in, and eventually Egwene would notice him and shout down to him while lighting a to’raken on fire that she might need to take a rain check on tonight’s date, this really isn’t the best time, she has to go wash her hair.

At least he was finally doing something to help Egwene.

IS HE THOUGH?

Not all princesses want to be rescued from their fiery towers beset by dragons, Gawyn. Some of them might rather like it there. Standing in a badass hero pose, silhouetted against the night sky, surrounded by power, with their hair blowing in the wind.

She’s doing far more to help herself than you are to help her, is what I’m getting at here, Gawyn.

They were gliding directly into a war zone where both sides were stronger than they were, both sides had little reason to like them, and both sides were wielding the One Power. It took a special kind of man to stare those odds in the eyes.

‘Special’ is not exactly the word I would use.

But this frames the whole situation quite nicely: they’re heading straight into a battle in which they are hideously outmatched, with very little idea of what’s going on, for no reason but to rescue someone who has specifically asked not to be rescued. WHY.

They’ve brought a hundred soldiers with them? Again…why? What do they think that will possibly do against a Seanchan attack mounted on dragons and wielding the One Power? It’s too many for stealth, and not enough to actually have an effect. I’m just so confused as to why they’re doing this at all. You’re all going to die and to what purpose?

I suppose disguising themselves as Tower guards helps a bit on the stealth front, but still. Everything about this plan seems terrible.

“It’s always a good idea to have a few copies of your enemy’s uniform.”

“It’s not proper,” Siuan said, folding her arms. “Serving on the Tower Guard is a sacred duty. They—”

“They’re your enemy, Siuan,” Bryne said sternly.

Are they?

How long can they look at the Tower as their enemy before it becomes insurmountable truth? This is why Egwene does not want to be rescued; this is what she has learned in her time as a supposed captive of the Tower. She came here as a result of her own declaration of war against them, true, but that’s a part of this whole arc for her, realising that the Tower and the Aes Sedai there are not her enemies, that she cannot afford for them to be her enemies, even if Elaida is. That the solution must somehow be unity, not war.

Gawyn, Siuan and Bryne took up positions at the front—Gawyn and the general walking just ahead of Siuan, as if they were Warders

Gawyn Trakand, the things you do not notice could literally fill books.

All in all, the illusion was very good. On first glance, Gawyn himself would have bought the disguise.

Yeah, sorry, that’s really not a high bar.

The billowing smoke reflected red firelight, enveloping the Tower in a menacing crimson haze. Holes and gashes broke the walls of the once-majestic building; fires blazed within several of them.

It’s so starkly different from how the Tower has always been described up until now; it’s the sort of language that would much more naturally be associated with, say, Dragonmount. But the illusion of a pure white structure, beautiful and untouchable and eternal, a monument and a lasting symbol of strength, has been shattered, and beneath it is…this. A nightmare of fire and a crumbling structure and chaos, burning.

I just love the contrast, because up until now the descriptions of the Tower have been so consistent, so perfectly crafted to suit an entity that presents only and exactly the image it chooses, never changing, never faltering, never letting anyone see what is truly there. In hindsight, all those descriptions feel a bit like looping a single piece of film across CCTV footage while carrying out a bank robbery. Too perfect, too still. And so to now get these descriptions instead is perfect in its suddenness, jarring in the way a shattering is as the illusion is forcibly broken away.

Up above, near the middle of the Tower, several gashes were spewing fireballs and lighting back out at the invaders.

EGWENE! Maybe Gawyn will see her as the absolute fucking badass that she is and will realise that she is way, way out of his league, and will give up and go home and leave Egwene to be awesome in peace.

“Now what?” Gawyn whispered.

Great plan, guys.

“We find Egwene,” Siuan answered. “We start at the base, then head down to the basement floors. She was locked down there somewhere earlier today, and it’s probably the first place we should look.”

Oh, ye of little faith. How can even you, Siuan, have so little confidence in her? You’ve seen her take on a Hall that treated her like a puppet, you’ve sent her to hunt the Black Ajah as little more than a novice, you know her strength and resourcefulness and ability.

Gawyn, she’s supposed to be the woman you love, and therefore someone you should have confidence in, and assume competence of. That’s how it works, right?

Bryne, you swore allegiance to her when, again, she was to all appearances just a girl raised Amyrlin so that it would be easy to pull her strings. You gave her an army and trusted that she would know what to do with it.

And yet NONE OF YOU look at the battle taking place, and think that maybe Egwene is in the middle of it, that maybe Egwene has done what she does and found a way to turn an impossible situation to her advantage, or at least found a way to fight back. Give her some credit already!

I know, I know, based on the information they have, her situation is Hashtag Not Great, but…come on, this is Egwene we’re talking about! Even if ‘ah she’s probably found a way to be badass and claim the Amyrlin’s authority at least as a battlefield commission in order to get shit done when no one else can and save the Tower’ isn’t the default assumption, they should at least entertain the possibility that she’s managed to figure something out, that she’s found a way to fight back.

Though in Siuan’s case, I wonder if there’s an element of…projection? After all, she was a clever and capable and powerful Amyrlin, but she was dancing on thin ice for a long time with the coming of the Dragon Reborn and the secrets she held and the course she was trying to take, and she did not see the coup coming, and for all her own resourcefulness and strength she was unable to save herself from it. So from her I wonder if it’s not so much a lack of confidence in Egwene as a sense of something almost like déjà vu, of looking at this situation and being terrified that it’s happening again, that what happened to her will happen to Egwene because even the most capable can be brought down.

Gawyn has no excuse though. He’s had many, many opportunities to give his girlfriend a single vote of confidence and he always seems to…not do that. It’s very frustrating.

Oh thank the Light it’s a POV switch.

I should have known it would be Saerin trying to actually implement some sort of strategy. Or one of that group, anyway; they’re some of the few who have managed bipartisan talks cooperation and effective work towards an actual goal lately.

Around her, the room was in virtual chaos.

I think this is a case of somewhere the word ‘literal’ would actually be appropriate…

Moradri was a long-limbed Mayener with dark skin, and she was trailed by two handsome Warders, both also Mayener. Rumours said that they were her brothers, come to the White Tower to defend their sister

Okay I know we’re in the middle of a battle here but this is such an interesting little aside! On the one hand, I’m almost surprised we haven’t seen instances of the Warder bond being used between siblings, but on the other hand, speaking as someone who has a sibling…wow. That would be uh. Interesting. And yet it also makes a lot of sense, given that it is by definition an incredibly close bond requiring a great deal of trust and a long partnership…but also two brothers as Warders. What a family! I suddenly want all of the backstory here.

No Greens to be found. We know where Adelorna is, at least, but it’s really not all that surprising, if you think about it.

“A pity,” Saerin said. “They like to call themselves the Battle Ajah, after all. Well, that leaves me to organise the fighting.”

They’re the Battle Ajah, but I think that the Tower’s long tendencies towards secrecy, isolation and insulation, noninterference between sisters, and manipulation rather than outright participation in any sort of war or battle has not just had an impact on the Greens’ ability to work as anything resembling a cohesive group, but is also a set of attitudes that would end up forcing tactics over strategy in a battle situation.

Whereas someone like Saerin, or really any of the Brown Ajah who have made war and strategy a part of their studies might well be better suited to the more administrative – but oh so massively underrated and vitally important – aspects of fighting.

Saerin eyed the Green sister, then tapped the map. “Mark the locations, Moradri. You can go back to the fighting soon enough, but your knowledge is more important right now.”

Yes, exactly this. Moradri wants to be out there fighting, because that’s what her Ajah’s attitude is or has become. And because if they all see themselves as individuals acting separately, of course the impulse is to go out and fight directly, rather than recognise that they’ll actually be more successful if they coordinate, and that all of them just throwing all their firepower at whatever they can reach is not the most efficient approach.

They have fighting skills, it seems, but they don’t know how to function as any sort of military force. Because the Tower’s attitudes haven’t allowed for that sort of thinking or cohesiveness to ever emerge.

So you need the people who can stand back rather than rushing straight in to where the fighting is thickest, who can pull out the maps and watch what’s happening and bring some level of organisation to the chaos, and send out those who do have the actual hands-on fighting ability but may lack the mindset for looking at the bigger picture.

Which of course is just another of the already myriad reasons the Ajahs need to work together and maybe, I don’t know, communicate and recognise that they all have valuable but different skills to contribute and that they’re stronger and more capable as a whole than as a disparate set of individuals, but…well, that’s sort of the whole point of the Tower’s story, isn’t it? United we stand, divided we fall, and all that.

“Captain, our most important task is to form a centre of operations. Aes Sedai and soldiers alike are scrambling about independently, acting like rats faced by wolves. We need to stand together.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Not that that’s ever stopped me from spending a few hundred words trying…

It’s not just that they need to stand together, though. It’s that they need to work together, and delegate tasks, and understand that it’s not just about firepower here. That they need a centre of operations, and that means some of them hanging back from the fighting, in order to make that fighting more efficient.

And I like that it isn’t Egwene organising this. Because Egwene is so much better suited to doing exactly what she’s doing: leading from the front, by example, and demonstrating in highly effective fashion the importance of having battle-ready tacticians who can hold their own in the middle of a fight and respond quickly. Egwene is somewhat more of a tactician than a strategist, and in a way she’s an example of what the Green Ajah could and should be, because she doesn’t only consider herself, and she doesn’t approach the fight as an individual but rather as a leader, taking into account the other people around her and how they can have the most impact.

But she goes straight for the front lines; Egwene is not exactly a character to hold herself back from…anything, really. She’s not the sort of person who would be in Saerin’s role—before or after a battle, maybe, but not during one. So I like that we get to see the importance of both. That Egwene gets to be badass as the Amyrlin in battle, but we also get this quiet emphasis on how important it is for the rest of the Tower to come together, to figure out how to strategise as a whole rather than a bunch of individuals. Egwene is fighting for the Tower, but the Tower also needs to learn how to fight for itself in order to back her up, and follow that lead. And for that, they need not just a leader like Egwene, but people like Saerin who can fill those desperately needed administrative and strategic roles, and look beyond the divisions as Egwene has been trying so hard to get them to do.

I also like that Saerin explicitly acknowledges Egwene in her thoughts, because Egwene isn’t here—and shouldn’t be; she’s doing just fine right where she is—but this is largely due to her influence. She can’t play every role herself, and what she’s doing right now is probably the best thing she could possibly be doing, but this is why she’s been trying to get them to break down those barriers between the Ajahs and even between the sisters themselves. Because Tarmon Gai’don is coming, and they need all of those skills—not just the fighters, or the healers, or the strategists, or the historians, but all of them, contributing their individual strengths. Just as we see Saerin doing here.

“This is a disaster!” an angry voice shouted.

Katerine, at least fifteen minutes late and not even bringing Starbucks.

“How dare they strike here!” Katerine continued.

Yes, Katerine, we see what you’re doing. It’s something the Black Ajah has been frighteningly successful at: sowing this sort of discord and inward-looking righteous anger and doing everything in their power to keep the Tower, and the Aes Sedai within it, from looking past themselves and their status and superiority.

So she comes into this ad-hoc centre of operations trying to rile them all up, because that’s the best way to ensure that they continue to face this threat as no more than an angry set of individuals, rather than putting aside insult or anger or fear for a while in order to fight back.

“We need to scour the Tower and eliminate each of them!”

It’s such a transparent attempt to divide them, and yet they’re all so divided already that would probably work, if Saerin weren’t here to immediately stomp out the bullshit.

Saerin raised an eyebrow. “Since when did the Mistress of Novices outrank a Sitter in the Hall, Katerine?”

Katerine tries to play the Red vs Brown angle but Saerin’s response is excellent not just because Katerine is a pain in our collective arses and it’s nice to see someone give her the verbal slap in the face she so deserves, but because it completely…not just ignores but takes all the relevance out of their difference in Ajahs. Saerin is a Sitter and Katerine is not and they’re under attack and it doesn’t matter what Ajah they are.

It reminds me, really, of Egwene telling Adelorna that for now, Adelorna and the others must call her Mother and accept her authority (also can I just say as an aside how much I love that the title of authority claimed by a leader in the midst of battle is Mother? Like what a way to quietly and without even addressing it subvert military and battle gender expectations and stereotypes). Saerin’s doing a similar thing in the…centre of operations, such as it is. She claims authority through competence, and for now they have to just accept that.

This battle isn’t really about the Seanchan so much as it’s about the Tower having to confront some hard truths about itself, which means it’s a time when characters like Egwene but also characters like Saerin get a chance to shine.

Another boom sounded outside.

“Where do those keep coming from?” Saerin asked in annoyance. “Haven’t they made enough holes?”

They?

“No, Aes Sedai!” the guard said. “I think it was a blast thrown from within the Tower, launched from one of the upper floors out at the flying creatures.” “Well at least someone else is fighting back,” Saerin said.

OH YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

She doesn’t, does she? Of course she wouldn’t. Because the Tower is a mess and there’s so little communication and even those like Egwene and Saerin who are trying to coordinate an actual defence—either by enacting it with whatever resources they can reach, or by trying to form a central command hub—are isolated from one another, and no one knows what’s going on.

“It appears that there’s a second rallying point for the defence, and it’s doing very well.”

YOU DON’T SAY. Tell us more, Captain. Paint us a picture of Egwene being a force of light, a rallying point for the Tower.

Have I mentioned I love outsider POV? We’re not even seeing Egwene through any of these characters’ eyes but that almost makes it better, because as the reader you know who they’re talking about even when they don’t. You can watch them try in wonder and surprise to work it out, or to see Saerin take it in stride but also with a clear sense of relief and even excitement, and you know who is causing that, who is having that kind of impact. There’s a particular kind of delight as a reader in seeing other characters in some form of awe or respect or even just surprise or relief at what you know to be another character’s actions, but their reaction isn’t for the character, it’s for what the character has done. It’s for the awesome, even when they don’t know the source of the awesome, but as a reader you do and it’s wonderful. This is maybe a weirdly specific thing to love, but love it I do.

“Where?” Saerin asked eagerly. “Specifically?”

“The twenty-second, Aes Sedai. Northeastern quarter.”

“What?” Katerine asked. “The Brown Ajah sections?”

No. That was what had been there before. Now, with the swapping of the Tower’s corridors, that area of the Tower was…

THIS IS EVERYTHING I WANTED IT TO BE.

This slow realisation, the amazement first at the fact that there’s a strong defence at all, and then wondering who and how, and then this gradual realisation that wait, wait…

It’s not suspense, exactly, because as a reader you know exactly who and how, but watching other characters realise is just delicious.

“The novices’ quarters?” Saerin said. That seemed even more ridiculous. “How in the world…” She trailed off, eyes widening slightly. “Egwene.”

I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS SO MUCH.

This, this is why I absolutely adore outsider POV. It’s that sense of…triumph by proxy, that thrill of other characters realising, and really seeing Egwene for the first time in a new light, even when she’s not actually there. Perhaps even because she’s not actually there. Those moments when characters recognise something in another that you’ve known all along but seeing it through new eyes it’s almost like getting to see it again for the first time.

Also okay, I’m just a simple girl with simple needs, and so if you give me a character breathing another character’s name in astonishment and realisation, I will be happy.

It’s especially effective because this is what Egwene has been working towards for so long, and we’ve seen bits and pieces of it—of the way the other Aes Sedai see her shifting—but this is where it really seems to happen. Where someone like Saerin fully understands that this girl is no novice, that she’s not a wilfull child or a puppet manipulated into declaring herself Amyrlin. This is where, again perhaps because Egwene isn’t actually there, she and maybe the others can look past Egwene’s youth and her novice dress and see what they’ve been unable or unwilling to see before. That this woman is the Amyrlin, and she is a force to be reckoned with, and she will save the Tower by sheer force of will if she has to.

I also like how that realisation is coming right on the heels of a very different mood of outsider-POV-realisations-about-a-character with Rand. Mostly in seeing him through Tuon’s eyes, but even seeing him through Min’s when he burned Natrin’s Barrow. There, it was watching other characters finally realise just how terrifying he has become—or in Tuon’s case, you get the same impression because it’s her first time meeting him and what she sees and thinks about shows Rand in a very different light, seen through the eyes of someone who has not been watching him all along and doesn’t still see, at least a little bit, the boy from Emond’s Field.

And now you get the same thing with Egwene—the realisation that she is not just a girl from Emond’s Field claiming authority she doesn’t have, and that she is a force to be reckoned with, and that she’s so much more than they assumed her to be—but in every other aspect it’s opposite to what we see with Rand. And yet conveyed through the same techniques, and even with the Seanchan as backdrop, to some extent.

Now over to Egwene herself!

Egwene stood at an open hole in the side of the White Tower, wind pulling at her white dress, tugging at her hair, howling as if in accompaniment to her rage.

I do love these…Hero Pose Portraits we get of her. Egwene at the heart of the storm, wind in her hair and fire in her eyes. It’s a strong visual, and a very recognisable one. This is absolutely and immediately recognisable as a Hero Pose, and I suppose it’s a good example of how some tropes are tropes because damn it they work.

Her anger was not out of control. It was cold and distilled. The Tower was burning.

Are you tired of me drawing parallels and contrasts between her and Rand yet? Yes? Well, too bad.

‘Cold’ is definitely a description pretty strongly associated with Rand at this point, cold and hard and emotionless. And right at this moment, yes, Egwene is cold and calm and ruthless. She’s in the middle of a battle; she has to be. She has to be able to order the novices to form circles and fight with her, she has to be able to strike to kill, to bring down raken that may be carrying Aes Sedai captives. She has to be able to think, and to respond to the Seanchan’s attacks, and plan her own.

But the difference between her and Rand here is that Egwene uses that as a temporary state, and even then she doesn’t deny her emotions, or push them down so far that they end up stabbing her to death from the inside with their tiny spiteful knives (don’t lie to me, Rand, that’s exactly what’s going on and we both know it).

It’s like when she told herself steel yourself, Egwene, before reading through the list of dead ladies Black Ajah members. There are times when a measure of cold is needed. There are times to put emotion aside for later. But she doesn’t try to become that cold. She doesn’t try to become steel. She can harden herself to battle when she has to, and she does a bloody good job of it, but she’s not trying to flay herself into a permanent state of it as a way of dealing with what she must do.

She can embrace pain, but embracing it also means accepting and acknowledging and feeling it, and understanding that her aims are simply more important than the pain. She can steel herself to harsh truth, but she also takes a few moments to work through the emotional turmoil it causes.

It’s an issue of moderation; Egwene seems to have found a balance of sorts, where Rand has gone to an extreme. She can access that place of calm, cold determination, but she doesn’t have to take up permanent residence there (which is good because wow, here I thought America’s citizenship path was demanding). And she has a very clear sense of why she’s doing this; it’s something she has chosen, and something she will fight for because she believes it is worth fighting for. The fact that she cares is what enables her to do this at all, whereas Rand feels like he has to not care about anything in order to reach a state where he can do anything.

She directed her anger—the anger of justice, the wrath of the Amyrlin.

She can be cold in the midst of battle, but she’s channelling her anger into that rather than denying it. She is not unfeeling, here; this is not like Rand so calmly and so quietly erasing a fortress with balefire, knowing it should terrify him and yet feeling nothing at all. She is angry and she accepts that anger and both the power and the consequences of it.

And I think maybe it comes down to choices, again. Egwene can kill for the Tower because she chose her role; she may not actually want to kill people but it doesn’t threaten to destroy her when she has to, because she accepts it as part of the path and cause and role she has chosen. Not that she specifically chose the killing people part, or necessarily would have, but I think she doesn’t see it as a duty she is forced to bear, a role she is forced to play, blood that is demanded of her. She chose the Tower and she chose to be Amyrlin and she chose to leave Emond’s Field and she chose to be the person she is now and give herself to this cause, and so if this is part of it, well, then, that is what she will do. It feels like one of those lines that is both vast and yet so small, just a matter of perspective and nuance, and yet it makes such a huge difference to almost everything.

She was a fount of Power, drawn from deep within the fluted rod in her hands, channelled through a group of novices and Accepted hiding in the room behind, bound to her in circle. Egwene was part of the fires that burned in the Tower, bloodying the sky with their flames, painting the air with their smoke. She almost seemed not a being of flesh, but one of pure Power, sending judgement to those who had dared bring war to the Tower itself. Blasts of lightning stormed from the sky, the clouds churning above. Fire sprouted from her hands.

This is absolutely beautiful, and so, so similar to how Rand was described, as a force of Light, a being seemingly made of light and Power rather than flesh, channelling through a ter’angreal that shone in his hands. And at the end, fire.

It’s such an eerily similar description, and it carries the same beauty and power, and yet the context and therefore feeling it evokes is so completely different. These are the parallels I love, where the scenes are almost mirrors of each other, where the actions or situations are almost identical, and yet a simple shift in perspective or sense of agency or reasoning can make it look completely and utterly opposite.

With Rand, this image was one to evoke a sense of quiet horror, beauty and yet terror, a pause before the step across a line, the sort of silence and blinding power and then act that leaves no breath or words for making sense of what has just happened. But now, the almost identical image is one of wrath and justice and power and triumph—there’s a harshness to it, yes, but it’s all for a purpose, and there is no silent gaping absence of emotion, no moment where it seems the whole world is drawing in in horror before the release.

With Rand, the eeriness came in part from the complete absence of violence in the description. It was just beauty and power and then…that. Whereas with Egwene the violence is a part of it; the description is beautiful and she is a being of power but we have fires the burned the Tower and bloodying the sky and painting the air with their smoke and blasts and churned. There is no denial of violence here, just as there is no denial of the emotional aspect of it. This isn’t quiet the way Rand’s scene was, because nothing is being muted or suppressed here. There isn’t a sense of absence, or of something vital missing. There’s just violent, terrible, beautiful power and triumph and anger and desperate defense and vengeance and justice. No, it’s not kind. But it’s not meant to be. And so it has none of the eeriness of A Force of Light, none of the growing horror at how soft and quiet everything was contrasted with what it was.

And I like the nod here to the Amyrlin being one with the Tower, in the way we’re always given the Dragon as one with the land.

Perhaps she should have feared breaking the Three Oaths. But she did not. This was a fight that needed to be fought, and she did not lust for death—though, perhaps, her rage against the sul’dam approached it. The soldiers and damane were unfortunate casualties.

The White Tower, the sacred dwelling of the Aes Sedai, was under attack. They were all in dagner, a danger greater than death. Those silvery collars were far worse. Egwene defended herself and each woman in the Tower.

Okay, I’m glad we at least got some acknowledgement that this is on the fuzzy side of compliance with the Three Oaths, though I’m still surprised Adelorna didn’t even think about it.

For the record, I have absolutely no problems with what Egwene is doing; the Seanchan attacked first, and they’re attacking to capture or kill, and if Egwene can spin that into defending her life and the lives of all the Aes Sedai in the Tower in order to comply with the oath against using the Power as a weapon, great. But it is definitely in a slightly grey area of that particular oath, so I’m glad we’re seeing some awareness of that.

And…yeah, she’s not killing because killing is fun, but she’s also not going to be torturing herself with the blood on her hands after this. Would she have chosen this battle? No. But it’s here and this is the role she has chosen, and so this is a part of what that means, and she can accept that. Even somewhat coldly, in the moment—but again I don’t think it’s a complete absence of feeling so much as an acceptance, and a lack of…heaping unnecessary pain on herself because of the things that she has to do.

(And I’m just going to continue to ignore the ‘worse than death’ thing because I said so).

The attackers prepared weaves to strike her down, but each time Egwene struck first, either deflecting the balls of fire with a blast of air or simply bringing down the to’raken who carried the women trying to kill her.

A one-woman anti-aircraft gun.

Something I really like about this fight is that it doesn’t shy away from the fact that Egwene is in battle, with a body count, aiming to kill. It’s something that often is…avoided…with female protagonists. Implied, sometimes, but often euphemised or glossed over or never really verified on-screen. A bit like how we see Aviendha, actually; she’s a former Maiden of the Spear and it’s kind of assumed that she has been in fights and has killed people, but it’s definitely told more than shown. So you get a fair amount of that (and then there’s Tamora Pierce, doing the Good Work and providing all kinds of Ladies With Swords content), but this is definitely more rare.

And yet Egwene gets to have that, and it’s not written as a stain on her character, or as something that’s going to cause an existential crisis. It’s just who and where she is: she is the Amyrlin and the Tower is under attack and she is on the front lines defending, and that means she is in a battle, and she is fighting and fighting to kill. Just as Mat and Perrin and Rand have been. And it’s not written differently because she’s a woman, or even written in such a way as to highlight that at all. It’s just written as a powerful main character in a battle for her life and the cause she’s defending.

Between Falme and Cairhien and now this, she’s probably in the running for second-highest body count after Rand (maybe third; Mat is almost certainly higher and it’s hard to say with Perrin), but it’s not made into a Thing any more than it is for any of them. Nor is she the seductress/femme-fatale type you often see with women who have blood on their hands. She’s just…a powerful character in a position that means she sees battle, and she’s really not treated any differently in that sense than the male characters in similar positions. Which I really, really appreciate.

Some would escape. But they would pay dearly. That was another goal. She had to make certain they never attacked the Tower again.

This raid had to cost them.

And this is the other thing I like: that she’s allowed to have this edge. She is fighting on the defensive, and out of necessity, but she is also approaching it as a tactician, and it is a battle, and could turn into an ongoing war. So she’s doing what she can to prevent that, which means making it cost them—which means killing them. She’s allowed that ruthlessness, just as she has always been allowed ambition; two traits that are sometimes hard to find in non-villain female characters.

Over to Bryne now, who is busy dodging a burning raken. Probably Egwene’s welcome gift to him; she’s a bit busy to send flowers.

It’s a shame Bashere isn’t here; he’d probably commandeer one and honestly I want nothing more.

Were the Seanchan running away from something or just looking for a fight?

Not something, Bryne. They are absolutely fleeing someone and I cannot wait for you to work it out. Because watching people work out how very capable and frankly terrifying Egwene is has been the best part of these chapters.

Well, aside from Egwene herself, of course.

I don’t want Bryne to admire Gawyn’s swordsmanship because that means I have to accept that Gawyn’s good with a sword and—okay, this sentence was actually going somewhere but it got derailed when I realised I was just diving headfirst into truly awful innuendo. Ow. Well, whatever Gawyn, Galad is still the better swordsman and Mat could take both of you with a stick and Lan could probably take all three of you without breaking a sweat and—yeah, no, that sentence wasn’t any better. I give up.

Gawyn unsheathed his own blade, on edge. “Look up there,” he said, and pointed with his sword. […] “By the Light…” Bryne whispered, focusing on the gap. A solitary figure wearing white stood in the Tower’s rent.

AW YEAH.

The theme of this chapter is whispered awe at the sight or even realisation of Egwene and I am here for it.

And yes, Bryne. By the Light indeed. Even more so than you meant it, I think.

It’s just SUCH A GOOD IMAGE, a solitary figure in white, alone and yet the essence of the Tower itself, as it should be; the Amyrlin even dressed as a novice, standing in a fracture in the Tower because she is the one holding it together, holding its attackers at bay.

It was too distant to make out her face, even with the spyglass, but whoever she was

ARE YOU SHITTING ME. ‘Whoever she was’? Surely one of you at least has a fleeting suspicion at this point?

Whoever she was, she was certainly doing some damage to the Seanchan. Her arms were upraised with fire glowing between her hands, the burning light throwing shadows across the outer Tower wall around her.

Setting aside the fact that her boyfriend and her general can’t seem to recognise her, I love all these glimpses we get of her throughout the battle. We only see briefly from her POV, but to those who see her…the descriptions are all in this mode of the heroic bordering almost on the divine. A force of light and power, a solitary figure in white, arms upraised and fire in her hands, a symbol of strength and determination and everything the Tower should be. And she is always met with awe and almost wonder; it’s such a great way to show a character coming well and truly into her own in the eyes of those around her.

Except, apparently, for Bryne and Gawyn, who still don’t even consider that it could be her. WHO THE FUCK ELSE WOULD IT BE?

I am Disgruntled.

(Also, the burning light throwing shadows is again so similar to the description of Rand in A Force of Light that it’s almost hard to tell the quotes apart…and yet while the visual imagery is the same, almost nothing else is. On the one hand destruction, and on the other, salvation).

The badly wounded would be abandoned into enemy hands, but they had been warned of that possibility before coming on this mission. Recovering the Amyrlin outweighed all other concerns.

Except by ‘enemy’ he means the Tower and not the Seanchan, and he looks at the whole battle against the Seanchan as a distraction from their real purpose, and really none of them should be enemies and he just saw the Amyrlin and she certainly did not need recovering and really…everything is wrong here. None of them should be fighting, and yet they are, and all sides or contingents involved have a different thought as to who the enemy even is, and it’s just confusion and chaos because none of this should be happening at all.

“And if you’d been recognised?” he demanded. “Siuan, these people tried to execute you!”

She sniffed. “Moiraine herself wouldn’t recognise me with this face.”

Wow, okay, I’m not sure why this hit me the way it did but something about the fact that she so reflexively uses Moiraine as the reference point her …as far as Siuan knows, Moiraine is dead, and yet she has for so long been the person Siuan was closest to, the one other person who shared their secret for twenty years, her best friend and onetime lover and just the way she says it, ‘Moiraine herself’, without seeming to even think about it…I don’t know, it came out of nowhere and yet of course that’s what she would say and suddenly I’m a little bit sad.

There are a lot of reunions—or even first-time meetings—I’m hoping for before the end, but Moiraine and Siuan are very high on the list. They are the only ones left of the ones who began this, and I just want them to have a moment to see one another again and be able to share that knowledge of how far they have come and all they have done, even if it’s bittersweet, and maybe even get to finally lay that duty down and look ahead to a life in this world they’ve given so much of their lives to save.

Anyway she’s found a novice who should at least be able to tell them what’s going on, and by ‘what’s going on’ I mean ‘that Egwene is a badass and they don’t need to rescue her because she’s busy rescuing the entire Tower, so maybe they could just go help her out with that’.

“The Amyrlin, Egwene al’Vere,” the novice said in a quivering voice. “She was released from the cells earlier today and allowed to return to the novices’ quarters.”

And the novices’ quarters aren’t where they were, so there’s still some reason for Siuan and the others to not immediately put two and two together to make ‘Egwene is a badass and they don’t need to rescue her because she’s busy rescuing the Tower, so maybe they culd just go help her out with that’ but the fact that still none of them have even considered the possibility is DRIVING ME MAD.

“But she’s probably up on the twenty-first or twenty-second level somewhere. That’s where the novices’ quarters are now.”

Okay, no more excuses.

AND YET. THEY STILL. DO NOT EVEN THINK. THAT MAYBE THE GLORIOUS AND TERRIBLE WOMAN WITH FIRE IN HER HANDS AND A WHITE NOVICE DRESS IS THEIR AMYRLIN.

I am, of course, most disappointed in Gawyn who should be the one going ‘Wait! What if that was Egwene! My girlfriend is awesome and capable and maybe she’s managed to find a way to fight!’ but instead goes straight for ‘We’ve got to reach her!’

He was the one who pointed her out, even. Worst Boyfriend of the Year.

I cannot believe I have been forced to a point where I wish that, if she had to choose one of the Brothers Arthurian, she had chosen Galad. I resent this.

“You’re here to rescue her, aren’t you?” The novice sounded eager.

Bryne eyed the girl. Child, I wish you hadn’t made that connection.

What, you thought there was even a slight chance that she wouldn’t? With you storming into the Tower and talking about Egwene and immediately saying you have to go and find her? Just because you three are all being as dense as bricks about what’s right in front of you doesn’t mean everyone else is.

As much as I loved the way Saerin’s realisation that Egwene was the one organising the fight against the Seanchan, the astonishment as she said Egwene’s name and understood what was happening? That’s how much I’m annoyed at seeing Bryne and Gawyn and Siuan fail to realise the same thing.

Especially because really, they have just as much information as Saerin did, and she worked it out. More information, even; they’ve actually seen Egwene, even if they couldn’t make out her face. *Shakes head* I’m not mad; I’m just very disappointed in the three of you.

Pause for a quick Healing break because this lot have brought swords to a One Power fight.

Would [the Tower] ever be the same again, or had a seemingly eternal monument fallen this evening? Was he proud or grieved to have witnessed it?

This, I like, because it’s one of the threads running through this whole chapter—and, really, through most of the series, especially since The Shadow Rising. Now, though, the cracks that have spidered their way up the Tower are made plain for the world to see, thrown open beyond anyone’s ability to hide. It’s that destruction of the illusion of invincibility, which can utterly flip entire worldviews. The realisation that something once considered untouchable is just as vulnerable as anywhere else, and I am…somewhat put in mind of an aspect of a nation’s response to fall of another (set of) tower(s); a lot has been written about the realisation of vulnerability that caused, and the effect it’s had on the sociopolitical landscape of the entire country pretty much since then. There’s definitely a paradigm shift that occurs with that sort of realisation or fracturing of worldview.

I like Bryne’s…confusion isn’t the word I want but it’ll have to do…at whether he feels proud or grieved to be seeing this. He’s not really a part of the Tower—I mean, he serves a claimant to the Amyrlin Seat and he’s bonded now to a former Amyrlin and his focus has been on fighting to reclaim the Tower, so okay, he’s got some ties there, but he’s not Aes Sedai, and he’s not from Tar Valon, and for most of his life he has been no more tied to the Tower than anyone on this continent. But it’s been a constant throughout all that time; love it or hate it or fear it, the Tower has been the Tower for as long as anyone alive can remember. So to watch this…there could be a sense of pride, or perhaps of justice or vindication in seeing the arrogance of the Aes Sedai brought low. But at the same time…it has been a constant, and while the Aes Sedai are far from perfect, what does it mean for the world if they are show to be truly fallible? If the Tower can break, what else will follow? It’s the sense of an ending; it’s one thing to know Tarmon Gaidon is coming, but another to watch as a symbol of your time is destroyed.

No time for philosophical pondering, though, because he has to go stab a guy.

Was this one of the Bloodknives? It certainly looks to be; pity that didn’t help him against a Warder’s reflexes.

Assassins. They always seemed to look the same, regardless of the culture.

This feels like an author poking fun, and I had to laugh.

“Min,” Siuan said, sounding tired. Those Healings seemed to have taken a lot out of her. “She said I had to stay near you.” She paused. “If you hadn’t come tonight, I would have died.”

“Well,” Bryne said, “I am your Warder. I suspect it won’t be the only time I save you.” Why had it grown so warm all of a sudden.

“Yes,” Siuan said, standing up. “But this is different. Min said I’d die, and…No, wait. That’s not what Min said exactly. She said that if I didn’t stay close to you, we’d both die.”

And she proceeds to pull a poisoned needle out of his arm. So Min was right, but her viewing only ended up being true because she told Siuan about it, because if she hadn’t, then Siuan wouldn’t have paused to think about it and about the other half of it, which implies that—okay, no, that way lies brain-pain. Do Not Think Too Hard About Foretellings And Prophecies: rule number one of reading fantasy (without falling into an infinite loop).

“But I wouldn’t have been poisoned if I hadn’t come!” “Don’t try to apply logic to a viewing or Foretelling like this”

It’s like you read my mind, Siuan. Or, more likely, Sanderson. A little nod to the nature of the genre, there?

Egwene sat, exhausted, on a pile of rubble, staring out of the hole in the White Tower, watching fires burn below.

I love that this is how we begin her POV here. We’ve seen her glorious in battle, full of cold anger and justice and determination, we’ve seen other characters look to her in awe, and the Seanchan have fled from her…

And, in victory, all we see is exhaustion. Exhaustion and the aftermath—the Tower is still broken, the fires still burn. They have won, but there is a price.

It’s such an excellent contrast to the imagery and mood from the battle itself, and it’s perfect in the way so many of the battle-aftermath scenes have been in this series. It’s that sense of…only a battle lost is sadder than a battle won.

She has fought, and she has won, but while there was a sense of triumph and strength in the moment, now there’s just…exhaustion and rubble. They’ve won, but it has taken so much, and they’ve taken wounds, and it’s not truly over. And like so many battles in the series, it wasn’t even against the Shadow; it was against those who should not be enemies and yet are, because they cannot find common ground.

And…I just realised something. This was Egwene’s parallel to A Force of Light (well, parallel and inversion) but it was also her Dumai’s Wells. The Seanchan are, in a way, her Shaido; the Shaido were the catalyst for much of Rand’s early arc and steps along the path that led him to where he is now, and at Dumai’s Wells he broke free from the box he was kept in and found himself surrounded by them and thought They will pay. I am the Lord of the Morning. And then he destroyed them—or, commanded and witnessed their destruction until he couldn’t take it anymore and they fled—in a vicious battle that ended in definitive but pyrrhic victory, as well as Aes Sedai swearing fealty to him.

Meanwhile, the Seanchan were the catalyst for much of Egwene’s early arc and steps along the path that have led her to where she is, and now she has just been freed from the box-like prison cell where she was held and beaten, and she finds herself surrounded by the Seanchan and thinks They would pay dearly. This raid had to cost them, and destroys them with fire and the One Power resulting in victory, but one that comes at the high cost to the nearly-destroyed Tower, but has led to Aes Sedai accepting her authority and seems likely to lead to Aes Sedai acknowledging her as Amyrlin.

Though, of course, there’s the usual inversion of tone to a certain extent; this doesn’t feel like Egwene’s darkest hour, even with the exhaustion and destruction that follows. But I think the point is that it so easily could have been, that so much depends on perception.

It’s also just a really cool set of parallels.

A few sisters weaving Air or Water could make short work of the flames, preserving the Tower. What was left of it.

Egwene closed her eyes and lay back, resting against the fragments of a wall, feeling the fresh breeze blow across her.

Here, again, we get a sense almost of the Amyrlin as one with the Tower. Victorious, technically, but beaten and exhausted and still burning, unable to do anything but lie back against the fragments of what was. With the wind, of course. Of course a wind rises, here.

Egwene wanted to help. A part of her did, at least. A sliver. But Light, she was tired! She couldn’t channel another trickle, not even using the sa’angreal. She’d pushed the limits of what she could manage. But she was so worn out now that she woudn’t be able to embrace the Source if she tried.

Oh, Egwene. It is a heavy mountain to carry, even if it is one she has largely chosen, or believes she has chosen. But she has been through so much in the last…well, twelve books but particularly the last few weeks, and she just faced the strength of the Seanchan while barely able to channel unaided, and still the Tower is broken and still there is more to do and she wants to help but there are limits and she is far past them.

Not that that always stops her, but…there’s a sense here not quite of despair but I guess that she’s been doing too much of this alone for too long. She’s held the Tower together and defended it all while those within it have tried to break her even as the Tower itself was breaking—the Tower is one with the Amyrlin and the Amyrlin is one with the Tower—and maybe now it’s up to some of them to put the fires out. To begin the repair. To help her hold the Tower together, because there’s no point if they don’t join her; there’s no point in her holding it up if the Aes Sedai don’t rally to the same cause.

And so perhaps it’s not up to her to help, here. She has done what she can for them, and she will continue to do more, but right now it’s time for them to take some steps of their own, to decide whether the Tower will in fact be saved, or whether they will let it fall.

She’d fought. She’d been glorious and destructive, the Amyrlin of judgement and fury, Green Ajah to the core. And still, the Tower had burned.

This is so, so lovely. I love that glorious and destructive are the words she chooses. There is absolutely a salvation/destruction duality to what she has done here, and I’m not even going to parallel it with Rand’s own entire character and story of salvation and destruction, but instead I just think it’s perfect for her situation and for the Tower itself.

She fought, and fought beautifully, and despite all her power and determination, the Tower burned. Because it can’t just be her; for the Tower to stand, it has to be unified. There is only so much she can do alone, and until the others truly join her and decide for themselves to save the Tower, she can only just hold it together, no matter how strong she is. She can lead, but only if they decide to follow. Otherwise she is holding together an empty shell of a memory of a possibility.

I just love aftermath scenes.

So much.

Especially the way they’re done in this series. Joyful or despairing, gloriously alive or exhausted, bittersweet or just bitter, triumphant or anticlimactic, they’re so varied and yet so perfectly suited to what they follow.

Egwene has done everything she possibly can and more, and yet the Tower is still crumbling around her, and so this almost-despairing exaustion is perfect, because what more can she do? Alone, nothing. And yet she can’t give up, can’t stop trying.

The White Tower was broken, physically now as well as spiritually. They’d need a strong leader to rebuild. The next few days would be pivotal. It made her more than exhausted to consider the work she’d need to do.

I’ve talked a lot about how Egwene is a hero-by-choice rather than a Chosen One, but I like that she gets to have these moments where…despite all of that, sometimes it’s really fucking hard. She belives in what she is doing, and embraces her role, and has a sense of agency that many heroes lack because she did choose, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be pushed past the limits of her own endurance. It doesn’t mean she is immune to despair or to doubt or to sheer tiredness. So much has been asked of her, and she has taken so much upon herself, and there’s still so much more to do, and she’ll do it, but right now…well, I can’t blame her for wanting just a few moments to rest.

She had protected many. She had resisted and fought. But this day would still mark one of the greatest disasters in the history of the Aes Sedai.

Can’t think of that, she told herself. Have to focus on what to do to fix things…

You can almost see her all but physically dragging herself out of that beckoning despair. She’s done everything, and still it’s not enough.

She has saved many but what will be remembered is the destruction, and oh, how familiar that sounds. It’s Rand after so many battles, after so much death and pain and people who hate him for tearing nations apart because it’s the only way to save the world. It’s Rand as a figure, hated and feared and yet the world’s hope for salvation. Seen as a monster but demanded as a saviour. It’s the duality not just of salvation and destruction but of perception and reality, of achievement and cost.

She fought and was glorious and still today will be remembered as a disaster, and how easy it would be to give in to that, to let it drag her down, but she can’t and so she pulls herself back up because if she doesn’t, then they are all lost.

She would get up soon. She would lead the novices and Aes Sedai on thse upper floors as they cleaned up and assessed the damage. She would be strong and capable. The others would be tempted to fall into despair, and she needed to be positive. For them.

And for herself. In a moment, she will be the Amyrlin again…

But she could take a few minutes. She just needed to rest for a little while…

And remember a girl named Egwene al’Vere…

Oh, Egwene. You can only do so much alone.

She barely noticed when someone picked her up.

NO. NO NO NO NO NO.

She tiredly opened her eyes, and—thought numb of mind—was astonished to find that she was being carried by Gawyn Trakand.

I DO NOT WANT THIS.

“I’ve got you, Egwene,” he said, glancing down. “I’ll protect you.”

DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT SHE HAS DONE? DO YOU? ‘I’ll protect you’ IT’S A LITTLE LATE FOR THAT, SHE’S ALREADY SEEN TO THAT HERSELF. And not just protecting herself but the whole damn Tower. That’s why she’s tired, Gawyn, or hadn’t you noticed? Do you think she just…decided to nap through the battle or have you finally figured it out?

And she doesn’t want to be ‘rescued’ but she’s too tired to say anything and I’m so very indignant on her behalf.

“They just left her there, Siuan,” Gawyn said. His voice was so nice to hear.

IS IT THOUGH? He still assumes she was just…left there. That she did nothing. That she was in need of rescue because of course she couldn’t possible be tired from having basically fought the entire damn battle on her own.

“Defenceless in the hallway! Anyone could have come upon her like that. What if the Seanchan had discovered her?”

WHAT IF

THE SEANCHAN

HAD DISCOVERED HER

I can barely breathe I’m laughing so hard at the wall of unintentional irony upon which I am now going to hit my head repeatedly.

Gawyn you idiot.

Seriously, the degree to which I find it frustrating when characters’ achievements go unrecognised by those around them is entirely proportional to the degree to which I love watching those around them realise or see those achievements. It is possible I am projecting just a little bit here, but I hate it when this happens—when a character does something astonishing but no one who is with them sees or knows or realises, and so they all assume that character is less than they truly are.

I destroyed them, she thought with a smile, thoughts slipping away from her. I was a burning warrior, a hero called by the Horn. They won’t dare face me again.

This contrast here, between his complete lack of even the slightest thought that maybe she was involved—he doesn’t even consider it, just as usual goes straight for the option that accords her the least agency or competence possible, because what more would someone want in a boyfriend—and her unspoken response. The knowledge that the Seanchan sure as hell discovered her, and it was to their grief that they did.

His denial of her competence and her own certainty of it, her own quiet triumph that goes unrecognised by her own strongest allies.

But not by those in the Tower; Saerin realised who she was, and the novices she was with know, and Adelorna was with her. They know what she has done. And Egwene herself knows, and holds to that knowledge.

I like that she gets to have that line, too. That she gets to take pride in what she has done, even if parts of it were terrible, even if she is so tired she can barely think, even if the Tower is broken despite all her efforts. I like that she gets to have that kind of confidence and that she doesn’t have to belittle her accomplishments. Because she was fucking awesome, and she should get to say so.

Called by the Horn is an interesting thought for her to have, by the way.

She distantly heard Siuan’s voice. “What’s this? Light, Egwene! Where did you get this? This is the most powerful one in the Tower!”

“What is it, Siuan?” Bryne’s voice asked.

“Our way out,” Siuan said distantly.

It’s also really the last puzzle piece you should need, to work out what exactly Egwene’s role in all of this was. Seriously, Siuan, if you and all your political and pattern-finding skill can’t put it together, I’m disappointed. Hm, I wonder what Egwene—who has been given forkroot and so can’t channel strongly—would be doing with the most powerful sa’angreal in the Tower, wearing a white dress and on the same floor of the Tower where Gawyn pointed out a woman throwing fire at the Seanchan. Probably just left ‘defenceless in the hallway’ to have a nap. Yep, sounds about right.

No! Egwene thought, clawing through her drowsiness, forcing her eyes open. I’m winning, don’t you see?

But they don’t see. Because for all that these three are the ones who should believe in you the most strongly—and two of them have shown themselves to be exactly that in the past, by helping you become Amyrlin in truth and acknowledging you as such, and by giving you the army and accepting your true authority—they apparently still see a defenceless prisoner in need of rescue.

It’s especially weird coming from Siuan—enough so that it almost seems out of character—because that’s really not so different from how Egwene appeared, to most, when she was with the rebels. At least until the declaration of war, she gave every outward impression of being the puppet child Amyrlin they wanted, naïve and powerless against the Hall and set up to take the fall if it all went wrong. And Siuan knew how much truth there was to that illusion.

Sigh.

Well, as soon as she wakes up I look forward to her giving them an earful.

And breaking up with Gawyn.

A GIRL CAN DREAM, OKAY?

I must say, though, that this chapter has made excellent use of outsider POV, across its whole range. We’ve had those moments of realisation from those who have seen Egwene, and even from Gawyn and Bryne who didn’t recognise her but were still awed by her, and last chapter from Adelorna who almost immediately understood and accepted her authority. And then we’ve had, too, the misperception of her as helpless, by those who found her after the battle had already been won when she’s too tired to do anything more. It’s a great way of showing the effect perception can have, and it also lends it this…kind of bittersweet sense of extraordinary accomplishment and the awe from characters like Saerin, but also the complete ignorance of characters like Gawyn, who don’t even know what an incredible thing she’s done.

It’s very well done, and such an interesting way to play it, even in the times when it’s INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING.

All in all, a truly excellent battle. I sort of wondered whether, under Sanderson, the battles would continue in the standard of excellence but each in their own entirely unique way, because it’s something I’ve really, really loved about the series so far. And in this book, at least, that standard has continued.

Anyway, back to Saerin, who is also very tired.

There were a frightful number of dead, including over twenty Aes Sedai so far.

Yeah, I think this might have been what Min’s vision was about, back in TSR. I assumed it was the coup, when that happened, but I don’t think the death toll was nearly so high then. That’s impressive manipulation of foreshadowing and deception, if so.

And also, once again we’re seeing the cost of the victory. They’ve won, but not without a high price.

Saerin has definitely taken command of the administrative side of this battle and its aftermath, and seems to be doing a good job of it. I like it when relatively minor characters get a chance to shine this way.

It also feels like the beginning of…exactly what Tower needs, which is others stepping up to help—well, not just to help Egwene, but to help the Tower itself. To help her help the Tower. She cannot do it all herself, but now there are those who are finally following the example she has tried to set, and the unity she has tried so hard to foster. It’s the beginning of the Tower saving itself.

Where under the Light was Elaida?

Yeah, good question.

Also, where has Alviarin been in all of this? We saw Katerine, but Alviarin’s been conspicuously absent. Where was Mesaana?

Nobody had seen anything of the Amyrlin during the battle

On the contrary, Saerin. Many saw her. The Seanchan certainly did, by the light of the fireballs she was throwing in their faces.

Only three novices in Egwene’s group of over sixty had died? And only one sister out of some forty she had gathered? Ten Seanchan channellers captured, over thirty raken blown from the air? Light! That made Saerin’s own efforts seem downright amateur by comparison. And this was the woman Elaida kept trying to insist was simply a novice?

Salvation and destruction, all in one neat report.

Can you forward that report on to Gawyn and Bryne and Siuan, Saerin?

Oh shit is Elaida dead?

“The entire wall burst in, Saerin Sedai.”

Yeah, walls and rooftops are dangerous enemies in this series.

Oh. Okay. No, Elaida is not dead.

She’s on a raken with an a’dam around her neck.

That’s…uh…

Huh.

I’m not completely sure how I feel about that, actually.

On the one hand, there’s a certain sense of balance to both claimants to the Amyrlin Seat being taken against their will from the Tower at the end of the battle, with none realising until afterwards. In that sense, maybe it’s a way of handing the fate of the Tower to the Hall—Elaida has done her damage and Egwene has done what she can to heal it and now the Tower stands shaken and poised to tip one way or the other and it is up to the Aes Sedai themselves to decide whether the Tower will be saved or destroyed.

On the other hand…what a weird way for Elaida to exit that storyline, after so much has been built up there.

I’ll wait and reserve judgement on this until I see what comes of it, but that’s…an interesting development, for sure.

Also I really, really want to be a fly on the wall when Egwene wakes up.

Next (TGS ch 42) Previous (TGS ch 40)

#this chapter was definitely worth waiting for #Wheel of Time #neuxue liveblogs WoT #The Gathering Storm

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