#sorry I saw the cameo shot of Lini from episode 2 and I was overwhelmed by class consciousness

[asha-mage]

I think the philosophical difference between Wheel of Time and Game of Thrones's class politics is best shown in how they depict their servant characters.

Take Lini and Lars as really good examples: they are a nurse and cook respectively, and lack any sort of structural power or protection at all, something they both are very aware of. But despite their relatively low place in society they are still principled, intelligent, women who the narrative treats with a lot of respect. Lars's acts of mercy and courage come up repeatedly- from refusing to be part of what she sees as unjust punishments of novices in The Dragon Reborn, to smuggling Siuan, Leane and Min to safety in The Shadow Rising, to being ready to break Egwene free of her imprisonment herself in Knife of Dreams. Keyly, Lars does all this not out of any loyalty to other more powerful characters, but entirely because of her own sense of right and wrong. She has no concern for the shifts in Tower politics because that is completely out of her control and she knows it. Rather she makes choices based entirely on what she thinks is right, refusing to be complicit in something she thinks is wrong and taking huge risks to do what she can for others whenever the opportunity presents itself.

In the same vein Lini, while personally loyal to Morgase and her family, is one of the few people in Morgase's life who is willing to treat her as a human being first and a Queen second: speaking her mind even when she knows it will upset Morgase, giving honest advice and wisdom, and generally refusing to acknowledge the huge power gap in their relationship- and Morgase not only allows this but clearly values it, even when it makes her angry, because with Lini she doesn't have to have any pretense, and she can trust the sincerity of Lini's words in a way she can't with courtiers and other rulers. When Lini helps Morgase escape the palace in The Fires of Heaven, she isn't doing it out of fealty to her Queen the way the rest of the team is. She is doing it because she cares for Morgase as a individual, and as a girl she helped raise to adulthood. As they continue on the run, the nuance and complexities of their relationship are explored more heavily- particularly after Morgase abdicates, and Lini's loyalty endures, because it was never about Morgase's throne or her power, but her as a person.

Contrast that with the way Games of Thrones depicts it's servants. The only ones who receive any real depth of character exploration are a few of the House Stark servants, and even then they exist largely as extensions of their masters. Old Nan and Hodor lack agency of their own, and they are not treated as having value by the narrative as independent characters, or having interior lives, motivations, or relationships to complexly explore. Even if we stretch the definition of servant to include a clerical tutor like Septa Mordane and the (presumably) commoner born Knight Rodrik Cassel this picture doesn't improve- because the primary role of both is to suffer and be harmed as a way to hurt other, more important characters.

And this is something you can walk out to pretty much the entire way the two worlds are built. Every time Jordan shows off a new place from Fal Dara to the Waste he remembers to answer the question 'who is cleaning the chamber pots and cooking the meals the sweeping the streets'- and some of his most interesting world building details from the Aiel gai'shain, to the structure of Borderlander's households via the shambayan and shatayan are born of his answers. More over he remembers that those people have humanity: their own wants, needs, and beliefs that are important to them even if they aren't important players in the scope of the narrative. Even if our heroes are stopping at a random inn for a single night, Jodan doesn't forget to show that inn is staffed with people who are going about their own lives entirely independently of the main characters who just wandered in.

By contrast the commoners in Westeros are largely invisible except when they are being impacted by the actions of the noble characters. The idea of the 'small folk' is presented as this nebulous concept, a vaguely homogeneous monolith that in theory is supposed to matter to the nobles but in practice doesn't really- which would an interesting class commentary if the narrative didn't also treat them that way- as if their only real value is being the foundation on which these power struggles are being fought. We're not encouraged to empathize with the cook, or the street sweeper, or the maid gathering laundry because we're not directed to notice them unless they are being a problem, which is exactly how all the nobles in Game of Thrones behave. There's also no nuance or complexity to the relationships between servants and their masters- it is only an expectation of simple obedience, and no energy is ever expended on the relationships between servants at all.

Wheel of Time from the beginning takes the position that everyone maters- maybe not to the fates of nations and the path of destiny, but to themselves and to the story that is being told. Game of Thrones takes the position that only nobles matter and everyone else matters only in relation to them- which for a story ultimately about an aristocratic civil war is fine, but it limits the depth of the world and the ability to say anything meaningful about class or society.