Speak no word which is not true

The Wheel of Time, S2, Aes Sedai of the Whiter Tower

Verin and the Jailbreak: Breaking down Verin's brilliant not-lies

Verin, to Leane: The Amyrlin requires your strength to protect Cairhien.

Actually, nothing in this says that the Amyrlin told her anything! Cairhien is under a huge, fiery attack by unknown forces, coincidentally just as they've captured the Dragon. I think it would be easy enough to argue that the Amyrlin requires the strength of all of the Aes Sedai there in order to protect Cairhien, especially depending on how thoroughly Verin is mentally defining "protect." Like, for example, if they wanted to prevent any more fires from being set or anyone else from dying, they presumably WOULD need every Aes Sedai they could get, even if they don't know it's Lanfear, bc more people are dying each minute. And after all, there's a lot of explosions and those explosions are clearly heading toward the Aes Sedai!

Verin, to Leane, con't.: I've been told to watch the boy.

And as for "I've been told to watch the boy," she doesn't say who told her. She could've asked her Warder or the other Brown Sister "Hey, do me a favor and tell me to watch the boy." It gets repeated back, and boom, statement true. Possibly, with that phrasing, Verin could've even gotten away with saying it to herself in the mirror or something.

Verin, to Leane, con't.: This is an order, Leane Sedai

Verin doesn't say who's giving the order. Really, anyone can give an order - it's just that only some people can give orders and actually be listened to. Who's to say Verin isn't just doing the ordering herself, here? Alternately, "Watch the boy" was the order that VERIN'S been told. "Order" could easily refer to the statement given to Verin, not the (completely implied) "Go help the Amyrlin," though that's clearly what Leane hears. And in addition to my speculation about "I've been told to watch the boy," it's entirely plausible that Siuan told or ordered all of the Aes Sedai to watch (generic) and make sure Rand doesn't get out, or that she specifically ordered that to Verin (and possibly any others) as an Aes Sedai who WASN'T going up to the wall for the battle

Verin, to Leane, con't: I'll take his shield.

This one's much clearer. Verin says that she'll TAKE his shield, not that she'll keep the shield up! And she does indeed take over the shield on Rand before releasing him!

Right after that, Leane passes the shield to Verin and says, "Don't let her [Moiraine] get close to you." Leane leaves right after saying that, and Verin doesn't respond. Door closes.

Moiraine: You are very clever with your words, sister.

This is a very Aes Sedai compliment lol. And anyway, there's nothing actually clever about just lying, for an Aes Sedai. After all, if you can just say something that's wrong, you don't need to do any of the very careful and cunning word/general manipulation that all of the other Aes Sedai have to do in order to mislead people

And then...breakout time! Cue lots of fires, lots of running, and Siuan looking Very, Very, Very Dismayed

I enjoyed the show’s depiction of Verin Sedai, though I do think that if they were going to drop her harebrained and forgetful mannerism, they could have made her seem less suspicious in another way. She was coming off more as “the suspicious one” than “the nerd” I think, and I fear non-book readers will not get the cool twist that book-readers got.

current emotion:

VERIN SEDAI

My pick:

Kathy Bates as Verin Sedai.

Verin: Law of attraction requires you to believe. That's all you need. Just believe. It's that simple.

Rand: I believe you should leave me alone.

so in love with Verin leaving out honeycakes for young Siuan and Moiraine and Verin saying she remembers the two of them sneaking into the kitchen for sweets <33 Verin my beloved i can’t wait to see her in s2!!

(click image for optimal quality)

prints available here!

NEW WHEEL OF TIME SCREENSHOTS FROM AMAZON LIVE EVENT

RED COAT RAND 😭😭😭

Liandrin Guirale has hidden depths.

Moiraine Damodred has hidden abyss.

I haven’t seen as much of Verin Mathwin, but I feel she has multiple hidden universes.

The oaths of an Aes Sedai:

1. To speak no word that is not true

2. To make no weapon with which one man may kill another

3. Never to use the One Power as a weapon except against Darkfriends or Shadowspawn, or in the last extreme defense of her life, the life of her Warder, or another Aes Sedai

The Wheel of Time Ajahs ranking + reasoning. From best to worst. Inspired by a late night conversation I had with my sibling. (Full series spoilers)

1: Brown. They are the best Ajah for 2 reasons, one: they actually do what their Ajah is supposed to do and don’t just fuck around doing politics like roughly 80% of the other Aes Sedai. And two: they are, on average, some of the least insufferable Aes Sedai to talk to. + Verin bias.

2: Blue. They, like the Browns, do also actually do what their Ajah is supposed to do. The unfortunate thing is that what the Blue are supposed to do is basically whatever they want. But they seem generally the most likely to actually help normal people and be invested in making the world better. + Moiraine bias.

3: Grey. They also do their stated job pretty well and consistently. They are the last Ajah until the Red (arguably the white) to do so. tbh the Grey is mostly here because we get so little information on what they’re actually like. But they seem to be doing a pretty good job and not fucking up in any significant way, so they get 3rd.

4: Green. I like the green Ajah. They just don’t really do what they say they do. “The Battle Ajah”? Really? So why aren’t you in the borderlands helping with fighting shadowspawn? Or doing anything actually? Because I thought about it for a while, and I genuinely can’t remember a major thing that the Greens were doing, as a group, before the last battle. But they’re generally pretty cool and when the last battle did actually happen they showed up.

5: White. They’re fine, just the ones we’ve seen seem pretty annoying to talk to. They also are actually philosophers and mathematicians, but from what I can tell they don’t have a ton of contact with philosophers and mathematicians from outside of The Tower. Which is not really good practice if you want to advance those fields. So they fail at their stated job by not actually sharing their work enough. Basically they’re the much less cool and more annoying browns.

6: Yellow. AAAAHHHHH!!!!! The way the Yellows act makes me unspeakably mad. First, they completely disregard traditional medicine, because they can do stuff with the power better. HEY WHAT THE FUCK? The power has limits, especially with healing. Aes Sedai say that constantly throughout the series. But NO. No studying how traditional medicine could teach you more about the body. No seeing if some herbs could help with the recovery from healing. No interest in learning anything new! The most understandable kinda stupid thing they do is that they don’t research new healing weaves out of fear. But the second and worst thing is that they call themselves the healing Ajah, but from what I can tell don’t heal ANYONE who doesn’t come to The Tower or they just happen to heal out in the world. Again, HEY WHAT THE FUCK? There should be HOSPITALS!! At least one small one in every major city. Or at least in a few? I know there’s a problem of them not being able to heal everything, but they could still save a lot of people! Especially if they recruited people who could use normal medicine! But no. They seem to be the worst offenders of sitting on their asses in The Tower just doing politics.

7: Red. Do I really need to explain why Red is the worst? If you’ve read the series you know why I’m doing this. They are literally such a fuck-up of an Ajah that at the time of the series the there hasn’t been an Amyrlin raised from the Red for OVER 1,000 YEARS because the last one was such a disaster. And then when there is a Red raised to Amyrlin during the series she literally causes The Tower to completely fracture and have a little civil war when THE END OF THE WORLD is about to happen. And even though they technically do their job of dealing with men who can channel, they do a really bad job at it (specifically in how they treat the men after gentling, I go into it here). As well as the fact that most red sisters aren’t actually hunting men who can channel. Like 50 of them are at most. That’s 1/4 of the Ajah that’s doing it’s job. Also The Box was the Red Ajah’s idea.

I have so many issues (thirst) with WoT women this season...

Sooooooo... now that we're two seasons into The Wheel of Time TV adaptation.

admittedly for feminist reasons I think making women who don't wear makeup the evil ones in a fantasy series would have some unfortunate implications, but man what if I want to be good but ALSO wear enough black eye shadow to ruin 40 pillowcases