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This did not age well.
Men who learned they could channel faced a grimmer fate; they went north, to the Great Blight and maybe beyond, to the Blasted Lands and Shayol Ghul. “Going to kill the Dark One,” they called it. None survived long enough to face madness.
I think this is the most humane way to treat male channelers that we have seen so far. Not a fun fate. But somehow more humane than being gentled or killed by others.
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Robert Jordan has the room to devote pages of character description for people who will never have a sentence of dialogue, but cleansed Saidin in one chapter.
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Lord of Chaos
I've finished the book and I still don't know what the Lord of Chaos is supposed to be. At first I thought it would be another euphemism for balefire and we'd see some timey-wimey shenanigans, but that does not appear to be the case. (Alas. I want Rand to have a good reason not to use balefire. He does not seem to fear it enough.)
It's like the title of The Two Towers. It's hard to point to any bit of chaos and say, 'yep, that's the eponymous chaos.'
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Egwene stared at the door after Sheriam had gone. Then she turned and stared at the table. Absolutely bare. Not a report to be read, no records to study. Not so much as pen and ink to write a note, much less a decree. And Siuan coming to teach her etiquette.
...
Nynaeve frowned worriedly, but Elayne was pure indignation. “You can’t let them get away with trying to . . . to bully you. You are the Amyrlin. The Amyrlin tells the Hall what to do, not the other way around. You have to stand up and make them see the Amyrlin Seat.”
Let's talk about Egwene becoming Amyrlin. Why her? I can think of a few benefits:
- She does not belong to any Ajah yet. Picking a Blue again would be politically fraught, and the Greens are also known to align themselves with the Blue. Red is out. Picking someone from any given Ajah would make a political statement, whether the pickers want it to or now. Picking someone with no Ajah helps avoid unintentional political statements, even though it sends a message in itself.
- She is stronger in the Power than Elaida. This book introduces the concept that Aes Sedai rank themselves via ability absent any other leadership authority. Egwene went from Novice to Accepted in about a year, when it takes most women many years. Even without being in her physical presence and getting a good measure of her, they can tell a good story about a prodigy, strong in the Power, wise beyond her years.
However, her strength should not be confused for legitimacy. IF some Aes Sedai lawyer can find some sort of rule or precedent that makes Elaida's election to Amyrlin even somewhat questionable, then Egwene's strength might become a factor. Without that doubt though, Elaida appears to be the legitimate Amyrlin to all those in the White Tower and most of the world.
- She is presumed easy to manipulate. This is the most important one. There are several factions in Salidar that have an uneasy truce with each other. Everyone can agree that they need an Amyrlin to appear legitimate and start meeting their goals. However, there is no majority yet. By choosing Egwene, they are stalling for time. Not in the sense that they will depose her when one faction wins. The winning faction will simply keep manipulating her to do what they wish.
Egwene, Nynaeve, and Elayne all meet this criteria. Elayne is a poor choice because she is royalty, and has political ties. No one wants to make the White Tower a subject of Andor. Nynaeve is a poor choice because of her block. No one thought she could even be Aes Sedai until she got over the block.
Egwene also has a benefit from being away for so long. Nynaeve and Elayne are in Salidar, being instructed by and disciplined by Aes Sedai. It's hard to respect someone they ordered to clean pots a week ago.
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“I bend the Pattern and bore a hole from one to the other. I don’t know what I bore through, but there’s no space between one end of the hole and the other.”
I feel like this will become important later. Boring a hole sounds a lot like what happened to the dark one's prison, after all.
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Berelain’s jaw firmed stubbornly, her hands tightening to fists on her skirts. “Young men always fight.” Her tone was condescending enough that you might almost have forgotten she was young herself. “But since they began this, not one has died in a duel. Not one. That alone is worth letting them go on. Besides which, I have faced down fathers and mothers, some powerful, who wanted their daughters sent home. I will not deny those young women what I promised them.”
...
“Keep them if you wish,” Rhuarc said. “Let them learn the sword, if they wish. But let them stop claiming to follow ji’e’toh. Let there be an end to them putting on white and claiming to be gai’shain. What they do offends.”
This is a difficult situation. On the one hand, Rhuarc is right. The Cairhenians are being offensive. They do not understand what they are doing. They decided to stop killing each other because it became more fashionable to pretend to be Aiel. Cairhenians suck.
On the other hand, as a practical matter, it's not like laws against dueling decreased the number of dead duelists. If Berelain cannot enforce laws against killing in duels, it's not like she can enforce laws against pretending to be gai'shain either. There's a cultural attitude that needs to be addressed first.
Then there's the question of what is more important, someone's culture or someone's life? Sometimes the moral of the story is that people need to get over their silly hangups and save lives. Other times, the moral of the story is often that their way of live is worth dying and being killed for.
Rand chooses to save Cairhenian lives over respecting the Aiel culture. I'm not sure it was the morally correct thing do do in this case, but it is consistent with the ethos Perrin had when saving Two Rivers. Perrin had a life-first priority when offering to work with the Whitecloaks and gathering everyone against the Trollocs. It doesn't matter what you believe or what feuds you have. When it comes to the final battle, it's life against death.
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Only a greater power can break a power, and then you’re trapped again.
So Egwene, Elayne, or Nynaeve could bond with Rand to break Alanna's bond. Not that Rand would likely appreciate it, given how he's feeling about Aes Sedai by the end of this book. I wonder how he will react to meeting Egwene again.
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Twenty-five years ago, more now, the Daughter-Heir of Andor vanished in the night. Her name was Tigraine. She left behind a husband, Taringail, and a son, Galad.
So Galad is Rand's brother. There does seem to be a family resemblance. Both are pretty stubborn in the pursuit of what they think is right. Rand is a bit more practical than Galad though.
Dyelin nodded, a touch impatiently. “Gitara was counselor to Queen Mordrellen,” she said briskly, “but she spent more time with Tigraine and Luc, Tigraine’s brother, than with the Queen.
And Lord Luc is Rand's uncle. Who also seems to have gotten mixed up with the fey of this world.
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Pausing, Semirhage studied him. There was something. . . . A tightness around the mouth and eyes. As if he already fought pain. Of course. That peculiar bond between Aes Sedai and Warder. Strange that these primitives should have come up with something that none of the Chosen understood, yet it was so.
Warder's bonds become very important in this book. Rand gets bonded, Lan's bond being passed along is mentioned, and there's this tidbit. Given that the bond is new to the forsaken, maybe there is a key in the bond that will help defeat them? What happens if a male channeler and a female channeler bond each other? Elayne wants to bond Rand - what if she does so and then Rand bond's her? Can that happen? I get the feeling that the bond is directional.
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“Actually, I got that scratch for knowing too little,” he said lightly. Women always liked it when you played down your scars; the Light knew he was growing enough of them. “I know too much now, but too little then. You could say I was hanged for knowledge.”
Mat keeps leaning into his Odin archetype. It's weird. He's got a lot of Odin motifs, without actually seeming to have a lot in common with Odin. Maybe that will change in time.
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To the Maidens, Rand was all those children come back, the first child of a Maiden ever to be known to everyone.
I feel kind of stupid because this did not click for me until this point. I needed it explicitly spelled out.
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“You and Mat worked out a good plan.” The basic idea had been Rand’s, but Mat and Bashere had provided the thousand details that would make it work. Mat more than Bashere.
There's this rule in fiction, I call it The Tell. If a character or narrator tells you what the plan is, the plan will go terribly wrong. The more detail, the worse the plan goes. If a plan is merely referenced obliquely with no details presented ahead of time, it goes off without a hitch.
I'm not sure what to make of a plan that is mentioned a dozen times without actually being carried out.
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The friends he did have would curse the hour they met him one day, if they did not already.
Mat is cursing Rand every time he stubs his toe.
Rand had told them that Lord Gaebril really had been Rahvin. He was not sure how much they believed, but just considering the possibility was enough to unhinge the knees of most. Their shock was why they were still alive. Had he believed they had served knowingly. . . . No, he thought. If they’d known, if they were all Darkfriends, you’d still use them. Sometimes he was so sick of himself that he really was ready to die.
That is not healthy. Not healthy at all.
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He had had the misfortune to be born one day after Lews Therin Telamon, who would become the Dragon, while Barid Bel Medar, as he was then, spent years almost matching Lews Therin’s accomplishments, not quite matching Lews Therin’s fame.
This explains all you need to know about Demandred.
she had lived over three hundred years, quite aside from her time sealed in the Bore, and had only been considered just into her middle years—
I wonder if channelers lived longer in the past because they were just that much stronger, or if it came of working with saidin and saidar together, or if it was some technique that was lost.
Mesaana’s face darkened. Her road to the Great Lord began when she was denied a place in the Collam Daan all those years ago. Unsuited for research, they had told her, but she could still teach. Well, she had taught, until she found how to teach them all!
Presented without comment.
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“Oh, big doings southward, my Lord. You’ll have heard of Cairhien? Him that calls himself Dragon and all?” Gawyn nodded, and he went on. “Well, now he’s taken Andor. Most of it, anyway. Their queen’s dead. Some say he’ll take the whole world before—” The man cut off with a strangled yelp before Gawyn realized he had seized the fellow’s lapels.
“Queen Morgase is dead? Speak, man! Quickly!”
Oof. That's a really bad way to learn that your mother is presumed dead.
I'm really eager to see what happens when people learn Morgase is alive. There were a lot of good meet ups this book. Egwene, Nynaeve, and Elayne. Mat and the girls. Egwene and Gawyn. Rand and Perrin.
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This book has the longest prologue I have ever seen, or ever want to see.
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