The last time I really thought about how free will and fate work in the world building of The Wheel of Time was back in August of 2020, right before I started The Fires of Heaven. The events of the story began to become more complicated in book five, expanding the cast of main characters and scattering our heroes even further across the continent. Jordan’s world building remained as on-point as ever, but its focus was on the physical landscape, the different countries and cultures, and on our young heroes’ developing understanding of the One Power. It makes sense that I, as a reader, would be asking fewer questions about how the Pattern works and what Fate means for our heroes, since Rand himself began asking fewer questions. Once he committed to his identity as the Dragon, he was no longer questioning the truth of his identity or fighting against the very idea that his destiny might be Foretold.
Recently, however, he has begun to ask different sorts of metaphysical questions. Questions about the Dark One’s prison, about the seals, and about what the Last Battle will actually look like. He turned to Herid Fel to help him tackle these questions—and in honor of that slain philosopher, I thought I would also tackle a few questions about the nature of reality, the Pattern, and free will in The Wheel of Time.
(A note: At the time of this essay, the author has finished up to Chapter 20 of A Crown of Swords; all conjecture and discussion is based on information provided in the narrative up to that point. Essay may contain slight spoilers for the same.)
The last time I wrote on the subject, I posited that the Pattern directs people’s lives in certain directions until they come to moments of choice, at which point their free will kicks in and they direct the course of the Pattern in turn. This felt in line with Moiraine’s understanding of how the Wheel worked—when she learned of the Dark One’s plot to attack the Eye of the World, she believed that the Wheel had orchestrated the event. The news came to her at a moment in which she had all the tools she needed to meet the threat. Not only did she have with her three ta’veren, whose presence would help direct the outcome of a confrontation at the Eye, she also happened to be in the presence of an Ogier, whose knowledge of the Ways would allow her to reach the Eye in time. But although the Wheel may have been responsible for bringing Moiraine and the others together in a specific moment in time and place, it never appeared to force her hand. She had a choice as to whether she would go to the Eye, instead of, say, to Tar Valon to warn the Aes Sedai. The choice was also Loial’s—he could have refused to guide them through the Ways, and indeed, did consider it. Moiraine also acknowledged that Rand, Perrin, Mat, Nynaeve, and Egwene all had to make their own choices as well, and did not force them to come.
Buy the Book
Origins of the The Wheel of Time
There really is no evidence to say that the Pattern affects the way people think. (Ta’veren powers do, but we’ll get to that later.) Of course, it is theoretically possible that every thought in every head is spun out by the Wheel, but neither the text of the books nor the philosophy and religion of the characters suggests that this is so. As Loial explained to a much younger and less worldly Rand earlier in The Eye of the World, the Pattern is flexible. If someone wants to make a change to their life and the Pattern can accommodate it, it will. Small changes are easily accepted, while large changes rarely are. This is an easy concept for the reader to grasp because it fits with how we observe the world to work—both our world and Rand’s. If a man is born a farmer and tries to become a king, there are a lot of obvious logistical reasons that such a feat will be difficult to achieve, even before one considers a metaphysical reason like the Will of the Wheel. And even in the case of more significant players—such as rulers, powerful Aes Sedai, and people like Moiraine who are directly tied up in affecting how the world will meet the Last Battle and the confrontation with the Dark One—they are still constrained by factors such as the political landscape, the opposition of other powerful groups, and the basic laws of physics.
The Fall of Malkier is one such example. Powerful though they were, the Aes Sedai couldn’t travel the distance between the White Tower and Malkier fast enough to reach it before it was destroyed. Now, if they had rediscovered Traveling by that point in time, they might have been able to, but even Traveling is not an unlimited ability, and it’s fully possible that the timely arrival of many Aes Sedai might still have not been enough to stop the Dark forces that consumed Malkier. And so we must ask ourselves, did the Wheel intend the Fall of Malkier for some reason?
It’s certainly possible—perhaps the catastrophe occurred because the Pattern needed Lan to be set on a certain path, needed the thread of his life to be woven in the direction of Moiraine’s, and eventually with Rand’s. As tragic as Malkier’s destruction was, it may well have been an intended part of the Pattern, important for the larger warp and weft of the Age. Then again, perhaps it was not. Perhaps the pattern presented the important players in Malkier with choices, and left them, and their free will, to direct the outcome. A third option, of course, is that it was the Dark One’s touch that made the difference, since Corwin was a Darkfriend, and that the Fall of Malkier was in some ways a corruption of the Pattern.
The existence of Darkfriends raises some interesting questions about the existence of free will, and how we define “free will,” in the world of The Wheel of Time. We know that, as the Dark One’s prison weakens, he is able to touch the Pattern and corrupt it—that is what is happening to the weather, first with the winter that won’t seem to end, and then the continual, scorching heat and drought the world is still facing in A Crown of Swords. But while the anomalies of the weather can certainly be called the Dark One’s touch on the Pattern, can the more subtle effects of his existence be counted in the same way? Most of what the Dark One does to affect the world is through human agents, who are part of the Pattern. Because their lives are threads woven by the Wheel, the Dark One’s influence on their choices and actions could in some ways be considered the Dark One influencing the Pattern. He isn’t touching it directly, as he does when he affects the weather, but he is still affecting it.
So, if you look at it one way, the Darkfriends prove the existence of free will in this universe, because if their choices were predestined by Fate and the Wheel, then that would mean that the Dark One’s influence was also woven into the Pattern by the Wheel. On the other hand, if the Dark One’s influence is a corruption of the Pattern, then the choices made by his followers might be considered a corruption as well, and their “free will” a result of his contamination rather than a part of the Pattern.
I don’t really think that’s true, but it’s an interesting thought exercise, and a reminder that the concept of “free will” can be looked at a few different ways. Still, if we subscribe, as the inhabitants or Rand’s world do, to the belief that no one can be so deep in the Dark One’s service that they cannot return to the light, then the Pattern must intend that people have the power of choice. The power to choose the pollution of the Dark One, and the power to choose to turn away from it.
The concept of ta’veren, how they exist and how their nature affects the Pattern and the people within it, also asks some interesting theoretical questions about free will and choice. Rand, Perrin, and Mat were all fated to be ta’veren; it wasn’t something they could choose, anymore than Rand, Egwene, and Nynaeve could choose whether or not they would eventually touch the One Power. But the effects of the boys’ ta’veren natures on the world are more complicated to understand. Some things, like Mat’s luck allowing him to mostly win at gambling, or Rand causing spontaneous marriages in a random village he passes through, seem meaningless, accidents that are neither intended by the ta’veren in question (Mat’s trying to win, of course, but his desires don’t seem to have any connection to when or how his luck kicks in) or by the Pattern. But though they appear random, we can’t know for sure that the Pattern doesn’t intend every single effect of ta’veren presence. We can’t know for sure that every unexpected wedding or well going dry does have a place in the weaving.
And there definitely are moments where it seems like the Pattern intends the results of Rand’s powers acting passively on the world, such as the way some people are drawn to leave their lives and go wandering. They don’t know what they are looking for, but this wide-spread and powerful change to the world seems to fit well with the prophecies that the Dragon will upend all current order and break all current bonds of fealty. It has the feel of Fate, of the Pattern directing the threads of human lives towards the Last Battle and, if the Light prevails, a new Age.
Then there are other moments, moments in which Rand’s ta’veren powers seem to be directed by his choices. He draws Perrin to him with his need, a need that may be metaphysical but is also literal—he has specific plans he needs Perrin to execute. Rand also affects how people respond to him. Like Perrin, he is often able to convince people to follow him or agree with his plans as his ta’veren powers bolster his arguments and persuasive abilities. This seems to indicate that Rand’s free will, his choices, are directing how his ta’veren nature affects those around him in these moments. It also suggests that the free will of others is being sublimated by Rand’s own will. It would seem that free will does indeed exist in this world—and also that there are ways the Wheel overrides free will when it needs to, through ta’veren, and perhaps by other means as well.
But what of Rand’s free will, specifically? Loial said that the Pattern will accept small changes, but not big ones. From the perspective of the people in the world, the events that are happening now are big changes, impossibly big in some cases. But looked at from the outside, from the Wheel’s point of view, if you will, it could be argued that these events are an intended part of the Pattern. The Wheel intends to continue, to keep the Dark One imprisoned, and to preserve the Pattern’s existence. So Rand’s existence, and his battle, might not be called a change to the Pattern at all, but merely the current direction of the Weave of this Age.
The Dragon is a soul that is specifically created to fight the Dark One and preserve the Pattern—the Pattern intends Rand to win the Last Battle, and ostensibly will bend all its threads to that purpose. It will push Rand, pressure him in the direction it intends, as Rand himself noted when he was being pursued on the road to Tear, where he would eventually take Callandor and declare himself the Dragon. Even then, he felt that his steps were being directed, that his fate was inescapable.
But does that mean that Rand’s entire course is basically predestined, and that he is acting out what the Pattern intends with only the illusion of choice? Colavaere’s fate is an argument that suggests this may be so—Rand had the choice to order her execution by hanging or to spare her life, but either choice ultimately led to the conclusion that Min had already viewed. Will Rand’s every inclination towards mercy or hardness, every military strategy and political coup, lead to the same place regardless of the exact specifications of his choices?
Or is it more subtle than that? We could posit that there may be more than one path to achieving that victory, and that Rand has the ability to make different choices at different times, and even make mistakes, without it being a violation of the Pattern and the Wheel’s intention for him. Thus he has both free will and predestination working in tandem, with neither canceling out the other.
It’s even possible—and the more I think about this idea the more I am drawn to it—that Rand may have more free will than your average citizen. If it’s true that the Pattern allows for small changes but resists big ones, perhaps Rand is specifically imbued with the ability to change the Pattern in large ways, ways that wouldn’t ordinarily be possible, so that his choices can affect the direction of the Weave. Almost like the Dragon is a sort of reset button—not to a factory default, but like shaking a box of puzzle pieces you’ve been staring at too long, so you can see them in a different order.
Perhaps free will—Rand’s certainly, and maybe everyone else’s as well—exists within the Pattern specifically as a tool to fight the Dark One. As the walls of the Dark One’s prison weaken he has begun to be able to touch the Pattern and affect it. And as the weave is distorted by his touch, the influence the Wheel ordinarily has over the threads may weaken or disappear. The Pattern needs another way to be directed when some of its connection to the Wheel is not what it should be.
So, even if the Pattern means that people’s lives and choices are largely pre-ordained, the Dark One’s touch is a corruption of that predestination. Free will might exist as a tool to allow them to direct the Pattern in their turn, allowing them to resist that influence of the Dark One and to make their own choices in moments when the Pattern is disrupted. A fail safe, if you will. A weapon. For Rand, yes, but also for every person who exists in this world.
In the end, all of these conclusions have led me back to my original belief about free will in The Wheel of Time, though it is somewhat more complex and nuanced now. I believe, and I think the evidence here supports that belief, that there is both free will and predestined, inescapable fate within the world of The Wheel of Time. Sometimes one or the other may be more favored, more powerful, than its counterpart. Just as the One Power is a single whole composed of two equal but contrasting halves whose interaction drives the forces of creation, so we can see that free will and fate are not two separate things that are in direct opposition to each other but rather two sides of a coin, two parts of a single whole, weaving the Pattern together. The Wheel of Time… and humankind.
Sylas K Barrett doesn’t really believe in binaries, but he does believe in symbiosis, and he enjoyed being a philosopher for a day.
