This week in Reading The Wheel of Time, Mat recovers a bit of his own memory, Elayne and Birgitte learn something unusual about their Bond, and Nynaeve and Elayne swallow their pride. A few times. It’s Chapters 21 and 22 of A Crown of Swords!
The citizens of Ebou Dar are celebrating Swovan Night with dancing and drinking, but Mat is more concerned with the fact that three men just attacked him. He considers the one he killed and the large sack he was carrying, and wonders what is wrong with his luck that he would encounter two robbery attempts in the same day. Returning to the Wandering Woman he corners Caira to ask after his men, but she is uncharacteristically cold to him as she informs him that Olver is in bed and that she hasn’t seen any of the others. She tells him that there is a “gilded woman” waiting in his room for him.
Buy the Book
Origins of the The Wheel of Time
Mat approaches the door cautiously, but when he goes in he is startled to see Elayne’s companion with the long braid, looking severe and studying Mat’s long Two Rivers bow.
“If this is about Olver,” he began, and suddenly a twist of memory unfolded, a mist thinned over one day, one hour in his life.
Mat suddenly remembers being caught between the Seanchan and the Whitecloaks on Almoth Plain. He remembers blowing the Horn of Valere, and seeing the Heroes of the Horn ride to their aid, led by Artur Hawkwing. He saw Birgitte Silverbow among them, and now he recognizes her again.
The woman of legend gave a resigned sigh and propped his bow back in the corner next to his spear. “I was ripped out untimely, Hornsounder, cast out by Moghedien to die and saved by Elayne’s bonding.” She spoke slowly, studying him as if to be sure he understood. “I feared you might remember who I used to be.”
Stunned, Mat drops into a chair and begins to complain about Elayne and Nynaeve keeping so many secrets, how they are truly Aes Sedai now and that Nynaeve is basically a stranger to him now. Birgitte counters that Mat has secrets of his own, and the fact that he blew the Horn of Valere is probably the smallest one. She asks him what language they’ve been speaking, and Mat realizes they’ve been speaking in the Old Tongue this whole time. He tries to brush it off as the Old Blood being strong in the Two Rivers, which makes Birgitte laugh uproariously.
She knuckled a tear from the corner of her eye. “Some people speak a few words, a phrase or two, because of the old blood. Usually without understanding what they say, or not quite. But you… One sentence you’re an Eharoni High Prince and the next a First Lord of Manetheren, accent and idiom perfect.”
Still, Birgitte tells Mat that his secret is safe with her, and he agrees that hers is with him. He is surprised when his comment about needing a drink is met with enthusiasm from Birgitte, especially when she suggests they go downstairs to talk. The dice are still rattling in his head.
She must be a key to it, somehow. A man with any brains would climb out the window right now. “A pitcher or two sounds fine to me,” he told her.
Nynaeve, Elayne, and Aviendha sit in their room, waiting with varying degrees of patience for Birgitte to return, while Thom and Juilin play stones in a corner. Elayne seems distracted, almost as if she’s been drinking, while Aviendha is more interested in talking about why they aren’t going to kill Carridin, since among the Aiel, Darkfriends are killed the moment they are discovered. Thom explains the political situation Tylin is in—how the Inquisitors are by definition followers of the Light, and Tylin’s accusation would result, at best, in her Kingdom being invaded and her made a puppet of the Children of the Light. Aviendha remarks that she didn’t think Tylin was such a coward.
“You have never faced something you could not fight, child,” he said gently, “something so strong your only choice is to flee or be consumed alive. Try to hold judgment on Tylin till you have.” For some reason, Aviendha’s face reddened.
Elayne interrupts with a gay plan to spy on Carridin, and begins weaving disguises for herself, and then Aviendha, and finally for Nynaeve using Illusion. Each illusion is more risqué than the last—she puts herself in the disguise of a Domani, clinging dress and all, and Aviendha as a Taraboner, but when she comes to Nynaeve she depicts the Illusion of a Sea Folk woman, bare-chested as they are only when out of sight of land. Nynaeve is horrified, even though the illusion is of a different woman and she is decently clothed underneath the weave. The amused men close their eyes as directed, but Nynaeve is unable to put a shield between Elayne and the True Source, since Elayne is already embracing saidar. She demands to know if Elayne is drunk, and Elayne drops her weave.
“No,” Elayne said slowly. Color burned in her face, but it was not embarrassment, or not entirely. Her chin rose, and her voice frosted. “I am not.”
The door bursts open and a very inebriated Birgitte stumbles in. She goes into the other room to upend a pitcher of water over her head, then returns, complaining that Mat must have a hollow leg to drink so much, and Beslan wasn’t far behind. Elayne and Nynaeve are confused, and worried that Tylin might be upset if Mat is being a bad influence on Beslan, but Elayne is more concerned about Birgitte’s behavior. Nynaeve throws Juilin and Thom out of the room, worried that the two women are about to have a serious argument.
Elayne complains that she is experiencing Birgitte’s inebriation through the bond, which makes no sense—Aes Sedai don’t start giggling every time their Warders have a bit to drink. Birgitte points out that Elayne knows more about the Bond than she, then suggests that it is because they are both women.
They return to the subject of Mat, and Birgitte reports that he wants an apology and thanks for what he did in rescuing them from their imprisonment in the Stone of Tear. Nynaeve and Elayne try to insist that they were nearly about to escape on their own, that they had incapacitated the Black Sister on guard and that Bel’al wasn’t even interested in them—his focus was on Rand.
“The Black Ajah.” Birgitte’s voice was flatter than the floor tiles. “And one of the Forsaken. Mat never mentioned them. You owe him thanks on your knees, Elayne. Both of you do. The man deserves it. And Juilin, as well.”
Aviendha tells Elayne that she has toh towards Mat for what he did, and more for the way they have handled things. As Nynaeve insists again and again that she will not apologize, Elayne tells Aviendha that she sees her point, and asks for help in figuring out how to make up for her actions. She tells Aviendha that she does not intend to become an Aiel, but that she wants her near-sister to be proud of her.
“I have pride in knowing you,” Aviendha said, touching Elayne’s cheek lightly. “An apology is a beginning, yet not enough to meet toh, now.”
As they continue right on talking, ignoring Nynaeve’s protests, Nynaeve thinks that they really should have sent Thom and Juilin to talk to Mat.The next morning at sunup, Elayne and Nynaeve stand in front of the Wandering Woman. Nynaeve won’t stop protesting, but Elayne reminds her that she agreed to their plan. They go inside and are directed to Mat’s rooms. Elayne hesitates at the door but doesn’t let her own reluctance or Nynaeve’s stop her from knocking, and then from going in when there’s no answer. They find Mat asleep on the bed wearing everything but his coat and boots, clearly having collapsed in a drunken heap. Elayne’s hands itch to try to take the medallion from around his neck while he sleeps.
Mat wakes sluggishly, clearly hungover and in pain. Realizing it’s them he asks what Birgitte told them, and Elayne pushes herself to make a start on their apology. She thanks him for saving them, and Nynaeve does as well, although her tone is more obviously reluctant. To her surprised, Mat brushes it off, seemingly embarrassed, saying that the rescue was nothing and they would have freed themselves soon enough. Elayne is infuriated that he would demand an apology and then dismiss it after she had humbled herself to him, but she still stops Nynaeve from physically attacking Mat. Mat, with his aching head in his hands, doesn’t seem to notice.
Elayne continues on to apologize for not thanking him sooner, and for how they have treated him since. To make up for that treatment, she offers the following concessions:
- they will not belittle or demean him, or shout at him
- they will not give him orders
- they will not leave the palace without telling him
- they will listen to his advice
- they will accept bodyguards if he deems it necessary
Mat responds by pointing out how difficult it was for Elayne to say that, and by giving her “permission” to call him Mat. He points out that Nynaeve has been silent through all of this, and Nynaeve, in a strangled shout, swears that she promises too. Elayne feels a certain satisfaction at the way he grabs his head in response to Nynaeve’s raised voice, and realizes that she is proud that her first Warder came out of the drinking spree better than Mat did.
Mat asks what it is that they want him to find, and cuts off Nynaeve’s attempt to tell him that he is only to accompany them while they find it.
“You just finished promising to do as I say. If you want a tame ta’veren on a leash, go ask Rand or Perrin and see what answer you get.”
As Nynaeve struggles with her temper, Elayne reminds Mat that they promised to listen to his advice, not to obey him. She sits, and explains about the Bowl of Winds. Mat is intrigued, but immediately insists that Nynaeve and Elayne be accompanied at all times by four or five men each. Aviendha and Birgitte, he says, don’t need “minders.”
They tell him his first job is to move himself into the palace, and Elayne is surprised by his horrified look. He ignores Nynaeve’s jabs and Elayne’s placating comment that he will be better able to keep an eye on them if he’s in the Palace, and moans “Why did they bloody well have to stop now?” They’re even more surprised by Mat’s reaction to being told that Tylin herself picked out his rooms, a mix of amusement and outrage. He stiffly refuses their offer of Healing, then incongruously thanks them for it.
Leaving his room Nynaeve begins to complain about Mat, only to be interrupted by Mistress Anan, who hauls them bodily into a nearby room and starts telling them off for pretending to be Aes Sedai. She threatens to take them over to the sisters in the Tarasin Palace, and neither their Great Serpent rings nor Nynaeve physically wrapping her up in Air fazes Mistress Anan in the least, as she continues to lecture Nynaeve.
“You look to be, oh, twenty-one give or take a year, so you might be as much as ten years older if you’ve already reached the slowing. You might even have worn the shawl four or five years. Except for one thing.” Her head, the only part of her she could move, swiveled toward Elayne. “You, child, aren’t old enough to have slowed yet, and no woman has ever worn the shawl as young as you. Never in the history of the Tower.”
She goes on to ask if Elayne was ever in the tower, and whether they had the rings made or Nynaeve simply stole them, and Elayne concludes that Mistress Anan must have spent some time in the Tower, perhaps journeying there in her youth hoping that she might have the ability to channel. She doesn’t, Elayne can tell, but the realization makes Elayne feel more sympathetic towards the woman.
But when Mistress Anan mentions some women who take in strays and starts asking about the specifics of their channeling abilities—whether they are wilders, whether they were put out of the Tower or ran away, etc.—Nynaeve starts to play along, intimating that what Mistress Anan is accusing them of is true. Mistress Anan tells them that she knows of a few women, the Circle who “take in the occasional wilder or runaway or woman who failed her test for Accepted or the shawl” and help them find a life that won’t get them in trouble with the Aes Sedai.
Elayne remains baffled as Nynaeve promises Mistress Anan that she’ll make Elayne behave, and that they’ll put away their rings. Still, when Nynaeve asks Elayne to trust her, she reluctantly goes along with the strange charade.
Ooh, this surprise reveal with Mistress Anan is really fun. Elayne thinks that she must have gone to the Tower when she was a girl hoping to find out that she could channel but was disappointed. But I don’t think that would explain the breadth of knowledge Mistress Anan seems to have. She knows approximately what age Aes Sedai start slowing down in their aging, she knows in a fair amount of detail what sort of punishments are meted out to runaways, and she knows without a doubt that no one, in the history of the Tower, has ever been raised to the shawl as young as Elayne is. I don’t think a woman who merely visited to be tested could have learned that much about the Aes Sedai. I think she’s either a fairly important, long-standing member of somebody’s eyes-and-ears network or, possibly, she was a full sister who was stilled or burnt out and left the Tower.
I know that stilling as a punishment is pretty severe, but I’m pretty sure we’ve been told that sisters who are punished by stilling are then thrown out of the Tower—a stilled Amyrlin would be kept around as an example, but for the rest I believe that they are just put out of the Tower and left to figure it out for themselves. That’s the reason Siuan and Leane’s changed appearances are so confusing to the Aes Sedai—they don’t keep stilled women around long enough to observe how they change after they are cut off from the One Power.
We also know that some Aes Sedai burned themselves out while studying angreal. While the Aes Sedai would have more sympathy for such a sister than they would for someone who was stilled as a punishment, they would still be very uncomfortable having her around, and the same Aes Sedai “pragmatism” would kick in around her fate—it is what it is, and only those who can channel can be Aes Sedai. A woman who burned herself out might be given some money or something when she was put out of the Tower, but the results would be about the same.
If Mistress Anan was once an Aes Sedai but is no longer, even if it wasn’t because she was being punished, it would make sense that she would have empathy for other women who were put out or refused by the White Tower. It would also make sense that she wouldn’t put herself in the same group—if she was once Aes Sedai, then she would still feel that identity in some way, and the fact that it made her different from women who never attained the shawl. Thus her disdain for what Nynaeve and Elayne are doing, but also her desire to help (under the guise of caring about Mat).
Elayne seems to have forgotten the Domani woman, Asra, she saw in the Rahad, the one who discreetly channeled while pretending to use herbs in an attempt to heal a man wounded in a duel. She wondered what a Domani wilder was doing in Ebou Dar, and even wanted to chase after her, though she was restrained by Birgitte. Or perhaps she just hasn’t connected this incident with Mistress Anan’s references to women who can channel operating in Ebou Dar. But Nynaeve has clearly latched onto the fact that there is some kind of organization at work, an organization which may have knowledge they need. I, of course, have been waiting for it, because I know that Jordan never puts extraneous events in his stories—almost everything comes back around eventually.
Most interestingly, I am reminded that Falion and Ispan were torturing Ebou Dari Wise Women in an attempt to locate the cache. I thought at the time that this was a misstep on their part, assuming that the cache was hidden so long ago that no one alive probably knows that it’s there. But I’m guessing that Nynaeve thinks that this Circle might be the ones hiding the cache, or at least that they might be able to locate it. If these women all have the ability to channel and if at least some, possibly all, have been trained at the Tower, then they would know how to recognize angreal. They live in Ebou Dar, some apparently in the Rahad—if anyone would know about the cache, it would be this mysterious Circle. And even if they didn’t know, they would be best able to look for it—Asra clearly had some sway in the Rahad, which is certainly more than Elayne, Nynaeve, Birgitte, and Aviendha have.
I’m also thinking a lot about Egwene’s desire to gather all female channelers to her, and to make a place for them, even if they aren’t Aes Sedai. There have been so many revelations recently that channeling, and even organized channeling, is much more common and expansive than the Aes Sedai understand, and I’m really curious and excited to see how the world of the books opens up in this new way. Maybe we’ll see Aes Sedai (Elayne and Nynaeve), a future Wise Woman (Aviendha), Sea Folk Windfinders and the members of this Circle all working together to find and use the Bowl of the Winds. The only thing more exciting than that will be if we ever get to see male and female channelers of this Age working together.
Speaking of men and women, I’m equal parts annoyed at the premise and enjoying the execution of the concept that Birgitte and Elayne are affected differently by the Warder/Aes Sedai Bond than they would be if it was a Bond between a female Aes Sedai and a male Warder—the suggestion that there is too much bleed over because, since they are both women, they are too biologically similar. Granted, this is only a hypothesis made by Birgitte and might not actually be what is happening, but the theory does fit with the way Jordan has structured his world building. Men and women are inherently and fundamentally different, both in body and in soul, so of course the Bond would work differently between two women. More than that, when it comes to the One Power, the difference between men and women together is what creates balance, in the One Power and in the world, so it follows that a link between only women (or only men) might very well be unbalanced.
There are other examples of this imbalance, such as when several female Aes Sedai link together and how different the results are than if a female Aes Sedai creates a link with a male channeler. As I’ve mentioned before, his set-up creates a sort of biological essentialism in the world building of The Wheel of Time, one that is especially obvious here because Birgitte isn’t a channeler—this isn’t just about being connected to the same half of the One Power but about a physical biology as well.
However, as much as I am made uncomfortable by this aspect of the world building, I am fully ready to admit that the idea of Elayne getting sympathetically tipsy when Birgitte gets drunk is a fantastic joke, and I loved it very much. It would be a waste of the concept of the Bond not to have something like this happen, and though I might wish that the setup was different, I really enjoyed the execution. When Nynaeve asked if Elayne was drunk and Elayne sniffed “I am not,” I could absolutely hear the delivery, the way she must have leaned on the “I” even though Jordan didn’t italicize it. It was a perfect cinematic moment when Birgitte drunkenly burst through the door a moment later. And Elayne is such a cute drunk. A cute and horny drunk.
Also, I find it absolutely hilarious when stories insist that a cup of coffee or a splash of cold water sobers a person up—it might make them more aware, but neither of those things diminishes the amount of alcohol in someone’s system.
I really like the idea of Mat and Birgitte becoming friends. They have similar temperaments, are both fun-loving and irreverent while still being very down to earth and capable when they feel the moment calls for it. They know at least the basis of each other’s secrets now, and they both could sure use a confidant with whom to talk about these things. They both have memories of different lives, and both sometimes reference those lives without meaning too, without even realizing what they are doing. It might be very nice to occasionally get drunk and share about the confusing nature of remembering lives you lived Ages ago, during different turnings of the Wheel.
A while back a few people on Twitter pointed out to me that Mat’s extra memories weren’t necessarily from his past lives, that they are just the memories of random other people. I admit that the idea hadn’t occurred to me, and might not have without input from y’all. But if the memories are random, that raises the question of where they came from and why the foxy folk chose the memories they did. They all seem to be specifically the memories of generals and heroes—perhaps they saw some of that heroism in Mat and chose memories that seemed thematically relevant. They must have gotten the memories from somewhere, so perhaps they traded for them or stole them from other people who stepped through the ter’angreal doorway. Back when more was known about the “snake people” and the “fox people,” it’s possible that visiting them was something only undertaken by powerful channelers and other heroes. Those might have been the sorts of people the foxy folk normally encountered, and so a larger portion of the memories would be of heroism and danger.
Another possibility is that some of the memories are from Mat’s past lives, but not all of them. We know he used a phrase or two of the Old Tongue back in The Eye of the World, long before he encountered the ter’angreal doorways. He has the Old Blood in him, and the connection to Manetheren, so those memories might be of a past life or lives. Maybe certain memories would have been accessible to Mat anyway, or perhaps, by giving him the memories they did, the foxy folk changed Mat’s relationship to being able to connect with his past.
Really anything is possible at this juncture, but given the number of different lives that Mat seems to have access too, it seems more likely that maybe they aren’t (all) his own. If so, I am disappointed he doesn’t have any memories from women. It would be awesome if he had the memories of being a female channeler or a lady hero mixed in with all those boring but useful generals.
I loved the little detail of Birgitte noticing the difference in Mat’s accent and delivery when he accidentally speaks the Old Tongue. It makes a lot of sense, given that he knows it because he has the memories of many different people. She specifically notes the speech of an “Eharoni High Prince” and a “First Lord of Manetheren.” Again, the mention of Manetheren seems significant to me.
I’m now confident in saying that both the attacks on Mat were kidnapping attempts—I think that sack and the empty chest were for stuffing him in, in order to carry him off. Ironic that Mat thinks his luck is off, not realizing the reason the odds of him being attacked are so high. The dice started rolling when he was outside Carridin’s rented palace and stopped when he was told that he would be moving into the royal palace; I suspect specifically that they started when he was spotted by Carridin and stopped when he made the decision to accept Nynaeve and Elayne’s request that he leave The Wandering Woman and move nearer to them. My guess, therefore, is that, if he had resisted being moved and had stayed in the Wandering Woman, he would eventually have been captured, despite his luck, or perhaps even killed. The choice to move has set him on a different path, to a different fate.
I’m worried about him though, especially given his distress at being so near to Tylin. I also have a lot of empathy for the fact that he is clearly discomfited by the very apology he wanted in the first place. He’s justified in feeling abused and passed over by them, but Mat is one of those people who has a lot of pride in the little things about himself and is in fact quite humble when it comes to his actually impressive qualities. Ironically, he and Nynaeve are very similar in this way, though their personalities are so different that the mix of stubborn pride and humility comes out very differently in one than it does in the other.
As badly as Egwene and Nynaeve have acted towards Mat, I do understand why, partly. Their prejudice against him because he was a troublemaker and a slacker as a kid in the Two Rivers is pretty unfair, but their desire to establish control and authority over him comes partly from the fact that they are due more authority in name, as newly-minted Aes Sedai, than they are able to achieve in practice. Even before they were raised by Egwene, these two were masquerading as full sisters out of necessity—they are constantly being asked to accomplish remarkably difficult tasks despite the fact that they have very little authority to wield in the pursuit of very challenging goals. For all that they could stand to listen to Thom and Mat more, it’s still understandable that they want to be obeyed—it is their task, not Thom, Mat, and Juilin’s. Finding the bowl is their responsibility.
It must be a very vulnerable feeling, being in Elayne and Nynaeve’s position.
It would be really interesting if being introduced to the Circle is what leads Elayne and Nynaeve to find the Bowl. Could that be Mat’s ta’veren luck at work for them already? It would be amusingly ironic if it’s not him looking, but merely them coming to him to ask, that did the trick.
I can’t wait for next week—we’ll be covering Chapters 23 and 24, and learning more about this mysterious Circle of non-Aes Sedai lady channelers. In the meantime, I’m just glad we got to see Thom and Juilin—their stones game and their banter was really fun to read, and I’ve been missing them in the narrative.
Have a good week everyone, and a Happy Valentine’s day!
Sylas K Barrett has never stopped being fascinated by the Warder/Aes Sedai bond, and would really like to see more things done with it.
It’s obvious to me but I’m clearly in a minority that the reason Mat is discomfited by the apology is that Birgitte is lying to Nynaeve and Elayne – Mat never demanded an apology, and certainly would never have predicated his help on receiving one. He probably simply griped to Birgitte about how he was mistreated and his new friend decided (correctly!) that he was owed one. When the girls apologize and offer concessions in exchange for his help, he is genuinely surprised, shocked even, which seems from their POV like he’s screwing with them.
Try to put words in Mat’s mouth that express the message Birgitte delivers: “I won’t help them unless they agree to my terms.” That’s really not Mat. He would do almost anything to get them to allow him to guard them while they do whatever it is they’re doing. Certainly he wouldn’t set conditions.
This is all Birgitte’s scheme and I say well done!
Silas, thats a pretty good theory about Mat’s dice in his mind, I never thought it was about HIS decision to do something. For me it was harbinger of event about to happen, and not necessarily to him and dice stop means it just happened. So this particular dice roll I enterpreted as starting of events that led to girls meeting Mrs Anan and dice stopped exactly when she decided to drag them forcefully to Circle (she made up her mind as Mat was talking with Nynaeve and Elaine so his dice stopped at that point). Girls going to Circle = Bowl of Winds= other things.
@1 I don’t remember that Birgitte ever implies that Mat won’t help Supergirls unless they thank him for their rescue and apologize for their behavior towards him. She only says that Mat wants their thanks and apology which is true, since Mat probably griped to Birgitte how ungrateful girls are and how they mistreat him. As for Mat’s conditions for help, they are only that girls don’t do it alone and ask him politely.
The dice probably stopped because moving to the palace leads Mat to meeting Tuon.
@1
I don’t disagree with your assessment of Mat’s character, but I guess I do disagree this was all Birgitte’s doing. We don’t really see the discussion she and Mat have, but the way she delivers the “ultimatum” very much makes it sound like Mat did at least demand the apology (while drunk, perhaps relevantly). I don’t think Mat acts surprised in any way that they deliver the apology, or reacts with confusion to Elayne prefacing things by saying they were informed of his demands beforehand. If anything IS surprising, it might be some of the extra stuff they add on because Elayne wants to meet her toh, but that’s mostly on Aviendha, not Birgitte. And I don’t think Mat is surprised by any of that stuff either, more seeing it as his due (note he immediately thinks they’ve agreed to do what he says). There are three things that noticeably surprise Mat here: that they’re leaving Carridin alone, that Birgitte didn’t mention anything about his old memories, and that the dice stop rolling.
I do think you’re absolutely correct that he wouldn’t really have withheld his help if they hadn’t agreed, which is where the small embarrassment comes from. He did make demands but didn’t really mean it.
Nice catch on Setalle’s past, that’s one I don’t think I caught the first time through.
As badly as Egwene and Nynaeve have acted towards Mat, I do understand why, partly. Their prejudice against him because he was a troublemaker and a slacker as a kid in the Two Rivers is pretty unfair
And that was exactly another notch in my respect for Egwene. She should have known better. IIRC She was close to the battle between Rand’s Aiel and Couladin’s Shaido. And therefore should be aware that Mat killed Couladin in personal battle.
Also, she should have been aware that the Band of the Red Hand was formed, if she just managed to look past her prejudices.
But I loved how both Birgitte and Aviendha pointed out what Mat actually did going to the Stone for Elayne, Egwene and Nynaeve. I forgot if Egwene actually followed the other two in thanking him.
I’m glad that Sylas has figured out that Mat’s memories come from intrepid adventurers who went through the ter’angreal doorways. Though he has not yet seemed to make the connection that the fox and snake people are the Aelfinn and Eelfiinn that were referenced by Birgitte to Perrin when they met by the Tower of Ghenjei in Tel’aran’rhiod.
The Swovan Night chapter contains one of my all time favorite WoT moments: “Speak we what language, Sounder of the Horn?” Apart from being one of those crowning moments of self-realization, as Leigh Butler might have put it, it’s another great example of how RJ uses subtle differences in syntax and vocabulary to indicate when his characters are speaking other languages or dialects. He did a similar thing when Mat spoke to the Aelfinn, especially with his extra creative swearing, which I imagine to be Old Tongue variants of Third Age curses, “Burn your soul for a craven heart!” “Unhand me you white-livered sons of goats!” “Burn your eyes!” “The light burn my bones to ash if I want to go to Rhuidean…” “You lying goat-fathered…”
@3 – exactly my thought, the dice are for moving into the Tarasin Palace to set him up to meet the Daughter of the Nine Moons, which is his fate.
@6, Exactly, even though it’s been 4 books, Nyneave and Elayne have barely seen Mat since Tear, so all things considered their apology actually comes fairly quickly. Egwene has far less excuse, and never apologizes at all.
@8 The apology came relatively quickly, yes. But it has the objective of gaining his help and the respect of Aviendha and Birgitte. It is therefore worthless. I do belive that they later came to mean it, but not right now. Egwene has her problems, sure, but this accusation is not fair. If no one had told this two to apologise, they would probably never had done it. If Egwene had been there with them, then maybe she would have apologised as well.
I’m both impressed by how perceptive Sylas is at already calling all the diverse channelers together (plus the lucky pull-quote about honorable retreat from an overwhelming opponent) and rolling my eyes at the idea that any of these will be seeing Egwene any time soon.
Anyway, the gender-bonding thing has more fun permutations to be had, even if mostly Sandersonian in origin… but even before that I think there’s an interesting argument to be made that Elayne got messed up by the leakiest possible version because she copied the traditional Bond weave by rote… which is designed to exploit the toughness of male Warders, but because “why would you prefilter these from a man?” tacked on the menstrual cycle, astrally projected intoxication, and literally superhuman suicidal boldness of her ultraWarder (who then survived being born with infinite lifetimes of compounded PTSD by gradually leaking it into her Aes Sedai and eventually fetii.)
Explains a lot of what people dislike about Elayne actually… caught spillover from Birgitte’s deep fundamental relation to the Pattern and accidentally infected with the Valere-meme to die dramatically and heroically. (Whoa, hey there generational trauma… guess she did have some of that from Queen Mother first, too.)
@1- Also fits with Birgitte’s overall deal there to actively seek justice even if he hadn’t asked, either way took just the right humbling presentation to get them to go visit Mat (and meet CetaliaMistress Anan) instead of summon him (to refuse to answer to his various future Mistresses.)
Anyway…
Haven’t we always really been in this for a smooth rod, red, about wrist thick?
I cut Elayne quite a bit of slack when it comes to her opinion of Mat. Obviously, she knows him the least well of the 3 and we must assume that much of her opinion of him is colored by what Nynaeve and Egwene have told her. Here, she finally starts to form her own opinion (with help from her Warder and future sister-wife, who clearly have a different take on Mat uncolored by his youthful persona that Nynaeve and Egwene use as their basis of their judgement of his worthiness). And, to her credit, though she is not quite there yet, she eventually understands she can count on him and is one of his biggest backers. (despite his complete lack of taste in picking intimate partners, which is deplorable)
I love Mat and Birgitte!
Nice call on Satelle Anan, the one who is no longer!
I actually loved the bit with the way the warder bond works. I think it follows pretty naturally given how it is set up. There is clearly some ‘metaphysical’ meaning to gender here in that it does represent some existing…concept or essence or force of nature. So female+female would work differently (especially because at least in this worldbuilding, channeling related things are also tied to that). I work with health care software and we’ve worked on the ways of distinguishing this in terms of how we document gender/preferred name, etc but we also have to make sure biological sex/sex at birth is stored because that does impact things like release ranges, abnormal results, medication dosages, etc. So, I guess to me it makes sense that channeling has the same kind of ‘biological’ dimorphism. (I could 100% do without some of the stuff regarding linking though…)
Or maybe the question is, why was channeling built that way in the first place? That said, I guess I’m coming at it from the opposite perspective; long story short but my own relationship with my femaleness is one that has had some twists and turns. But for me the distinction works. (However, I also love midichlorians, so I guess it’s a theme with me to find it interesting see how the physical/biological can impact a mystical skill!)
However, YES, there are definitely some missed opportunities with Mat’s memories, I would have LOVED to see him having some female memories from female adventurers/chandlers. I don’t think – even within the constraints for how reincarnation works in Jordan’s world that would restrict any ‘past life’ memories – there is a particular one against the kinds of memories that could have been given to him.
We know Birgitte went into the Tower of Genji at least a couple of times, it would be really hilarious for them to realize that they had the same memory at some point.
Argh, still? Saidin/saidar, yang/yin. It’s a simple dualism, except it’s not exactly simple. The two parts together can do something neither could do alone. Taoism is kinda interesting.
I’d be amazed if the author of these books didn’t have that kind of historical context in mind during their conception.
Absolutely the men & women as strangers to one another gets old fast. You might want to look at some Chinese web novels to get an idea of how truly annoying that trope can be.
I don’t really agree with the idea that Elayne/Nynaeve/Egwene are struggling to give Mat the respect and thanks he’s due because of issues surrounding their own authority. Mat rescued them when they had no authority. Elayne I give some credit to, I guess… she’s a princess (so some authority, I guess), she doesn’t know him, all she gets are the very negative reports from Nynaeve, mostly. But the other two know him, and they know him well enough to admit that if/when he makes a promise, he’ll keep it, that while he’s mischievous and a troublemaker he’s not a complete asshole.
This isn’t an issue where Nynaeve thinks he relationship with Mat should change because she’s now an Aes Sedai. She refused to give him credit or thanks long before that, and as someone else mentions, the fact that she does this under duress and specifically for the purpose of gaining his help does undermine the sincerity of said apology. And things will get worse before they get better, of course, so we’ll have plenty of opportunity to shame all of these women for victim-blaming Mat when he’s eventually assaulted.