Hello friends and allies of the Dragon! This week on Reading The Wheel of Time, we’re covering chapters 3 through 5 of A Crown of Swords. It was originally going to be just 3 and 4 but as it turns out, not that much happens in those chapters. It’s all set-up for the payoff with Colavaere, which is really intense! So let’s get to it. Make me a gateway to the recap.
The gateway opens on a hilltop some miles from Cairhien and the procession spills out, headed by veiled Aiel. Everyone has arranged themselves to be ready for battle the moment they emerge, as Rand has ordered, but there is no attack waiting for them. Still, Rand scans the countryside carefully, then finally turns to look at Perrin. He murmurs “I trust you,” and adds that he trusts Min and Loial too. One of the Asha’man spots an Aiel Wise Woman running towards them. She reports to the Wise Women, and then Rand goes over to hear what they have to say. Perrin follows.
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Because of the rumors that Rand went to the White Tower and swore fealty to the Aes Sedai, many more Aiel have been seized by the bleakness, throwing down their weapons and leaving, some possibly to join the Shaido. Some of the clan chiefs believe that Rand must have been betrayed, others that Rand has betrayed the Aiel and that they should return to the Three-fold Land. Perrin finds himself trying to calculate which of Rand’s allies might desert him if he no longer has the force of the Aiel behind him.
Too many people still schemed for advantage as if they had never heard of the Prophecies of the Dragon or the Last Battle. He suspected some still would the day after Tarmon Gai’don began. The worst of it was, most would not be Darkfriends, just people looking out for their own interests first. Loial’s ears hung limp; he saw it, too.
Colavaere has been crowned Queen in Rand’s absence, and is claiming that Rand will return and confirm her as Queen. The “bubbles of evil” have killed more people, while Caraline Damodred and Toram Riatin have been camping outside the city, with Darlin and some other Tairens. Rand’s demeanor turns to ice when he hears that there are Aes Sedai in the city, as many as ten or more, but Perrin is only concerned for news about Faile.
Rand tells Sorilea to take all the Aes Sedai to the tents, and to make sure everyone sees that they obey the Wise Ones now. As he goes off to issue more orders, Gaul comes up beside Perrin, muttering about how strange women are, and how Chiad won’t marry him and yet keeps trying to entice him. Perrin is horrified when he realizes that both Bain and Chiad are among the party, which means that Faile has been left alone without any protection against Colavaere. Loial tries to assure him that Faile can more than take care of herself, and points out that Perrin can’t always be there to protect her. He is ta’veren, after all, and the Pattern has a purpose for him.
“Burn the Pattern,” Perrin growled. “It can all burn, if it keeps her safe.” Loial’s ears went rigid with shock, and even Gaul looked taken aback.
What does that make me? Perrin thought. He had been scornful of those who scribbled and scrabbled for their own ends, ignoring the Last Battle and the Dark One’s shadow creeping over the world. How was he different from them?”
Perrin chafes at the pace Rand sets towards Cairhien, but eventually they come to a rise a few miles from the city, where Rand stops to observe. Dobraine is confident that a small group will be allowed to enter where an army would be barred, as Colavaere will have authorized free access to the city for the coronation. Outside of the gates Perrin is surprised to see refugees and Foregaters—he supposes that Colavaere must have put them out. Officers observe them uneasily as they pass through the city gates and by the guard house, but no one challenges them. Inside, Perrin sees little sign of any kind of Coronation Festival or celebration of High Chasaline. When they reach the gates of the Palace, the guards watch them approach. They seem to be studying them, weighing, and then one Maiden veils herself. The Asha’man immediately trap them with Air.
Perrin watches as the guards’ eyes roll in panic as they strain to shout but make no sound. The servants at the Palace take their horses, unaware of what has happened to the guards. Perrin reflects that even knowing wouldn’t have changed their behavior—in Cairhien, servants play their own version of Daes Dae’mar, but they also keep their heads down and show no sign of noticing what those above them do.
In the entry hall they find a group of young men and women with swords, some of the nobles that have been trying to adopt Aiel ways. They kneel to Rand, offer to “dance the blades” for him, which elicits eye rolling and groans from the Aiel. They lead Rand to the Grand Hall of the Sun, where all the high ranking nobility, both Cairhienin and Tairen, are gathered for something called the third Sunset Convocation.
When the two guards on the door of the Hall recognize Rand they kneel, and one can be heard whispering a prayer. Rand remarks that he is loved, and Min touches his arm, looking pained.
They find the Hall full of people, and Colavaere on the dais flanked by seven women, including Faile. Perrin (with Aram), Dobraine, and Havien advance with Rand to the dais. Colavaere tries to play innocent, arguing that Cairhien has gone for too long without a ruler and that rumors say that Elayne is dead, like her mother. When she points out that she has already been crowned, Rand takes the crown from her head and uses the power to stretch it out and break it, and then restore it again. He tells her that whatever can be done can be undone again.
Colavaere continues to argue, increasingly desperate, telling him that she has maintained all his laws and policies and that she has a right to the throne, asking him to give it to her. Perrin wonders why Rand is letting the confrontation drag on, and interjects, demanding to know if she had the right to murder Lord Maringil and High Lord Meilan, and asking where Berelain is. Colavaere claims that there is no proof she had anyone killed and continues to insist that she is Queen of Cairhien. When she calls out for someone named Annoura to advise her, a woman with an Aes Sedai’s face steps out from behind the throne.
She tells Rand that there is no need to shield her, and is shocked to realize that he is not the one doing it. She introduces herself as Annoura Larisen of the Grey Ajah, advisor to Berelain. Because of the attitude of Tear towards Mayene and the Aes Sedai, her identity has been kept secret, until now. Rand tells her that, if Berelain confirms her story, Annoura will be released into her custody, and warns that he won’t be schemed against, nor will he hobble the Asha’man. Annoura answers that she understands.
Faile interjects to announce that Colavaere told one of her other attendants that she planned to undo many of Rand’s laws, and that Rand wouldn’t dare change anything she had done. The attendant later disappeared—Faile suspects that Colavaere had her killed. At that, Dobraine steps up onto the dais and formally arraigns Colavaere for treason, the penalty for which is death. Rand’s mouth moves almost silently, but Perrin catches the words “No. I cannot. I will not.” He realizes that Rand has been hesitating because he was looking for a way out of killing Colavaere. Annoura tells Rand that Berelain’s thief-catchers found those who assassinated Maringil and Meilan, both of whom said their orders came from Colavaere.
Word by word the defiance leached out of Colavaere. She still stood, yet it seemed a wonder; she appeared as limp as a damp rag. “They promised,” she mumbled to Rand. “They promised you would never return.” Too late, she clamped both hands over her mouth. Her eyes bulged. Perrin wished he could not hear the sounds coming from her throat. No one should make sounds like that.
Dobraine reminds them that, according to Rand’s decree, all murderers are to be hanged. Colavaere demands the headsman as her right as a noble, but when Rand finally speaks, it is to formally strip Colavaere of her titles, her lands, and every possession she has. He sentences her to exile on the smallest farm on her former holdings, with guards to keep her on that land and someone to teach her how to work the land.
Dobraine seems stunned, and there are whispers of astonishment from the crowd—nobles have been stripped of their estates and exiled before, but never of their titles themselves, and never to a farm. Colavaere faints, and Rand catches her with the One Power, lowering her gently. He turns and looks out over the anxious faces assembled in the hall and Perrin can smell the fear of men and women who swore the same oath as Colavaere.
“This audience is at an end,” Rand said. “I will forget every face that departs now.”
Everyone assembled starts to leave, first in an orderly fashion but soon giving in to anxiety and rushing out, pushing and elbowing each other. Not one looks back at Colavaere’s unconscious form.
Whew. That was some serious drama.
You know, I don’t think I actually got it wrong in any former posts, but at some point I definitely got mixed up in my head and forgot that Colavaere was a Cairhien problem, not an Andor problem. I think I mashed her together in my head with Elenia. In my defense, there are a lot of scheming nobles. I should make a chart. (Reader, he is not going to make a chart.)
The incongruity of Loial standing in the middle of the assemblage as everyone watches Colavaere be slowly destroyed was really something, and I appreciated the moment of levity in an otherwise very serious scene. The way the whole confrontation unfolded with Colavaere—watching her go from startled but still confident, to anxious and demanding, to grasping at straws—was very cinematic, especially with the way everyone was arrayed around each other like a standoff in a wild west film. Despite her crimes, I felt for Colavaere, just as Perrin did. Perrin has recently compared his own desire to see Faile safe to the way others have put their own self-serving ends first, despite the threat of the Last Battle, and I think having that comparison fresh in the reader’s mind increases our empathy for Colavaere. Not that the two things are that similar—Colavaere murdered people for power, and conspired against someone she had previously swore fealty to—but it is a reminder of how much the world has changed in such a short time. Colavaere is still operating by the old rules, and she ends up paying dearly for that mistake.
I was pleased that Perrin made that observation (the same one I keep harping on) about how many people still refuse to act as though the Last Battle is real and coming within their lifetime. People who are still caught up in their own petty scrabbling for power. It’s an interesting theme for the narrative, and the reader, to ponder. What psychological factors come into play when one is faced with such an intensely terrifying prospect as the Last Battle and the Dark One potentially breaking free? Which people are unable to comprehend how the world has changed through no real fault of their own, and which are choosing to close their eyes and ears to a truth they can’t bear to face? And then of course there are the variety of ways people are accepting some of the truth about the Last Battle, but still attempting to have power and control within the new structure. For example, Niall, Elaida, and Taim are all examples of people who did acknowledge that the Last Battle was coming, but they had three very different reactions to it. Niall believed Rand was a False Dragon and that the Last Battle would be more like another Trolloc Wars instead of what the prophecies suggest. Elaida believes that Rand really is the Dragon Reborn but seems to view him more as a pawn than a driving force; she thinks the point is merely that he has to be at the Last Battle, but believes that the Aes Sedai are meant to be the ones orchestrating everything. And Taim… well, Taim sees glory and prestige in the identity of the Dragon. He wanted to be the Dragon Reborn, and now he chases the next best thing. How he feels about the Last Battle is hard to say, but I imagine he doesn’t regard it as the nearly hopeless cause Rand does, or he wouldn’t see so much glory in it.
Of course, there’s also the chance that Taim turns out to be a Darkfriend. We’ve never been in his POV (significant? maybe.) so my analysis is only based on what we see externally from him, which might end up being quite misleading.
In some ways, you could also fit the refugees—the ones who leave their homes either because they believe Rand has broken all bonds or because they feel a nameless, aimless pull towards something—into this category as well. But unlike the high-rollers, they aren’t in charge of anything, and are less privy to the actual information about Rand and what is going on. Whether they believe Masema or the rumors Niall has put about, whether they think Rand is a False Dragon or the real Dragon Reborn, whether they believe he is a savior, or evil, or something in between—all of these factors will affect Rand’s attempts to unite the world in time for the Last battle. But you can’t exactly say that these people are at fault for that, even if they do end up causing Rand more complications.
It makes me think about the place the lower-ranking, less powerful Aes Sedai have in the world. The White Tower is so very strict about how its members are expected to behave, and although Egwene and the Salidar crew are shaking up a lot of conventions, these regimented power structures aren’t going away overnight for the Little Tower Aes Sedai, either. Accustomed to being given less authority and less control over their choice, those lower-ranking Aes Sedai will be facing a very different decision when asked to either swear to Rand or get out of his way from those higher-ranking sisters who, ostensibly, carry the authority and power to pivot their plans. It will be interesting to see if any of the sisters who were forced to swear to Rand find a sort of freedom in being in his service. Though I suppose Rand’s distrust-bordering-on-hatred of Aes Sedai would prohibit that.
Still, I’m intrigued by Annoura. She could be anyone at this point (it’s been a while since we’ve had a Forsaken-in-disguise lurking around Rand, and I’m looking askance at anyone new, including all the Asha’man—I mean, there’s something going on with Dashiva, right?) but she does seem to be in a rather unique position as compared to the other Aes Sedai we know. She’s advisor to Berelain, which makes me think she probably isn’t a terribly high-ranking sister—Mayene seems to be of strategic importance to several groups, but in itself it isn’t a very powerful country, and being an Aes Sedai advisor, while important, doesn’t seem to be a particularly high-level position as far as the White Tower is concerned. If Annoura has been advisor to Berelain for some time, which it seems like she has, then she probably hasn’t been involved in the splitting of the White Tower. We’ve seen other Aes Sedai, such as Alanna and Verin, who were outside the Tower before Elaida’s coup and who aren’t sure which side of the Aes Sedai they want to give their allegiance to, and that may well end up being the case for Annoura as well. As Berelain’s advisor, she may end up being more interested in supporting Berelain than in any particular Aes Sedai agenda—and since Berelain is working for and supporting Rand, he may well benefit from that.
Then again, maybe something very different will happen. Annoura could be a spy for all we know. But there is something about her matter-of-fact attitude, especially the “I think me the time for secrets, it is past, yes?” line that really made me like her immediately, and I’ll be interested to see where the story goes with her.
In any case, all of that is very interesting for the reader to contemplate, but Perrin isn’t sitting comfortably on the couch at home perusing this book. He is actually living in the world. For him, all this “scribbling and scrabbling” from the high-ranking people of the nations, all the denial of Rand and of the truth of the Dark One’s touch upon the world, must feel particularly horrible to a man who has to live that truth every day. Perrin is ta’veren and Rand’s close friend; he never had the option to turn away from the path the Pattern has put him on. He is very, very aware of the fact that he’d rather put his own desires first, that committing violence pains him deeply, that he doesn’t want to be a lord or a general, that his heart would be happiest working a forge somewhere and building a family with Faile. But Perrin is ta’veren, and tied to Rand, a stronger ta’veren—even if he tried to turn away, I’m not sure he’d be able to. And even without the Pattern’s influence, Perrin is far too straightforward and pragmatic as a person to be able to ignore a hard reality, however much he might daydream, or wish things could be different.
I do wonder—if it really came down to Perrin having to weigh Faile’s personal safety/survival against the fate of the world, what choice would he make? Obviously, if the Dark One broke free, Faile would suffer as much as anyone else, but that is a difficult concept to understand in an emotional moment. I don’t think Perrin could survive letting Faile be killed, but he has proven that he can weather a lot of emotional pain in the moments when it counts.
Hopefully he will never be faced with such a decision. Either way, I do think that there is a pretty wide gap between his “selfish” desire to protect the person he loves at all costs, even if that means turning his back on the larger battle and power-hungry nobles scheming for power and ignoring Rand’s need to prepare for Tarmon Gai’don.
Getting back to Colavaere for a second, it seems that her fate has been decided, but I’m thinking that there are a few loose ends yet to be tied up. For one, there is the question of whether or not any of the citizens of Cairhien will object to Rand removing her from the throne. Dobraine seemed to think that the custom of a newly-crowned sovereign giving gifts in the streets as part of the Coronation Festival would win her many supporters among the commoners, and worried that there could be rioting if those supporters disliked Rand’s actions. But when the party rode into Cairhien, Perrin noted that the refugees and Foregaters had been put out of the city, and that the mood even in the streets seemed subdued, and very much not festival-like. So perhaps Colavaere neglected that part of tradition—in which case it’s unlikely that Rand will face any trouble in that arena.
One also wonders if circumventing his own law—that murderers will be hanged—will cause Rand to lose face with any of the nobility of Cairhien. True, they must disapprove of the way he demands equality in the law’s protections and punishments, and might be pleased to see him decide not to hang a noblewoman after all. But mitigating a punishment once sets a precedent that might be used against Rand in the future. On the other hand, Dobraine seems to think that being stripped of her nobility and exiled to become a farmer is a harsher punishment than hanging—if others agree, then Rand’s thing about killing women might actually work in his favor. Other nobles who might be contemplating moving against him now know that they, too, could suffer a fate previously unimaginable.
But there is one other detail left hanging in all of this. I had to go back to Lord of Chaos to make sure I was remembering correctly, but I definitely was. Min had a viewing that Colavaere would die by hanging. It was actually in the same paragraph where we learned about her viewings of the deaths of Maringil and Meilan. And Min’s viewings are never wrong, which suggests that either Rand might be somehow forced to change his ruling, or perhaps that someone else might take matters into their own hands. I believed Dobraine when he told Faile that he will do as Rand orders, but you never know with these things. Not really.
We’re covering chapters 6 and 7 next week, which means one more chapter from Perrin’s point of view next week before transitioning to one from Rand’s. I’ll be sorry to move away from Perrin’s section—I’ve been finding his observations about people really interesting. I especially enjoyed his reflections and observations during the confrontation with Colavaere, I think because they weren’t informed by his sense of smell. I’ll talk more about Perrin smelling emotions next week, but I’ve noticed that the ability is sometimes very helpful, while at other times it’s actually a hindrance to him. In the throne room, standing at a distance and surrounded by other people and the scents of the ladies’ perfume, Perrin had to rely on his regular old human interpretation of what he was seeing. I enjoyed the way he observed Colavaere’s strength and bravery, and the way he clocked that Annoura was quick-witted and very fast in assessing and understanding the situation. It was also nice to see him considering Faile without a long paragraph about the trouble between them—although we will get back around to that in Chapter Six.
In the meantime, I leave you with the following thoughts.
- Feraighin calls Perrin by a new title we’ve never seen before: Sei’cair. Perrin (probably too distracted by worry) doesn’t acknowledge the title in the narration at all, so we don’t know if he’s heard it before or if he knows what it means. I myself am quite curious, though.
- I would like to lightly slap Gaul upside the head. Like, I get that it must be frustrating to want to marry someone who cares about you but won’t marry you. But if he is honestly confused about why Chiad is trying to entice him without the possibility of marriage, he’s being deliberately obtuse. Gaul knows perfectly well that a Maiden cannot marry and keep the spear. He says he’s willing to marry Bain just to make Chiad happy, but he is apparently not willing to have a relationship with Chiad that doesn’t include marriage. Which is completely reasonable if that’s what he wants, but it’s not reasonable to act confused, especially given the fact that extra-marital sex and relationships are acceptable and seemingly fairly common in Aiel culture. I really like Gaul and I think the love triangle between him and Chiad and Bain is really cute. Hopefully he can work out his differences. Also, I know that things are pretty heteronormative in these books and that the sister-wife relationship is supposed to be platonic best friends sharing the same husband, but I fully ship Bain and Chiad, and will accept no other version but that they are in love with each other and considering Gaul as a third, thank you.
- And finally, I didn’t have anything particular to say about it, but the moment when the guards outside the Grand Hall drop to their knees before Rand and one begins praying was the most poignant moment in this section. When Rand murmurs “So I am loved,” I felt like someone had grabbed my heart in their fist and squeezed. Min clearly felt it too.
Sylas K. Barrett is rooting for you, Perrin and Faile. Don’t let him down.
