“The Power inside you is the smallest part of your strength. It’s your mind, and how you use it, that will mean much more in the battles to come.”
—Moiraine to Egwene, S1E2, “Shadow’s Waiting”
In the finale of season two of The Wheel of Time, Egwene finally gets her opportunity to defy Renna and gain the upper hand. By refusing to fight for the Seanchan, she creates an opening that allows the Whitecloaks to take out the ranks of the sul’dam and damane. Only Renna and Egwene manage to survive, and Egwene is able to obtain an a’dam and put it on Renna. With each woman wearing the bracelet to the other’s collar, a battle of wills ensues as Egwene explains that Renna, too, is capable of channeling. Renna releases Egwene in the hope of being released in turn, but Egwene carries through on her earlier promise to kill her captor, and strangles Renna to death.
After two and a half episodes of watching Egwene being emotionally and physically brutalized, it was very satisfying to see Egwene get her revenge, especially because this is a revenge she doesn’t get in the books upon which the show is based. But something about the scene didn’t sit right for me, and that problem is also a result of changes the show has made from the source material.
[This essay contains minor spoilers for world-building aspects of the Wheel of Time novels, and spoilers for season two of the television show.]
Whenever I analyze the television series The Wheel of Time, I always feel like I have to reiterate one very important point: The greatest challenge to adapting Robert Jordan’s work is the absolute density of the source material. From the world building, to the plot, to the number of important secondary and even tertiary characters, this fifteen book series averages out to over 800 pages per novel, and is particularly loved for its complexity. Even if the show had more than an (in my opinion) measly eight episodes per season, the writers would still be constrained to streamline many of the world-building and plot elements, and to cut quite a few others in their entirety. The show has struggled somewhat to hit the right balance, especially in season two, but there are also a lot of elements that I have really enjoyed. One of these is how the One Power works.
The show hasn’t changed what the One Power is and what it can do, but slight shifts in nuance have allowed the show to bypass some of the more problematic aspects of the world building, and to streamline a very complicated system into something that is true to the heart of the story but not unnecessarily bogged down in facts that it doesn’t have time to adequately explore.
The way the show decided to present the One Power was especially important to me in season one, because the writers made a point of de-emphasizing the difference between the male and female halves of the One Power, which reduced some of the sexism inherent in Jordan’s very binary-driven magic system. In season two, however, the subtle changes the show made around how the ability to channel manifests itself ended up slightly altering the revelation that the sul’dam also posess this ability.
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A Season of Monstrous Conceptions
In the novels of The Wheel of Time, there are two ways of becoming a channeler. One way is to be born with what the Aes Sedai call “the spark.” People born with the spark will at some point instinctively channel the One Power, even if they aren’t aware that they have the ability, and even if they don’t receive any training. However, not every channeler is born with the spark; in these cases, their potential has to be uncovered through testing by an Aes Sedai, or by an equivalently experienced channeler.
There is a lot of interesting and complicated world building around different ways people become channelers. The spark is particularly relevant because there are many dangers around touching the True Source—the well from which the One Power springs—without guidance. For example, drawing too much of the One Power can be deadly, and a channeler also risks burning themselves out—destroying the part of themselves that allows them to channel and rendering themselves unable to touch the True Source ever again. If someone born with the spark isn’t given proper training, they will either die or find a rough sort of control over their abilities, often by developing a block that stops or severely limits their ability to channel, and often without ever realizing what they have done. The Aes Sedai call these women wilders.
Nynaeve is one example of a wilder. She and Egwene were both born with the spark, although Egwene hadn’t yet touched the Source before she met Moiraine. Nynaeve first channeled some years before Moiraine came to the Two Rivers, instinctively using the One Power to help heal sick villagers and to predict the weather. But she doesn’t realize what she is doing until Moiraine teaches her, and for a long time experiences a block against channeling that she can’t overcome unless she is angry.
Women who have been trained to channel can also see—in a metaphysical sense—when another woman is holding the One Power, and they can see whatever weaves she constructs. They can also sense the ability to channel in any woman who is close to manifesting her spark, but other potential channelers can’t be detected without further testing. For example, Moiraine is immediately aware of Egwene’s potential and of the fact that Nynaeve has already begun to channel on her own.
While the show doesn’t seem to have a concept of those born with the spark and those without, it still keeps most of the trappings of the experience. In the second episode, Moiraine tells Egwene that touching the Source will come to her, whether she wants it to or not. She then leads Egwene through a meditative exercise, focusing on the blue stone of Moriaine’s hairpiece and imagining she is being carried by a river. Egwene is then able to channel for a brief moment, though she is unsure if she really did so until Moiraine confirms it.
In this scene, we learn that Egwene will instinctively channel at some point, regardless of Moiraine’s interference, and we also see how an Aes Sedai might test a girl’s ability, through the joint channeling around the stone. Moiraine even acknowledges the Wisdom skill of listening to the wind as being linked to channeling with the line; “You don’t listen to the wind, Egwene. It’s the wind that listens to you.” The viewer believes Nynaeve is dead at this point, but when she turns out to have survived being taken by the Trolloc, we can also guess that she, too, must be a future channeler.
Although the more intricate details of the One Power are very interesting, they aren’t strictly necessary for the story, and I think the show has given us all we need to understand the plot arc and the emotional underpinnings of what channeling means. The concept of a “block” hasn’t been brought up by any of the Aes Sedai, but we can see Nynaeve’s struggle with channeling, can understand her fear and distrust of the One Power, without that exact concept being present. Even if this phenomenon of channeling is never outlined and defined for us as such, it doesn’t change what it means for Nynaeve to go through such a struggle.
And then there’s Egwene, the Seanchan, and the a’dam.
In the season two finale, Egwene realizes that the a’dam is a device that creates a link between the woman wearing the collar and the woman wearing the bracelet. Like the audience, Egwene is still learning the basics of how the One Power works and what a woman can do with it, but she has learned enough to figure out this much about the a’dam. As has the viewer. The show has given us some examples of how linking works, such as when Moiraine and Alanna linked with Liandrin to stop Logain from escaping, and when Nynaeve and Egwene, along with a few others, were linked with Lady Amalisa during the fight at Fal Dara. In both cases we saw that only one person is in charge of channeling when women are linked—Liandrin in the first case, and Amalisa in the second—while the other or others become a vessel through which the leader draws the One Power. At Fal Dara we also saw that it is possible for the person in charge to force the other(s) to channel more of the One Power than they can actually handle, even to the point of killing them.
The clues about Renna and the truth about the sul’dam were there for us to figure out, as Egwene did. Of course, as a book fan, I already knew about the reveal that Renna and her cohorts were also (potential) channelers. But in the books the distinction between those women who are marked out as damane and those who become sul’dam is based on whether or not they are born with the spark. Just as Aes Sedai can recognize the ability in “sparkers” who are either close to touching, or have recently touched, the True Source, so can the damane, and any sul’dam linked to a damane. And just as Aes Sedai must test for those who have the potential to learn but will not channel without teaching, so must the Seanchan.
In chapter 38 of The Shadow Rising, the fourth book in the series, a Seanchan sea captain named Egeanin has recently learned that at least some of the sul’dam can be affected by the a’dam just as a damane would be. Egeanin is shocked at the discovery, and reflects on the process by which damane and sul’dam are discovered.
The yearly testings all across Seanchan found every girl who had the spark of channeling in her: each was struck from the rolls of citizens, struck from family records, taken away to become collared damane. The same testings found the girls who could learn to wear the bracelet of the sul’dam. No woman escaped being tested each year until she was old enough that she would have begun channeling if the spark was there. How could even one girl be taken for sul’dam when she was damane? Yet there Bethamin was in the basement, held by an a’dam as by an anchor.
Because channelers are enslaved by the Seanchan and used mostly for war, both the ordinary citizens and the channelers know very little about how the One Power actually works. They do not realize that there is any other way to become a channeler other than to manifest it instinctually, to have “the spark of channeling” in them. Not knowing how the a’dam works or what linking is means that they have no clues to understand why only certain women are able to become sul’dam and learn to control the a’dam—and because they despise the One Power, they don’t care enough to wonder about it.
An aside: One assumes that this fact about the sul’dam must have been known at the time the a’dam was invented. Perhaps during the early years of enslaving channelers, the Seanchan drew a distinction between those who would touch the True Source regardless of their intention and those who wouldn’t unless taught. Over time, the knowledge of the sul’dam’s potential was forgotten, perhaps even deliberately, and such a distinction was no longer needed. We can also conclude that directing a link is a form of channeling: The a’dam does the work for the sul’dam so she doesn’t learn how to do anything on her own, but she has opened up the ability in herself, which is why the collars will then work on any woman who has been a sul’dam.
The difference between having been born with the spark or discovered as a potential learner is, in many ways, one of semantics. Though sparkers tend to be very powerful once trained, there are plenty of strong Aes Sedai in both groups, and they channel the same way. The spark really only matters for an Aes Sedai in how her journey begins. But for the Seanchan, the differences are more important; a woman with the spark will end up enslaved and treated as sub-human, while a woman who can learn gains a decently important position in society… at least as long as she and everyone else remain ignorant of the truth.
But the show has not made this distinction between sparkers and those who can be taught. Instead, it tells us that the difference is one of degrees. Just as Ryma explained to Elayne and Nynaeve that small amounts of channeling are hard to detect but using large amounts of the One Power will result in being sensed by the damane, it turns out to be the same for those who are very weak in the One Power. Damane are those who are powerful enough to be detected by other channelers, while the sul’dam are those who are so weak they slip through the cracks. One assumes that in the show version of the world, the Seanchan rely on the damane to detect all the potential damane, and then the sul’dam are found by trying on the bracelet to see if they are able to use it. Indeed, this may also be the way it is done in the books; to the best of my knowledge we are never given exact specifics of how testing is done.
Egwene’s confrontation with Renna is a powerful moment. In the books she never has this opportunity, as she is rescued by Nynaeve, Elayne, and Min instead. I heartily approve of this change. Not only is it more thematically powerful—especially after we witnessed Renna’s casual dehumanization of the enslaved women and her belief that Egwene owed her not only obedience but loyalty and love—it also shows us Egwene’s inner strength. In the books, Egwene is revealed to be exceptionally strong-willed and determined; she is also quite ruthless when she believes she has to be. But much of her journey is an internal one, and between that and the need to streamline her story to fit into the limited space the show has for it, this part of the character could easily have been lost in translation.
There is something incredibly thematically satisfying about how Renna spent all this time trying to break Egwene, but despite having had all the power for most of their relationship, the moment the two were on an equal playing field there was no question as to whose will was stronger. Egwene must have been physically exhausted, undernourished, dehydrated, and aching from all she endured, and because Renna was still wearing the bracelet to Egwene’s collar, she would have felt twice what Renna was feeling as she suffocated. But I never doubted for a second that Egwene was willing to die and take Renna with her if that’s what she had to do. I never doubted that she could endure more than Renna, the woman who lashed out in pain and anger because the person she enslaved didn’t have warm feelings towards her. And I think, maybe, Renna knew it too. Whether or not Renna believed that Egwene would release her if she freed Egwene first, it was really her only option—she was certain to die either way.
It was, for me, one of the best moments of the season. Or it would have been. Except.
Except that before she hung Renna on that peg to suffocate to death, Egwene explained how the a’dam worked. She explained that Renna is also a channeler, and that the only difference between them is the difference in how strong they are—Renna, she says simply, is too weak. And thus, probably without even meaning to, the show has correlated strength in the One Power with personal strength. It has suggested that Egwene is better than Renna because she is a stronger channeler. And that, I think, steals the beauty from this moment.
I have a lot of issues with Jordan’s magical system, especially when it comes to how gender plays into being a channeler. However, one of the more interesting things he explores in the series is what it means to be able to wield the One Power. The Aes Sedai of Rand’s time have a hierarchical system that is very much reliant on strength in the One Power, and over the course of the series this supremecy based on channeling strength is examined, challenged, and even scorned, both by some of the Aes Sedai as well as by many other characters and societies. We meet groups of channelers who organize themselves very differently, including one culture where the Aes Sedai-equivalent group is made up both of women who can channel and women who cannot.
In a story that is literally about a chosen-one savior and his “chosen-one lite” friends, there is a lot of emphasis on strength, what it really means to be strong, and how responsible one is for the power one can wield. In some ways, Egwene’s journey even parallels Rand’s in this area. I think that this conflation of strength of will and strength in the One Power lessens the impact of that story, as it lessens the impact of Egwene’s triumph over Renna. If we were to take this connection seriously, it makes Egwene’s revenge feel smaller and meaner somehow. She should not be saying “You are less than me because you are weak in the One Power.” She should be saying “You thought that I was a subhuman being, but my will and inner strength is greater than yours.”
Renna is a slaver, someone who reduces human beings to something less than. The fact that she is also a potential channeler is relevant to that story, but only if she has time to reckon with the fact that she is the same as the people she tortured and dehumanized—only if she has time to realize that the joy she took in channeling, and in connecting with other channelers, could have been hers for real, rather than something stolen and tainted.
But Renna dies without having time to grapple with these themes, themes that the show doesn’t have time for anyway. The focus, instead, is on this battle of wills, and that is where the power of the scene lies.
Ironically enough, in a scene that never existed in the books, all that is missing to make it right is a little bit more of Robert Jordan’s worldbuilding.
Sylas K Barrett will always be grateful for the complexity of The Wheel if Time. Not only is fun to read, but it provides a wealth of information and themes for those of us who live and breathe deep dive analysis.
Could be worse. Could be midichlorians.
You said, “The concept of a ‘block’ hasn’t been brought up by any of the Aes Sedai.” Alanna actually mentions Nynaeve’s block in their first scene together in S2E1 shortly before Liandrin confronts Nyneave about it herself.
Honestly, i did not hear Egwene as saying anything more than that Renna’s connection to the One Power was too weak to detect. I did not feel it was making any particular commentary on personal worth based on that connection. I think the venom in Egwene’s voice was for obvious reasons. Otherwise i agree on the take of the article.
I’d add that i thought the actor playing Renna did an incredible job. I had a sense that Renna saw herself as the good guy the whole time, she just saw Egwene as a disobedient dog because that was her culture. I agree Renna living to learn a new perspective would have been a great story, but given the circumstances Egwene killing her at the first opportunity was the only thing that made sense.
Why is Egwene the only person allowed to have her own victory? Everyone else has their whole arc this season rewritten to show how much they need to work together, to the point where Nyneave and Elayne end up doing basically nothing, but Egwene gets exactly the opposite treatment. Thematically, it makes no sense.
I think it’s at least possible that Egwene’s statement about Renna is simply a mistake based on her lack of knowledge about the spark/can be taught distinction. Lacking the spark might read to a novice like weakness.
@@.-@ – That’s kinda Egwene’s thing in the books too. She uses and discards people but never truly works with anyone except maybe Siuan to a certain extent.
I particularly enjoyed the animation of the one power around the sul’dam’s hands when they’re channelling with a damanae on leash. Shows folks care <3
@@.-@ Because this show desperately wanted it’s main hero to be female and now tries to make it so (without alienating book fans too much). And who is better for this purpose then Egwene?
@6: I’m a bit confused by the statement about Egwene “using & discarding” people. When does she do this exactly?
Also, the statement that she never collaborates with anyone but Siuan seems odd. SPOILERS Egwene teams up with Nynaeve and Elayne to hunt for the Black Ajah in The Dragon Reborn, and continues the collaboration after she becomes Amyrlin–doing so via Tel’aran’rhiod once they leave Salidar. She also works with several Aes Sedai on her and Siuan’s plan to vastly increase her power via the declaration of war. Once captured, she works with Leane and a few ex-Salidar AS to undermine Elaida as much as possible.
Back in the White Tower as Amyrlin, she works with Sylviana and Siuan on admin & rebuilding and successfully negotiates via Tel’aran’rhiod with the women leaders of the Aiel and the Sea Folk. And as one of the leaders of Team Light during Tarmon Gai’don, she obviously has to work with the other Team Light leaders as well as her generals and her leading AS. So I’m not seeing this failure to collaborate in the books.
The biggest problem with the scene is not Renna’s unceremonious death. It’s the insane coincidence that all others die but these 2 live.
And, of course, the next scene with Ishamael.
Wheel of Time only works if the True Source is split by gender. Without the split between saidin and saidar, you don’t have the Dark One’s taint. Without the taint, the only remaining implication is that men are simply inherently evil and can’t be trusted with power or the Power.
The biggest mistake the show made in the first season was trying to suggest that a woman could be the Dragon Reborn. If the Dragon Reborn didn’t encounter the risk of madness, then there would be no reason for anyone to fear the Dragon’s rebirth. Sure, the Last Battle would occur, but there would be no potential second Breaking Of The World. Egwene and Nynaeve being ta’veren is totally understandable, but the Dragon Reborn absolutely had to be male.
The second season reduced Rand and elevated Egwene to proportionally similar levels. Rand wipes out Turak and several soldiers without drawing his sword, but that’s all he gets (and I would have preferred the sword fight, it’s my favorite scene from The Great Hunt, but I digress), while Egwene gets her big revenge moment and then, after getting knocked unconscious, wakes up to stand toe to toe with Ishamael? She is not and should not be The Main Character, but you’d never know it.
Making Egwene save herself makes the Nynaeve / Elayne part of the show over the last two episodes be meaningless, not to mention Ryma’s sacrifice. Also robs us one of the good Nynaeve scenes, in which she tells Egwene not to kill Renna. It’s kind of like Gandalf talking to Frodo about if Gollum should be killed. Shows how Nynaeve, for all her anger, doesn’t kill people outright and that having Renna become a damane and know she can channel is the bigger punishment.
Egwene, and viewers, are allowed to experience this moment because, presumably both, afe about to learn valuable lessons about the One Power and it’s place amongst the Aiel women. Ideally, this is the perfect setup for that lesson.
This is actually spelled out in the books exactly this way, though I forget where. While the damane are out looking for girls who can channel, they also let other girls try on the bracelets to see if they feel anything. Those who can are trained as sul’dam.
How could Egwene even pick up the other A’dam? She planned to use it as a weapon and her own A’dam should have prevented it.
This may be too book-WOT, but Renna and Egwene are already in a circle. Neither of them can enter another circle (wear an another bracelet/collar)
Hmm…
Definitely. In one, we have Rand experience the trauma of having killed a human for the first time. The other has him slaughter a bunch of mooks without a hint of remorse for a cheap laugh.
JasonD@13 has good points. And there are just too many problems in the show. I’m of the opinion that Jordan’s WOT saga is much too complex to reduce to a few hours of TV. Sylas makes the observation that streamlining is necessary – but the degree of streamlining required to cram WOT into a few 8-episode seasons necessitates the omission and/or distortion of major themes. I think the TV series was doomed once the decision was made to severely limit the number of episodes.
@skockie that was my first thought. Why even show that the collar will prevent her touching anything she plans to use as a weapon. If you just ignore that rule in the next episode.
@18: For what it’s worth, since the showrunners said season 2 was combining things from books 2 and 3 (just as season 3 will combine books 3 and 4), that scene may be meant to sub for Rand killing the Darkfriend merchant and her guards in a similarly remorseless fashion in The Dragon Reborn. Or, if they still plan to keep that, to set up for it and make it seem less out-of-character.
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“measly eight episodes per season”
YES. This is wild to me.
I’m enjoying the show so far, though I’m not a fan of the books (couldn’t get past the first one). And I understand they had to compress, cut and simplify a lot of the rather overabundant source material.
But the eight-episode season concept is giving the characters and the worldbuilding scant room to breathe.
I love the visuals –the Seanchan in particular were very interesting visually, and managed to reference several real-world cultures while staying uniquely strange–, the cast is great, and there are good scenes, but the whole thing feels rushed to the extreme.
A ten episode mark per season would have been, maybe not ideal, but a lot better.
The “except” part that you are talking about here is exactly WHY it is actually better that Egwene, in books, CHOSE not to exact retribution on the Seachan suldam. Doing what she did in the TV show actually cheapens and diminishes Egwene’s amazing strength of character which is critical to how to behaves later as well Because she HAS better character because of how she was raised. One of my favorite things about many of the women in WoT is that they actually have very strong moral character. Egwene tops that list – she has suffered much and many people try to manipulate her, but she rises above it all – despite it all – that is what makes her such a compelling character and becomes such a critical character in the story. The distinction of the male/female have of the One Power was also a critical component – the BEST things in the age of legend were when men and women worked TOGETHER – a great sentiment that working together we can always create things better than we can alone.
One very important thing that is missing (unless I missed it) is that Women cannot see Men’s channeling and Men cannot see Women’s channeling. That is why Moiraine was suddenly weak in the One Source. She didn’t realize that the One Power had been used in a weave placed upon her at the Eye of the World by Ishamael to separate her from the source and that the weave was tied off to remain in place and continue working. This was a technique lost to the Aes Sedai but was easily seen by Rand and any other male channeler because they were men and could see the weaves made by men.
Aes Sedai and the men who can channel were originally teamed up and working together. They each touched the One Power but differently. Men could see men’s weaves and women could see women’s weaves but neither could see the weaves of the opposite sex. The combined power when working together in teams addressing both sides of the One Power was more than the sum of the parts. Then the Dark One in a desperate attempt to weaken and break these teams, tainted the one power as he was being sealed away. From that point on, men touching and using the male half of the One Power would be infected by the taint and driven insane – some quickly and some slowly. That made teams of men channelers with Aes Sedai impossible. Meanwhile the Aes Sedai were untouched by the taint because Ishamael couldn’t touch the female half of the power to taint it too.
To preserve the continuity and authenticity of the story, that point needs to be made. As watchers of the show, we are aware of both sides and know when they are being used. But that difference needs to be pointed out in the show or it will get very confusing before the end.
@32,
the concept of not being able to see each other’s weaves is mentioned briefly in season 1. While AS are watching Logain in a cage with him shielded, one Aes sedai mentions something along the lines of “I wish I could see when he channels.” Then the concept is immediately disregarded when one of the AS intercepts Logain’s magic missile weave with an anti-magic missile weave, I think in the same scene.
Uhm… Tons of spoilers to follow of you haven’t actually read the books.
No one actually gets to touch the true source without being given the chance to by the dark one… The whole point was that channelers only ever had access to the split form until lanfear burrows through and unleashes the dark ones influence upon the world… at which point, it chooses who gets to touch the true source… it chooses which males will suffer the taint. I feel like this concept is pretty explicit and bold in the books with forsaken speaking of being disallowed from the perceived benefits of being able to touch the true source at varying times as a result of choices made by the dark one… of specific members being more chosen, per sae, than others. I’m not sure if the author of this article fully remembers the books that well. Also, as an aside, I appreciated the difference in how the male and female halves had to be controlled, in how individuals were rediscovering how it was different when they finally linked with the opposite genders.. it was interesting and I thought a lot of the Egwene talks about the river stuff was going to play into that as a clever way to include that description of the female half of the source and was looking forward to the male equivalent down the line… It was also a nice opportunity for characters to learn they had a lot to learn, for more seated members of the tower to realize they didn’t know as much as they did… That they, too, were ignorant of some things. Also, Logain the teacher is just weird man… idk.
Also, Egwene killing the sul’dam just goes against one of the major points of her story arc across the series. She is the uniter. The one who would take control of the tower and seek to unify all channelers again with the White Tower who had been in hiding or in other cultures. To make whole the broken tower and all the individuals who were cast out by it’s policies that developed after the breaking. Killing her just makes her the vengeful act of a song. Takes away her credibility when she insists that the tower be more inclusive, that it end the ignorance upon which things like the seanchan use of the collars relies upon. Egwene fights ignorance with education and light.. not death and cruelty.
In the end, her choices make Egwene one of the most profound characters in the books save for Rand, but even then it’s only because he gets to fight the ‘final battle’ with the dark one. Her character, personally, is more interesting than Rand and more potent even if only because Rand’s Ta’veren thread is so strong that the world happens to him. He never chooses what he wants to do. All of the boys are like that though…. they’re just different examples of how to react to a fate that seems to choose an every increasing number of the big choices in your life and how to deal with/live with that and maybe find some agency. Egwene chooses to fight, to make and effect change. Hell, she even manages to undue all the ages worth of Baelfire use.
The Wheel weaves as it wills… but the Ta’veren have very little choice in it (just look at poor Matt refusing to fight a big battle and ending up with one of the most talented and fearsome armies in the known world made up of people from all over the known world… whoops). The people around them get to choose to do things, to rise to the occasion and do something great, or terrible… but it’s a choice that they have to make and rise to. That makes it interesting, makes it worthwhile to explore because being close to strong Ta’veren puts them in proximity to calamitous upheaval, but it also gives them the chance to choose to do something amazing rather than let the wheel thrust it upon someone else.
Another aside, one commentor mentioned preferring the battle in the sky… I agree… I feel like a big fire dragon wheeling around is something anyone could have messed around and done with the source already… The giant battle showing who the real deal combatants were… showing Rand and what he looks like…. was way cooler and a bigger deal for the world in general. Rand would be elevated to the level of their savior at that point with people describing his appearance and look… of how he fought a forsaken in the skies like some kind of Kaiju battle and spreading his myth and power like the romans inadvertently did stamping the emperors face upon currency across the realm. It was a big deal.. it wasn’t just an omen, it was his coming out party.
@34,
You might have conflated the True Source™ with the True Power™
The True Source is power from the creator, it drives the spinning of the Wheel and is split into saidin and saidar.
The True Power is from the Dark One, similar to the True Source, but not gendered and only available to those chosen by the Dark One to wield it.
I’m a little surprised no one else said anything and even fell into the trap of calling the Source the True Source. In the book there was a distinction between the One Source and the True Source. The One Source is what the Aes Sadai use while the True Source was used to denote the power coming from the Dark One. This is a BIG deal in the story line as the use of the True Source further corrupts the user while use of the One Source does not, unless it is saidin that has yet to be cleansed
Yes, many people have issues with the basis of the True Source being halved along gender lines. What tends to get lost or forgotten is the fact that all of the greatest works done with the One Power were accomplished by linked groups of men and women. A circle of 13 women would be evenly matched with a linked pair of one man and one woman. It’s a wonderful idea, and one I agree with completely.
Eh I’m not sure if I’d take Egwene as the word of truth on whether or not they’ve changed this piece of world building. Considering the character is just starting to learn about channeling.
@34 Haven’t read the books, and that does sound cool and I feel it would work well animated, but I think the cgi version of that could very easily end up looking kind of silly tbh.
@12 pretty ta’veren of her eyyy if I’m understanding what that means.
@34, as comment 35 mentions, the True power is not the same as the true source. The true power is the “essence” of the Dark One, and the DO controls who can touch it because it is essentially, a bit of its being/power. Too much use creates the saa, amid other side effects. Late book Spoiler: Rand is allowed to touch the True Power to break the sad bracelets and destroy Semirhage because the DO hoped that would tempt Rand enough to turn to the dark. The taint that touches saidin, as metaphysically explained many times, is basically a layer of filth that the DO laid on top of the male half of the true source as blowback from the 100 companions resealing his prison. Lanfear initially made the bore because she sensed that it was a new form of power, she’s always been about power, and she was hoping to find something even stronger than saidar/saidin. But the true power is the essence of the DO, and the true source is basically the essence of the creator, if you want to look at it in yin/yang terms similar to saidin/saidar. Everything has its opposite in the books, that’s why the cleansing was successful, as the taint from Shadar Logoth was essentially the opposite of the taint on saidin, and then magnetism/reverse polarity/a whole bunch of metaphysical gobbledygook allowedfor one to draw the other until they essentially cancelled each other out.
@17 and @21. I also wondered about Egwene’s ability to touch another collar. But I wondered if the show simply didn’t have time to highlight that she used the same method that she learned from the vase — she convinced her mind to not see it as a weapon. After all, a vase is a weapon too.
I had always remembered the incident with the vase being told with a laugh in the books — oh ha ha, I couldn’t pour water for 3 days. It was interesting to me to see how it was translated into a psychological drama in the show.
I thought that the final showdown between Egwene and Renna was about strength of will, with Egwene drawing on the very discipline she learned as a slave. I hated that Egwene killed her, but I accept that the show is grimmer than the books (and more adult– I chuckled at the fact that they didn’t leave the Two Rivers as 5 blushing virgins — did the writers think that would have been too much of a fantasy?)
Egwene was one of my favorite characters in the series– she learned so much from so many different people and evolved so much as a person. I am glad that the show is doing well by her. Madeleine Madden is outstanding!
I am really enjoying the show so far — a bit uneven, but fun. I had doubts when I saw some of the plot changes (especially Mat), but many have revealed themselves to actually make sense, and it is nice to be surprised every now and then.
@40 she didn’t just trick herself into believing she didn’t see the pitcher as a weapon, she had to actually reject any possibility that it could be one. The idea that she genuinely didn’t view the object that was used to torture and enslave her for the last week as a weapon is absurd.
Totally agree with @14, 31 and 34. Thanks for your joint eloquence in expressing disappointment about Egwene’s murder of Renna–a disappointment I share. I’m really puzzled why Sylas thought it was so cool.
@13
Correct. The author complaining about the split being “sexist” is bizarre. No, it’s not. No one’s saying one is inferior to the other, just that they’re different.
Exactly right. That is literally one of the most important parts of the conflict within the Aes Sedai of what what to do with the Dragon. Some believe he will save world, some believe he will break it again.
And beyond that, it’s not even internally consistent. The Reds track down and gentle any male channeler who claims to be the Dragon, for the above reason. If the Dragon can be a woman, then what is anyone doing about it? There’s no indication on the show that the White Tower is stilling false female Dragons, or that there even have been any women who claimed to be the Dragon Reborn. It simply doesn’t make sense, and was just a half-hearted attempt at trying to be forward thinking.
I think that sul’dam being too weak channelers to be detected, as well as detection of other channelers on sight being a somewhat rare Talent is a change that works to help the show keep things simpler than in original material.
I don’t remember how testing was done in the books – didn’t they put collars on all young women yearly and whoever got caught by it became damane? Sul’dam only became susceptible to the collar after a few years on the job, IIRC.
There was one rather obvious oddity with sul’dam recruitment, though, because they accepted girls as young as 16, which meant that they should have been getting late-blooming sparkers on a regular enough basis and the fact that some sul’dam trainees tended to eventually become damane couldn’t have been concealed. Maybe it was yet another thing that Randland channelers were wrong about – i.e. that there was a way to prevent the spark from manifesting after all, and getting vicarious access to the OP as a sul’dam was exactly that. Maybe it was one of the seeds for change to the Seanchan outlook in Randland, that was strongly teased in early and mid books, but ultimately wasn’t implemented, because Jordan decided to relegate these issues and events to the Outriggers, and Sanderson chose to honor this intention (unfortunately, IMHO, YMMV). Or maybe it was just a mistake. But I always had my doubts about Tuon being an inhibited sparker who got lucky.
Concerning equating strength in OP with the strength of will, this was the case in the books too, with some exceptions.
MG @31:
Egwene would have totally killed Renna in TGH if Nynaeve hadn’t stopped her, and in the show Nyn wasn’t there, so it makes perfect sense to me that she did.
Egwene being able to collar Renna… hm. In principle a’dam restrictions should be somewhat susceptible to mind-games, like the Oaths are. Hence brutal brainwashing of the newly captured. If Egwene could convince herself in the moment that she wasn’t using it as a weapon, maybe? It is iffy, but in the books she was able to channel a little when nobody was wearing the bracelet, even though it made her sick.
Some more thoughts that I forgot to add yesterday:
Chitnis @12:
How is an improbable survival of one of the protagonists a problem in WoT? They do it all the time.
JasonD @13:
I have never liked the souls being gendered and apriori segregated into channelers and non-channelers in WoT.
I also disagree that there would have been nothing to fear if the Dragon had been female – the example of Artur Hawkwing and the Hundred Years War in his wake that thoroughly devastated Randland and completely re-wrote it’s political map amply demonstrated that a strong ta’veren could be very destructive without being mad or even a channeler. Also, LTT didn’t start out mad and a female Dragon possibly following in his footsteps and tainting saidar too should have been horrifying indeed. The risk of madness for a male Dragon was just a cherry on top, not the only or even the main reason to be afraid of him.
I didn’t like Egwene standing up to Ishy even for as short a time as she did, though, at least not without a stronger indication that he was just toying with her. I would argue, that the show is going for the ensemble feel, which WoT also ultimately developed into, so there isn’t going to be “the” main character. And that Egwene being the shield in this fight while Rand was the sword sort of foreshadows certain future events.
Ryamano @14:
Yes and no. In the books Nyn’s block is a minor inconvenience, because when chips are down she nearly always, with one notable exception, manages to become angry and come through. I liked that the show presented her block as a genuine liability, particularly since she also didn’t try very hard to overcome it there. I agree that this somewhat wastes Nyn’s and El’s efforts and Ryma’s sacrifice, but their courage and loyalty weren’t devalued by this.
JasonD @37:
I was OK with divided OP, though of course it is rather problematic if one takes into account non-binary gender and/or sex. I am somewhat OK with the power differential between men and women, since male wilders had to be plausibly destructive and dangerous for the world-building reasons.
But the rules of who gets to lead which mixed links rather undermined the whole “functional equality through cooperation” between genders idea as depicted in WoT, IMHO. Particularly since in the most basic channeling partnership of one man and one woman, only the man can lead if they link. Not to mention in most circles under 13 and in the biggest possible circle of 72. There is no equality in this – women are just means of linking and power reservoirs for the men in most of the frequent and practical configurations, as well as in the largest possible one. I don’t love Sanderson’s “double bond allows trading control” solution to this issue, but I appreciate his attempt to remove this ridiculous obstacle to true cooperation between any 2 channelers of saidin and saidar.
The show seems to have balanced female ability to link in a different way – by making it really dangerous for those not in control. This works too and largely removes the need for strength difference between genders, so the show can keep it simple.
Hello friends! I’m so sorry to keep you waiting another week for Winter’s Heart! I had surgery recently and somewhat overestimated my ability to get things done while in recovery. I’m silly like that. But I am on the mend, and feeling confident about getting back on track for next week. I’ve read the prologue already and there’s so much to talk about! Can’t wait, and I’ll see you all soon!
As always, thanks for reading. I’m so grateful for every single one of you.
It probably doesn’t help that the prologue for Winter’s Heart is a real doozy.
@36 – Yes there is a difference between the powers but you’re mislabeling them here in a different way. from the others who were also mislabeling them.
“True Source” is not from the Dark One, and there is no “One Source.” The True Source is the infinite power of creation that drives the Wheel, and it is divided into two halves, saidin and saidar. When channelers, good or bad, draw on the True Source through their respective halves what they use is the “One Power”. A physics way to look at this is that the True Source is all the potential energy in the universe. The One Power is the kinetic or chemical energy that potential is channeled into.
“True Power” is from the Dark One. It is not gendered. It may not be unlimited. It can only be used with the Dark One’s permission. The True Power destroys and corrupts while the True Source (which maybe was used to create the universe) preserves or transmutes.
I get why there is often confusion because there is some propaganda in the names. The “One” Power is really two, and there’s also a completely other, alien Power. The “True” Power isn’t exactly “True” and it comes from the Father of Lies.
I saw some confusion in some of the comment’s. The One Power (split into the corrupted male half and clean female half) comes from the True source, which is different than the True Power which comes from the dark one. The dark one chooses who can access the True Power, and what they can use it for, but the dark one doesn’t control who can channel the One Power from the True source.
When looking at the supposedly “problematic” elements of the Wheel of Time, they need to be viewed from the lens of the setting’s deeper themes.
Robert Jordan is all about balance. Saidin and Saidar push and pull against one another to turn the wheel, which means they need to be different, rather than indistinguishible. So, folks who wield saidin tend to be better at fire and earth, and folks who wield saidar tend to be better at air and spirit. Men tend to be better at breaking things, and women tend to be better at putting them back together. An indivudual man may be more powerful than an individual female, but more women may link together than men, and yet a man is needed to extend the circle beyond its initial limitations. Both halves need each other.
More deeply, and to Rand’s surprise, they can’t just destroy the Dark One, either. He has a role in the wheel against which the True Source must also struggle to keep the thing moving.
More broadly, 21st century readers seem shocked, shocked that a pre-modern setting with wildly different cultures has people that do not share or affirm their world view, and that the third person narrator doesn’t try all that hard to affirm or deny those beliefs. If the Wheel of Time’s treatment of women is “problematic,” wait until you read A Song of Ice and Fire!