Indeed, and so it is another Wheel of Time Reread Redux! Huzzah!
Today’s Redux post will cover Chapters 30 and 31 of The Dragon Reborn, originally reread in this post.
All original posts are listed in The Wheel of Time Reread Index here, and all Redux posts will also be archived there as well. (The Wheel of Time Master Index, as always, is here, which has links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general on Tor.com.)
The Wheel of Time Reread is also available as an e-book series! Yay!
All Reread Redux posts will contain spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time series, so if you haven’t read, read at your own risk.
And now, the post!
Chapter 30: The First Toss
Redux Commentary
He knew he was lucky. He could remember always being lucky. But somehow, his memories from Emond’s Field did not show him as lucky as he had been since leaving. […] But it was not just since leaving the Two Rivers that he had become lucky. The luck had come once he took the dagger from Shadar Logoth.
Don’t get me wrong, I adore the whole Mat + luck thing; it’s always been one of my favorite fantastical conceits in the whole series. There’s something inherently fascinating in playing with the laws of probability, and the (probably ill-advised) air of romance surrounding gambling and its various symbolic trappings (which Jordan makes liberal use of in connection with Mat) only adds to the mystique. Storytelling (especially in fantasy) is about finding signal in the noise, patterns out of randomness, and that is precisely what games of chance tempt us with.
So, that’s all very cool. However, as I said in the original commentary, I never did quite get why unnaturally good luck should be the residue of Mat’s encounter with the Shadar Logoth dagger. As I said, it’s too beneficial a result, for one thing. And for another, there just doesn’t seem to be any logical connection between “luck” and “unreasoning paranoia and hatred”, which as you’ll recall was Shadar Logoth’s main theme in life. Or, er, death. Or undeath. Whatever.
And, well, maybe there isn’t a connection. A lot of commenters on the original post opined that Mat is actually just plain wrong about the source of his luck, and that it was owed to his particular manifestation of ta’veren-ness instead. Some argued that maybe the extreme Healing session he had in the Tower, and its apparent thinning of the boundaries between Mat’s present life and his past ones, may have been what made his luck go haywire. And, in fact, Mat himself brings up that possibility a few lines later:
Maybe it was something the Aes Sedai did. Something they did Healing me. By accident, maybe. That could be it. Better that the other. Those bloody Aes Sedai must have done it to me.
I don’t remember whether Jordan’s ever provided a definitive answer to this question, but on balance I think I prefer the idea that the dagger had nothing to do with Mat’s luck, and that it was either his ta’veren nature coming forward, a result from exposure to extreme Healing, or both. That makes a lot more sense to me.
Either way, though, it sure is fun to read about.
As [Anaiya] turned from him, her eyes fell on the quarterstaff he had brought from the practice yard, propped in the corner of the room. “You do not need to protect yourself from us, Mat. You are as safe here as you could be anywhere. Almost certainly safer.”
“Oh, I know that, Aes Sedai. I do.” After she left he frowned at the door, wondering if he had managed to convince her of anything.
Something I think we rarely if ever see any Aes Sedai express, but which I most certainly would feel if I were one, is any real chagrin or regret that most people seem to regard them so negatively, with anything from caution to fear to overt hostility. Or that even those people who do regard Aes Sedai favorably only seem to do so in a way which is nearly as distancing as outright dislike. I mean, it’s not like you can really make much more of a connection with someone who’s always bowing and scraping at you than you can with someone who visibly wishes you would just go away and quit freaking them out.
I don’t know, most of the sisters in the story seem to either not notice or not care about this (or even tacitly approve of it), but I feel like I would find it awfully… lonely, to be so restricted in who I could hang out with as a peer.
There are only, what, right around a thousand living Aes Sedai at this point in the series? Which might seem like a fairly large pool of potential people to be friends with, but objectively it really isn’t. Especially when you consider that most Aes Sedai were discouraged from making friends outside of their own Ajah, which means you actually only had a group of a hundred or so to choose from – all of them being people who, by definition, are probably pretty similar to you.
Yeah, that… sucks. It’s great when your friends like the same things you like, obviously, but jeez, it’s not cool for everyone to be exactly alike, all the time. Variety, yo, get you some!
Not to mention the near-total exclusion of the possibility of having male friends in that pool. (I feel like Warders can’t really count, given the inherent power imbalance there; maybe that’s not always true, but it’s undeniably an issue.) I don’t know about anyone else, but some of the best and most enduring platonic friendships I’ve had in my life have been with men, and the idea of having no access to the possibility of cross-gender friendships is really pretty upsetting.
Anyway, I just feel like walking around in a world where 95% of people either avoid you or hate you (or excessively kiss your ass while wishing they could avoid you) would be a kind of depressing lot in life, really.
And in the “hilariously minor/random” category:
Raucous music filled the streets from bittern and flute, harp and hammered dulcimer.
Huh. Never really noticed this before, but I’m pretty sure a “bittern” is a kind of bird, not an instrument. A gittern is an instrument, kind of halfway between a lute and a guitar; there is also apparently a variant called a cittern, but at least as far as Google is concerned, a bittern is a bird, the end.
But, apparently this is not a gaffe on Jordan’s part (or if it is, it’s a determinedly unnoticed gaffe), because not only is it mentioned several more times in the book, TDR actually has “bittern” as an entry in its glossary:
bittern (BIHT-tehrn): A musical instrument that may have six, nine, or twelve strings, and is held flat on the knees and played by plucking or strumming.
Interestingly, neither a gittern nor a cittern is played in this manner; the description sounds more like a zither to me than anything else, though I am hardly an expert on historical stringed instruments. But regardless, what it definitely is not, is a shy, short-necked member of the heron family.
Sooo, I guess Jordan just decided to… call his version of this thing a bird? Even though all the other mentioned instruments are actual names of actual instruments? Weird. It’s not like “zither” isn’t plenty exotic-sounding to the average modern ear, after all.
“Zither” is an awesome word, actually. Sounds like what a snake’s zipper would sound like, if snakes had zippers. Zither. Zither. Zzzzzzziitther
Hm? Oh, right. Moving on!
Chapter 31: The Woman of Tanchico
Redux Commentary
Yay, Mat and Thom! They are a great duo. I heart them. “Try not to eat the table” makes me chuckle every time.
Still can’t believe I didn’t realize Thom killed Galldrian for so long.
“Footpads,” Mat muttered. “I was thinking about footpads.”
“No street thieves or strong-arms in Tar Valon, either, boy. When the guards take a footpad—not that many try that game here; the word spreads—but when they do, they haul him to the Tower, and whatever it is the Aes Sedai do to him, the fellow leaves Tar Valon the next day as wide-eyed as a goosed girl. I understand they’re even harder on women caught thieving. No, the only way you’ll have your money stolen here is somebody selling you polished brass for gold or using shaved dice. There are no footpads.”
A crime-free city? I can hardly picture such a thing.
Of course, I’m sure Tar Valon isn’t actually crime-free; it probably just has more subtle criminals. Grifters and con artists and bribe-takers, maybe. Civic corruption. Maybe a cat burgler or two. Probably no graffiti artists, though; I shudder to think what the penalty would be for defacing millennia-old Ogier stone work.
I’m not clear, now that I think about it, on who exactly sent the not-footpads, plus optional Gray Man, after Mat in the previous chapter. I guess it would have to be Mesaana? I don’t think Mat is on any other Forsaken’s radar at this point, except in the most general sense, but presumably Mesaana’s minions reported to her about Mat’s Healing and his connection to Rand (though not, apparently, his connection to the Horn, otherwise I assume it would have been stolen out of the Tower long since), so that’s probably why she would have ordered his assassination. Yeah, okay.
And… that’s all I have to say about that chapter, so here’s where we stop! Next week: more Mat goodness! Stay tuned!
I’m listening to Towers of Midnight right now and just got past Nynaeve’s trial, where she tells Egwene that Aes Sedai are too isolated from the world by staying in their Tower/ Ajahs without families or community roots. A lot of them probably do feel the sad weight of people’s unfounded bigotry, but believe too strongly in the tradition of staying in the Tower and maneuvering against other Ajahs to do anything about it, and refuse to attribute any blame to themselves and their isolation for the prejudice.
Hopefully some will follow her/ Moraine’s example and get away from the Tower after the Last Battle, to give the Aes Sedai a better name.
I seem to recall that at first Mat’s luck was as likely to be bad luck as it was good. All that mattered was the improbability. But by the end it seems it was all good luck, to the point that Mat could just use it to toss a knife blindly knowing that it would hit a rabbit (as opposed to it bouncing off something and hitting a friend in a sensitive area). Am I remembering it wrong? Or is it one of those things where Mat, being the ultimate unreliable narrator, perceived some events as bad luck when in reality they were good all along?
Real nobles, especially kings, really had to live that way. They couldn’t really trust anyone because all the courtiers just wanted to win the ruler’s favor. For some modern stars and rich people it is still imposible to interact normally with ordinary people. If you are always surrounded by screaming fans or bodyguards that is certainly annoying (I never got why people scream, especially during a concert: don’t they want to hear the music?)
Grey Men are supposed to be rare, but there are a lot of them in Tar Valon.
Re: Mat’s luck – I always viewed it as Mat’s own interpretation (and his lifestyle) determining how his Ta’vern-ness exhibited itself. The Pattern needed Mat to stay in Tar Valon long enough to get what he needed (Thom) and so Mat gambled and ate and drank and kept winning. If Mat hadn’t been on such a winning streak, he would have realized he had plenty of money for traveling and moved on prior to meeting Thom. I don’t think the dagger had anything to do with the luck – vice versa, in fact. The Pattern needed Mat to have the connection to the dagger so he could rid us of Fain at the end.
@2 I don’t recall anything about Mat having just as much bad luck as good. There were times when Mat believed he had bad luck (such as the cliffhanger ending of one book where a building is toppling toward him and he cries out “What happened to my bloody luck?!) – but again, if that didn’t happen to him, he would have escaped and the Light would never have had the Seanchean as an ally in the Last Battle. And a non-Ta’vern would likely have been crushed by the falling building as opposed to surviving. Again, the Pattern needed Mat to be wounded so badly that he had to stick around, meet Tuon, etc.
RAND however did seem to be “balanced” in the things that happened when he was around – one town with a flurry of weddings, the next town with a bunch of unfortunate accidents, and so on.
I suppose being an Aes Sedai is similar to being a Republic era Jedi – up in an ivory tower, isolated, but also somewhat convinced of the rightness of your own aloofness. Which is not necessarily a good thing…
Mat is the Gambler. Hero’s of the Horn call him that directly. As the series progresses, I think he just learns to direct the luck better. The Pattern needed him to be the lucky battle lord. So it starts the process.
He was pretty un-lucky with the dagger, so maybe this is the balance. And Mat is an unreliable narrator.
It could also be he started noticing it and noting the events better.
#4 @@@@@KalvinKingsley
Interesting theory – his luck isn’t specifically good or bad, but simply what is necessary for the Pattern. And since what’s good for the Pattern is usually good for Mat, it looks like good luck. That makes sense, and fits well with Mat’s internal narration.
I always thought Mats Luck was the Pattern working against the Dagger! The Pattern has really only Chance to work with, so it has to give Mat the most Luck of the Superboys to try to keep her/his T’averen alive (or at least give him a fighting Chance;) )
Leigh, IMO, the Darkfriends (those who confronted Mat directly and those who hired footpads to kill Mat) were acting on orders from the Darkfriend Social at the beginning of TGH. Ishamael planted instructions in many of their minds. When they saw Mat, those signals were triggered. They may not have even realized why they felt the need to kill him.
It is possible that Thom is correct. After learning about that ter’angrael that the Black Hunters used on Talene later in the series, I could imagine that Aes Sedai would use that thing on criminals. It may have provided a worse experience for women than men. That could have been the basis of Thom’s comments about women criminals.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
Hey, new guy here. About Mat’s luck…I always assumed it was a Talent, like Perrin’s Wolfbrother thing or that Sniffer guy.
Mat’s luck is partly tied to his soul (The Gambler, as the Heroes called him), and partly it’s his manifestation of being ta’veren. I know for sure Sanderson has said that that’s what the notes indicated.
I think Aes Sedai could form real friendships with their Warders, but not anyone else’s Warders.
Tweaking the name and design of an instrument is a very Robert Jordan thing to do.
Tar Valon is kind of like Singapore in regards to crime. Effective at its suppression, but rather draconian in its means of doing so (their solution also seems to consist entirely of convincing footpads to ply their trade elsewhere rather than stopping it).
As Mat mentioned he has always been lucky – just not as lucky as he was after this event. So I have always taken it as he had a talent like Hurin’s or Min’s – extreme luck. It was just very weak before the Aes Sedai Healed him and that Healing upped it to a huge level. So his current flood in these last few chapters is all the good luck he had stored up over the last several years flooding out. After that initial flood it settles down to the state he keeps throughout the rest of the books.
Heh. Always a bit of a mind-bender to be reminded that Mat is “lucky” despite everything he endures. His kind of luck doesn’t mean bad things don’t happen to him…only that a lot of things which should kill him don’t (permanently) do so. Plus the other defiances of probability which sometimes cause more trouble than they solve.
Mashadar is white, but doesn’t seem very meaty. :-P
I think taking the dagger could have been the catalyst for Mat’s luck, despite not itself being the direct cause. That was the moment where Mat’s story truly begins, in that it is the dagger and its subsequent loss that put him on the path that eventually leads him to the Horn, and Tar Valon, and thus everything that follows. The moment he takes the dagger therefore could be the moment the Pattern really fixes on him and tightens around him, thus making it the moment when his possibly ta’veren-enhanced luck would manifest to the degree that it does, rather than whatever level it was “naturally” at.
Never liked Mat’s luck, as it is just too extreme and ultimately cheapens all his accomplishments even more than general ta’verenness does. And the battle memories will cheapen them even more, to me. His continuing to participate in games of chance (for everybody else, that is, not him) after he knows that he can’t lose is downright cheating and a confidence trick and makes me dislike him. IMHO, his luck prior to the dagger/Healing is what his incarnation usually has – which is why he is a “Gambler”. What post-Healing Mat does isn’t really gambling though, it is all guaranteed wins until the Last Battle, where the odds are so grossly against the side of Light that Mat’s luck isn’t entirely overpowering.
Yea, I also feel for the non-evil AS. I mean, such a big deal is made of SGs not being appropriately grateful to Mat, who yes, helps them, but also treats them very dismissively most of the time, but Mat (and other superboys) being rude and wholly ungrateful to the AS who save their butts time and again is taken as par for the course and a sign of them being strong-willed and independant. Sigh. For that matter, did Mat ever thank the SGs for bringing him to Tar Valon for Healing?
Speaking of ivory towers and being separate from normal people, RJ kind of cheated by neglecting to aknowledge that having these connections to community, families, etc., also opens channelers to blackmailing and manipulation. Like, Taim taking families of Asha’man hostage once he got the Turning factory rolling should have been Villainy 101. The way WoT addressed the issue was far too simplistic and contrived, IMHO.
I suppose Mat’s dagger arc, from gaining it to being Healed of it, all the way to trying to get the holes filled back in by the Finns, characterized Mat’s transition from being lost farmboy to hero of the story. In much the same way as Rand learning to Channel and Perrin getting the wolf. So by coincidence(or perhaps not), the time immediately after sees his abilities and “powers” maturing. Hence the luck of the dice.
The Darkfriend attacks on Mat are a result of Ishy’s orders, it would seem. Messana hasn’t really entered the narrative yet, even though she’s there chronologically. We later see Ishy killing a Dark Friend from (presumably) Tar Valon in the dream world for letting Mat escape. This book is mainly about Ishy, Be’lal, Lanfear, & Rahvin’s Evil Plotting (TM). The next book will be: Lanfear, Asmodean, Sammael, and (very tangentially, when she sends Shadow spawn to counter Sammael’s Shadow spawn) Semirhage. And of course Morghedian moving around the boundaries and causing trouble. The Fires of Heaven introduces the Rahvin, Sammael, Graendal, Lanfear cabal of Evil Plotting and Snark (TM). It isn’t until book six that we meet Damandred and (I think, it could be book 7) Messana and really Semirhage.
Regarding the source of Mat’s luck: while I agree it could very well have just been the Healing thinning the boundary between him and his past lives, or him being ta’veren, I did make a post about this on the original commentary years after the fact which I still think presents an interesting possibility which could explain the connection between it and Shadar Logoth:
“While I agree it most likely was just him being ta’veren, either him getting good luck as the Pattern needed him to survive, or because it fit his personality; that the Horn could also have been part of it; and that the holes the dagger gave him could also be part of it (I especially like the theory that the dagger tore away the Dark One’s evil influence on the Pattern, leaving only the good Pattern occurrences), there is one way the dagger could be tied to his luck.
Yes, Aridhol and the Dark One were opposed, so it doesn’t seem to make sense the dagger would give him the Dark One’s luck. And yes, luck doesn’t seem to have any connection to paranoia/hatred on the surface. But even beyond the notion that introducing chaos (Mat’s luck) would be a great way to bring down the Shadow, there’s the simple fact that Aridhol’s raison d’etre was bringing down the Shadow by any means possible, including its own methods. Ergo, it wouldn’t surprise me if the people of Aridhol and/or Mordeth (RJ and Sanderson did say that he searched for all kinds of ways to combat the Shadow, and found things he shouldn’t have) found a way to use the Dark One’s own luck against him. But even setting that aside as “just a saying”, Aridhol and Mordeth wanted to defeat the Shadow. So I could see the dagger gifting Mat with phenomenal luck so as to counteract the Dark One’s influence on the Pattern–-i.e., turning Mat into a weapon against the Shadow.”
Also, while we’re on the subject of luck, I love that it’s Mat having encountered the ‘footpads’ which leads him to flee and run into the one on the bridge (a bad thing), and that in turn results in him being tired/overcome by nerves and needing to sit down…right in the nearest inn, which happens to be where Thom is. I also like the bit Leigh called out in the original commentary where Mat used his “time to toss the dice” phrase and the assassin briefly looks confused; while this could just be because he has never heard the saying before or isn’t aware of its meaning, it seems more likely to me this is a subtle hint he was spouting off in the Old Tongue again.
Nothing to say really about the observation of people fearing as well as respecting Aes Sedai, and the Aes Sedai not noticing/caring or even approving of it, since Leigh pretty much covered it. Except that it may be this point came to the fore because of who was involved: Anaiya. She was always one of the nicest, kindest, most human of the Aes Sedai, so to see her react to Mat’s dislike/desire to get away the way she did makes it even more noticeable (to the point even he notices, and feels bad about it). Basically, everyone, even Aes Sedai-fearing Mat, likes Anaiya, so when she is made upset by something, we notice it.
Lastly I don’t know what’s funnier: Jordan deliberately choosing to impose another meaning on the word bittern (and as proof of my immersion in WOT, I didn’t even notice the ‘gaffe’ here despite having read books well before that which used bittern in the proper sense), or Leigh’s little English major digression on both it and ‘zither.’
Next chapter, a humorous aside: when I first looked at the table of contents for TDR way back when, I thought the title of Chapter 31 meant an actual character from Tarabon. Amusingly, the only character who fits that description that has any real impact on the plot (unless there’s an Aes Sedai I’m forgetting) is Amathera, and other than how finding and freeing her is part of the discovery of where Liandrin’s coven is, and her hooking up with Juilin, she really isn’t that important at all. Though I bet Jordan loved the foreshadowing here regardless–not just to her, but because this is where Thom re-enters the narrative again, this time to stay, and he ends up being one of those who goes to Tanchico.
Considering how quickly he seems to get over his drunkenness after he agrees to go with Mat to Caemlyn, I wonder if Thom wasn’t as drunk as he actually seemed. Either way though, he was certainly on the ball in a number of respects, including how he didn’t give away to Mat why he thinks Rand might not be well. Whether he wouldn’t confirm why because someone in the common room might overhear, or because he didn’t know if Mat knew Rand could channel and didn’t want to tell him because he remembered from TEotW how Mat felt about channelers, is an interesting question. I also like how Jordan used his talk of killing Galldrian being the right thing but still having terrible consequences to once again talk about the balance of the Pattern. And we get another hint at his feelings for Moiraine.
The line about eating the table (and for that matters, putting the chickens up his sleeves) gets me every time too.
As for the footpads (and Gray Man), two things. The reason there aren’t any footpads in Tar Valon (though I agree more subtle/less physically violent criminals are likely there somewhere) is mentioned by the WOT Encyclopedia: the Chair of Remorse. (That’s why those who get caught “leave the next day wide-eyed.”) Second, the source of these Darkfriends: while Mesaana is a possibility, I’m pretty sure it was Ishamael again. Not only do we know he set Darkfriends after Mat and Perrin at the Darkfriend Social in the previous book, but the next time we see him (Chapter 36, when Perrin spies on him and Lanfear in TAR), we see Ishamael punishing a Darkfriend from Tar Valon because he “let the boy escape.” The fact we later see Darkhounds sent by Sammael after Perrin’s group in Illian, and Moiraine notes they were not sent by whoever sent the Gray Man; a Gray Man attacks Rand in a few chapters; and it’s been theorized that the one in the Tower (which Lanfear had Slayer kill) was sent by Ishy to kill the Supergirls, all seems to suggest Gray Men are Ishy’s weapon of choice at the moment, and that he is the one after Perrin and Mat.
@1 michael_hicks: Very nice observation.
@6 Braid_Tug: Nice thought on the luck balancing the dagger. Even if the dagger didn’t cause the luck directly, it could have indirectly through such a counterweight.
@9 AndrewHB: Good corroboration on the Chair of Remorse, and the Darkfriend Social.
@11 PallonianFire: So it always would have manifested, due to his specific thread and his being ta’veren? Of course it could still be the dagger (or a reaction to it) just brought out of him what was already there (and apparently always appears in every Age/cycle). Maybe there’s a different catalyst each Age and this one happened to be the dagger?
@13 finder1: Regardless the source or catalyst, that’s a good assessment of how/why he is so extremely lucky now but it settles down later.
@15 emuriya: Another very good point!
@16 Isilel: Mat’s luck being as strong as it was, however, was one of the only things that gave the Light a fighting chance at Tarmon Gai’don, so there’s that.
I don’t think Mat explicitly thanked the girls, though I could be wrong. As for the families of channelers, I do recall one instance where having such a family did have an effect on an Aes Sedai, and one caused by the Shadow: Pevara, whose family was killed by Darkfriends.
@18 gadget: Thanks for the backup on Ishy killing the Darkfriend for failing to kill Mat. Also your analysis of when we meet all the Forsaken and their plots is correct (and yes Mesaana and Semi show up properly in LOC, it’s in the prologue).
No post today….?
No post this week, sorry–Leigh should be back in the saddle for next week, though!
Okay, thanks, hope all is well with her!
@19 macster: the Aes Sedai you could be forgetting about is Liandrin :)
Hope things are okay on Leigh’s end! Figured when I didn’t see the ReRead in the Series List, there would be news in the comments as to whether or not there would be an article this week.
@@@@@14 @@@@@AeronaGreenjoy I totally agree with you regarding Mat’s “luck”. Bad things still happen to him, like dying a few times and getting revived or the timeline being “reset”, as well as losing an eye, which is horrific just to think about, but things happened to him that would have surely killed anyone else. It is a rare type of “luck” indeed.
I do believe most people would rather not have luck with the dice and be able to keep both eyes and not have to deal with having been hung by the neck and left for dead!
@@@@@19 @@@@@macster I always appreciate reading your insight. I will not go to the current ReRead article until I’ve made sure I’ve thoroughly read your comment on the prior article!
@@@@@ 23 bungo: Gah! How could I forget her indeed, since I seem to recall her braided hairstyle is typical of Taraboner women. And she certainly does have an influence on the plot–even if it’s only from books 2 through 5, it can’t be denied how much affect she has on things in this book and the next. Which makes a place called The Woman of Tanchico appearing in this book even more noteworthy, considering what happens in Tear. In fact I think I remember connecting the inn name to Liandrin at some point. That’ll teach me to write replies in the early morning hours. :P Though in my defense, I don’t always recall where all the characters hail from.
@@@@@WDRParksGal: *blushes* Thanks! Glad you think I have insights and they’re worth reading. Sorry if any delays on my part keep you from reading new entries.
Sorry, guys, I meant to post a comment letting you know there would be no post this week and totally spaced on it. But no fear, we’ll be back on track next week!
Hi Leigh,
::waves::
Posting off my phone so things suck. Dang apps grumble grumble.
Anyways. Mat’s luck. It isn’t all that. If it was so great why in the Light did he wind up with one of the most annoying women in the series short of Elaida? Tuon is not even Mat’s type, let alone the cargo ship of baggage that comes with her. He rolled ones whwn it counted.
@5 Lisamarie- I was just thinking that. Aes Sedai have similar problems as Jedi. Was I Luke, last of the Jedi knights, I would not be in some distant rock moping. I would be single handedly trying to repopulate the Jedi ranks by every means.
Same for Aes Sedai. Enough with the higher thinking. Get out of that tower and er…. See the world.
Mat and Thom ride again. About time.
Woof.
By the time the Last Battle begins, how come nobody on Team Shadow knows that Mat is a military genius? You would think that a report of Mat’s military knowledge would have risen up to the attention of a Forsaken. Moridin relies on the Darkfriends for information. Most of the Foresaken have some network of eyes and ears. It is inconceivable that at least one officer or one soldier in the Band of the Red Hand was not a Darkfriend. That Darkfriend should have gotten in touch with another Darkfriend in send the information up the ladder.
Nevertheless, I do not think Demandred would have changed his battle plan if he knew about Mat’s battle knowledge. Demandred would still have believed the Dragon Reborn was at the Field of Merrilor.
I also do not understand why Demandred’s name in the Old Tongue translates as “one who twists the blade.” I had I read that during the Age of Legends, Bel’al was a better swordsmen than Demadred. What does Demandred’d personality have to do with blades.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
AndrewB @28 – I didn’t realize that was his OT name, but when I hear that phrase, I think of betrayal, not swordsmanship.
AndrewHB @@@@@ 28
You “twist the blade” to cause more pain to somebody. Usually after stabbing them. So not swords per se, but more on daggers and knives.
As for Mat’s skill as general:
It is literally unheard of for someone so young to be at the level of a Great Captain. That would put him in the esteemed company of men three times his age. Besides, none of his skill has yet been used against the forces of the Shadow. Unlike the others who all distinguished themselves campaigning in the Blight or even in the Aiel War long before he was born.
When you think about it, Team Light wasn’t really sure about his skill either. After their debut in the invasion of Cairhien, the Band pretty much stayed out of trouble. Away from Rand’s wars. As leaders we can see the amount of organizing Mat has put into the Band, as well as their loyalty to him. But much of this is in fact lost on Team Light. Rand and Lan know, having tested and discussed it at length. Perrin wouldn’t care. And the Girls wouldn’t believe it, thinking of the idea of him leading fighting men to be completely absurd.
The only major polity that would believe are the Seanchan. And even then, only the Empress and her Deathwatch. Because the only major campaign they’d really seen was trying to punch their way out of Seanchan territory. For which both the Empress and the Deathwatch got a front row seat.
Re: Mat’s Luck and Shadar Logoth
My take on this is that the two are not causally related, but Mat wrongly thinks they are because of post hoc ergo propter hoc. They are both caused by Mat’s Ta’verennnessness-nosity.
I think Mat was already Ta’veren when Moiraine first saw him, but it was only at Shadar Logoth that it really started influencing his life. It led him to possess the Shadar Logoth dagger; it also gave him his extraordinary luck. Both things started happening around the same time, so Mat supposes one of them caused the other.
A thought,
Aes Sedai not havig friends I think is both a natural development, and a nessecary one.
They live centuries. Who wants to watch friends die over and over again? Who wants to watch you nephews and neices, grandnephews and grand-neices etc all die?
I think anyone that realizes they are going to possibly outlast their entire family tree, is going to pull back from the outside after a while. You would almost have to, the grief would be incredible.
@@@@@ AndrewHB: Yes, I agree with alreadymad and Lisamarie–I thought it was pretty clear the name was a reference to “twisting the knife” (as in after backstabbing somebody), which is absolutely what he did to Lews Therin and the forces of the Light when he joined the Shadow.
Re: Mat’s skill as a general–the only campaign he fought in after receiving his memories was the Battle of Cairhien, and considering that led to Couladin’s death, I doubt there were many Shaido who survived to be able to tell Sevanna, let alone Sammael, Graendal, or any other Darkfriend among the Aiel. And indeed the only ones who knew about his skills were Rand, Lan, and…Asmo, who not only betrayed the Dark One, he got killed. :P Mat planned the next of Rand’s campaigns along with Bashere, the assault against Sammael, but was in Ebou Dar when it was carried out; the Seanchan campaign in PoD was all Rand and Bashere. And of course the Seanchan Mat fought in KoD didn’t include Semi for fairly obvious reasons, and the only Darkfriend we knew of for sure, Elbar, got killed so Tuon could bring his head back to Suroth. Even the gholam, assuming it would bother to report to Moridin about Mat’s skills, only fought him and his men one-on-one. So there really wasn’t any way for the Shadow to know how good Mat was until the Last Battle started.
@@@@@ JonathanLevy: I still like my theory about how the dagger could have caused the luck, but you make a good point that even if it didn’t cause it directly, his ta’veren nature still led him to the dagger–in fact you could even say his luck is why he picked up the dagger yet was able to escape Mordeth/held out against Mashadar so long, considering he had to get those holes in his memories in order to make way for his fate with the Finn and everything which came of that. Not to mention that the dagger and the Fain/Mordeth gestalt were necessary to give Rand the clues he needed to cleanse the taint.
@@@@@ Derek: Very well said, and so true. I believe Leigh even said something like that at one point in the original Reread.
The ‘bittern’ thing could be a bit of wordplay, a bittern being a heron known for wading in rushes.