Greetings, my peoples! Welcome back to the Wheel of Time Reread Redux!
Today’s Redux post will cover the short story “The Strike at Shayol Ghul.”
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 now available as an ebook series, except for the portion covering A Memory of Light, which should become available soon.
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!
“The Strike at Shayol Ghul”
[Given the brevity of this story, it seems pretty silly for me to summarize it, especially as it is available for free in multiple locations on the Internet. So instead, I suggest you just go read the whole thing, and then come back here.]
Redux Commentary
And here we have yet more new material in this supposed Redux Reread, haha! But the comments on the last post asking for “The Strike at Shayol Ghul” (henceforth abbreviated TSASG) were entirely right in their opinion that it should be included, and again I felt that this was the most appropriate place to include it. So here we are.
I am not entirely sure when I personally first read this piece, but I know it was not until after I had plowed through all the published books available at the time of my discovery of the series (so, through Book Seven, A Crown of Swords) and then bumbled my clueless way onto Usenet and rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan, which, as all y’all know in probably nauseating detail by now, was my introduction to not only Wheel of Time fandom, but the entire concept of fandom in general, and also the Internet in general. Most likely, ironically perhaps, I found it via a link from the Wheel of Time FAQ, which at the time was run by the lovely and effervescent Pam Korda, and which also at the time I would never have dreamed I’d one day end up maintaining myself. Ah, memories.
I do know for sure that I never read the version of it that was included in An Illustrated Guide to The Wheel of Time, which was a companion… thingy to the Wheel of Time, published by Tor in 1997. I know this because my sole interaction with that book was that I took it down from the shelf in a Barnes and Noble once, flipped through it, goggled in disbelief at the awfulness of the “art” contained within, and then took me and my money and ran the hell away. So, er. Not there. Sorry, TPTB! *waves*
(I have much higher hopes, on the other hand, for the official Wheel of Time Companion book, currently in the works from Team Jordan, which is tentatively scheduled to be published late next year. Yay!)
I would be willing to bet, based on my own recent experiences with such things, that the text for TSASG was lifted more or less verbatim from Jordan’s own world-building notes on the Wheel of Time, which we know from Team Jordan were… extensive, to say the least. I would also be willing to bet that he wrote it this way even before expecting that it would ever see the light of publication, too. Created worlds don’t just have to seem real to the eventual readers, after all—they have to be real to the writer as well, and writing the history of your world as if it really were history is a great way to accomplish that. Gets you in the groove, as it were.
(I have no actual evidence for this speculation, of course, though there might be evidence out there to support or refute it. Or, you know, I probably could just ask. But why have, like, facts and things when I could indulge in wild speculation instead? Whee!)
Annnyway. The thing I particularly like about TSASG is how much it is (in my view) a love letter to one of Jordan’s prevailing fascinations, which is the way history is a fragmented, ephemeral, transitory thing—and how, as a result, it is just as much (or more) of a puzzle to be solved as it is a dry documentation of the past. Jordan was (among other things) a military historian by trade, but his love of the subject obviously reached far beyond that particular niche, and it is things like this story which show this love most clearly.
There is also the point that the ephemeralness of history is kind of an awesome thing when the burden of creating that history is on one person’s shoulders, because that means that not only are you, the author, not obligated to have to nail down every last detail of everything that happened, but that it actually gives your created world more authenticity and verisimilitude if you don’t.
Or maybe I’m not giving him enough credit: it’s perfectly possible that Jordan really did know every last detail of the exact way everything happened ever in the Wheel of Time (and if he did I’ll just be standing over here in awe). But even if so, he was also smart enough never to present it that way, and that’s why it works.
[…] we can only be thankful that the art of printing survived the Breaking of the World when so much else did not, and was indeed practiced to some extent during the Breaking itself, though under severe and restricted conditions.
In that vein, this particular passage struck me as the historian’s most ardent wish: that even when the world is literally ending, there will be those who strive to preserve its history as much as possible—a thing which must strike those of more practical bent as a frivolous and even wasteful effort in a survival situation. And yet, those surviving accounts will be the thing that defines that time to everyone who comes after. (Assuming, of course, that anyone does. But so far we seem to be still achieving that.) So it seems that “things which are important during an apocalypse” is actually a rather relative set of things. Food for thought.
Speaking of which, rereading this story reminded me how much the War of the Shadow and the subsequent Breaking was actually just as much of a nearly-world-ending apocalypse as Tarmon Gai’don was in the Third Age. If not even more so, considering Rand’s ending stroke turned out a hell of a lot better for the world than Lews Therin’s did. Things were sucking a lot for folks in the latter half of the series proper, but it seems pretty clear that they weren’t that much more fabulous for the Second Agers who lived through the time covered in this story either. Presumably there are one or two Ages on the Wheel which don’t have to end in a horrific cataclysmic conflict between good and evil? Maybe? Eek?
As to the actual content of the story (yes, I’m finally just now getting to that, y’all hush), well, that’s a thing. I remember there was a fair amount of debate among fans back in the day (and, probably, nowadays too, but who knows with all these young whippersnappers with their actual websites and shit) about Latra Posae Decume versus Lews Therin Telamon, and the resulting division along gendered lines (and subsequent disastrous events) depicted within it. Because the thing is, it’s pretty easy, reading this story, to cast Latra Posae as its villain, and that is problematic on a number of levels.
Before I get to that, though, I have to take a second to point to this story as absolute proof that anyone who’s ever complained about me focusing “too much” on gender politics in commentating on the Wheel of Time has utterly missed the fact that gender politics is an absolute core attribute of the entire series, and to ignore that is to ignore one of the central themes Jordan was evoking (for better or worse) in his entire construction of the world of the Wheel of Time. In his view, the fallout along gendered lines of the Aes Sedai during the War of the Shadow was what ultimately led to the Breaking and thus the near-destruction of the world. Which makes sense in context, since the very essence of life and magic in his world (the Source) depends on the divided-yet-intertwined male and female components of the One Power working together to drive the whole. And once that symbiotic relationship was broken, according to his system, everything inevitably fell apart.
All of which is all well and good, up to a point, as long as you accept the basic premise of a strict binary gender division being a real thing (which, to be fair, in Jordan’s generation most people did). So, okay, we’ll go with that, even though it’s not really true. But even so, there are some… issues with this, not only in how it actually went down, but in how it was perceived later.
Because it’s kind of hard, in context, to avoid coming to the conclusion that Latra Posae’s opposition to Lews Therin, the “chosen one” of his Age, is ultimately what led to the Breaking, instead of the decisions Lews Therin himself made. The text attempts to qualify that, true, by bringing up the possibility that if Latra Posae had given in and went along with Lews Therin’s plan, that both halves of the Source would have ended up tainted instead of just saidin, but the fact is that the Dark One’s counterstroke was not something that could have been foreseen by anyone on the Light side, so without that foreknowledge it just kind of looks like Latra Posae was being the stupid obstructionist in the overall scenario.
It’s tricky, because it’s all justifiable, but there’s no escaping that the essential story structure itself casts her in the role of villain, because even if he was all wrong-headed and ultimately insufficient to his task, Lews Therin was still symbolically the Messiah of his age, and therefore by default anyone who opposed him was automatically in the wrong. Whether or not Jordan meant to imply that is irrelevant; the nature of the story itself demands it. Plus, the eventual disastrous deployment of the Choedan Kal in Rand’s era also suggests that Latra’s plan would have been even more foolish and world-encrappening than Lews Therin’s was.
Not to mention the rather odd detail that other than this account, all historical details of Latra Posae were apparently lost, despite her supposedly being nearly as famous and influential as Lews Therin himself, which is probably unintentionally reminiscent of how often the achievements of women in history get “lost” in favor of the exploits of their male counterparts. This is especially bemusing here, because supposedly in the Wheel of Time world things are skewed more toward women instead of men, and yet this comes across as a classic case of erasure in favor of a Great Man driving everything.
And, perhaps damnably, this made me think of Rand and Egwene, and how likely it apparently is that future histories will make much of Rand’s contribution to Tarmon Gai’don, but less or none of Egwene’s, even though (as I have argued before) she was just as instrumental in keeping the world from going Boom as Rand was. But, you know, Rand (and Lews Therin) are the Messiahs/protagonist/central figgers, and everyone else is either an obstacle or a sidekick, right? That’s just how it works.
I could be wrong about that, of course. I hope that I would be. Loial had better live up to his historical responsibilities, is what I’m saying. Because History Is Important, dontcha know. All the more so because of how easily it is lost.
And that’s what I got for this one, kids! Hugs to everyone in the comments to the last post welcoming me back. It’s awesome to metaphorically see y’all again too, and welcome to the new readers as well! Have a lovely week, and I’ll see you next Tuesday, when we finally start the actual reread reread part of this thang. Cheers!
When I read this book, oh so long ago, I did not particularly care for Latra, but I was more angry at everyone. Seriously, no women would join them? Their relationships must have been crap since day one. They still married each other back then, we think, so none?
And I like to fanwank that the men and women working together thing would have been enough to avoid the taint, but that’s just assumption on my part.
So, I am aware enough that there is enough fault to go around, but Latra does not come off well, neither do any of the other female Aes Sedai, nor do the men, and that’s important, because the separation must have begun long before the Strike.
As for not much information regarding Latra surviving, it’s likely because all of the acts of every man that went mad throughout the Breaking was pinned on the Dragon, while women of the time made their own names. So, the Dragon was strictly associated with men who could channel, while women who could channel were not related back to one person.
I loved getting this little tidbit during a long wat between books, it was great. I love the whole scene
Well, let’s be fair, none of the surviving Forsaken (who weren’t sealed in the Bore) or any of the other generals of the Light were remembered either.
I remember in last few books wondering about Rand and Egwene and why he was so afraid to trust her. Yes, she was aes sedai, yes, the Dumai wells and all that, but this was Egwene! So now I think it was also Lews Therin´s memory of Latra, and when Egwene seemed sceptical about his plan to break the seals, he must have been scared to death of history repeating itself.
Now something else occured to me: was Ilyena aes sedai or not? I have no idea why I always kind of assumed she was – there is no mention of it as far as I know. I wonder what she thought on the whole gender-division thing.
I actually take this story completely differently from you, Leigh, such that it doesn’t make me headdesk at all. Yes, the SOURCE casts Latra Posae as the obstructionist and Lews Therin as the Messiah, but it’s a fragment of a fictional document. I do think that a huge number of interpretations which make The Wheel of Time seem less profound or, worse, reactionary, are based on readers who don’t understand the difference between a viewpoint character and a narrator who should be questioned. And everything in Jordan’s view of history suggests that ALL of his narrators should be open to question and that their theories must be tested against the experience of the story. Thus, TSASG does not in any way diminish Egwene’s significance; it proves its significance. The end of AMoL makes it as clear as anything in WoT can be that the whole concept of the Dragon as a unitary Messiah, not one piece of the puzzle, is hopelessly flawed, and Rand succeeds because he sees and accepts that. Also, early in the book he remembers that his domineering (can we even say, sterotypically masculine) leadership style during the War of Power alienated many valuable potential allies like Demandred; might we infer that he bears some personal responsibility for alienating Latra Posae as well?
P.S. The detail that printing survived the breaking is massively important for worldbuilding; it makes it far more plausible that, though there are regional variations in pronunciation and syntax, the whole continent still speaks the same language 3,000 years AB.
*mouthpiece character, not viewpoint character. Trying to fit this in super-fast between lots of (sadly) more important reading and writing.
@@.-@, I would guess (though this is completely headcanon) that Ilyena was not Aes Sedai, and that she earned her three-name honorific some other way. Maybe it’s just more tragic thinking that Lews Therin had to wait until channeler middle age to meet the love of his life (by way of wasting time with Mierin) only to kill her when they would have so few years together in any case.
Leigh, thanks for inserting TSASG into the redux!
What a thought-provoking snippet. It pulls us right into the 2nd age and gives us a brief glimpse of the trials and tribulations of the time surrounding the Breaking. How sad it is for an advanced civilization to have been caught up in such a disastrous cluster f***. //Sheds a tear// That said, we wouldn’t have quite the same 15 volumes to explore if those events hadn’t happened, so…onward.
We can debate what ifs about TSASG events at length and I expect to see some of that going on downthread. But it’s all been done before, so I’m going to sit back and enjoy what others have to say.
Or not.
Tessuna @@.-@
It never occurred to me that Ileyna might be AS. If she was, then I would
suspecthope she might have escaped LTT’s death and destruction rampage. But who knows.C’mon, Lews Therin vs. Latra Posae? I’ll take Lews Therin over pretty much anyone (excepting, possibly, The Gambler, in whatever age and by whatever name he’s known).
It’s important to note that the piece is ostensibly written by a female historian, in a nation with a female queen, in the Borderlands, where female Aes Sedai are held in higher esteem than anywhere else in Randland (excepting possibly the Aiel Waste). So any apparent bias in favor of Lews Therin should not be gender-based, at least not within this published “account” of a recovered ancient record. I tend to dislike Latra, as most readers do, because anyone opposing LTT so adamantly seems to be standing in the way of the true champion of the Light. Yes, his plan was risky. Yes, it’s possible that both halves of the Source might have been corrupted if he had gotten his way. But to make all female Aes Sedai refuse to help him, just because you’d rather institute your own (highly dangerous) plan, seems the height of arrogance and short-sightedness.
Well, this was an unexpected sidetrack to the re-re-read. But a welcome one! Can’t wait to get to the actual story, as I’ve been most looking forward to covering the first few books in more depth than the original reread. See y’all next week! (Well, technically I’ll see many of you on Thursday for AROIAF).
I love this small tidbit; it provides a nice view at a historical perspective of the Breaking.
One thing that (perhaps has been discussed to exhaustion in the past, but not by me!) came to mind as I reread it (and more specifically, read the end of Leigh’s commentary), is, was Lews Therin’s Ta’veren-ness responsible for Latra Posae Decume’s divisiveness, as a means of ensuring that part of the True Source remained untainted for the next Age? It’s easy to paint Latra as a villian, but if the Dark One’s strike could have and would have effected both halves of the One Power, her resistance would be a good thing for the Pattern.
I loved the History : It puts the rest of the Story arc in prospective!
I also think the Gender divide happened way before the strike. The forsaken did not have that problem.
Do we cover New Spring Next???
I don’t see this story as an example of a woman’s accomplishments being forgotten and a man’s being remembered. Lews Therin was remembered for [nearly] destroying the world. It’s as simple as destroying the world is far more memorable than almost stopping someone from destroying the world.
But I hold the opposite belief of @DougL in whether Lews Therin’s plan would have worked with Saidar and Saidin. In my opinion that would have tainted the whole of the source leading to the complete destruction of the world.
I don’t have an issue with binary gender in Wheel of Time. The binary gender is a simplification and exaggeration of reality. It seems to me that this exaggeration was necessary for Robert Jordan to make the commentary on gender politics that he wanted to make. I don’t feel that the “them vs us” attitude that both the Asha’man and the Aes Sedai have toward each other would have worked very well if there had been a sliding scale in the magic system.
Was there ever an explanation for what happened with the Big Book of Bad Art? I remember being excited to purchase it, mostly because of this very story, and was so disappointed at the artwork within. I love fantasy art, and seeing scenes from the books depicted, but then there was this book, and I just can’t imagine what happened. With so many great fantasy artists out there, why couldn’t we get any to contribute?
I don’t remember the rest of the book so well, but I think there was some cool information ont he Seanchan and the Sharans that hadn’t been revealed yet.
@9. rhandric
I think you make a very good point there, but that’s the only point in favour of DavidW”s belief. We are told continually in the books that women and men working together are far more powerful, which is why I think it may have worked had they worked together. However, your point is where my shadow of doubt comes from but you voiced it very well here, thank you.
@11, I agree with you, especially if we are very precise with our terminology and say “binary sex”, not “binary gender”. While most characters in WoT suffer from polarized and very binary views of gender (the culture construct) which aren’t necessarily supported by the range of personality types represented among the huge cast of characters, I do think that sticking to “binary male/female sex” is a good decision that allowed RJ to approach gender from a provocative perspective that isn’t the same as a university gender studies department. Not every speculative fiction book absolutely needs a character who is a hermaphrodite/transsexual/other rare variant–imposing that smacks of tokenism. There might well be biological hermaphrodites in the WoT world (which would be fascinating, especially if they could also channel), but. . .maybe addressing EVERY SINGLE possible bunny trail is not a good thing? (Stop laughing, readers who think RJ did that anyway. . .)
Tessuna @@.-@: It had never occurred to me that Ilyena might not be Aes Sedai. Though not conclusive, the available evidence would tend to indicate that she was Aes Sedai.
According to the Guide (more accurately, according to the Guide as relayed by encyclopaedia WOT; I don’t have the Guide handy right now), Lews Therin and Ilyena married “about fifty years” before the War of Shadow. The War itself lasted (according to TSASG) roughly 8-10 years. So the scene in TEOTW prologue occurs approximately 60 years after they were married. Ilyena is still described as “golden-haired,” so unless they married when she was very young, or ordinary AoLers lived longer than normal, or she dyed her hair, it’s unlikely that she would still be “golden-haired.” It’s possible, but I’d say the balance of probability is on her being Aes Sedai.
…because supposedly in the Wheel of Time world things are skewed more toward women instead of men…
This did seem to be true in the series proper, but that would tend to be natural after 3,000 years of people blaming the men for the Breaking of the world. It does not seem like it would be unexpected for things to be much less skewed towards the women pre-Breaking, when male and female Aes Sedai still worked together.
Could Latra Posae have been under Compulsion? Or was she just the Elida of her day?
I was so excited that there is a new post I started wildly theorizing (is that even a word?) and forgot important things like:
Hello everybody! It is absolutely fantastic to be (virtually) here and this time around actually participate in wild theorizing (even if it´s not a word) and other fun stuff.
And Leigh, thank you so much for doing this! Your Re-read helped me a lot when I thought to be the only WoT reader (not knowing of any others) in the world. And it gave me the courage to start reading it in original (english not being my maternal language) – where I come from, the latest published book is ACOT.
Ways @7: I suppose she wouldn´t believe Lews to be danger to her despite the madness – she loved him. But it is more likely she wasn´t AS, and, like @6 says, it just makes the story even more tragic.
I remember the newsgroup “Latra vs. Lews” debates fondly, as that was around the time of my introduction to fandom as well. My favorite argument was that someone on the newsgroup posited that Latra Posae was a darkfriend. Latra Posae Decume was also known as Shadar Nor (“Cutter of the Shadow” or “Slicer of the Shadow” in the Old Tongue). The proponent of this theory suggested that the “Nor” was possessive, meaning Latra was the Shadow’s Cutter/Slicer. I never bought it m yself, but definitely found it intriguing food for thought at the time.
I remember I had a theory back in 2003 that Egwene was the reincarnation of Latra Posae. I think it can only be that (a theory), since there wasn’t confirmation in the end of the books about it.
@20 Ryamano: Did you post it on wotmania? I think I remember reading one on wotmania about Egwene being Latra reincarnated. I found it very convincing and it was the reason that I was convinced that Egwene would survive AMoL and help rebuild the world.
Thanks for covering, Leigh!
It’s been awhile since I read it, but I don’t recall if I felt Latra was a villain per se, but just that the entire thing was a commentary about the importance of communication/integration. But it would be interested to read now that I am a little more sensitive to such things to see what I think.
So no Illustrated Guide re-read? :)
There was a lot of talk about Egwene taking Latra’s role in the final book at Rand’s big meeting. She, it appears, was headed down that road and only stopped by the reappearance of Moiraine. That may have been why Rand would have failed without Moiraine. (I like all that in theory, I didn’t like the scene in practice.)
@12: At my first JordanCon I asked someone who was much more versed on WOT publishing history than I about the White book.
I learned this:
The artist had originally be contracted to do a grouping of Black & White line drawings. With about half his time expired, the request was changed into more drawings in full color. However the deadline was not changed.
So I have given the artist a large pass since then. It takes much more time to produce full color images.
But yes, Lanfear “the most beautiful woman” of her time looking like an ugly Fiona Apple, still pisses me off.
I received the book as a Christmas gift. Looked at it a handful of times over the years, but mostly ignore it.
But TPTB I’m sure will not make the same mistake again regarding the art. Looking forward to seeing what is included
The artwork bothered me when I first read it. I still own it and used as reference book for a couple of WOT Theories I posted before book 11 came out
There is a wonderful line in one of the books about there being more unburied dead than living at one point during the Breaking. It was definitely capital B Bad. The books kind of skirt around how bad the end of the Third Age is going to be. Even with the Dragon’s Peace and without the Dark One’s touch, a very significant portion of the population is going to starve to death.
After reading (and now re-reading) this, I tend to think that the DO’s touch was affecting everyone, even in the parts of the world not controlled by the Shadow. That increased the tensions between the different Aes Sedai to the point where working together was impossible. Latra’s pride was a factor, but I doubt she could have convinced EVERY other female Aes Sedai to go along with her if that was all it was.
On an unrelated note, I was confused about the “the eventual disastrous deployment of the Choedan Kal” mentioned. Weren’t the Choedan Kal what was used to clean the taint from the male half of the source? That had some disastrous consequences in places, but overall wouldn’t that be a good thing? Or am I not remembering this correctly? (The most likely possibility.)
bad platypus @15: I think yes, Aol people lived longer (even non-chanellers), so it still may be possible that Ilyena was not AS, 100-year-old and golden-haired. But if she was AS… I just pictured her being on Latra´s side, signing the Fateful Concord, her and Lews arguing, him leaving with the Hundred Companions without saying goodbye… then I read the prologue and it seemed to me that some little details fit this imaginary plot.
To the “Latra = villain theory” – I don´t think so. Lews had a plan, she had a plan. None of them could know or predict, if either of their plans is going to work, but they both believed in succes of one of them. Latra probably thought that even if he is a Messiah, Lews is still a man who can make a mistake and is about to make one right now, so she did what she believed was a good thing. And he did what he believed was a good thing. I don´t see any villain here, just normal human beings facing difficult choices.
Ryamano @20: It makes sense, Egwene being so strong in One Power and such a good leader at very young age, but I kind of like her more to be all that awesome by herself, not because of her previous life. I just think it would be somewhat more karmicly-poetic, if Latra would be reborn as Moirain. She is the one to stop Rand and Egwene arguing at Merillor.
Thanks Leigh. I loved your commentary.
I usually try to read all the comments before I post. However, I do not have much time so apologies if anybody made these exact same points before I did.
First, I want to know more about Latra Posae Decume. I find it interesting that she was not mentioned (at least to my knowledge) at all in the text or glossary of any of the 14 central books. I would have thought that at least one Aes Sedai (even a Brown) would have known of her and thought of her — even in an internal thought. From what I can tell of Egwene’s discussion with some of the Sitters in ToM, the Tower’s library had some info about the Foresaken that survived.
Second, I like the parallel that RJ created between what occurred during the War of Power and what occurred in AMoL. Both LPD and LTT (together with each of their supporters) had strong ideas as to how the fight against the Shadow should be prosecuted — LPD favored the construction and use of Choedan Kal and the access keys, whereas LTT favored attacking the Shadow at its center of operations (Shayol Ghul).
(An aside — LTT (at least according to Demondred) was cautious as a general. Yet, LTT’s plan to strike at Shayol Ghul was more akin of a gambler throwing in all his chips for one final hand/toss.)
In AMoL, you have a similar division. Rand favors breaking the Seals (and probably sooner than later). Egwene, on the other hand, is not willing to break them. As with LTT and LPD, both Egwene and Rand position’s are reasonable. Yet unlike in TSASG, there is somebody both Egwene and Rand (as well as each of their supporters) respect to act as a mediator — Moiraine. Comparing the consequences of not having a unified strategy during the end of the War of Shadows with what could have been if the Summit at the Field of Merrilor ended with no agreements, IMO it demonstrates the key role that Moiraine played in AMoL. During the initial re-read, there were many who thought that Moiraine did not do anything in AMoL. They would have preferred her to appear “guns-a-blazing” (so to speak). Yet I beleived that her role at Merriolor and accompanying Rand (with Nynaeve) at the Pit of Doom itself was crucial. And it was every bit as important as what any other female Channeler did during the Last Battle.
(Note — I understand the point that Leigh raised in her commentary, and which IIRC, was raised in TSASG itself. It is possible that had LPD supported LTT, then taint would have effected both halves of the One Power. On the otherhand, it may not have. We do not know if LTT would have used female channelers to support his assault of Shayol Ghul (along with the Hundred Companions). If he was the only person to enter the Pit of Doom itself and the only one to channel inside the Pit of Doom, then it is possible that Saidar would not have been tainted.)
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewB
Nick31 @27
I agree that it would have been nigh impossible for Latra Posae to convince EVERY female AS to join her side. And before someone accuses us of being misogynists, I think the same would be true if LTT were trying to convince EVERY male AS to join his cause. Ain’t gonna happen, human nature being what it is. So that puts some creds to your theory about the DO’s touch influencing everyone, IMHO.
I believe “the eventual disastrous deployment of the Choedan Kal” refers to (1) the destruction of a good share of Rhuidean (and Avendesora) by Rand and Asmo (Who killed him, anyway? JK. Really.) when they were fighting over the male access key in TSR, and (2) the mass suicide of the Amayar on Tremalking after the taint is cleansed in WH. Both are sad events. The first could have been avoided, the second probably would have happened regardless of when the Choedan Kal were fired up in the 3rd age. The law of unintended consequences is alive and well. There’s no question about Saidin having to be de-tainted. The Amayar suicided as a result of cultural beliefs, no one forced them to do it. RJ expected more of a reader reaction when the suicide was revealed in KoD, but we mostly blew it off because we weren’t very invested in the Amayar.
@30. Ways
I think Leigh probably meant Rand going full on Vader, though it had little to do with the access key to start, it became a huge prop and Rand didn’t step into his Jesus state until he had destroyed the Choedan Kal.
@30 “Who killed him anyway?
It’s official that it was Graendal, no?
It really stinks when things get world-encrappening, eh?
DougL @31
Deployment really suggests use of to me, but we should let Leigh answer the question.
Branded @32
Yes, it was Graendal.
ETA: JK = just kidding, which may not have been obvious to everyone out in cyberland.
DavidW @21:
That was me. I still have the article binned somewhere … perhaps I can resurrect it if I look for it. I remeember thinking, “Aha, Latra Posae in the flesh!” when Egwene started trying to rally Randland to oppose Rand’s plan. It also occured to me that perhaps Rand as Lews Therin recognized Egwene as Latra Posae, and deliberately used her expected opposition and intention to rally the nations against him as a backdoor way to get all the nations together. I might also mention that, but for Moiraine’s intervention this time, Egwene would have indeed acted exactly as Latra Posae did.
I like the parallel pointed out, which I hadn’t noticed before- I just thought Egwene was being hard-headed and contrary- but LPD and LTT really were in “Uh-huh!” and “Nuh-uh!” mode, and Rand and Egwene were doing the same thing.
So Egwene was going to ruin everything if Moiraine hadn’t returned!
Wow. I had to reread the Strike on the spot after that analysis, because I never saw LPD as any kind of villain here. (Antagonist, sure, now that I think about it.) Maybe the 20/20 hindsight re: what happened to the expedition – as the “author” pointed out -combined with youthful gullibility made me assume she was absolutely right to oppose LTT all along, and maybe even more so after every single alternate plan conveniently blew up in the Lightsiders’ faces.
I mean, maybe there weren’t any Darkfriend moles by that point in the war, but trust can’t have been thick on the ground there. So a wildly powerful and influential channeler or ten want to get as close to the Bore as possible to tack a tarp over it, and they only want a measly force of > 10,000 who, surely, don’t have anywhere else to be? Yeah, it sounds a little hinky. I don’t think being skeptical there is even narratively villainous.
And yet, I could totally see whence that impression, where I hadn’t before.
Thanks again for the reduxread! I might actually be able to keep up with this one.
Late to the game thoughts (probably discussed in old rec.arts. threads)
1. Was the Wheel doubling down on the fate of the age by having Latra vs. Lews?
2. (because) if there was such a split between male and female, who was going to use the male access key?
3. What would the age have looked like if Latra made her attempt? At that point, you would have had a single female as the focal point.
4. How did Lanfear know so much about the CK in The Great Hunt and the access keys later on? If they were built in secret, and the keys were in enemy territory at the end, it would seem she couldn’t have secretly known about them.
Al Cc @38 regarding point #4. The actual language from TSASG is “The only good point in it was that the ter’angreal themselves had been hidden and the place where they were made destroyed (its very existence had been a secret at the highest levels all along) so that neither Sammael nor anyone else for the Shadow knew that any of these things were now within their grasp.”
IMO, it was the location where the ter’angreal access keys were made was what was meant by the word “its” in the phrase “its very existence had been a secret at the highest levels all along.” I do not think the Aes Sedai and the Hall could have hide the significance of the CK huge statutes. The location of where the access keys were being made, however, could be limited on a need to know basis. The CK huge statues, by themselves, would be meaningless. It was the access keys that were the essential part of this project.
Thanks for reading my musings,
AndrewB
Glad the re-reread is back (again, but much shorter break this time), it’s pretty late so I don’t have much to comment, but I am glad I got a chance to read TSASG. I had heard of it, but had no idea it would be in the format it was in. All for now, just wanted to say I liked it, and liked the re-read of it. I will have to come back and read the discussions in the comments so I can make a worthwhile contribution. Have a good night all, or morning if that is your current temporal persuasion.
Was LTT the prophesied messiah in the AoL? He was a leader of the Light forces, but there need not have been prophecies that he was the most important leader.
re: Latra as a villain // Lews Therin as a messiah
I didn’t read Latra as a villain, just someone who opposed Lews Therin’s plan with good reason. And history proved her right.
Could it be that so many read her as a villain because they are mislead by the assumption that LTT was the prophesied Champion of the Light(TM) à la Rand al’Thor? I don’t think he was.
As birgit @41 already mentioned, there was no prophecy regarding LTT being the Champion. WE know he was and Randlanders post-breaking know he was because Karaethon Cycle and alla that. But that’s hindsight being 20/20 or actually more like 30/20 because prophecy is like the Creator’s annotations to reality. People in the AoL didn’t have that. All they knew was that LTT was the shit and all the rage with the ladies, but also kinda reckless and arrogant.
That’s what we have to keep in mind when looking at Latra. She wasn’t opposing the messiah (knowingly), she was opposing Mr. fancy-pants Superstar and his foolhardy plan.
re: LTT – would his plan have worked with Team Latra on board?
No.
Aside from the fact that the seals still would have been a temporary solution at best, I think AMoL makes it fairly obvious that the reason for the DO tainting saidin was the lack of a TP buffer between the DO and the OP. If the female AS had joined him, all LTT would have achieved would have been both sides of the OP being tainted because his plan lacked the TP buffer. Maybe the seals would have worked better (deteriorated slower) but the result of ALL channelers going mad would have been absolutely disastrous for the world.
I don’t think humanity would have survived a Breaking of that magnitude.
Edit: AndrewHB @29 raises the point that LTT might not have used female channelers for the actual sealing but I don’t see how that would work. He only went in alone because the female channelers refused to cooperate. If they had joined him, a female channeler would have joined him in the Pit of Doom.
It wouldn’t make sense otherwise. If the female Aes Sedai hadn’t been part of the actual sealing, why would there even be any discussion about whether LTT plan would have succeeded? As far as the sealing goes, his plan actually DID succeed. Having the women come along for the ride just for the purpose of having additional firepower wouldn’t cause that kind of controversy because as it turns out it wasn’t needed. The Hundred Companions held back the Shadow, LTT did the sealing, saidin got tainted. Female Aes Sedai punching fireball sized holes in Shadowspawn and Darkfriends wouldn’t have changed that one bit.
The plan was considered a failure because of the tainting of saidin which would have happened either way if LTT’s plan had been to do the sealing all on his awesome lonesome anyway. The whole controversy is about the idea that using BOTH halves of the OP in the sealing might somehow have prevented the DO’s backlash. That means having a woman present alongside LTT, using saidin and saidar in the sealing. And that in turn means, as we know post-AMoL, both would have been tainted.
@15. bad_platypus
It never occured to me before that Hyena was Aes Sedai, but now you mention it, it does seem possible.
With regards to Latra Posae Decume, I’ve never seen her as a villain( ess ), either. We must remember that at this stage in the proceedings, the Bore had been made into the Duck One’s prison for at least ten years, society had gone to hell in a hand-cart, and matters that once would have been a simple matter of discussion would have been fraught with distrust and recriminationss and whatnot. And neither of the two plans for stopping this war for good, were particularly safe.
That being said, it would’ve been interesting to see the effects of the Choedan Kal in concert with Callandor at the moment Moridin was trapped …
@15 bad_platypus
AoL people did indeed live considerably longer. Charn, an Aiel whose life Rand glimpses in the Columns, was 25 when he witnessed the drilling of the Bore (or rather the resulting destruction of the Sharom). The following societal decay lastet roughly 80-100 years, before finally the War of Power broke out. And it was another 10 years of war before LTT led the Strike at Shayol Ghul (title drop!) and Charn was killed by an angry mob. Which makes him, a non-channeler, between 115 and 135 years old.
Jonai, another of Rand’s early post-Breaking ancestors, was considered to be in his prime at 63, which indicates that life expectancy for non-channelers was at least twice as high as it is now. Maybe even as much as three times, assuming that several generations of decline and war and the Breaking respectively would have had adverse effects on Charn’s and Jonai’s longevity.
That means, Ilyena’s golden hair in the prologue is no indication of her being an Aes Sedai…
I’m glad you did choose to discuss this since not only is the strike a momentous event that affects the entire rest of the series, but as you point out it addresses (and makes possible) the whole issue of gender conflict that Jordan found so critical, and it brings up Latra Posae, who is never discussed anywhere else in the series or the re-read but obviously was very important in many reader debates.
I really never found her to be a villain; just an antagonist. Obviously the fact she could be seen as a villain is both an in-story and out-of-story commentary on how easy it is to cast someone else as a scapegoat for your own failings and how flawed and mistaken people can be about each other and their own motivations. We can’t allow hindsight to influence our thinking–either in knowing what the strike leads to or knowing what the ultimate uses and dangers of the Choedan Kal are. All we can do is look at what Latra knew at the time, which was that the Shadow was this close to victory; something had to be done to stop it, but the Light had to make sure it was the right thing or else they risked destroying the very world they were trying to save. The fact that happened anyway just shows how poor all the available choices were and that the Pattern had decreed things had to turn out this way as part of balance and preparing for what Rand and his allies would later do.
Was it arrogant for Latra to assume Lews Therin’s plan would fail and hers wouldn’t? Of course. But that doesn’t make her belief unreasonable, nor can we forget that even Latra and her allies acknowledged that if the Choedan Kal worked as intended, the plan for their use involved erecting a barrier around Shayol Ghul to keep the Dark One and his touch away until a more permanent solution could be figured out. In other words while the methods and applications were different, she and Lews Therin were essentially doing the same thing, planning a way to temporarily remove the Shadow’s influence from the world until a way to truly undo the Bore could be figured out. Whether the Choedan Kal could have done this, we’ll never know–even if they had the power for it, I doubt Latra and the other women had the kind of knowledge to do what Rand later does, but by the same token there’s no reason this Choedan Kal barrier couldn’t have acted similarly to what the seals did. The difference would have been whether they or the access ter’angreal could have been as easily protected and then later lost as the seals were.
In any event, as short-sighted as her plan was, it did spare the world from a fully-tainted Source–while it is possible that men and women working together could have prevented that, I seem to recall Jordan saying somewhere that indeed the whole Source would have been tainted if the women had joined in. This is probably because the way women and men working together would save the Pattern was intended to be what Rand did with Nynaeve and Moiraine, which was most certainly not what either Latra and her Concord would have done or what Lews Therin actually did–mingled Powers actually weaving the Pattern back together to reseal the Bore (and incidentally restore the damaged Pattern itself, too) rather than simply creating a seal that could be tainted. Or it could just be that the only way both halves could be used in balance was if the True Power was available as a buffer, which was why there had to be a taint to lead Rand to both the True Power itself and the nadir of self to let him draw on it. (And the link with Moridin, of course.) Truly the Wheel wove as it willed.
What matters is that in the end, at the time and with what she knew, Latra was trying in her own way to save the world, and I hardly think it fair to put her on a level with Elaida, Niall, and their ilk. Yes, she believed she was right, but unlike them she truly was trying to preserve the world. She wanted to save as many as she could, and thanks to keeping the women away from the taint she did in fact succeed at that. And Lews Therin himself acknowledges his faults in how he led the Light and that his actions were a gamble which, even as it technically won, was such a Pyrrhic victory it could not be lauded. And in the Third Age parallel, while many of us were furious with Egwene and how she acted toward Rand (with various levels of reasonability and accuracy in the points raised regarding her actions and motivations), as it turns out it’s absolutely true that Rand’s intention to lead the armies himself and his plans for breaking the seals really would have doomed everyone if applied as-is.
In the end it took compromise–having one leader, but it be one everyone and especially Rand could choose and approve of, and having the seals broken but at the proper place and time–to achieve victory. This is why I think that whether or not Egwene herself was Latra Posae reincarnated, the conflict between her and Rand was clearly the Pattern re-weaving the same events so that the proper resolution could be achieved–i.e. regardless whether Latra’s thread itself was part of the proceedings, Merrilor was intended to balance and make up for the Fateful Concord. Moiraine herself points this out when comparing the Second and Third Ages’ endings.
I also feel compelled to note that while I couldn’t find it anywhere in the interview database so I may be imagining it again, I swear I remember Jordan talking at some point about Latra post-strike…that while she never gets mentioned in the series proper (or ever again), he at least spoke on her activities afterward–that as “Cutter of the Shadow” she was quite the force to be reckoned with and did all she could to fight both the remaining Shadowspawn and the maddened men. Particularly that she felt regret for the rest of her days for what her Concord had led to, and that she did all she could until the end of her life to try and atone.
As much as keeping the women out of it most likely saved them too, I got the impression Latra was a grief-stricken and burdened woman, punishing herself for what happened far more than anyone else could or did, and that she made quite the name for herself in fighting the forces of evil and madness (even if her actions were intended simply to rectify what she’d done wrong, not to be heroic or repair her reputation). I actually felt sorry for her. And considering how powerful an Aes Sedai she was, I have to be very curious what kind of interactions and relationships she and Lews Therin may have had prior to this…were they always at logger-heads? Had they been distant rivals? Observers of each other and their power who never had cause to interact until then? Or could they even have been allies once?
Regardless, the strike shows again the importance of the genders working together, of cooperation and reason and common understanding, and of course of unintended consequences. (On both sides, since as Rand pointed out if not for the taint he never would have gotten Lews Therin’s memories or the knowledge to help him win–or for that matter the True Power.) Lews Therin gambled and won but at a terrible price; Latra Posae was right to withhold power but at the same time doing so may have pushed Lews Therin to be more reckless than he otherwise would have been, and it certainly set up (and likely stemmed from the late Second Age divisions that preceded) the gender division which came later. Both were necessary to allow for what Rand and Egwene do, illustrating what not to do but also providing the answers for how to do it right when taken together and balanced.
What I got out of it was not that Latra Posae was a stupid obstructionist, but just that she was desperate and terrified of what would happen if Lews Therin’s plan went wrong (and it turns out she was right, just not for the reason she thought–it wasn’t that the placement of the seals could let the Dark One out, but that they simply allowed him a way to touch the Source and do his counterstroke). The other women may have just been blindly clinging to the Concord, but she believed in it…and while we can sit here and judge her for that belief and how it seems like certain views and attitudes and groups in our world, it can’t be forgotten that Lews Therin was no flawless paragon of virtue…both he and Latra were quite human with equally big flaws and mistakes. It is a tragedy that they couldn’t work together and make things right…but thankfully the Pattern gave them a chance to try again–not necessarily literally, although I do think there’s plenty of evidence Egwene is Latra reborn, but in terms of the relationships and roles involved. That in the Third Age we finally get the chance to see how men and women really can work together, and that someone in Latra’s *role* was able to join with Rand and thus achieve true victory for the Light (albeit still at great cost…including personally).
And frankly I don’t think things will be brushed over and forgotten the way Leigh fears. She may no longer be in the history books but I got the impression from Jordan that Latra did do amazing things before she died that allowed her to be remembered and meant that no one at the time could hold her responsible for what happened. (Yes they put all the blame on Lews Therin instead, but at least she wasn’t hated for being the obstructionist to “cause” it all.) And since Rand still lives, plus many who were close to her (Nynaeve, Elayne) or who witnessed her deeds and were loyal to her (Moiraine, Leane, Silviana, the Black Ajah Hunters), then I have every confidence Egwene’s role in the Last Battle will not be forgotten. She brought balance back to the Pattern, in more ways than one, and that will be written and taught as much as her actual heroic acts during the fighting, I think. If nothing else, the fact Loial was so determined to get everyone’s stories means he’ll make sure Nynaeve and Elayne’s information gets in his book, and they’ll have access to what else she accomplished via the rest of the Aes Sedai. And since I fully believe Rand will eventually make himself known to Loial (who will understand the value of secrecy)…
@@.-@ Tessuna: Interesting…I never really thought about it. I believe it was possible to earn your third name without having to be Aes Sedai (we know of Aes Sedai who never earned their third name because they weren’t quite talented enough in their fields, and while this says nothing about whether you have to be Aes Sedai in the first place to even be eligible, the Guide did say that Aes Sedai while respected in the Age of Legends were not the only ones to have respect and power, so that implies to me you could earn a third name just by being really talented rather than from One Power access). So her having three names doesn’t really tell us anything.
But it’s probably likely she was, since I don’t think channelers interbred with non-channelers very much (due to the mismatched longevity for starters). And indeed her still having blond hair implies either extreme youth compared to Lews Therin (since bad_platypus pointed out the timeline issues) or her having the extra long lifespan. As for the Concord, we know that many women joined it but I don’t think the text said that *every* channeling woman joined it. So Ilyena may have been one of the few who didn’t, either because she loved Lews Therin and believed in him, because he had already explained his rationale to her and she found value in it, or because for whatever reason (taking care of their family?) she wasn’t likely to be involved in the fighting anyway.
Still, I do agree that the idea of them arguing about the Concord and his plan, and whether this caused any division between them before he left, the last time he’d see her before going mad and killing her, is pretty dramatic and tragic. I wonder if info on that is in the notes or may make it in the encyclopedia?
@7 Ways: You have a point, but it’s perfectly possible for men to outduel women with the Power. And Lews Therin was one of if not the most powerful male channelers of his Age. While we never hear Lanfear mocking Ilyena for her weakness in the Power (implying maybe she wasn’t a channeler, but we also never hear her mock Lews Therin for marrying a non-channeler either–odd either way), chances are she was weaker than her husband. Plus his madness would have taken her by surprise which might have been enough to keep her from holding him off, not to mention the fact she loved him and wouldn’t want to hurt him. And we know other female Aes Sedai were killed by the maddened men during the Breaking, obviously.
@9 rhandric: Good point.
@28 Tessuna: I love your idea of Moiraine being Latra reborn!
@30 Ways, 31 DougL: Yes, specifically him balefiring Natrin’s Barrow and everything that followed from that.
@@.-@2 Randalator: “Mr. Fancypants Superstar” LOL!
Randalator @42:
Thank you! I was getting increasingly perplexed whilst reading the comments, because many of them veered back towards villification of Latra (and Egwene) and reiterated the notion that a Dragon can’t be wrong, because he is a Messiah and that everybody who opposes him is either a fool or evil.
Yet I seemed to remember that AMoL has proven beyond shadow of doubt that saidar _would_ have been tainted if women had participated in the Sealing. I.e. that Latra was completely vindicated and that her actions have saved the world.
Not to mention that the Dragon _had_ been wrong, many times, in both of his incarnations. And it wasn’t a sacrilege or malicious to oppose him in these cases. Ahem.
I was beginning to doubt my memory, heh.
And from what I can gather, when the Dragon is erring in the ways that could destroy it, the Pattern throws it’s weight behind Light-siders who oppose him. Which is how Latra was able to form the Fateful Compact against the strongest ta’veren who ever lived and why Egwene was able to oppose Jesus Rand ditto.
Yes, Rand was wrong about the timing of the breaking of the Seals and apparently it could have been dangerous enough that both Egwene’s opposition and Moiraine’s reappearance was necessary to prevent it. Egwene was, of course, also wrong not wanting to break the Seals at all, but it is important to remember that Rand wasn’t completely right either and his plan needed to be disputed.
Re: Latra, I used to have a pet theory that she vanished because she went to Finnland and deposited something there, that was going to prove crucial for denouement of WoT. And that Moiraine’s stint there would have been, at least in part, about retrieving whatever it was. Would have played into the “balance” theme wonderfully, I thought. Alas…
Anyway, it seems that being the Dragon’s female counter-weight is a “heads, I win, tails, you lose” proposition. In AoL, Latra got to see the horror of the Breaking before dying in despair, while LTT suicided. In the Third Age, Egwene died in battle, while Rand got to ride away into the sunset, free and happy. Not very balanced at all, I’d say.
As to The Breaking, it seems to me that it was incomparably more horrible than the Last Battle. I mean, it lasted for decades, it completely re-arranged the world and threw society back centuries, if not millenia development-wise. “Weep for us, who have no more tears, pray for us, who are damned alive.” quoting from memory, but it really made me shiver when I read it. And reminded me that WoT proper was actually treating us to a rather cuddly version of the end of an Age.
What we saw at the end of AMoL was a snap by comparison. For one thing, the real action only took 2 years, most civilians seem to be safe, most great cities still stand, etc. Frankly, with everything blooming in the end, one has to wonder if Min’s vision of famine in Tear is going to pass at all. I mean, with all that accelerated plant growth, why would it?
This discussion about gender politics to my mind is the central theme of WOT. Every moment that a male and female interact on scene we get the charactor’s viewpoint about the other sex. Being a male myself and also the same generation as RJ, I perceive his comments about women spot-on. The level look, the flat stare, how women always know what a man should be doing and shouldn’t. Golly the list goes on forever.
Furthur I would like to add that Egwene, as beautifully awesome as her final stand was, the stubborn fool insisted she was right, all evidence to the contrary. Even, and especially her dreams told her of the rightness of breaking the seals. Remember the crystal globe held together with string. Her final action at the end. Luck. It wasn’t thought out, it just occured to her.
It was Perrin’s influence that finally did it for her. How many times did she see him in the wolf dream, yet it never occured to her to accept that he could actually be there. To her viewpoint it was never an important dream like her dreams of foretelling. Truth be told the girls, IIRC, never meet a male in TAR’. Do they ever even see the Forsaken when they meet in Tar’? Nynaeve meets Rand there and sees Ravin, but they’re there in the flesh so they’re “Damm Fools”
The reason that I go on like this is my perception that from the beginning EG and Rand butt heads.Men and women butt heads in most every chapter. And every time RJ comments on women, I’m feeling that he’s right again, women are like that, they do that s— all the time. I really mean it. What he says about women constantly strikes home with me.(married 35 years)
Do you women readers feel similarly about the rightness of women’s viewpoints of men in WOT? Does his observations of men’s foibles ring true for you?
4. Tessuna
15. bad_platypus
It never occurred to me that Ilyena *was* Aes Sedai. :)
We know from the flashback scenes in TSR that the average lifespan for non-channelers was much longer than in the third age.
17. Braid_Tug
‘Elaida of her day’ sounds pretty good to me, though perhaps excessively harsh. I don’t see her as a villain, nor as a tool of the Shadow.
As I see it, the Second Age was coming to an end, and the Third Age’s main characteristics are the gender imbalance plus slow decline and decay.
The Pattern was guiding events towards a harsh division on male/female lines; it required a woman like her in power to oppose Lews Therin. The Pattern guided women to her Fateful Concord, not just her own efforts. If she had hesitated or backed out then another, more Elaida-y Elaida would have taken her place.
29. AndrewHB
Nicely said.
Count me in the camp of those who viewed Latra as being completely correct in opposing LTT from when I first read this piece online when it came out.
It seemed obvious to me that if LTT had used a circle of Saidar/Saidin, then both halves would have been tainted, since it was the Seals themselves that allowed the counter stroke. There was no logical reason to assume using both halves would have protected both halves… it would have just exposed both halves.
I never viewed her as a villain. I do think her plan would have backfired as well. And with events in AMoL, in retrospect, its quite obvious that Macster is right. The Pattern spun out Latra for a specific purpose. Not to cause the Breaking, but to mitigate it. The Breaking was supposed to happen, it was part of the Pattern, and it was completely necessary to allowing this Last Battle to actually be the Last Battle (In this cycle, at least) with the Dark One, because Healing the Bore (as opposed to merely Sealing it) required the use of the TP as a buffer. Which LTT didn’t have. It took a whole chain of circumstances (including the Breaking) to put the Dragon in a position where he and Moridin crossed the streams and merged to allow that access.
Wall of Text on the Wheel of Time warning! Oh so many thoughts! The reread is truly back, and we likes it, Precious, oh yes we does!
Leigh, thank you thank you thank you! Excellent post as always. I love the idea that you likely found TSaSG through the WOTFAQ – I did too! Also ironic, to me, is that it sounds like we discovered Usenet, the internet, and the FAQ at about the same time – within a year or so of each other, anyway. In fact, I may have come into WOT a year or so (May 1996) before you, which boggles my mind. But barring a half dozen posts on Usenet and obsessive reading of the Encyclopedia of the WOT and the WOTFAQ, I stayed away from organized fandom until brought into it by the Reread community lo, these many years later.
Regarding the BBoBA, I’ve never disliked it as much as most do. I’m not a particularly visual person anyway (though Michael Whelan’s gorgeous AMoL cover has helped me start to see the importance of art). [My first JCon, 2013, I didn’t even bother entering the art room until the last day. Whereupon I was fascinated and overwhelmed by awesomeness and the need to buy things.]
The BB has a fascinating section on the Forsaken and on the founding of the White Tower by *more* than seven distinct groups. The seven Ajahs that remain are the remnants of the several groupings of channeling women that came together to form the Tower. For whatever reason, that stuff fascinates me.
LOVED your thoughts about RJ’s love of history, including the ephemeral, deductive nature of it, and how that love shows in his writing. I’ve not thought much about the discipline involved in not telling the reader everything you know about the world. I’ve seen authors, including Brandon, talk about that, but not I think in this sense of lending verisimilitude to a world by having parts of its history be dark. Very cool stuff.
Also loved your thoughts about the importance of historical records during an Apocalypse! Reminded me of the role that history plays in Barbara Hambly’s Darwath trilogy. (BH being another historian-by-training-turned novelist. I love her fantasy novels, characters, and the strong sense of mystery always present in her stories. She needs a new US publisher for her fantasy works, Tor! Here endeth the digression.)
More to say, but I’ve decided to break it into successive posts. Hopefully that will make it easier for people to skip to the next idea if they’re bored. Y’all let me know if I’m being obnoxiously wordy. I’m trying here! (er. trying not to be obnoxious. that might not have been clear.)
Leigh, re: your comparison of how bad things seemed at the end of the Second Age vs. the end of the Third Age: “the War of the Shadow and the subsequent Breaking was actually just as much of a nearly-world-ending apocalypse as Tarmon Gai’don was in the Third Age. If not even more so…”.
One of the things that always bugged me as we saw the Dark One’s touch get worse – dead rising, OP wards failing, bubbles of evil, rooms and even streets shifting – is that the Bore was *still partially closed.* What kind of effects were occurring during the Second Age, with the Bore unsealed?
In that vein, something struck me in TSASG that I hadn’t noticed back in the day, namely the reference to the Bore widening since it was first drilled. I didn’t know/remember that, though on reflection it makes complete sense! Of course the DO would be working to widen it! That indicates that despite the absence of Seals, the DO’s touch on the world at the beginning of the War of the Shadow was likely lighter than it was by the time of Tarmon Gaidon. Which I find fascinating as it repairs one of my chief quibbles with the series and reveals it to actually have been fully thought out by RJ. But that, plus the Light’s greater numbers, powers, and cohesion at the beginning of the War, explains how the Light was able to hold off the Shadow for as long as it did.
(Although now I’m wondering why the DO didn’t just order Lanfear and Ishamael to link and drill more holes in Its prison…)
I was also struck, in the story, that Lews Therin’s original plan was to use a circle of 13 Aes Sedai, rather than a full circle of 72 (or whatever – is 72 the right number?). It’s a good reminder to me that, for whatever esoteric reason, we’ve been told several times that sometimes a full circle isn’t the best for a certain task. Sometimes it’s a circle of 13, or even of 2 (as during the Cleansing), where the smaller number allows for greater precision. This reminder mollifies some (not all) of my lingering discontent with AS tactics during Tarmon Gaidon. I keep thinking that all of those women – novices included – should have been in full circles. But sometimes that’s not the best.
Re: Ilyrena – it’s honestly never occurred to me that Ilyena might have been Aes Sedai. Fascinating to see the arguments for and against.
Re: Latra Posae – I remember reading the theory that she might be Egwene in a prior life, and I still think it quite possible. Because of that, I don’t really agree that this story casts her as the villain. (Although I note interpreting it, and her, that way is perfectly valid and possible – and there is much of fandom that regarded Egwene as almost a villain, instead of an adorable Ooh Ooh Girl turned flawed-but-great hero, as I’ve always seen her.) (Except I only know the term Ooh Ooh Girl because of Leigh. Just one of many ways the reread has immeasurably enriched my life.)
Anyway, I don’t see Latra Posae as a villain. I do see her opposition to Lews Therin as very much being echoed by Rand vs. Egwene, and without the intervention of Moiraine we’d have had the same disasters.
But even with the disaster of male/female division that led to the SaSG, it’s still likely that Latra’s opposition saved the world by keeping the DO from tainting saidar. I do think the preponderance of evidence is that would have happened. Evidence for and against is very slight – but according to the narration in AMoL, the DO was prevented from counterstriking at Rand/Nynaeve/Moiraine only because Moridin and the TP buffered them.
Using the TP that way was, of course, a common fan theory for how Rand could reseal the DO’s prison without a counterstrike. I was one of several who argued hard *against* that theory, on the grounds that the TP was the very essence of the Dark One, and thus the very essence of evil. Using it could only result in worse evil, and so despite the cleverness of “fighting fire with fire”, I was convinced it was a terrible (even evil) idea. It’s entirely possible that, had I been a character in the story and had Aes Sedai and Ashaman been floating the TP buffer idea, I would have signed a Fateful Compact to prevent it. And been wrong, as it turned out, though I think Rand was only saved from dire consequences by his second-or-third hand use of the TP – through Moridin as controlled by Nynaeve/Moiraine.
Anyway, my point was, I was probably as opposed to *that* plan as Latra Posae Decume was opposed to LTT’s plan. And I’m not a villain, so I don’t see her as one. :)
Re: Braid_Tug @17 comparing her to Elaida – ouch! Elaida was a complete disaster – Latra Posae did (imho) save the world, rather backwardly, but there you go. What if LTT was the Elaida of his day? He/Rand’s admitted that his arrogance drove others away, even driving Demandred to the Shadow. And the SaSG indicates that the division between male and female was “unprecedented”. I find that…difficult to believe, considering the division between saidin and saidar…but the fact that Latra Posae brought EVERY significant female Aes Sedai to join her in opposition to Lews Therin indicates SOMEThing was up. SaSG doesn’t make LTT sound particularly arrogant or dictatorial (more desperate than anything), but I don’t understand how they could have been so very divided unless he was contributing to the division.
And no, I don’t really think LTT was comparable to Elaida – I was just making a point. Despite everything, I do think LTT saved the world. Latra Posae’s intransigence robbed him of other options, but acting unilaterally and disastrously, it still may have been the only way to actually stop the DO and give humankind some kind of chance to recover.
ETA: the other reason I don’t see Latra as a villain is that the document itself talks about “restoring her to her proper place in history” right after talking about her accomplishments fighting the Shadow. It doesn’t seem to vilify her (or the Dragon), despite the unfortunate way things turned out for all involved.
Re: the nature of the Dragon as Messiah – I don’t agree that the logic of the story makes us accept the Dragon as savior and all those who oppose him as being in the wrong. Quite the contrary. Lews-as-unilateral-leader and Rand-as-unilateral-leader both ended up being disastrous. At the same time, attempts to manage and control him were also disastrous. What was needed is what Nynaeve eventually came to (along with Mat, Min, and Perrin) – accept him as leader and *help* him, arguing with him as necessary, but from a position of “I’m here to help you” not from a position of “shut up and let me guide/order you”.
Macster @45 – excellent. (I’m reading the comments out of order, sorry!) ETA: Anthony Pero @49, also excellent.
sps49 @@@@@ 36: Yes, Egwene was going to *ruin everything* if Moiraine hadn’t appeared.
Also, Rand was going to *ruin everything* if Moiraine hadn’t appeared.
Why all the Elaida comparisons? We had zero indication that Latra was an ambitious megalomaniac – just that she honestly disagreed with LTT and that her opposition to his plans for the Sealing saved the world! I mean, seriously, I remember that there was a school of thought that the Dragon is always right and those who disagree with him are deluded fools at best and evil at worst, but IMHO the last volumes of WoT have conclusively proven that not to be the case.
And really, there was enough evidence of that notion being false in prior volumes too, just that it wasn’t quite as incontrovertible and could be explained away by fans of Rand and/or (?) LTT.
Re: Ilyena, I could have sworn that I did read somewhere that she was an AS. Is it really not mentioned in her article in the Ugly Book? But she may have been a weak one or lacking Talents LTT deemed necessary. Or maybe he couldn’t bear to risk her life in what was likely to be a suicide mission. Who knows.
Lotsa thoughts… but only a few bricks worth of wall-building today.
I really like the parallel Andrew pointed out @29: it’s a very similar situation, where the male leader and the female leader have different assumptions about what needs to be done and what will work. In both Ages it’s true that neither protagonist is entirely right, and neither is entirely wrong. The real solution comes in working together at all levels. Not only did Rand need to be in a circle with the women at Shayol Ghul, he and the Asha’man needed to be working in cooperation with Egwene and the Aes Sedai, and they in turn needed to be working with all the other international powers to defend against the forces of the Shadow. It really does reveal Moiraine’s role as peacemaker to be far more critical than most of us realized at first – and I’m pretty sure that was intentional on RJ’s part. (I suspect he didn’t have the reason written in the notes, though; either that, or he left instructions not to draw the parallel too plainly, leaving us to figure it out on our own.)
A lot of people seem to be wondering what would have happened if the women had gone along with LTT’s plan; we have Word of RJ on that. This is verbatim from a Q&A in Budapest, April 2003:
Duck @43 – Hyena? LOL!
Also: RJ did say, at a signing in 2005, that Ilyena was an Aes Sedai. (The report is as paraphrased by John Nowacki, so I didn’t copy/paste like the previous.)
For some reason I thought that the War of Power only lasted for 10 years, from the time of outright hostilities until the closing of the Bore… I’ve seen a lot of other timelines laid out here, though.
@59 – i think you have good reason to think the War of Power lasted 10 years. Lews Therin says “10 years” in the prologue of TEOTW. Of course, there seems to be a fair amount of retconing that has gone on to make it longer, but i think at the outset of WoT, it was supposed to be 10 years…
@57. Wetlandernw
Well, there goes my theory, thanks for clearing this up!
So, it was probably the Pattern protecting the world then because it makes zero sense for every woman to take no part otherwise.
DougL – It probably was the Pattern. I do like the theory that the DO’s touch was egging on the levels of discord, but I also think the Pattern could simply make use of that discord to diminish the negative effects of the plans being proposed. Both proposals had drawbacks, so it’s quite possible that implementation of either plan would have been disastrous (just like Rand’s and Egwene’s). By allowing the discord to keep them from full implementation, it also kept them from complete disaster.
Weren’t the Aes Sedai a unified group in the 2nd Age? I don’t understand how they could issue a decree that all female Aes Sedai not participate with LTT’s plan. Surely, there would be dissenting voices within. Even with the Covenant, surely there are some who would have no problem breaking it given the situation at that point in time.
Well, unless the mananged to get every one of them to swear by the Oath Rod.
I think I’m just missing something. Maybe the drilling of the bore convinced them that there was a need for distinction and separation?
Thanks FSS@60. I feel better. From the text of Th Strike at Shayol Ghul itself, there is this:
So, 50-100 years from the time Meirin drilled the Bore to when the perfect society of the AoL collapsed to the point that actual hostilities broke out. 7 years into the actual fighting, a stalemate arose. During the stalemate (which lasted a year) it became obvious that the Shadow’s victory was inevitable if Team Light didn’t do something drastic, and soon. At this point (8 years into the war, maybe less) is when both plans were developed and argued over. So, 10 years from the start of hostilities is a good number. Certainly not 20 or 50 years.
I feel better now.
As a “His”tory teacher, I think that your fear of Rand being remembered more than Egwaine is valid. You will always remember the guy or person who did the great thing in History than the “Grunts”. Roosevelt is remember in WWII more than Truman even though it was Truman who ended the war and dropped the Bomb. “Rosie the Riveter” is remember but not the actual women of WWII and their contribution. I think if it was called “Her”story then it would be a different story.
Just for nitpicking: “his” in “history” and in “his” in the English language, come from two different languages etymologically speaking. “history” comes from the Greek word “historia”, and before that from Proto-Indo-European roots. “his” as in the pronoun in English comes from Germanic and proto-Germanic “hisa”.
Being a non-native English speaker, with the first language being descended from Latin, it always amazed me how feminist in Anglosphere countries were so preoccupied with the word “history”. Only in the English languege (and probably some related ones) is there a “his” in “history”. In Portugese, the word his (dele) and history (história) have nothing in common. At all. Not even one letter. And história is a feminine word (yes, words have gender in that language).
Again, it always amazes me how some preocupations with languages can seem so … narrow-minded, when looking at the global picture. It’s like the Portuguese language feminists saying that the way surnames are ordered is a thing from the patriarchy (mother’s surname first, father’s surname last). And then I read that Spanish language feminists also consider the way surnames are ordered in their language to be a thing from the patriarchy (mother’s surname last, father’s surname first). It seems they didn’t try to communicate with each other before deciding what was and what was not a thing from the patriarchy.
world-encrappening – heh
Ryamano @66 – All too true. Just goes to show that if you look hard enough for something, you can make almost anything into “evidence.”
Yep, clearly it was Latra/LTT = Egwene/Rand. Don’t know why Elaida got mixed up here. Certainly now that we know the end she shouldn’t be.
Rand and Egwene were lucky to have Moiraine.
I also think that it had to be a Pattern involvement in Latra’s Concord. There would have been thousands female AS, generally strong-willed, independant-minded women. Spread all over the place, most likely. To get a majority to listen to her, even huge one like 80-20% will still leave hundreds.
Wetlander @@@@@ 57, 58
Thanks for the info. And like Isilel @@@@@ 56 I was sure that Ilyena was an AS and all those postsers inisting she wasn’t were really confusing me. Though, Wetlander, how about next time you set things straight, you wait until we get closer to the hunny, ok?
Aaah, but then again, Leigh, perhaps everything is simply skewed in favor of the Dragon. LTT’s legacy was certainly ambiguous, reviled for being responsible for the Breaking, yet at the same time hailed for Sealing the Dark One away at great personal cost. When both your hero and villain figure are the same person, there isn’t much space left for a counterpart, no matter how pivotal her role.
Also, let’s bear in mind my friends, that sowing discord is one of the Dark One’s favored MO’s.
birgit @41I think that comes of being the Dragon.
macster @43
Awesome wall of text. Good points all. Minor nitpick though: you get a third name not out of pure talent, else Lanfear would have gotten hers. You get it for making a momentous contribution to society or gaining distinction in your chosen field.
ValMar @69 – Oh, rats! It didn’t even occur to me. I coulda let things wind up a lot more first…
sps49
Actually, I think both Rand and Egwene were going to ruin everything. Neither was comprimising and both were escalating the conflict. Moiraine called each out for being wrong in one fashion or another.
Now, I personally find much to dislike in Egwene, and I would say more than I find to dislike in Rand. But both need to claim some blaim here.
ValMar @69
Just to set the record straight: I did not insist Ilyena (Hyena?) was not an AS, only commenting that it did not occur to me that she might be. So…Doh!…because we have learned from Wetlandernw’s (who loves my double negatives) research that she was indeed.
Regarding the hunny: In the future I may not be as, um, generous as I was last week, when I let it sit for nearly 2 hours without grabbing it since I had comment @98. Beware!
J.Dauro @72
I am reminded again of how vitally important Moiraine was in AMoL, even though her activity level and on-screen time were a disappointment to many readers.
Wow! I’m surprised and pleased that Leigh responded to the requests and added TSaSG to the re-reread.
Given Leigh’s dismissive comments toward the BBoBA above, we can be pretty sure that no other aspect of that text will be covered in the re-reread. Which is a minor shame.
I fully agree that the art sucks – but there’s a lot of interesting background material and stuff is discussed there that appears nowhere else (e.g. the Isle of Madmen.) It would have been fun to kick some of that around. Of course I have no idea how Leigh would attempt to summarize the book.
Dorman@10
It was covered in the original reread in publication order, so I imagine the re-reread will follow that order.
@60 FSS, @64 anthonypero
re: duration of the war
The duration of the War of Power is either a mistake by RJ or an incomplete retcon.
SaSS says that the war lasted 10 years give or take. However Rand’s trip to the past in Rhuidean implies that it was considerably longer. His ancestor Coumin is sixteen at the time of the Strike and doesn’t really believe Charn’s stories about a time without war, Forsaken and Shadowspawn. But before the War of Power there were no Shadowspawn and no wars (according to the author of SaSS) and Coumin should have at least some recollection of that world.
Even if we discount the idea of war being unknown before the War of Power (assuming that it is an in-universe error by the fictional author), Shadowspawn like Trollocs or Myrddraal were specifically created for the War of Power…
Speaking of lost historical details: Jordan has likely left us forever guessing on the nature of Ishamael’s on-again/off-again imprisonment behind the seals.
Another item likely item lost to history is how Callandor was conceived and how it could possibly be made (who on the Light side would know anything about making a TP angreal?) and how it was attuned to the Dragon’s soul.
Here’s hoping we might find a little bit out in the forthcomng Wheel of Time
EncyclopediaCompanion.The way Robert Jordan set up his Wheel of Time, with a world where women were – more or less – the “dominant gender” because the men “destroyed the world”, he needed a reason for the sole responsibility of the male Aes Sedai for the Breaking. So, only male Aes Sedai followed Lews Therin and “all” women opposed him in his plan and only Saidin got tainted. For me, this is a point on the edge of Jordan’s worldbuilding where things get fuzzy and less well explained than in the more detailed parts of his plot – he needed this to be so and clearly did not see the need to flesh it out more.
@Ryamano
Indeed I have sometimes wondered, when seeing arguments by feminists that were based on the structure of words like human or female whether countries with languages such as my native german, where such words dont really exist are less “sexist” by definition ;-)
@77 Kah-turak
Fun fact: The word ‘man’ meaning ‘male’ is derived from the gender neutral variant and not the other way round…
– germanic root ‘man’ = sentient,
– indoeuropean root manú = human being
So, yeah…
I haven’t read all the comments yet, merely the first few (it’s 3am, I’m not going to stay up any longer right now to do it), so I have no idea how common or otherwise my perspective on this is. But I read TSASG very differently from how she read it. (This doesn’t surprise me, given Leigh’s, er, fixation on certain issues, stated with all love as an occasional reread reader, rarer commenter, and longtime WoT fan. :-) )
In my reading, Latra Posae has one approach, Lews Therin has another. They’re both responsible for the rift between the two factions. Lews Therin’s daring move in no way suggests Latra’s plan to use the Choedan Kal was the wrong plan to follow. Rather, Lews Therin’s move demonstrates several facts. We know that his way worked, where we know nothing about whether hers would have. But we also know that his way was a colossal failure in both the “short” run and in the long run. Where her plan might or might not have succeeded, we know absolutely that his plan, executed rashly with no assistance from women Aes Sedai, led to the Breaking, thousands of years of low-level strife as a result of Ishamael’s “nudges”, and essentially completely failed by the end of the Age. The world hates Lews Therin as the person who destroyed the world and will do so again. (Oh, and save it, too. But most people don’t know that.) Latra Posae comes off easy — her plan is never put to the test, she’s not the one who Breaks the world, she’s just forgotten while everyone concentrates on just staying alive.
So, no, I don’t see Latra Posae as the story’s villain. Rather, I see her as the somewhat-less-blinkered antagonist to Lews Therin, whose plans are never shown to be successful or lacking. I see her as the person who never stopped trying to do the right thing in bringing both genders’ complementary efforts to the battle. Most importantly, I see her as the person who did not accidentally Break the world by going it alone in what would be the most important strike of the campaign. How in the world this story can be read to villainize Latra Posae, or at the least villainize her more than it villainizes Lews Therin, I have no idea.
The only knock particularly on Latra Posae that has any validity is for her dogged resistance to deploying the seals even after the access ter’angreal were lost apparently irrevocably. But we only know now that retrieval had failed. And, far more importantly, we know that the alternative carried out alone nearly destroyed the world. And we have the live possiblity that both saidin and saidar would have been tainted had the seals been deployed by a unified force.
I don’t award Lews Therin any points for the seals mostly working. He was lucky at best that his method was effective. And he was utterly foolish to go to battle lacking half the Light’s forces, knowing full well that the greatest achievements of the Age of Legends were performed by men and women acting together, in equal proportions, and that men couldn’t even link without women involved. This mistake was entirely his own. That the Dark One’s counterstrike was unforeseeable is irrelevant. By acting alone, Lews Therin assumed responsibility for all the consequences, whether expected or unintended.
In the end, I think Latra Posae comes out of this pretty good. Partly this is because she never has to take responsibility for the outcomes of her plans. That’s luck for you; that’s war. But it’s also because she never gave up, never tried to go it alone, and never doomed an entire Age to strife. She comes out of TSASG far better than Lews Therin does. And I absolutely cannot understand Leigh saying “there’s no escaping that [TSASG] casts her in the role of villain”; I see it as doing almost exactly the opposite. There’s absolutely a lot in WoT to view through a gender lens, by design. But as regards Latra Posae Decume as inescapably villain, I say it’s an overread colored by reading too much through the lens of gender stereotypes.
(I’m having trouble logging in, so not using my “Jeff Walden” account for now. If I get it working, perhaps I’ll post a followup from it to confirm this is actually me. Not that I suspect anyone cares. :-) )
Ways @@@@@ 73
“Insist” was a poor choice of word by me regarding Ilyena not being an AS. I think the other comments were like yours too, generally.
forkroot @@@@@ 74
I agree. The art of the book seems to overwhelm most people. Luckily I lost my copy back in’99. Currently I have the UK artless edition. Big impovement, except that the maps aren’t in colour (IIRC in the “ugly” edition they were).
I am somewhat reminded here of the brief contretemps between Petra and Bean n Ender’s Game/Shadow, regarding how to defuse the Bonzo Madrid situation. Petra thought to defuse by letting a (she thought) controlled fight happen, to blow off steam and wind it up. Bean thought otherwise and prevented it (although he, and everyone else, didn’t recognize her strategy as such at the time). Petra only comes off as a villain because people don’t recognize she’s not actually trying to betray Ender. (Which is itself for gender reasons, if you believe Bean.) When we understand what she was trying to do — and we understand what Latra Posae was trying to do here — we can no longer fairly characterize her as villain. Wrong or misguided, perhaps. But, then, so was Bean. Remember his line? It applies exactly to the Latra Posae/Lews Therin situation.
“Well, I guess when you look at how it all turned out, we’ll never know how stupid your plan was. But we sure know that mine was shot to hell.”
Latra Posae (and Petra before/after her) is no villain.
@79 Jeff Walden
re: LTT’s responsibility
There’s one point where I don’t agree with you, that being that LTT was at best lucky that the seals worked.
According to SaSS his idea to seal the Bore was sound, ‘just’ incredibly risky. AoLers were concerned that if not place precisely the seals might have the opposite effect, ripping open the Bore instead of sealing it. But nobody challenged the idea that the seals would work if placed correctly.
And after the loss of the Choedan Kal, his plan was the only one left. I can still understand the opposition to his plan, but I can also understand him seeing it through.
Ultimately we have a beautiful balance here again. Latra Posae and Lews Therin were both right and wrong at the same time. LTT was right to execute his plan even without the support of women, because the alternative would have been the DO breaking free, meaning the end of humanity. Latra was right, because helping LTT would have tainted saidar as well, again meaning the end of humanity. But both were wrong in thinking their respective plan was the only and the right way to go, as both were only temporary solutions that would have led to more or less the same results.
@76 Forkroot:
Not sure about the exact details you’re looking for, but I remember sometime someone saying it was an industrial-line process gone wrong that made Callandor lack its buffer. Which doesn’t answer the TP aspect, but at least leaves an avenue for further consideration. (I don’t remember it being attuned to the Dragon, exactly. I assumed its being meant for him to use, eventually, was the Wheel weaving as the Wheel wills and all that — but it worked for him inherently no better or worse than it would for any man. Maybe others remember more details here.)
And, um, curse you all, I’ve now gone and read the rest of the thread rather than going to sleep. Bah! :-)
@Randalator:
Time for me to re-read the relavant passages in the way way back machine chapters. Its my favorite part of the whoel series anyway.
Even the text of this short story, published years after TSR, suggests 10 years is a reasonable conclusion, so I’m interested to see if I can retcon it to my satisfaction.
Sorry I’m late to the party – on the road last few days.
– I had no doubt Ilyena was AS, and was surprised to point of shocked that anyone thought otherwise. LTT treated her as an equal, she had earned three names, how could any “normal” mortal keep up with that?
– I thought the Strike did a great job with introducing ambiguity into who is/are hero of the piece. Arguments can (and are) be made on all sides. Both can be viewed as partially right, partially wrong, but they both failed because they could not find a way to bridge the gap between them.
– Agree wholeheartedly with the many who saw the Rand-Egwene showdown in AMOL as directly paralleling the LTT-Latra showdown in the Strike, but with the critical world saving difference being the role of Moiraine to find the middle ground. Especially when you call back to LTT-Latra do you realize that Mat’s lose the light to save the world prophecy really means something – Moiraine was that important.
long time lurker, first time poster (all the way from South Africa – I bring sunshine to the bunker :) )
I have been reading the Wheel of Time since 1993 and just love this reread!
Just a thought on Rand vs Egwene, LTT was LTP
LTT dies, LTP lives
Egwene dies, Rand lives
So there is a balance there, which make me also lean towards Egwene being LTP reborn?
@86 BrownAjah
Welcome to the asylum, gentle ex-lurker. I dare say, that’s a mighty fine observation you chose for your first post.
Wetlandernw:
Thanks for that interview with RJ confirming that saidar would have been tainted if the women had participated in the Sealing.
But I seem to remember that now there is also direct textual confirmation in AMoL, where Rand aknowledges in his PoV that this is indeed what would have happened.
Hence Callandor being essential for the perfect re-creation of DO’s prison in the Third Age, because it allowed Rand to use the True Power as a buffer and to prevent the DO from tainting the OP used to re-imprison it.
I.e. we don’t need to rely on external sources of information anymore to know that Latra was right to hold back the female AS. Which is why villification of Latra, her comparison to Elaida, etc. was so perplexing for me in the here and now, when we finally know the truth. It felt like such a “blast from the past”!
Callandor itself isn’t attuned to LTT, but the wards around it in the Stone of Tear were. After he took it out from the wards, any male channeler who is strong enough could use it. That is why the Forsaken wanted to lure him to Tear.
If wards can be attuned to one person, why didn’t Rand use that to protect the Seals and access key? In the beginning he probably didn’t know how (e.g. when he put Callandor back in the Stone), but later in the series he had enough memories from LTT that he should have been able to do it.
Randalator @75
Perhaps the period of open fighting only took 10 years, but before that was a much longer period of political maneuvering and cold war.
forkroot @76
It was a quality control failure that led to Callandor not having the buffer, and this coincidentally led to its being able to amplify the True Power as well.
Jeff Walden (alt.) @83
Agreed, it didn’t work any better for him than it did for others like, say, Jahar. The original wards holding it in the Stone might have been attuned to him specifically though. No clue how they did that.
Isilel @88
Yeah. I don’t get where she became a villain either. She was certainly on the good side, if somewhat opposed to LTT’s mad plan. I don’t see where that makes her a villain worthy of all the hate. In fact, it’s good that she can stand up to Mr. fancy-pants Superstar and stick to her own guns. The division as unfortunate as it was, ended up working out to the good. The division might not even have been entirely her fault. The Dark One certainly loves sowing discord among his enemies.
birgit @89
By the time he had full use of LTT’s memories, it was a moot point, as Callandor had by then been taken by Cadsuane for safekeeping.
@76 Forkroot (Hi!), @83 Jeff Walden alt, re: Callandor –
I believe Forkroot’s question about Callandor being attuned to the Dragon’s soul isn’t so much about Callandor itself, but about the wards that guarded it there in the Stone of Tear which prevented Belal or anyone else from claiming it until Rand took it in book three.
ETA: I see Birgit and alreadymad already answered about the wards. Agreed that Rand probably didn’t know how to do “only me” wards at first (though the ward he did place were apparently quite effective, according to Narishma, who almost got got). Later, he was obsessed with the CK and saw Callandor’s flaw as a box or a chain to control him. And after he became Zen Rand, he *wanted* Callandor to be used against him. Though…hopefully he took precautions against it being stolen before Shayol Ghul!
As for that attunement, I tend to worry less about it than some others, assuming it falls under the “it’s magic, dummy” category. But I don’t think it’d be tough – a weave of Spirit, perhaps, from some Aes Sedai who’d known Lews Therin Telamon.
The TP angreal aspect is more problematic – I remember an interview citing the industrial accident story too, but I wonder what kind of accident could create a TP sa’angreal. Lacking the buffer is one thing – accessing another Power entirely, the power of the DO, is something else completely. There’s also the references in AMoL to Callandor being a very clever trap. But was it *created* as a trap, with the industrial accident a cover story? Or was it created ‘accidentally’ (Providentially? Team Jordan did say the Creator might have intervened more than once…) and some Light Sider Aes Sedai saw the potential in its flaws – perhaps with help from Foretellings?
@82 Randalator – excellent. @79 Jeff Walden alt, re: Latra Posae –
While I’ve already indicated I didn’t see her as a villain, and potentially as saving the world, I think you’re too far to the other extreme of lauding her. For one thing, seeing her as “the person who never stopped trying to do the right thing in bringing both genders’ complementary efforts to the battle” is…a little mind boggling to me. She’s the one who *prevented* male/female cooperation, sowing division with her Fateful Compact/Concord, while LTT was arguing for male/female cooperation in his plan.
Or perhaps it’s more balanced to say that both wanted male/female cooperation – LTT with the Seals, LPD with the Choedan Kal – but both only wanted it on their own terms.
But I think, despite the disaster of the Breaking and the relief that at least saidar wasn’t Tainted, LTT still comes across as the more reasonable to me. After all, there’s no mention of him rounding up male AS and having *them* swear to refuse to aid LPD’s plan.
In fact, I note that LTT didn’t take unilateral action like her (the Fateful Concord I count as unilateral action) until:
1. the access keys were lost, their recovery uncertain;
2. the Choedan Kal themselves were in danger of capture (could the Shadow figure out how to construct new access keys if they had the CK to study?);
3. 3 major new offensives by the Shadow, led by brilliant generals Sammael, Belal, and Demandred, had been slowed but couldn’t be halted;
4. starvation and rioting were spreading, the forces of the Light getting ever weaker,
5. dissension by the Peace Faction who wanted to try negotiating a surrender,
6. and the division of the Aes Sedai along male/female lines now preventing almost any cooperation on any subject, to the point that men and women weren’t speaking to each other.
Things were *desperate* and the final defeat was at hand.
I do think LPD’s dissension prevented the Breaking from being even worse, and so in that way, she saved the world. But I also think it’s clear that if LTT hadn’t acted when he did, the Shadow would have defeated the forces of the Light and the DO continued to enlarge the Bore. At the least the Shadow would’ve ruled the world; likely the DO would’ve broken free.
So if LPD saved the world by her obstructionism, LTT’s activism saved the world *more*, in my view. (Which maybe is what Leigh meant in the first place by saying the story cast her as a villain.) If LTT hadn’t acted and LPD’s views had instead been followed, the disaster would’ve been EVEN worse.
I also can’t help feeling as if LTT had the right, and the responsibility, to act. Leaving aside the question of whether he was seen at the time as a Messiah figure (I have a post coming on that, as I asked Team Jordan about it at JordanCon), he was their highest military commander and the leader of the AS. We don’t know the command structure or legal niceties of things – Aes Sedai weren’t supposed to be leading the society, but maybe under the exigency of war they’d taken on more authority, so maybe the army wasn’t supposed to act without approval from the Hall. But as I read the situation LTT was their top general, First among the Servants, and perhaps, as Dragon, commander-in-chief. I’d say he had to act.
One other thing. I just read the relevant paragraphs of the Strike at Shayol Ghul again, and I’m now struck by this phrase: “the lines of division had hardened to a point where many female Aes Sedai refused to speak to male Aes Sedai, and the reverse as well”. *That* sounds all too reminiscent of the situation among AS in the Third Age, where Mesaana/Alviarin had all the Ajahs divided into armed camps.
I’m not saying LPD was a Darkfriend. I consider that firmly in Very Looney Theory territory and contrary to the text. But I think it’s an inevitable conclusion that the Shadow was worsening the division. Several folks yesterday suggested the DO’s influence from the Bore might be the problem. Maybe so, maybe no; but certainly the more mundane influence of secret DFs (or Compelled or Turned victims) among the Aes Sedai contributed to the division. (Same thing with the Peace Faction.) That’s what the Shadow does – looks for points of division. They did everything they could in the Third Age to divide the Ajahs; in the Second Age they were almost certainly manipulating and worsening the division between LTT and LPD specifically, and male and female AS generally.
I will repeat my theory here regarding TP sa’angreal…
One solution to the problem of creating a TP ‘greal is fairly simple–perhaps all ‘greal can access the TP, but the buffer that prevents people from drawing too much of the power also prevents them from drawing on the TP.
Imagine it like this–this buffer is not around the One Power, but around the user. Its a fence that keeps you safe. It also keeps you contained, and unable to access the TP. Please note that this would be a byproduct of the buffer, not the intended purpose of the buffer.
Might not be the real reason, but nothing in-text contradicts it, and its as good of a retcon as any.
chaplainchris1 @91
Let’s not forget, that by the time he got to the Stone, Rand had been marked several times. All in accordance with the Prophecy.
Also, Narishma complained that there were more traps than Rand had described, implying somebody had been in there adding traps willy nilly.
@93 anthonypero- while I concede that there is no explicit statement that ONLY callandor is a TP sa’angreal, it IS implied that it is the only one, or at least that such things were exceedingly rare. Remember that at the end of the Second Age, Callandor was constructed and protected according to prophecy, so I assume that something in the prophecy included construction of a sa’angreal that could use the TP, a secret aspect that was likely even more closely guarded than the location of the Choden Kal access keys. There’s a reason that Callandor, rather than any other sa’angreal, was in the prophecies.
Sure, it was the only one without a buffer… chicken, meet egg :)
Thanks, Randalator@87 :)
Hunny’s getting close – back off, Valmar! :)
Anthony Pero – Callandor wasn’t the only sa’angreal without the buffer to keep you from drawing too much. We know there were others – it was rare, but not unheard of. Vora’s sa’angreal, the white fluted rod of the Aes Sedai, was one…hence Egwene’s death. It may have been the same sa’angreal used by Eldrene (though if so, why not name it Eldrene’s sa’angreal?). If not, then that was another.
But Callandor had a deeper flaw – not only lacking the buffer, but magnifying the Taint; not only magnifying the Taint, but opening the male user to be controlled via a forced link. By accident, design, or divine providence, perhaps those deeper flaws are what makes Callandor also able to amplify the TP.
I note that during the final scenes, Rand is not just using massive amounts of the TP but also using more saidin than was used at the Cleansing (per Logain’s POV), and so presumably more saidar as well. Which – without the Choedan Kal, I don’t get, except that something outside the normal rules was taking place.
Isilel @88 –
I also regard it as settled that saidar would have also been tainted, but I don’t remember a reflection from Rand stating it outright. It might be there, cause AMoL is, you know, BIG. I did find this at the end of Chapter 47 “Watching the Flow Writhe”:
“They fed it to him. Power. Saidar from the women. The True Power from Moridin. Saidin from Rand. Moridin’s channeling the True Power here threatened to destroy them all, but they buffered it with saidin and saidar, then directed all three at the Dark One.”
That’s not the relevant bit, but I did find it interesting that they ‘buffered’ the TP with *both* halves of the OP. I mean, of course they did, but both halves come into contact with the TP, the essence of the DO. Anyway, back to the quoting:
“Rand punched through the blackness there and created a conduit of light *and* darkness, turning the Dark One’s own essence upon him….With a bellow – three Powers coursing through him, blood streaming down his side – the Dragon Reborn raised a hand of power and seized the Dark One through the Bore….”
Interesting that he seized the DO *through* the Bore. Again, of course he did, but since I only yesterday was reminded about the Bore widening over time, this strikes me. The Bore was the way for the DO to touch the world. But it also provided a pathway for the Dragon Reborn to stop the DO, grabbing him with a TP hand buffered by both halves of the OP. Or vice versa – grabbing the DO with a OP hand, both saidin and saidar, with the True Power between the OP and the DO.
Anyway, the next sentence is the relevant one: “The Dark One tried to pull back, but Rand’s claw was gloved by the True Power.” Clearly, it’s the TP that protects from the Dark One. Unfortunately, the next sentence is “The enemy could not taint saidin again.”
For the purposes of this discussion, I’d rather it mention saidar as well. But it’s the “could not taint *again*” that the passage is speaking to, of course. The passage does make clear that it’s the ‘True Power glove’ that protects against a counterstrike from the DO. It’s not the presence of saidar that protects.
It does, again, raise the question of if there was *any* solution to the War of Power that didn’t end with either the Breaking or the end of the world, even if LPD had cooperated with LTT.
And then from chapter 49 “Light and Shadow”:
“Rand pushed his arms to the side, grabbing twin pillars of saidar and saidin with his mind, coated with the True Power drawn through Moridin…Rand hurled the Powers forward with his mind and braided them together. Saidin and saidar at once, the True Power surrounding them and forming a shield on the Bore. He wove something majestic, a pattern of interlaced saidar and saidin in their pure forms.”
Again, seems clear that without the TP sheath, both saidar and saidin would’ve been vulnerable to counterstrike.
RobM @@@@@ 85 – regarding Ilyena aka Hyena (heh):
To be fair, the BBoBA makes clear that earning three names isn’t limited in any way to Aes Sedai, and that Aes Sedai were not separate from the rest of the population. Other than somehow earning three names, we don’t really know anything about her (textually at least) than that she was pretty and golden-haired and married LTT and had his kids. Nothing about her accomplishments and skills. (Although, if the common fan theory about Elayne being Ilyena reborn is accurate, then of course she was Aes Sedai.) Anyway, I hadn’t speculated much about her being AS or not.
I don’t think we had any indication of the lifespan issues early on, either – what is it, book five or so before Nynaeve learns about Slowing? (Things like that, and the pairing up of Thom and Moiraine, make me wonder if Slowing was even part of RJ’s original conception of things? Something I’ll be looking for in this reread.)
ETA: “Even though we ain’t got money, I’m still so in love with you, ‘hunny’.” Heh. Granted, I’ve made like fifty posts myself. But really, I’m just trying to keep my text walls small! No ulterior motives! (Heh heh heh.) No, really!
Y’all! Y’all! In the last 12-18 hours:
1. Before going to sleep and immediately upon awakening, I checked this post for discussion, and there were new responses both times!
2. I’ve written like 8 posts on different subjects! When I should be working!
3. Wetlander’s intervened in a debate that seemed likely to be interminable by providing actual *quotes*! And *evidence*!
4. I’ve opened and quoted liberally from a Wheel of Time book, while almost getting sucked into reading against my will!
5. I’ve had my laptop open to a post I was working on, with the post I was responding to open in another window, while looking up things in the Encyclopaedia-WOT on my phone!
Truly, everything old is new again, and the Reread is back. It feels good, folks.
I imagine the Aes Sedai who set the Stone of Tear up must have been puzzled at all the fuss over what they knew to be a defective sa’angreal.
AS1: That thing? Doesn’t even work right. Will kill the stupid fool who even tries using it.
As2: Unless they’re of a particular strength. Like Lews Therin level or something.
As1: Still, they’d have to be pretty desperate. You sure we can’t put any other sa’angreal in here? I’m sure we must still have a few we can use instead.
AS2: (shrugs) I know, right! But this is what the prophecy says to use, so this is what we’re putting in. Now shut up and keep working.
AS1: (grumble, grumble)
In any case, I’m pretty sure we got the word of the Creator that the lack of the buffer was mostly a result of failing quality controls at the time, and not deliberate.
My feelings on LPD vs LTT: LPD should not be seen as a villain, but I don’t think she can be seen as a hero either. She didn’t know that both saidin and saidar would or could be tainted by the DO and she admitted that her own plan was merely a stopgap which would, by the way, leave the Forsaken and Shadowspawn loose to continue to ravage the world. This really all goes back to the Pattern knowing what could/would happen and forcing a solution, however badly it turned out for the world.
I am also hoping for a little more info on Callandor and its wards from the Companion.
One thing to keep in mind in regards to Callandor’s ability to magnify the TP is that when Rand describes the process of making angreal and sa’angreal to Elayne in AMoL, it turns out that the method requires temporarily sacrificing some of your channeling ability to “infuse” the object with. It seems highly unlikely that that is how Callandor got its ability to be a TP sa’angreal (unless one of the Forsaken was undercover in the team making it!), so either the process is different or it was a side effect of something else in the creation process.
I personally think that the team didn’t fully understand what they were doing; maybe they were just following instructions from a Foretelling, and the result was incidentally a TP sa’angreal because that’s what the Pattern required. Keep in mind the Ishamael didn’t even think it was possible. That was admittedly not his area of expertise, and it may just be that the Forsaken didn’t have enough time/patience/perceived need/etc. to sacrifice TP channeling ability for the long-term gain of a TP angreal, but I definitely lean towards it being an accident of the construction rather than a deliberate attempt.
@98:
And for all we know, Vora’s sa’angreal could be used to channel the TP… in the narrative, no one with access to the TP tried to channel with it, to my knowledge, and if they did, would they have even tried? The Forsaken didn’t seem to know of any TP devices at all, and were extremely hesitant to use the TP anyway (Ishy being the exception).
And in the whole history of this turning of the wheel, access to the TP had only been granted (outside of however long Ishy spent out of the Bore) for less than 100 years. Thats not a lot of time for such things to be discovered.
As far as Rand drawing on more of Saidin than when cleansing… I didn’t read it that way. During the cleansing, rand was cycling things through his impromptu filter… at no point would he have been drawing in and holding as much as was possible… there’s no reason to. He just needed to, over the hours he was doing, keep a constant stream of it running through the filter to skim of the taint.
So, in AMol, he was drawing on as much as he could. I would have loved to get another male channeler’ reaction to the amount of power being used when Rand and Asmo were both using the access ter’angreal at the same time in Rheiudean, for a better comparison.
Also, Callendor was attuned for a man, Vora’s was attuned for a women. Without knowing far more specifically than we do what that difference means, and how it works (such information, of course, probably doesn’t even exist in world or even in RJs notes), this is all just speculation. But that’s a good reason why Callendor, specifically, was in the prophecies. Also, for those other flaws you spoke of. Although, it would be interesting to wonder if Vora’s sa’angreal would have had the same effect as Callendor (only in reverse) if the female half of the source had been tainted.
EDIT: To clear up what I’m trying to say, its possible that all of the differences between Callandor and Vora’s sa’angreal are caused by the taint being on Saidin, and Saidar being untainted.
forkroot @74: Well my way of thinking goes that this re-read should be done from start to finsh regarding the story arc. It makes no sense to do New Spring around book 7 or 8!
The perfect place for it should be before the prologue or just after IMO.
Waited over 20 years to put the story altogether. It would be nice to do the whole series from the begining to the End!
Thoughts
bad_platypus @103
As I recall, the process involves focusing your channeling ability into the seed. The side effect is that you can’t use The Power for anything else. The longer you are able to focus your ability in without interruption or using The Power for anything else, the more powerful it would be.
As for using the TP, bear in mind all use of it comes at the express permission of the Dark One, who is the source for it. While I can see the Dark One endorsing a sa’angreal, I don’t see him letting the Light side have it. More likely, the ability comes from having been created for saidin. Which itself ended up being Tainted.
One theory for the creation of Callandor is that it was created at the exact time the strike at shayol ghul was happening. Therefore, the male Aes Sedai that was feeding the seed might have fed tainted saidin to it. With the taint, some kind of connection to the True Power was created.
@106 Dorman – Leigh’s thoughts are the ones that matter here, but for myself, just like the pre-prologue we did already, I find New Spring very underwhelming as the beginning of the series. I’d rather read in publication order – The Eye of the World is the best introduction to the series. (Rather as A New Hope is still the best introduction to the Star Wars series. I’m not talking about relative quality between the movies, which…wow! I just mean that Star Wars: A New Hope has the best intro to the universe, with discoveries unfurling gradually.) Starting with New Spring lets you know way too much about Aes Sedai too quickly, imo. But since this is reread, not a first read, whatever Leigh decides to do I’m on-board for.
None of that should be taken as criticism of New Spring, which I really enjoyed. Although perhaps less than anything this side of Crossroads of Twilight.
bp@103/ap@105
I was thinking that as well. Once we found out how they are made through the process of infusion and male/female attenuation based on the gender of the channeler to saidar or saidin with the general disclaimer at the end for legal purposes.*
So if any of the “assembly chain” channelers involved in Calandor’s gradual creation process were men impacted by the Taint, then the potential for side effects would seem logical.**
Plus, Rand attributes the Taint to his potential for victory and he may unwittingly (or through a conversation with Min along the lines of Min asking “how are these things made anyway?” and Post DM Rand describes the seed infusion process and then Min is all like, “Zounds, Batman! This thing could be ‘tainted’ too!” Then Rand feels for TP resonnance much the same way he feels drawn to the Fat Man Angreal and bingo.)
Edit: For spelling.
@CireNaes @110
*bwah-hah-hahing uncontrollably*
*wheezes*
*claps like seal*
chaplainchris1 @@@@@ 98,99,100…..
You really went for it there ;) No one stood a chance.
And the discussion on Callandor is just dizzying…
chaplainchris@100:
Why does that follow again? Do we have Word of Team Jordan that reborn Sparkers were Sparkers in previous lives? I thought that Birgit could remember lives she spent as Aes Sedai?
I also thought we had a quote somewhere form RJ that said while every soul gets reborn, it didn’t happen very often, other than to Heroes of the Horn. In otherwords, its more likely that Ilyena’s soul wouldn’t be respun out for many, many turns of the Wheel. Certainly not two Ages in a row… But I’m not sure where I heard that, so it could be total bunk.
chaplainchris@100:
With regards to lifespan, we know through the text that lifespans were much greater in the AOL from Rand’s ancestor walk in Rhuidean in Chapter 26 of TSR. Coumin at sixty-three was only considered to be in early middle age; it can be surmised that the average lifespan for nonchannelers was well over a century, and without a doubt the infirmities accompanying old age were kept at bay by Aes Sedai physicians and skilled normals using advanced techniques and medical ter’angreal.
@110; now that was epic!!
alreadymadwithtaint @107: I went back and re-read the actual text, and I think it supports my view of the process more than yours. (Then again, I am a somewhat biased observer. :-)
anthonypero @113: From the Theoryland quote database (listed as a verbatim quote from RJ):
CireNaes@110
That was hilarious!
On the subject of TP angreals … Remember that Jordan had mostly disavowed their existence:
So under the principle of “retcon minimization”, unbuffered angreals should not normally be able to channel the TP and Callandor is some sort of special case.
While I was retrieving that interview, I noticed other interview responses from RJ and BWS confirming what has been stated in other comments. Namely, that the “flaw” in Callandor was a manufacturing flaw, and it was indeed created specifically as a trap for a male Forsaken.
Given that it was specifically mentioned as a trap for a male Forsaken, this hints that the TP capability was indeed designed in (by someone who knew how to do it!) since the Forsaken are the ones most likely to be allowed to access the TP.
There’s the seeds of a pretty good story in there. Perhaps a Gita Moroso-like AS with uber-foretelling determined what needed to be made and an Ingtar-like regretful Darkfriend came back to the service of the Light and participated in the making of Callandor, giving up some secret of access to the TP?
Just fun speculation.
@90 alreadymadwithLatra
There was such a period. It is called “The Collapse” and lasted about 80-100 years after drilling the Bore. All material RJ released on the matter, both meta and in-universe, distinguishes between the Collapse and the War of Power/War of Shadow. But Coumin’s thoughts on war and Shadowspawn in TSR indicate a longer period of actual fighting than the 10 years RJ seemed to have settled on later with the BBoBA and SaSS.
@110 CiraNaes
It’s a damn shame I never read fine print. :(
@117:
Actually, as was pointed out upthread, the very first mention of “10 years” was by LTT… in the Eye of the World prologue. So, RJ settled on the number 10 years before the very first book was published. As to why COumin’s thoughts are the way they are… I need to go back to that passage and see if I can figure out a solid reason.
@TP ‘greal conversations:
There’s obviously enough RJ and Brandon quotes to refute my theory as presented, so, oh well.
That being said, as presented in their quotes… there’s still no way to explain how it happened on purpose. Which leads me to be about 99.99% certain that the TP angle was shoo-horned in later to the narrative, and RJ hadn’t quote worked out the specific mechanics of it. Which is fine. I’m sure that’s the case for a lot of things in the story.
Maybe the “trap” in Callandor which was created on purpose, was that it allowed 2 female channelers to forcibly link with the user.
Whereas lack of the buffer _and_ the ability to amplify TP was due to it being finished after the Strike at SG, with tainted saidin and everything falling apart.
Chaplainchris1 @99:
Thanks! Well, I’d say that Rand thinking that tDO couldn’t retaint saidin because he was using a “glove” of TP is sufficient to confirm that participation of the female AS in LTT’s Sealing _wouldn’t_ have prevented the counter-strike. After all, Rand is using saidar as well as saidin, but it is the TP “glove” that is preventing the taint this time, not saidar.
But IIRC, Rand thinks about it even more explicitly in one of his earlier PoVs. We’ll see when we get there, I guess.
Anyway, that is a very important blow to the whole “Latra as a villain” view, because there used to be a school of thought that female AS participating would have prevented the counter-strike. Which we now know beyond the shadow of doubt wouldn’t have been the case.
BilliHI @102:
Sure, Latra admitted that her solution was temporary, but so was LTT’s, as it turned out.
And dealing with Shadowspawn and Forsaken may have been preferrable to the madness of the male channelers and complete re-arrangement of the world, accompanied by the dying-off of vast majority it’s population. We just don’t know what the drawbacks of Latra’s plan would have been and whether the fallout could have been improved by LTT supporting her project instead of pushing for his own.
But we know for sure that Latra’s cooperation could have only made the results of LTT’s plan worse.
Oh, and let’s not forget that female channelers going mad also would have meant no Prophecies of the Dragon, no Aiel support, no support structures for Rand at all, and hostility against channelers increased by several orders of magnitude. I don’t see how Dragon Reborn could have possibly prevailed in such cirumstances.
That is, if women going mad too wouldn’t have destroyed the world outright.
The Pattern was backing the Fateful Concord for a very good reason, methinks.
I think we didn’t do the short version of New Spring in the first round. If we start the reread with things we left out the first time, that should be next.
@119, @102
The text of this short story seems to imply that after the “fateful accord” LTT, while maybe not supoprting it, wasn’t trying to hinder it. It reads like he gave in. Because it wasn’t until after the ter’angreal were lost that he decided to go in without the support of the Female Aes Sedai, and that was at least a year, maybe two years after the “fateful accord”. Maybe more. The exact quote in the history is:
So, it seems to me liek he wasn’t being an obstructionist, and didn’t just go off on his own until it becamse obvious that Latrae’s plan was no longer workable.
alreadymad @101:
Is Aes Sedai #1 in your scenario Nynaeve’s earlier life? :)
@112 Valmar – I composed my posts in word then posted in quick succession. :) But truly…they’re all on different topics. Made sense to post ’em separately.
forkroot @116: IMO RJ’s answer to the WOTMania question is not a “retcon minimization.” The question was “Can Moridin use a male angreal if he channels the True Power?” By his/her own terms, the questioner did not ask about the more powerful sa’angreal (of which Callandor is one). Thus, RJ could have answered no for a question regarding angreal. If somebody asked a follow-up question about sa’angreal, RJ may have given a different answer.
Thanks for reading my musings,
AndrewB
Thanks, folks. I’m enjoying the discussion going on here too and I’m happy to see some fresh posters in the mix.
What I’m sort of debating is whether or not to go back and read the old comments and posts as we go along with the rereread. The first two years of the reread the comments were off the hook and the moderators were working overtime. I think it was around TSR that the comments started to exceed the 300 mark.
And I just noticed the 2009 date on those after a quick check. Man alive. This has been going on for awhile now, hasn’t it? I’m still using the same laptop. Maybe that’s why it hasn’t felt like five plus years.
75. Randalator
Thank you for bringing that up, I do think you’re right, and I had quite overlooked that inconsistency.
91. chaplainchris1
I always assumed that the flaws in Callandor were there because it was created after the Taint. This meant, first, that the Saidin which was used in its creation was tainted, and second, that it was created by inexperienced and weaker male channelers because the rest went mad at Shayol Ghul.
This adds an element of irony – the taint caused a valueble weapon to be flawed, but those flaws turned out to be an life-saving advantage. It parallels the madness of Rand – a seemingly crippling disadvantage – which gives him LTT’s memories, which turn out to be his salvation.
chaplainchris1 @@@@@ 123
Obviously there was a lot of meat in those posts, I wasn’t criticising, by the way. Just stating the obvious ;)
JonathanLevy @@@@@ 126
It fits very well in the general theme that Evil with its designs often hurts itself. RJ himself specifically talked about this (on Dragonmount IIRC) and we see it frequently elsewhere in the genre- e.g. LOTR.
I’m still getting login errors here, complaining I don’t have session cookies enabled or somesuch (which I do). And they happen with multiple browsers. :- Dunno what’s up.
@82 Randalator: You make good points — particularly about the “beautiful balance”, which I’m not sure I’d ever noticed quite so visibly before.
However, I’m not sure we have enough information to conclude that the plan was so likely to succeed, if properly executed. We’re reading a summary of a summary of the actual arguments. It’s quite possible uncertainty about the effectiveness of the seals method may not have been captured. And in any event, it seems unlikely to me that the science of the Bore could be so confidently understood as to admit that little doubt about the method’s effectiveness.
@91, @92 chaplainchris1:
The industrial-accident explanation always did seem strange to me wrt Callandor’s working with the True Power. Yet given the rough similarities between them — method of access, usability by the untutored, etc. — I can rationalize it far enough to accept within the context of the story. :-)
Regarding “mind-boggling”…looking back at the text again, I concede the point that I went somewhat too far. I had written most of that from memory of TSASG, then did a quick-ish reread before making final edits and posting.
At the same time. Many had reasonable fears about the Seals method. Those fears turned out to be well-founded, although not in the anticipated ways. And we have Word of God that had they actually worked together on the Seals method, the entire OP would have been tainted (although of course Latra Posae couldn’t have known this, doubly so). Encouraging others not to cooperate is hardline (although those others have to actually listen, so this isn’t just on Latra Posae’s head), but if one truly believed in the danger of the method, isn’t it reasonable to convince others of that? I don’t see what other options she had. The binary choice between Choedan Kal and Seals doesn’t allow half-and-half compromises. Or at least no such coordinated amalgamation of methods is presented as a live choice, here.
With respect to saying LTT “had to act”, Hall of the Servants aside. I have an awfully difficult time okaying any military figure going rogue like that. This view is strongly informed and colored by our world, to be sure. :-) But I’m not convinced things had quite reached that point yet.
@109 chaplainchris1:
I too was underwhelmed by Crossroads of Twilight the first time around. But when I reread it in preparation for AMoL’s release in a whole-series reread, knowing I was able to move to the next book immediately, giving me time to appreciate what it related, as it related it, and the embedded nuances: it came off much, much better. The Tuon/Mat interplay is a pretty beautiful dance throughout that book. But the first time through…it really was all lost on me as I wanted to see what happened next. And I wasn’t rewarded with much of that. Without the strong desire to read momentous events, it comes off far, far better than on first read. At least, IMO. (Which isn’t to say that it isn’t reader-centrically flawed in its construction, if the ability to read through after is a requirement to enjoy it.) Agreed about NS not being a good place to start the series, tho I enjoyed it interleaved among the rest of the books.
Regarding further comments: I’m really hoping we get a bunch more information about Vora and her sa’angreal in the Companion.
@118 anthonypero
Maybe it’s a retconned retcon?
Retcon redux?
Retcux?
Do I detect a bit of twitching going on?
@@@@@ 128 Jeff Walden (alt.) – agreed completely about Crossroads of Twilight. Upon rereads it hasn’t bothered me at all – it’s just unsatisfying in the midst of “I’ve waited years to find out what happens next and now I have to wait more years nononono o the humanity!!” etc. It’s fine when you can go right on to Knife of Dreams, which was highly satisfying imo.
Re: LTT and military leaders going rogue – no, I fully agree that it’s a skeevy thing. Generally I’d be utterly opposed. But aside from just trying to present an alternate POV, I’m not sure Lews Therin really went rogue, legally speaking. That is to say, while the SASG seems to imply that he needed the approval of the Hall, I’m not sure we’re correct to draw that inference. The BBoBA/BWB indicates that Aes Sedai did *not* rule in the Age of Legends, and that the Hall of the Servants was not a governing body for society. I have the impression it’s more of an internal governing body – like the Bar for lawyers (or, ahem, the NFL for football).
We just don’t know enough either about how Aes Sedai worked or about how the government worked, or the Hall’s relationship with government or military. There was no army or concept of military prior to the drilling of the Bore, so how was the army actually created, and who was it beholden to? Had the Hall somehow assumed control, since its members were so integral to the war – not only in fighting, but in transport, armament, etc. Was the army under the Hall’s command, or was there a military structure which had the right to commandeer Aes Sedai resources as needed? Was there still a ‘civilian’ government of any kind, or were they under martial law by that point?
It’s certainly suggestive of…something…that so many of the Light’s highest generals were also Aes Sedai. Weren’t Sammael, Demandred, and Belal all generals for the Light before turning to the Shadow? But Lews Therin was the highest general, and may have just been appointing people he knew to other generalships.
Either way, what I’m getting at is that LTT *might* have gone rogue from the Hall’s point of view (and I say might, because we don’t know what his position as First among them, Tamyrlin, actually signifed – the Hall might not have operated anything like it did during Egwene’s time, maybe even only as an advisory board). But it’s not at all clear that the Hall had any actual authority over the military. (The SaSG mentions that he got his ten thousand soldiers without alerting the Hall – that may be a counterargument, or it may be an acknowledgment that the Hall had the *power* to stop him, whether or not they had the *authority* to do so.
Lews Therin lived in a palace, according to the prologue. Was he a king or a civilian governor, as well as First among the Servants and high general? He was Lord of the Morning, summoned the Nine Rods of Dominion, sat on the High Seat. It’s entirely possible he had the authority to launch any military strike that he wanted.
Huh. I was just thinking that someone needed to point out the position of authority LTT held…
Continuing my thought from 133, re: our lack of information on the pre-Breaking world and society and what Lews Therin’s actual level of authority was.
This ties into discussion between Birgit and Randalator @41 and 42 into whether Lews Therin Telamon was a prophesied messiah or not. We just don’t know what he was – or rather, how he was perceived. There could well have been Foretellings that people applied to LTT. In fact, there almost certainly were. Considering a) that the Pattern probably needed to give people some guidance, meaning there would be Foretellings, and b) how crazy people act when they *think* the world’s coming to an end. It’s almost certain there would have been prophecies and people calling the Dragon both messiah and anti-Christ, or whatever the AoL equivalents of those kinds of concepts were, even before the Breaking.
We know what Dragon Reborn means. What did Dragon mean? I asked this at JordanCon to Team Jordan – or Harriet, Maria, and Alan, anyway. Demandred’s conviction that he should have been Dragon rather than LTT because he was (by his estimation) the superior general had me thinking. That doesn’t sound like “Dragon” was a messianic concept; it sounds like it was a rank or an honor. There was no military prior to the War of Power/War of the Shadow – and therefore no military structure. Perhaps “Dragon” was simply the title for the Commander in Chief or something similar? (Would it have been Commander in Chief, in charge of gov’t and military, or something like Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – in charge of the military but subject to some higher authority?)
Unfortunately, we don’t, and I think can’t, really know. Maria Simons indicated there was no data on that and she wished there were.
Wetlander @132/134 – twitch!
@104 anthony pero – apparently during the Cleansing Rand was channeling more saidin than saidar. At least that’s what I remember, and can anyone verify? I don’t think that’s necessarily said during the Cleansing scene itself, but…sometime later.
He was channeling LOTS o’ saidin though his saidar filter. Even the amount of saidar he channeled was enough to be felt all over the world; the amount of saidin was greater.
So when Logain’s POV in AMOL says *more* saidin was being channeled than he felt during the Cleansing, it’s…interesting. I agree with your analysis about how he wouldn’t need to be drawing to capacity during the Cleansing…but he was using a LOT of power, and was apparently drawing enough of Nynaeve’s capacity that she passed out.
(As an aside, if there really was less saidar used, I find it interesting/troubling that it’s the female access key that was destroyed during the Cleansing. Design flaw? Makes me wonder anew about the workability of Latra Posae’s plans for the Choedan Kal. What if the female access key had given out in the midst of battling the DO and trying to corral him and his forces behind a barrier?)
At any rate – Callandor was less powerful than the Choedan Kal. Perhaps Rand drawing to capacity is enough to make up the difference. But while Callandor could amp saidin and the True Power, there was no sa’angreal in play to amp saidar. Moiraine and Nynaeve each had angreal, I guess – strong ones, Moiraine’s almost strong enough to rate sa’angreal status. But I still have the impression that something transcendent was going on. The barrier Rand weaves – remaking the DO’s prison anew – uses saidin and saidar intertwined, in their pure forms, not Fire/Air/Spirit/Water/Earth but Light, both equal (my assumption, since that’s the theme of the books). That seems like he should have needed a saidar sa’angreal to match the strength he could get in saidin from Callandor. Since apparently he didn’t, I think there was something outside-the-rule, a Pattern Level Event taking place.
(“So, Chris, you’re saying that the Dragon Reborn facing the Dark One is a transcendent kind of event? Good deduction, Sherlock.”)
CoT is a fine work, in context, but suffers from the absence of any resolution of any plot plots covered and from the relative weakness (compared to all other works) of the set piece that concludes the work. Egwene getting caught < Dumai’s Wells, or Cleansing of Saidin, or Egwene fighting Seanchan as a novice or…..
forkroot @116 – excellent. So should the *trap* – the ability for two women to forcibly link with a man wielding Callandor and take control – be distinguished from the *flaw*, which is that it magnifies the Taint? (And should the flaw and the trap be distinguished from the TP amping?) I thought Cadsuane/Min explained the flaw as being two-fold: first, worsening the taint-madness, and second, opening the man to being controlled. Wait, part of the flaw is also lacking the buffer against overdrawing the Power…
Ok, let me go look some things up.
While looking up Callandor references, there’s this from The Dragon Reborn chapter 29, Siuan speaking to Nynaeve: “The Sword That Cannot Be Touched is a sa’angreal, girl. Only two more powerful were ever made, and thank the Light, neither of those was ever used. With Callandor in your hands, child, you could level a city at one blow.” Siuan goes on to say that it’s vital to keep it out of the Black Ajah’s hands.
So, a couple of problems for retconning.
1. This implies Callandor could be a sa’angreal for saidar, as well. Is that possible? It would solve the potential problem I mentioned @137, with the final battle with the DO having a sa’angreal for saidin and the TP but not for saidar.
2. “Only two more powerful were ever made.” At the point we originally read that – in book 3 – we’d obviously take that to mean the Choedan Kal were the two sa’angreal more powerful than Callandor. Are we now, post book 14, to interpret that to mean Sakarnen and the male Choedan Kal were the only sa’angreal more powerful than Callandor? Or to stick with the idea that it mean the Choedan Kal when Siuan said it, and the Siuan and the White Tower didn’t know about Sakarnen. (Which they’d have no reason to know about, after all.)
@125 CireNaes – time permitting, I definitely want to reread the comments to the original reread. Is it narcissitic that I really look forward to reading my own, when I start showing up halfway through? Well, I do. I look forward to seeing how many of Text Walls become completely, hilariously erroneous in light of later books. :)
Ok, according to Theoryland’s archive (http://www.theoryland.com/vbulletin/archive/index.php/t-7830.html), Callandor was constructed and used during the War of the Shadow, and that’s how its flaw-in-manufacturing (the lack of a safety buffer) was discovered. (Was it discovered by someone getting burned out? Yikes!)
So, it seems at least that feature was a manufacturing flaw. Presumably some of the other features – the vulnerability to forced linking, the TP access – were also flaws.
The *trap* wasn’t in the actual design of Callandor, but in the surviving AS placing it in The Stone of Tear and leaving it for the Dragon to find and use against the Forsaken. At least, that’s how I synthesize all of that.
bad_platypus @115
You’re probably right on the actual mechanics. It doesn’t change though that someone has to Channel in the appropriate side of the Power. So… someone had to Channel in the True Power for Callandor to be able to use it, and I don’t see a dreadlord high level enough to get explicit permission to use the True Power participate in the creation of a “trap”.
So it would have to be accidental. Probably by Channeling Saidin, which is tainted by what is essentially the same thing.
chaplainchris1 @131
I’m not sure Lews Therin would have just appointed his clique to high command positions without oversight. Also we must bear in mind that with their longer than usual lifespans and abilities, Aes Sedai would have been shoo-ins for given qualities of experience, wisdom or even sheer destructive potential.
Latra as Elaida of her day-
Okay, a few have interpreted this a little different than I intended. But I also should have included a few more thought to my post @17.
I was thinking more of the Elaida of the early books before she went hard core stubborn crazy due to … take your pick of reasons from Fain to the DO, or having a pile of evidence showing she was wrong, but was incapable of admitting or see that.
Early Elaida was a forceful, stubborn woman who thought she was right. She had visions and her interpretation were the only right way of seeing that vision.
Not that the Royal House, could be the one that just fell from power. Not the one that took over. Yes, the new household was very important too. But not as important as Rand being born.
As was said, she was a ‘hard’ woman. More like to break than to bend.
@47: I first started reading RJ when I was 14 years old. And I would say that some of the gender comments have really influenced my view of things. Such as his saying “Women will forgive, but never forget. Men forget, but never forgive.”
Did I see every boy/man around me as a ‘wool-head’ who didn’t know anything? No. But some things so linger in my subconscious.
I also have that decades long friendship / relationship with a boy I thought I would marry eventually. Life didn’t work that way for either of us, for the best. Yet I have a much harder time seeing his actions and words with an objective rational mind. My reactions are skewed, and it’s been over a decade since we were romantic.
So Rand and Eqwene’s interactions with each other ring totally true to me.
Much like most of us with a sibling of a close age know they can hit your trigger buttons faster than anyone else. Even when they do not mean to. You have this history with them you do not have with anyone else on the planet.
@66: Didn’t the Portuguese deliberately try to make their language and culture different from their Spanish cousins? It was partially politely motivated, and some cultural pride. Thus why there are so many irregular vowels in Portuguese? But it’s also been a long time since I studied that aspect of history.
@110: Good one.
Oh, well. Good to see we still have things to discuss. J Thanks everyone!
Braid_Tug @144
Comparing Latra to Elaida is utterly unfair. Even with your qualifiers.
Latra simply stonewalled LTT’s efforts politically. Elaida immediately stooped to murder. Latra did what she did for what she thought was right for the majority. Elaida did what she did so she could be number one.
Even in the early books before she launched the Tower coup, Elaida was unnecessarily hard. As advisor to the Queen of Andor and even as an Aes Sedai to the Accepted, she was known for being unreasonable. Just plain full of herself.
@145: Fair enough. It was a thought I do not have much invested with.
143. alreadymadwithhall – oh, agreed. Didn’t mean to imply that LTT was appointing generalships willy-nilly. (Unfortunately, all of those appointments – Sammael, Demandred, Belal – proved to be highly competent, yes?) Just that, as happens naturally, he was choosing people from his own circle of knowledge – he had more opportunities to know other Aes Sedai, and know of their capabilities. Of course, four male Aes Sedai high generals may mean nothing. There might have been 100 generals in the armies of the Light at the beginning of the war.
(I’m just now wondering why there aren’t any records of female Aes Sedai who were great generals during the War of Power – or blademasters, either. Supposedly there was equality for men and women during the AoL, and war was something they had to (re)invent from scratch, so why didn’t female Aes Sedai take it up?
Well, maybe they did. Latra Posae Decume, Shadow Cutter, seems like a good possibility…although it seems her greatest prominence as a leader was achieved *after* the Bore was sealed (and thus after society was completely broken and records weren’t being kept, making it a miracle we’ve heard *any*thing about her).
@145 – Elaida “immediately stooped to murder” – what’s that referring to?
(Although I guess she was always a murderer, sort of, if she participated in the Vileness after the Aiel War.)
chaplainchris@142:
If theoryland has that right, then Callendor was constructed, and used, and retired, prior to the Strike at Shayol Ghul and the Taint. Which means the Taint couldn’t have been the reason for the flaws.
chaplainchris1 @148
At 400 yrs old how big(or how small) exactly would that circle of acquaintances be? Think about it, hundred year lifespans without any deterioration of mental faculties. Memories of close friends and peripheral acquaintances, even friends of friends of friends remaining fresh. Long distances easily traversable thru Travelling.
@149
In case you missed it, Elaida’s opening move in deposing Siuan was to disable her emotionally by having her Warder stabbed in the back.
I’m going by memory here, but in TSR when Rand went through the “Way Back Machine” at Rhuidean there is a scene where one of his ancestors speaks with a soldier. I believe it is the scene with the Green Man dancing in the new fields while the Aiel sing “The Song”. The soldier was, I believe, a communications tech and his armor had the various antennae that inspired the Seanchan helmets. The soldier reports that LTT and the Hundred Companions have led a successful strike at Shayol Gul, and that the war is over. He, the soldier, is not sure what he will do now, but Rand’s ancestor tells him that there will still be plenty of shaowsoawn like trollocs to hunt down.
As I said, this is based on memory so perhaps someone can post the relevant text from TSR. It shouldn’t be very long.
Now consider the following excerpts from TSaSG.
“As the highest military leader for the Light, Lews Therin was able to
assemble a force of some ten thousand soldiers unbeknownst to the Hall. With that force and the Hundred Companions, he launched his planned attack at Shayol Ghul.”
“Exactly what occured that day can never be known, only the results. Of
the soldiers, not a single man or woman returned to give any account.”
“Lews Therin and the sixty-eight survivors of the Hundred Companions went insane on the instant. Within days they were leaving trails of death and destruction in their paths.”
My point/question is this. How does this soldier know what has happened? Would simple soldiers know what was going on but not the Hall? If no one but the remaining mad Hundred Companios returned from Shayol Gul, where does any of the details of what happened at SG come from?
TSR came out in fall 1992 whereas TSaSG was first released at Balticon in 1996 essentiallyy 4 years later. Are these two glimpses of what happened that faithful day consistent or inconsistent? Was RJ just throwing some notes together to create a short story for the Balticon program book (which Leigh seems to be implying), or is this yet another minor retcon relative to the brief details shown in TSR?
Thoughts, comments, concerns?
Lensman2 @152
I can only theorize that some of the men were able to return and spread the word before succumbing to madness. Either that, or somebody knew of the raid, and surmised immediately from observable effects that it was successful.
Beyond that, you know rumor tends to travel faster than anything else.
Two posts in, and I’ve already completely lost any hope of keeping up with the comments on these threads. Alas…. ;)
@140 chaplainchris1
We have to be extremely careful with those kind of references. Aes Sedai have been very wrong about any number of things. It’s kind of a theme that especially in their particular areas of expertise we gradually discover that they are far from being the authority they think they are.
Just because an Aes Sedai, even Siuan or Moiraine, states something as fact doesn’t mean it’s correct and contradicting information in later books isn’t necessarily a mistake or a retcon. Siuan could just be flat out wrong about Callandor…
Hello all,
As you may have seen on Facebook, my grandfather passed away this weekend, and I have been heavily involved in helping to deal with his estate and preparing for his funeral since then. So there will be no WOT post today; the Redux Reread should resume next Tuesday.
Please extend your thoughts to my family if you would. My grandfather’s passing was not really a surprise, but it was nevertheless a great blow, and nothing will be the same without him. Thanks.
My condolences, Leigh.
May your grandfather shelter in the palm of the Creator’s hand.
Leigh,
I wish you and your family all the best in these trying times.
Sorry, Leigh. Take care of the family.
Sorry to hear that, Leigh. Family comes first, my thoughts are with you.
My condolences, Leigh.
Leigh we understand. Thoughts with you and family.
Even expected news can hurt.
For those that are not on her FB, here is an article about his life.
http://theadvocate.com/sports/10257473-32/warren-perkins-former-tulane-star
So sorry for your loss.
So sorry for your loss. I will pray for you and your family.
Sorry for your loss. Family comes first.
Leigh,
My condolences to you and your family. Please take all of the time that you need.
Condolences, Leigh! Sorry for your loss, and your family will be in my prayers. I hope you can take some comfort from spending time together and remembering the good times.
Condolences, thoughts and prayers for your family.
Condolences from me as well, Leigh. My thoughts are with you and your family.
My most sincere condolences to you and your family. I will keep you and them in my prayres.
So sorry to hear that Leigh. I will keep you and your family in my prayers.
@59 Wetlander: Well there’s our confirmation. I did think Ilyena probably was an Aes Sedai, I just argued the other side since I didn’t think the evidence (barring direct words from Jordan) confirmed it one way or the other. So I wonder if Isilel is right about why she wasn’t involved in the Concord (or it wasn’t mentioned that she was), or if she was, and whether we’ll find out either way in the encyclopedia. Also @62, note that having both plans work but not be fully carried out allowed the negative repercussions of the one (the taint) to be undone by the other (the Cleansing with the Choedan Kal).
@69 ValMar: I wasn’t insisting she wasn’t, if you thought I was. I just pointed out that her having three names and being married to Lews Therin didn’t necessarily prove she was (what with all people in the Age of Legends being long-lived and whether you earned your third name or didn’t being independent of whether you were Aes Sedai). All along I thought she probably was, but I wanted to be fair to the other side of the argument.
@70 alreadymad: Thank you, I stand corrected on that. (Although I would note Lanfear wasn’t exactly known for pure talent either, unless you are talking about her World of Dreams abilities, but instead for simply being the Strongest Female Channeler Evar which isn’t a reason to get a third name by itself. Which means you’re still right, as her contributions/distinction or lack thereof had nothing to do with her One Power strength, but since we’re nitpicking… :P )
@74 forkroot: Yeah, I don’t see how she could summarize it either. (Or the encyclopedia either when it comes out.) What she could do, hopefully, is draw on the information you mention when the time comes to comment on particular Forsaken, time periods or regions, WOT themes, and so forth as she said she would do. She’s never from what I can recall specifically drawn on the information related to the Forsaken’s backstories or the history and politics/geography of Randland and its world, so if that could be incorporated where appropriate that would be great. I especially agree with Chaplainchris’s idea that talking about the White Tower’s formation would be excellent. But if she doesn’t include that, oh well.
Also @76, I really want to know how Callandor and its wards were attuned to the Dragon’s soul. The only thing I can think is that since Ishamael and Lanfear both said it was possible to track ta’veren through the Pattern, that there were Aes Sedai who could do this in the Callandor creation group–and since Lews Therin was the strongest ta’veren ever, by tracing that power in the Wheel they could bind a One Power-object/wards to that particular thread in the Pattern.
As for making it a TP sa’angreal, I still say that Jordan telling us the sword was made during the War of Power allows for the explanation if you interpret his words as an Aes Sedai answer: if it was made in the last days of the War what he said would technically be true, but its creation process could also have overlapped the Strike at Shayol Ghul (note the scene in Rand’s ancestor memories has Callandor there, unable to be finished due to the interruption of maddened men on their way). Which meant the taint itself could have been responsible for it being a TP sa’angreal since at least one male Aes Sedai (obviously not yet fully mad) had to be involved in making it. Even Jordan’s words that it was created this way intentionally could still fit: if either thanks to a Foretelling or just logically figuring it out after what happened to the men at Shayol Ghul, the female Aes Sedai knew that only the power of the Dark One could shield the Power from further tainting when the Bore was properly sealed, then they would have made Callandor with the help of not-yet-fully-maddened men, knowing that this would cause the taint to attune Callandor to the True Power too.
@85 RobM: Point of order, as several have pointed out there are examples given in the Guide of non-Aes Sedai who earned their third name and Aes Sedai who did not (besides Lanfear, there was Moghedien, Balthamel, Mesaana, and Rahvin among the Forsaken who didn’t). So while there’s plenty of good reasons to argue for Ilyena being Aes Sedai (and rightly so as it turns out), her third name isn’t one of them.
@89 birgit: Because he didn’t have all of Lews Therin’s memories (and the mental stability) to do so until AMoL…and by then the seals had already been switched and the access key destroyed.
@92 chaplainchris: Beautiful post. I especially like your point about the Shadow/DFs/Turned or Compelled people helping to widen the division being similar to what Alviarin/Mesaana (and Taim, don’t forget him vs. Logain and Rand) were doing. As for Latra Posae, I have to agree she wasn’t admirable in what she did during the War. When I was praising her above, it was for her actions during the Breaking, which I think show she realized what she’d done was wrong and did her best to atone for it while helping save people and fight the Shadowspawn. She most certainly screwed up (even if the Pattern and the Dark One both led to it happening, and even if it did spare the women and thus the world), I just forgive her and feel sorry for her because of what she did later.
@95 MDNY: Also keep in mind how shocked Moridin was to discover it was a True Power sa’angreal. He didn’t even think such a thing was possible, which is interesting since you’d think the Forsaken would have wanted such an item or the Dark One would have ordered its construction. But then consider how afraid most of the Forsaken were of the True Power; the fact that the Dark One controls how much you get to use, so if you need more Power he can just give it to you instead of needing an amplifier artifact; that said control also means the Dark One wouldn’t one of his followers able to use such an item to gain access to more Power than he wants them to have; and finally that none of the Forsaken may have had the ability to make ‘greal or the Seeds to do it with. (This is supported by the fact all the Forsaken were so eager to find stashes of ‘greal in the Third Age; obviously with so much having been lost or destroyed in the Breaking they’d need and want replacements, but the fact they weren’t just trying to make them instead points to again either the lack of the Talent among them or the Seeds.) So i.e., yes Callandor is the only one in existence (not that others couldn’t be made, they just weren’t).
@103 bad_platypus: Actually since the taint was created by the True Power, then if my reasoning above is correct that Callandor was created during the very last days of the war (hence explaining why they were still working on it in a scene where maddened men were approaching the city, i.e. post-counterstroke–it was made but perhaps had not been attuned to the Power yet), then any man working on it with them would have been sacrificing tainted saidin to pour into the Seed. Ergo, True Power attunement via the taint.
Also as a side note, since the True Power is granted by the Dark One, I don’t think any user of it can sacrifice some of it to put into a ‘greal, since it isn’t innate to them like the One Power is.
@108 Ryamano: At the exact time, or just after it. Remember that it took them a long while to realize what had happened to saidin and what it was doing to the men, so they could have gone ahead making the sword (for Lews Therin, not knowing yet what had happened to him, or for the war effort in general and only later did they attune the wards to him) not realizing what would happen due to the men involved in its making. Yes, Jordan said it was made during the war, but since there were still Shadowspawn and fighting after the Strike, being made just after the strike would still count for that. Aes Sedai wording again. ;)
@110 CireNaesL ROTFL!!! Utterly brilliant!
@116 forkroot: Interesting. I like that theory. Even so, that does suggest that the original intentions for Callandor were changed–partly because the Forsaken were sealed in the Bore so the trap was no longer necessary, but perhaps also because of a Foretelling which informed them the Dragon would need it later against them/the Dark One.
@133 chaplainchris: For what it’s worth, both the Guide and (I believe) Jordan’s interview answers stated that the government in the Age of Legends was completely separate from the Aes Sedai and the Hall of the Servants; there were Aes Sedai in the government, but they did not compose it, and those who were part of it were answerable to it in addition to answering to the Hall. But since the Hall is a separate body, then they would have no authority over what the government decreed or what those who were ordered by it did. We know many generals in the war were Aes Sedai but not if they all were; we know Aes Sedai (specifically Lews Therin and Barid Bel, with Tel Janin and Duram Laddel later) were the ones who rediscovered/recreated the tools of warfare, but that doesn’t mean they were the only ones to use it/them. Without knowing if the new armies were under governmental jurisdiction, Aes Sedai, or both, we can’t be sure who answered to whom or who had authority over whom. But thanks to the Collapse and the dire situation at the time of the Strike, I think we can be sure that whatever government still existed was probably gone by that point (remember Paaren Disen had fallen to Ishamael)…but the Hall of the Servants had also been razed by Be’lal. Of course the Aes Sedai leaders would still have been meeting elsewhere, but I think the point stands that everything was falling apart–so regardless who answered to whom, it probably would have been fairly easy for Lews Therin to make off with the Hundred Companions and that a good argument could be made that with everything in such disarray, there wasn’t really a chain of command to follow or any ruling body who could have forbidden him, just groups of female Aes Sedai who would have opposed him.
And @140: First, it has usually been interpreted that when Siuan said that, she didn’t literally mean that Nynaeve could use Callandor as a saidar sa’angreal, but that she could wield it by leading the circle that took control from Rand–because apparently the fact such a circle was necessary to protect against the flaw was written down somewhere, for Cadsuane to have found it, and it’s hard to believe Siuan and Moiraine, with all their planning and preparing for Rand’s coming, couldn’t have found and read the same thing. (They did know Verin after all, as well as Adeleas and Vandene.) Second, in the very next book Lanfear also tells Rand about there being only two more powerful sa’angreal than Callandor, with one being the Choedan Kal. While it’s true she (like Siuan) could have meant the Choedan Kal as separate items, I always interpreted it as the two being a set (the name after all applies to both, and both were meant to be used together in Latra’s plan), so that there must be another sa’angreal out there somewhere. And while Siuan had no way of knowing of Sakarnen, Lanfear could–and obviously so did Demandred. So I don’t think this is a retcon, Sakarnen’s existence as the second sa’angreal was intended all along.
@150 anthonypero: Barring an explanation from Team Jordan via the Encyclopedia, I am inclined to think Theoryland just interpreted Jordan’s comments wrong, and it was made (and discovered to lack the buffer) during the very last days of the war, and at the same time as the strike–thus technically still being made during the war, but allowing for the taint to cause the True Power attunement. If the encyclopedia can explain a plausible way how it could be attuned prior to the taint (captive Forsaken, turncoat Darkfriend), all well and good, but otherwise the taint is the only viable explanation IMO.
@leigh: I am so sorry to hear that. You have my deepest sympathies and
prayers, and I hope you and your family will be well and make it through
this by taking strength in each other.
My condolences as well, Leigh.
Referring back to the discussion in the first 100 or so comments,
Neither Lews Therin nor Latra Posae was evil, though they were both vilified during their difference of opinion. If Lews Therin continued to be vilified for centuries afterward, well, who was there left to contest Latra’s point of view as to who was to blame?
The battle of the sexes is just the most obvious and immediately identifiable of the rifts showing how hard it is to work together. The Seanchan prove to be a better example of this theme since none of the baggage we all carry about sexism is brought along for the discussion.
By the end of the series, Rand understands that only he himself could make the choices that save or destroy the world. The Wheel would bring him to the turning point of his destiny, and then he would make a choice. Lews Therin and Latra made choices which drove them further apart until the only choices that remained to them were desperate and doomed. Even at the end, Lews Therin could have abased himself and worked out a better plan with Latra. Or vice versa.
Ultimately, whatever befalls Lews Therin, and by extension the world, is by his own choice.The taint is a physical manifestation of Lews Therin’s choice not to cooperate with others, so all male channelers thereafter are cursed and excluded from society. You might argue the same should be said of Latra’s inflexibility and there is no resultant symptom afflicting female channelers, but this is Rand and Lews Therin’s story, not hers.
For interest’s sake, my take on The Strike at Shayol Ghul is found here: http://greatlordofthedark.blogspot.ca/2012/01/strike-at-shayol-ghul.html
Leigh, my deepest condolences to you and your family.
My condolences, Leigh. No matter how expected, it is always hard.
Oh, Leigh, so sorry to hear. Thoughts are with you and your family.
My condolences, Leigh.
I made some notes while reading the first 80 or so comments, which have been addressed thoroughly by now, so I’ll just leave them.
To add to the discussion on Callandor, reading all the thoughts and arguments above, what macster @172 says about using tainted saidin to create Callandor rings true. The link with the TP was caused by saidin, since the taint originated from the TP. Knowing what we know about creating angreal, it seems that during creation, there should have been some link to the TP in order for the angreal to act as a conduit.
On LTT vs LPD: “History is written by the victors” seems to apply here in a sense. Although the documents referred to in TSASG are old enough to maybe have been unbiased (or at least less biased), the scholars writing TSASG were definitely biased by their hindsight and the actual results of the play of events. I’ve always liked that about the field of history. What is written isn’t necessarily what actually happened.
My condolences as well, Leigh.
Sorry to hear that Leigh, I have lost all of my grandparents now, even the step grandparents. Each one hurt as I loved them all. I recognize what you must be feeling. I want to say good luck, it can be tough dealing with estate matters. My best wishes to you and your family.
So sorry to hear of your loss, Leigh. Even when it’s expected, and life has been good and long, it’s a shock and a big empty hole in your life. My thoughts and condolences to you and your family. May this be a celebration of his life.
Sorry to hear of your family’s loss, Leigh. Praying for your family!
Condolences, Leigh. And you’re so right- it doesn’t have to be surprising to hurt.
(My mama died very early Monday morning. one of my friends from high school lost his dad on Friday. This was a cruel, cruel weekend, imho.)
Condolences, Leigh and to everyone else who’s lost a loved one. I have only one positive aspect to point out, a so-called silver lining. You are so lucky that your grampy lived long enough for you to grow up. I lost all four grandparents before I was sixteen and would give a lot for a chance to interact with them as an adult.
My condolences, Leigh. My grandfather passed on just a few year ago, and my one living grandmother is likely to follow him soon.
Macster: I don’t know how well the idea holds up to what has been revealed, but I recently proposed on tvtropes that Be’lal created Callandor as a trap for Lews Therin before Duram Ladell Cham was publicly revealed to have turned to the Shadow. He certainly seems to have assembled what he needs to use it safely in TDR before his demise: a set of barely-trained female channelers whom he intends to Compel, Turn, or both. Get Rand (or Lews) to take it, make him burn himself out, and then use it via a pair of mind-controlled women who will do as you want anyway.
I am so sorry for your loss. It is never an easy time when a loved one passes.
I do not have a Facebook page (deviantART takes up a lot of my online time), so I’m grateful a link was provided to read what an amazing man your grandfather was.
@172 macster – Just want to point out that the scene in the Hall of the Servants with Callandor on the table takes place many *decades* after the SaSG. In the scene with Callandor, Jonai is 63 years old and the madmen are approaching Paaran Disen. Coumin is Jonai’s father, and Coumin was only 16 years old on the day of the Strike at Shayol Ghul. By the time we see the Callandor scene it is well into the Time of Madness and society is slowly being destroyed. Callandor is most likely already finished at that point – the Aes Sedai do not say that Callandor is unfinished. They are talking about creating the Eye of the World partnering with some of the not-quite-fully-insane males, and say “the sword must wait.” I interpret that to mean that they must create the Eye of the World first (and die in the process) and that the Stone of Tear was completed at some point later on during the Breaking and Callandor placed at that time. By my (very rough) estimates I made some time ago, that scene could have taken place anywhere from 60 to 100 years after the sealing of the Bore, certainly after Ishamael was finally fully sealed. And the Time of Madness/Breaking could have lasted upwards of 230 years based on the longer (though gradually decreasing) lifespans of the Da’Shain Aiel generations we see, though no one knows for sure.
Another interesting note: TDR ch. 50 is where Loial tells us that Be’lal razed the Hall of the Servants just before the Bore was sealed. And yet, there we are 60-100 years late in the Hall of the Servants! Albeit with men approaching who will likely turn it to a slag heap soon. Either that scrap of history got distorted over time, or the Hall got rebuilt after the Bore was resealed, as it may have been up to 10 years before the world plunged into chaos from the greater and greater numbers of insane men. Or RJ made an error. :)
Or, like the Third Age Aes Sedai, “the Hall of the Servants” is wherever they choose to gather – like the Hall in the Little Tower, and the tent that became the Hall while the Salidar group was travelling…
I’d even go so far and say that “the Hall of Servants” doesn’t so much refer to an actual room but more to the gathering of Aes Sedai itself. Hence the “the Hall is wherever it damn well pleases” approach…
Possibly, but the description in Jonai’s flashback makes it sound like a pretty impressive building, with a “great columned entrance,” “silvery white elstone” floors, “great gilded doors” to multiple ingathering halls, etc. Doesn’t sound like a temporary structure to me, and it’s in Paaran Disen. While “Hall of the Servants” could be used generically as you describe, I don’t think it was *in this instance.*
@190 fernandan
You’re right. However, that still leaves the possibility that the “razing of the Hall of Servants” referred to the Aes Sedai and not the building. Or it could be that every major AoL city had a dedicated “Hall of Servants” building. Or that they appropriated an existing palace in Paaran Disen to serve as the “Hall of Servants” for the time being.
@@@@@187 fernandan: Good point. Which makes it even more likely that the taint is the cause of Callandor being attuned to the True Power. Even if you assume the sword was made quite some time before that scene, and is already finished in it, there was plenty of time (by your calculations) for the making and finishing to have occurred after the Strike.
@@@@@185 Mabus101: Now that is a very interesting theory. If you’re right it would indeed explain the discrepancies, and it would also explain things like why Be’lal in particular made a beeline for Tear once out of the Bore (as opposed to all the male Forsaken trying for it) and why he’d be willing to use child Aes Sedai of the Third Age, and work with Mesaana and Alviarin to make it happen. It could even explain the argument between Be’lal and Ishamael that Perrin witnessed in TAR (either Ishamael thought the trap was too dangerous/would backfire on Be’lal, he was afraid Rand would get killed instead of burned out or Turned, or he just didn’t want Be’lal to have that much power if it succeeded). While I still think the taint is the most likely explanation, I kind of hope you’re right since I always wanted to have Be’lal have more relevance and importance to the story.
@@@@@ several re: the Hall of the Servants: I just re-read the passage in the Guide about the Hall and this is what it had to say: the Aes Sedai
“had their own internal governing structure through the Hall of the Servants, which was the core of the guild that controlled and regulated all those who could channel. This guild had branches in every city, town, and village that housed Aes Sedai. In large cities the guild hall was usually an impressive building. In small towns or villages the guild often met in someone’s home, temporarily dedicated for that purpose. The main Hall of the Servants, located in the capital city of Paaren Disen, was described in one holographic fragment as having ‘massive columned entrances, large ornate doorways, and polished floors of glowing white elstone’.”
So on the one hand, you’re right: the Hall of the Servants was the name for the governing body of the Aes Sedai itself as well as the building(s) it met in, just like the Amyrlin Seat is both a person and the chair she sits in; and that every city had its own Hall. However I can’t see the word “raze” being applied to a group of people rather than a structure–Jordan was always a stickler for language, if he meant the group wouldn’t he have said “slain”?–and the description of the main Hall clearly matches the one in Jonai’s memory. It is possible Teresa Patterson included that description from TSR because she assumed this must have been the main Hall, and Jordan just never corrected her because he wanted the Guide to have the inaccuracies and mistakes of real history. But I think the simplest explanation is that Be’lal did burn down the main Hall, and that since this scene takes place many decades after the strike (when he was sealed away), the Aes Sedai in the interim rebuilt the main Hall. Probably because they wanted a symbol to give the people hope, that the Shadow had not won despite the Breaking going on, or maybe out of their own sense of pride and a need for safety. It’s also possible that they just simply rebuilt it in the aftermath of the war ending, assuming that with the Dark One and Forsaken sealed away life could get back to normal and thus they’d need a Hall again. Then of course they discovered what was happening to the men…
I always thought the place was the Stone of Tear, which reportedly was built early during the Breaking, perhaps before. It also makes a sort of literary symmetry that the Hall (rebuilt after the razing, like the Jewish temple in Ezra’s time,) became a place Aes Sedai weren’t welcome, and then later the seat of the Dragon. It would also better explain the largest collection of power related items outside Tar Valon. Tear ADDED to a collection that was already there.
This is a fine little piece, but one detail irks me. In the Prologue to Eye of the World, Ishmael confronts a mad Lews Therin in the rubble of his home. Ishmael was bodily present in this scene, and Lews Therin was certainly insane. But, in Strike at Shayol Ghul, it is stated that all 13 Forsaken were sealed in the Bore, and all of the male Aes Sedai present went instantly mad. Well, how was Ishmael confronting Lews Therin in body after he was sealed up in the Bore? And if he wasn’t sealed up, why wasn’t he wreaking more havoc in the absence of anyone nearly powerful enough to handle him? In other parts of the series it is supposed that maybe Ishmael was sealed close to the surface, or in some way could still touch the world, though ephemerally. But that still doesn’t account for the fact that if Ishmael was in the Bore at the time of sealing, he could not have confronted Lews Therin after he went mad and destroyed his home.
194, yes, it’s been long known that Ishmael somehow wasn’t bound, why and how? Who knows, maybe he was in the middle of Traveling or did something else with the True Power.
Wow, haven’t read this thread in forever!
@194:
Ishmael was only partially trapped during the Sealing of the Bore. He was there, but somehow escaped being fully trapped. We don’t know the mechanism. But every 1000 years he can roam the earth for 40 years. So, he likely had 40 years right at the beginning as well.
As for this:
Ishmael was mostly alone. The 13 weakest female Aes Sedai in the 3rd Age could have trussed him up and handled him like a kitten. He kept his head down – and made plans. Long, long term plans.