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butterflydm · 2 months

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The Queen of Attolia (plus some WoT comparisons)

Haha, it's been a few months but I got my chance to read the next book in the Queen's Thief series and it was so good! I am going to have two sections in this review -- my overall thoughts and then some specific thoughts that are mostly for @markantonys due to the series being her recommendation and I have a lot of thoughts about the comparisons between the Queen of Attolia x Eugenides and Mat Cauthon x Fortuona, because you can really do a point by point comparison, though I don't think it was intentional -- I think that Megan Whalen Turner and Robert Jordan were both going for the same idea but Turner was, imo, wildly more successful than Jordan at it.

But first, thoughts that don't particularly relate to The Wheel of Time:

We open with a tense cat and mouse chase between The Thief and the Queen's guardmen and that is really the heart of this book when it comes down to it -- a cat and mouse game between two extremely complicated people, and how they have to navigate in the world that they share.

Turner is really good at writing these fun action scenes where you're very much in the PoV of the character.

The (apparent) foundation that is laid here (that later gets overturned because Gen got to me again and he was once again acting on personal information that he kept from me for the majority of the book, lol, love him for it) - is very much beginning as enemies who have respect for each other's skills. At this point in the book, I knew that they would end up married due to spoilers and I know that it's considered a good romance, so I was really looking forward to seeing the journey, especially since I did get spoiled about the huge upcoming traumatic event.

But we start from this strong narrative place where they are aware of each other and have respect for each other but they belong to two separate counties that have some political tensions and they are both important parts of those countries and can't set that aside.

Because of how bold Gen is, Attolia has been backed into a corner by his actions and we actually see this affirmed by Gen's cousin (the Queen of Eddis) and her thoughts on the matter -- she is aware that Gen going into Attolia's country to spy on her is a dangerous thing for him to do.

And then the cutting off of his hand. This is brutal, and it feels brutal, and then we also get these hints of Attolia's reaction afterwards (that we get into more later) but especially her reaction when he begs her not to hurt him anymore and you can really see her feel the impact of what she did. She doesn't allow herself to show her remorse but even this early on, we're getting hints of it as readers.

Then when Gen goes home, we actually see that the Queen of Eddis also maintains a mask in public, just like Attolia does, so we see another hint here that Gen understands that kind of masking. Eddis looks just as cold and impenetrable to Attolia's guards who return Gen to her, as Attolia looks to everyone else.

I really appreciated how long the recovery time was after the loss of Gen's hand and how much time we spent with him to feel him get used to the changes (and how economically Turner is able to pass that time). We get these tiny looks at Attolia as well, and her difficultly sleeping at night, which we expand on later.

Then we get the return of the Magus from Sounis! It was really nice to see him again, dropping in to visit Gen, but he's also here to give us that continuation of the division between personal and political -- as a person who genuinely likes Gen, the Magus was upset about what Attolia did to him, but as the advisor to the king of Sounis, he knew that they would be able to use Eddis's reaction to Attolia's act on the political stage.

But what a way to learn that the two countries are at war!

It takes some time for Gen to really believe that Eddis went to war over him, and we see him processing that over the course of the book as well, and they talk about it more. I do think that Gen does not always realize how deeply other people care about him.

Turner really is so good at giving us these pieces of information that reframe the earlier story -- now we know that during all those snippets of Attolia that we had earlier, she was also dealing with realizing that her actions with Gen led to the war that she's currently embroiled in.

The progression of the war was really well done (again, Turner is very economical with her narrative here), with what details she chooses to focus in on, and we see that Gen, even though he has gained more of an ability to have that cold and impassive mask like Attolia has, still does things like make sure that no one is on the ships that he's destroying, because he doesn't like getting people killed.

Turner also does a really good job showing how destabilizing the war is to all three countries involved, and how the war is hurting everything.

We take a little mythology story break here in the narrative, which was a fun story about love and choice, both of which are very relevant. This story definitely does end up applying pretty heavily to Gen and Attolia in the themes, and I like the style that Turner tells these stories.

I love how perceptive Gen is once he's been apprised of the situation and we get to see the thought process that leads to him blaming the emperor's ambassador more for the loss of his hand than he does Attolia herself, because he sees that ambassador understood that seeing Gen maimed and returned to Eddis would be more like to spark a war than just killing him would, and a war is exactly what he needs in order to try to justify getting his troops onto Attolia's land. All the politics here are pretty complex but I feel like the book does a good job explaining the reasoning.

And this is also the point where it's really confirmed that Attolia knows that the ambassador is underestimating her, and that she also understands a lot of the things that he thinks that he's pulling over on her. But because of the fragile position that she's in, she needs to entertain the ambassador's advice and his attempts to sidle in on her country.

Quote about Gen: "It was like him that if he had to have a thing, to have the fanciest thing of its kind."

I really like all this about the cost of war; the price of war; and why this outside party has been trying to urge war on the three countries.

We also get Eddis admitting to Gen that she thinks that she could have possibly controlled herself and not started a war if he had only been killed, rather than treated in a way that she finds so insulting, and that it made her so angry that she made a choice that had now brought a lot of damage to their own country that she wishes could be avoided. And Gen can see, basically, that the ambassador of Medes is the one who put both Eddis and Attolia in this trap, and he was used as the tool to start this war.

We really move into Attolia's PoV and we get the story of the broken amphora (she thought about it when she saw Gen after she'd had his hand cut off) -- it was, essentially, the moment that marked when her life changed and she couldn't be a young girl anymore.

This really is a heartbreaking story -- how after her brothers died and she was the heir, her father essentially sold her off to be married, and her fiance was actively plotting against her father and how to suck her country dry for his own benefit after they were married. And how she kept herself quiet and small and just listened, but then poisoned him at their wedding feast, also having her captain of the guard kill the next man who tried to force her to marry him. We also see here that she only trusts loyalty that she can buy in gold (because every other kind of loyalty failed her).

Then we finally get the big reunion! This scene is so tense, with both Attolia and Gen wearing these cold masks (we later realize that Gen has pretty much directly modeled his mask on Attolia's) and we get this private negotiation that is only for the two of them. And this moment when it is literally just them, together on a boat, with no one else to interrupt them... just exquisitely done.

It's been implied before, but this is where we get our confirmation that Attolia has been just as haunted by Gen this entire book as he's been haunted by her. They've been separated for most of the book but constantly haunted by each other. I gotta share the quote:

"He was too young to have bones that ached. No matter what he thought of himself, he was hardly more than a boy. A boy without one hand. She reached up to push the wet hair out of her face, wondering when she had sunk so low that she had begun torturing boys. It was a question she had asked herself night after night, lying awake in her bed or sitting in a chair by the window watching the stars slowly move across the sky."

We've been seeing her do those things the entire book, but this is the first moment when we're told what she was thinking about in those moments.

We also get our Big Revelation here that Gen has had feelings for Attolia since before the events of The Thief! How does he hide these things from us so well! Gen! We learn here (and we get even more detail later) that he's been feeling drawn to her for literal years. That part of the reason that he made those trips that she thought were mockery was because he wanted to be close to her and get a look at her and see if she really was the monster that their spies reported that she was, or if she was just a woman who was being forced to make difficult, maybe impossible choices.

And then we get our story reversal where Attolia gets 'rescued' by the ambassador and his people, and we get to see how she behaves in these circumstances where she doesn't believe that she can trust Gen (sure, he said he loves her, but she cut his hand off! And he's a known liar! how can she trust him?) vs this dude that she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that she absolutely cannot trust.

The moment when she tells her handmaidens not to put on her golden bee earrings, I knew exactly what she'd done, especially when we got Gen's reaction. The writing doesn't have to tell us in the moment what's occurring (that she put on the earrings that he left for her one time and that she said she would only wear if she'd decided to marry him) for us to know, and I love that. This coded sign that only he will understand.

It's the most unique and fascinating marriage proposal I've ever read. Well done. Haha, and I did guess that the gray-haired man that he fought so well with was his father. <3

Love the moment when we see him process that marrying the Queen of Attolia is going to mean... that he'll be the King of Attolia. He just wanted to marry her because he liked her! <3 <3

And everything after that was just so delightful. Working together for the double-cross and then the process of Eddis and Attolia working out the treaty and Eddis trying to convince Gen that they can have the treaty without the marriage, and his rejection of that, and then essentially testing Attolia with that offer as well.

I also really like one of the moments when Attolia realizes that she can trust Gen, which is when Eddis tells her that of course Gen also lies to her. Constantly. And I feel like that reframed a lot of her interactions with Gen for Attolia. Realizing that Gen wasn't being maliciously deceitful towards her; he's just Like That With Everyone. Plus, I can't forget the moment when, after the battle is won, Attolia and Eddis return to where Gen is being held and Attolia believes for a moment that he's been poisoned as a parting shot by the Medes ambassador and we can literally watch as her heart completely shatters and she is completely undone and devastated in her head and even shaken where people can see her. It's beautifully written.

And we get the moment with the gods (who are very real in this series but very carefully choose how they interfere) and it's just as well done as it was in the first book. The windows in the palace shattering as the goddess responds to Gen's sacrifice! And basically laying out to him that his suffering was required to reach this ending and would he trade it back if he could -- if it meant that Attolia would have been forced to make that deal with the Medes ambassador. And Gen would rather have Attolia in his life and wanting to marry him than have his hand back.

Just that whole final section that leads up to the ending of the book, with Attolia really being able to believe Gen when he says that he loves her... it's so good. How the narrative (and Eddis and Gen) are able to tease out Attolia's feelings for Gen, and how we end on that final quiet moment between the two of them. Really powerful ending.

It's a really good book and it's a really good romance. Gen and Attolia are both fantastic characters and even with all the twists and turns and revelations, their relationship felt incredibly captivating and believable. I really believe that Gen wants to break through Attolia's walls and, just as important, I feel like there's a person on the other side of those walls who is worth being loyal to and loving. You understand why Gen wants to be Attolia's husband, even after she ordered his hand cut off, which is very impressive storytelling.

Hopefully I'll get the chance to read the The King of Attolia soonish, and not in, like, four months.

And now onto the Wheel of Time/Mat & Tuon comparison section of the review for @markantonys 💖

It really does feel like a point-by-point improvement on Mat & Tuon, though I suspected unintentionally (it looks like this book came out 3 years before CoT).

Starting with the characters: wow, Attolia really is so much the person that I would have wanted Tuon to be. And she feels like the person that Jordan wanted readers to believe that Tuon was. Every place where I was going through my WoT reread and going "footage not found!" about something the narrative tried to claim about Tuon is something where the footage is very much found for Attolia. While Tuon's potentially heartbreaking backstory really is just backstory and ends up have zero impact on her active storyline, Attolia's tragic backstory is the entire spine of what her character is going through and what Gen can help her with.

We get to see and really experience Attolia's context, which is not something that we got with Tuon. Jordan makes an attempt, I guess, with Karade's sob story about Tuon and the doll, but he made the bizarre choice to frame this story in Karade's PoV (Tuon's slave), not from Tuon's PoV. For whatever reason, Jordan always insisted on making Tuon the most insufferably smug person in the world in her own PoVs.

With Attolia, we get those breaks in her mask that I kept desperately wanting us to get with Tuon but we never did. Again, this is mostly only for the reader, not even for Gen -- the reader gets to see behind Attolia's mask. And so Attolia is captivating and fascinating and I understand why she felt like she had to do these horrible things.

With Attolia, we actually get her being removed from her power base and feeling helpless, which Jordan never had the guts to do with Tuon (when Mat kidnaps Tuon, he lets her take her slave along with her, and then some of his allies decide to support Tuon over him despite having zero narrative or character-based reason to do so), which means that when Attolia regains her power, it has a much bigger impact on the narrative, while it felt like Tuon never really lost hers. Attolia and Gen both manage to be scrappy underdogs, in their own way, and that's something that Tuon never was.

Both Attolia and Tuon commit horrific acts, but while we see Attolia's remorse and how it torments her, Tuon always seems to shrug off the horrible shit that she does. It doesn't ever affect her emotionally and she never seems to think past it after it's done. She is a character without remorse or reflection (I think she vaguely thinks that it's a shame one time when she's pondering how she will break Mat's spirit but that's about it). And Attolia has those two qualities in spades. Attolia feels like a real woman to me in a way that Tuon never did. We see the brave face that she puts on, we see her regret and remorse, we see her loneliness, we see her jealousy over the Queen of Eddis, who is able to trust the members of her court in a way that Attolia has never felt she could trust her own. Tuon just feels really shallow in comparison to Attolia.

Even in the first cat and mouse scene with Attolia and Gen in this book, you can see the push and pull and the narrative equality of the characters. Gen has been in and out of four different strongholds of hers, and she feels that he's pretty much taunting her with his abilities. There's a mutual respect for the other person which was one of the big things that was missing for me with Mat and Tuon. In her final PoV in KoD, we learn that she has not had an ounce of respect for him during this entire journey -- it's not until she sees how the Band respects him that she considers whether or not there may be more to him than just being a pretty and dumb sextoy. And the big problem with that is that was the period when the 'romance' was being developed. During the time when she didn't have any respect for him as a person. And that makes it very difficult to find their relationship compelling, even apart from the fact that I found Mat himself profoundly unlikable in CoT & KoD.

Now, Mat being a terrible person (in CoT & KoD) and Tuon being a terrible person (always and forever) are not things that would stop me from shipping them in general. I am capable of finding Awful4Awful pairings compelling (like Louis and Lestat from Interview with the Vampire). They don't have to be good people, but there has to be something in the relationship that grabs onto me at any level, and that's where Mat and Tuon failed.

We can see in Attolia's thoughts that she envies the relationship that Gen has with the Queen of Eddis -- she envies that loyalty and wishes she could have something like that of her own. That sort of envy was also missing from CoT & KoD (I am going to mention, briefly, that some of these elements were present in the Mat & Tuon relationship in AMoL but at that point, it was just too late for me to give a shit about their relationship, because CoT & KoD thoroughly killed any interest that I had in them). Whether because of his own personal kinks or because of the plans that Jordan had for the Outriggers, Jordan made Tuon too much of an island; too much of an wall. The way he wrote her made me feel like nothing Mat could do would ever really matter to her in any way; that she was content to use him up and then throw him out and that's just not my thing. It may have been Jordan's kink but it is not mine.

So I definitely understand @markantonys's point about this feeling like a well-written version of Mat and Tuon! It really does feel like this is the sort of relationship that Jordan wanted to write with Mat and Tuon but didn't have the skill at romance writing to pull off. Something like Mat and Tuon is Hard Mode Romance and Jordan wasn't even always good at Easy Mode Romance.

Two of the key elements that really makes Attolia and Gen work for me is just getting to sit and exist in Attolia's emotional reactions to the wrong that she has done to Gen; and Gen acknowledging and processing the harm that she'd done. And both of those things were desperately needed with Mat and Tuon, both as characters and as a romance.

A major major part of why Mat and Tuon failed for me is because I didn't feel like Mat was actually reacting to her realistically for the vast majority of their page time together; she threatens to invade a city and he laughs it off, she assaults his companions that he freed from slavery and he thinks it's hot?!?, she talks about how she likes to torture women and he ignores it.

If Tuon had cut off Mat's hand, the way that Attolia cut off Gen's, it feels like Jordan would have just had Mat shrug it off and then buy her a puppy as a reward or something as his response. Here, we get Gen begging Attolia "please don't hurt me again" after she cuts off his hand and then we have months of separation and recovery and processing before the narrative takes him anywhere near her again. And Attolia is forced to reckon with what she did, first by being haunted by the memories of him crying from the pain and loss, and then she has to face it directly by seeing his stump, seeing the pain that he's still in (because of her). She has to admit (not just to herself but to him) the damage that she did before they can move forward together. This is something that Tuon never shows herself capable of on any level. Tuon is never allowed to grow as a person the way that Attolia is, or to be vulnerable with the audience or with Mat.

I definitely still really felt the Mat-Gen comparison in this book too. Lots of places, but there's a great moment in the meadow with him, Eddis, and the Magus, where Eddis explains that Gen has deliberately made people believe that he can't fight but he also still gets miffed sometimes if people fall for his carefully constructed facade.

And the moment when Gen tells Eddis that he plans to steal the Queen of Attolia. It really feels, again, like this is the sort of vibe that Jordan wanted us to believe existed between Mat and Tuon: "She may be a fiend from hell to make me feel this way but even if I've got to hate myself for the rest of my life, this is what I want. I dream about her at night." This intense draw and this pull that he feels towards her. Jordan appears to want us to believe that Mat feels this kind of draw towards Tuon at the end of KoD but has not created any kind of foundation in Mat's characterization as to why.

We also got the long separation between Attolia and Gen where they are haunting each other with their absence. Attolia and Gen just get the time that is needed to develop this relationship in a way that's believable. Time in the story, not page time. This book is shorter than CoT & KoD, and probably shorter than if you made a "Mat and Tuon" novella out of their scenes in those books. It's the actual 'in world' time that matters, that gives Attolia and Gen time to think about each other and miss each other in a genuine way.

For another comparison -- Gen 'steals' Attolia to marry her like Mat kidnaps Tuon, but the context is so incredibly different on every level. Mat gets, essentially, tricked into kidnapping Tuon by the 'finn (it never would have happened if he hadn't heard that prophecy) while Gen acts with intention the whole way through. Technically, in both cases, Gen and Mat are 'saving' Attolia and Tuon by kidnapping them, but we feel the weight of it with Gen and Attolia in a way that we don't with Mat and Tuon. And a lot of that is because the bulk of Gen and Attolia's build-up happens before the kidnapping, during the times when they're separated and haunted by each other. So once the kidnapping happens, it's quick-paced and moves the plot forward rather than, you know, just fucking around with a circus for a month.

We also know that Attolia has complicated feelings about Gen already. I talked about this with @markantonys but that really is something that needed to happen with Tuon so much sooner than it does in the books (there are two big Mat & Tuon scenes in AMoL that desperately needed to happen back in CoT, imo -- Tuon trusting that Mat isn't trying to kill her; and Tuon going wild trying to protect Mat in the command tent).

Attolia and Gen also genuinely have things that they can each offer the other person, while with Mat and Tuon, none of the things that Tuon offers are things that Mat actually wants (slaves bowing to him; being dressed up like one of the Blood; being formal at all times - these are things that some of Mat's fans want for him, but not things he wants for himself) and she just feels like this ravenous black hole that constantly takes and takes and takes and gives back nothing of value. When Gen is startled at the realization that marrying the Queen of Attolia makes him the King and he'll have to actually be a king, it's this incredibly sweet moment, because it illustrates so clearly that he wants Attolia for herself and not her country. When Mat reacts against the idea that marrying Tuon makes him royalty, it just kinda makes him look dumb, because we've been given nothing of value in Tuon herself as a person, and no reason for Mat to care about her.

With Tuon, Mat talks about how she's better than other nobles, but nothing she actually does on the page is better than any other Seanchan noble. It's all 'footage not found'. By contrast, every single positive thing that Gen says about Attolia is backed up by the text and we even get shown additional positive qualities that no one needs to talk about because it's right there in the text.

With Tuon, it feels like Mat is attempting to gaslight me (and himself?) into believing that an interesting character exists there despite all the evidence against it, while Attolia simply is a compelling character based on what happens on the page.

That fact that there are so many raw similarities between the two pairings, but my reaction to them are so different really does illustrate the importance of execution, imo. Attolia and Gen's romance manages to travel so much further than Mat and Tuon's, while also being considerably more economical with how many pages it took to get us there.

The point-by-point comparison (aka WoT's failure of execution):

Tuon's interior life is poorly illustrated in comparison to Attolia's; because she starts off as an even worse person than Attolia but so much less character work is done on her than on Attolia, who is haunted this entire book by how she has "sunk so low as to torture boys" (on that note, Turner's choice to make Gen the younger and more openly vulnerable one really works here).

Seeing that Attolia's handmaidens are genuinely affectionate and protective of her at the end of this book is so incredibly touching, because she had no expectation of their loyalty (she believes in the loyalty of gold, and gold alone, for the most part). Tuon, otoh, has slaves that she expects to be subservient and loyal unto death, so her slaves' affection for her (that was trained into them) is something that completely fails to move me. This difference in the expectations of the character also makes a huge difference in how their PoVs come off -- Attolia's walls are due to her internal vulnerability and we get to see that vulnerability in her PoVs; while Tuon comes across as full of herself and incredibly arrogant, taking everyone around her for granted.

We're told that Tuon is smart and perceptive but rarely get any evidence; while Turner shows us Attolia's intelligence and how she sees a lot more than people like the Medes ambassador believe that she does. We get to see Attolia's intelligence in how she tricks the Medes ambassador into believing that she's so much less perceptive and intelligent than she truly is. This is another place where Jordan's unwillingness to ever place Tuon into a genuinely vulnerable position really hurt the character. Turner wasn't afraid to make Attolia the underdog and knew that it wouldn't undermine her as a character, it would strengthen her, because we would get to see who she was in adversity. The set-up of Crossroads of Twilight should have led to us seeing Tuon in adversity but Jordan was allergic to allowing her to be truly vulnerable, and gave her people to hide behind (Selucia & Setalle Anan) the entire time.

Mat as an agent of chaos is wildly downplayed in comparison to Gen as an agent of chaos. The Seanchan end up getting spared the chaos that the end of the Age brought to pretty much every other society, even though Mat seems clearly positioned to bring their society crashing down even as late as Winter's Heart. Gen's actions, otoh, are constantly throwing other people's plans off.

Mat does not behave realistically to the horrible things that Tuon says and does -- with Gen, even though we find out towards the last third of the book that he was already in love with Attolia before the book begins, we still get his raw reactions to her doing things that hurt him. He has nightmares after she orders his hand cut off, his pained begging of her not to hurt him again, and how he develops his own mask of impassiveness that is modeled on her own. Gen also never throws away his moral code in order to try to force himself to be at peace with the relationship -- he grows and changes as a character as a result of his trauma, but he stays himself at the core.

Something else that Jordan could have used more in the books that would have helped develop an understanding of why Mat believes that something exists beyond Tuon's 'cold Empress mask' would have been to make the comparison between Rand's mask and Tuon's mask more clear in the narrative. Because there's too much separation in time between Rand and Mat's interactions with Mat and Tuon's interactions. In this book, seeing that Eddis also needs to put up a queenly mask of not caring about Gen at first (in front of the Attolian guards when they return him to her after his hand has been cut off) helps illustrate why Attolia needs the mask that she uses -- Eddis doesn't trust the Attolians, but Attolia feels like she can trust absolutely no one, and so she always needs the mask and feels like she can never take it off. That's compelling! It could have been compelling in Tuon too, if it had been written better.

On that note: Turner personalizes the damage that Attolia's cold mask and her ruthless defense of herself/her country is doing by having her hurt Gen directly, and that being something that she struggles with over the course of the book. With WoT, Jordan basically did everything he could to hide away the damage that Tuon/the Seanchan were doing from Mat in order to try to justify why he could ~fall in love~ with her (was it intentional? to set their relationship up for a fall later in the Outriggers? we'll never know) without ever actually changing Tuon/the Seanchan for the better, which also meant giving Tuon no reason to have any internal struggles over the choices that she's made.

Gen and Attolia get another thing that Mat and Tuon desperately needed but that Jordan refused to give them: privacy. They negotiate getting married (after Gen has kidnapped Attolia in a much more narratively satisfying kidnapping than Mat and Tuon's!) in privacy, just between the two of them; when we get the conversation about their feelings at the end, again it happens in private. That makes a huge difference. Jordan being unwilling to ever actually yank Tuon away from her full power base and her slaves was a huge hindrance to ever allowing her to be vulnerable. And I do chalk this up to unwillingness and not failures due to plot set-up because there is no good reason to have Selucia tag along on the kidnapping and then it's even more bizarre in CoT & KoD, when the character of Setalle Anan goes from being fond of Mat to all of a sudden acting like he's the worst person in the world and she must protect poor helpless baby girl Tuon from him.

Both Attolia and Tuon get tricked by their respective love interests about who they are as a person because of the facade that they put up, but Attolia still has respect for Gen and his skills, even as she doubts his character, and it is Gen's own actions that show her who he really is and make her believe in him; while with Tuon and Mat, she spends over a month with him and still refuses to look past his surface until she literally has her face rubbed into it by seeing the Band's reactions to him. This difference is a key one in making Attolia's failure to see Gen as a failure due to the protective walls that she has up; while Tuon's failure comes across as her just not being very perceptive or intelligent. And the fact that we don't get the moment when Tuon begins to have even the faintest shred of respect for Mat until the end of Knife of Dreams just meant that I felt even more like all the pages time that Jordan spent on the two of them in CoT & KoD was a complete waste of my time.

We got to have genuine reactions from all of Gen's loved ones about the relationship! This is a huge place where, I guess, Sanderson is the one who failed for a change instead of Jordan because wtf was Perrin's "lol you married now bro? haha" reaction to Mat being married to a slaver? Though Jordan also does this to a certain extent with Thom, who we are supposed to believe is in love with Moiraine, and yet who never calls Mat out on courting a woman who would enslave and torture Moiraine if she had the chance. By contrast, Eddis is genuinely hesitant and worried because of everything they've heard about how cold Attolia is, and because she's the reason that Gen's hand was cut off.

We get to see Attolia and Gen develop a shared language and see behind each other's walls. The moment when she wears the earrings that he left for her, and he knows that it means she's chosen to marry him of her own free will is such a huge and impactful moment, and the only people who are aware of what it means are Attolia and Gen! This is really a failure that happens based on earlier failures of execution: because Mat and Tuon are never allowed to be alone together, it's impossible for them to develop this kind of shared coding and shared language.

12. We also have the 'footage not found' issue, where one of the characters (mostly Mat) tries to tell me something about Tuon but the narrative completely fails to back it up: this is the case with Tuon being intelligent and perceptive (in the narrative shown to us, she never picks up on anything until her nose is forcibly rubbed in it); and this is case with Mat thinking near the end of Knife of Dreams that Tuon belongs in the same 'better than other nobles' bucket as Talmanes when she has never shown herself to be willing to make better choices than other Seanchan nobles: he is still, at this point, worrying that she might enslave him and turn him into her cupbearer; she has not only threatened but actually assaulted his companions; whenever she's placed in a position of power over other people, she takes advantage of it and them. We're told that she's not a child but she also throws a tantrum (and pottery) at Mat at the start of Crossroads of Twilight. This could have worked if Jordan had leaned into the fact that Mat is deliberately lying to himself in order to make his marriage bearable, but that's where things like randomly having Setalle Anan go over to Tuon's side messes with that narrative.

13. When Jordan has Mat think about how Tuon dying would be a deep loss to him, it's just baffling because she has not done a single thing the entire 'courtship' that has shown why in the world Mat would feel that way. All of the attempts at reaching out during the courtship are Mat's, while Tuon just smugly accepts it as her due. Because Attolia doesn't just accept Gen's love as her due, because she actually doesn't believe him and challenges him on it, we get to hear his justification of it and why he feels that way, and then we also get to see her reciprocation. The relationship is a two-way street in The Queen of Attolia.

14. Which ties into the fact that Jordan chose to make Tuon not just a slaver but an enthusiastic slaver who enjoys the slave-breaking process and that is an incredibly dark place to start a character but it could have worked if it had been the beginning of Tuon's character arc and we'd actually watched her change and grow from that position. And she had the narrative set up for it! In her very first chapter, the reader learns that Tuon has the ability to learn to channel! She was created with the narrative juice to have a compelling arc about accepting the truth about herself and her people. And then Jordan gave that arc to Bethamin instead, lol.

15. In both of these stories 'fate' does kinda serve up Gen/Mat to Attolia/Tuon on a silver platter, but the execution of the storylines makes the reveal that fate was acting to push the two of them together so much more effective in The Queen of Attolia. Choice is a much larger consideration in Attolia and Gen's relationship than it is in Mat and Tuon's. There are elements of the higher powers of the world at work in both relationships, but Attolia and Gen have to put in the work themselves and have to face hard emotional truths in order to get us to the satisfying ending. I get the impression that Tuon wouldn't know an emotional truth if it spit in her eye. We actively see both Gen and Attolia consider and reject the idea of solving their main problem (about the war) without needing to get married; we see them choose their marriage and each other.

With Mat and Tuon, this is a lot more muddled. Fate/the Pattern/the 'finn want them to marry each other but we never get any kind of payoff as to why, and this is primarily because of Jordan's other storylines imo. He should not have had Rand already willing to make peace with the Seanchan in his separate storyline. Convincing Rand to be willing should have been Mat's job (because that also would mean that Mat would need to make the arguments to convince the readers). Jordan showing at the end of KoD that Rand is willing to make a deal with the Seanchan, even at the cost of giving in on the matter of slavery, basically completely voided any narrative reason for Mat and Tuon to get married, but without the satisfaction of seeing the two of them grow to a place where they would actively make that choice rather than being motivated by what they believe is necessary (due to prophecy).

There really were the bones of a potentially compelling story with Mat and Tuon, and I really do hope that the show (when we get there) is able to take those bones and turn it into a genuinely compelling story.

#the queen's thief #butterfly reads tqt #butterfly book club #wot book spoilers #a memory of light #wot #wheel of time #seanchan cw #wot meta #my wot meta #irene of attolia #eugenides #mat cauthon

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cannoli-reader · 4 months

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Hello Cannolli, your metas on the Wheel of Time books are always very well thought out and constructed, and you've clearly given a lot of thought to the series as a whole. I was wondering if you have any ideas on what RJ's plan for Egwene's AMoL arc and story would be? For all the other characters I can see the writing on the well, the clues and foreshadowing, and together with what can be inferred from BS's books about RJ's notes get what I think is a good aproximation for what would be their final arcs and ending. Except for Egwene! I've always had a hard time understamding her character and Sanderson favoured her so much that I have a hard time discerning what came from him or from the notes! I've found your analysis of her character very interesting and enlightening and so wanted to hear your thoughts on this! Thanks in advance! (No hard feelings if you're not up for answering this tho!)

With the caveat that I have a limited and spotty awareness of Jordan's notes, and so my answer is based largely on my projection of her arc and established characterization in the series, I would say her end was probably where Jordan intended, but Sanderson's path to get there, somewhat different.

"(No hard feelings if you're not up for answering this tho!)" - I found this amusing, because I am always down to go off at length about WoT, among other topics. "Up for answering this"? How could I not be? How hard could this be? The results of seven hours and two drafts later are under the cut.

First of all, when speaking of Jordan's intentions, I generally refer to all three of the final books together as aMoL since that was his plan, to finish the whole series with one book. So I would have to take Egwene's story from where it left off in KoD.

I think her rise in the Tower would have been a lot quicker. Maybe a montage chapter like in KoD, where she meets the other Ajah heads, with less dramatic results, but making a slightly better impression than she did with the two in KoD. Her serving Elaida, as set up in Tarna's chapter, might bring things to a head, but not with schoolyard putdowns. I don't believe she suddenly has the revelation, conveniently just in time to avoid behavior that would spur Elaida to put an end to her pretentions for good, that she should be trying to unite the Tower instead of driving the factions further apart. Rather, that realization should be more organic and maybe a result of seeing the fruits of her sowing coming to pass.

I don't believe the Seanchan attack would have gone as it did in tGS, where Sanderson seems completely oblivious to the fact that all Egwene did was kill a lot of people without changing much of the outcome. Even her shooting down the to'raken with captives was pretty appalling, since she and Alivia are living proof that being collared is not the end of your life, and the view of channelers as combat assets it is important to deny the enemy is morally repugnant. If anyone is going to be thinking in that manner on the eve of Tarmon Gaidon, there had better be some harsh & immediate blowback. I also don't think Sanderson realizes he had Egwene torture helpless women to death, or that there was any irony or sense of hyperbole in her self-congratulatory stream of consciousness. IF those things happened under Jordan, it should be the spur to Egwene coming to realize that fighting the Seanchan can't be the plan going forward, since it brings out the worst in her and others, and maybe the truce is the best thing for now. During the attack, Saerin actually showed the best leadership, and the kind more in keeping with Jordan's style in the prior books.

I don't know about her rescue, because so much of that is utterly wrong, especially everything with Bryne, from his going along at all, to suddenly brandishing a heron-mark sword, to his reaction to the Warder bond, to Egwene's pompous displeasure with Siuan in the aftermath. Again, I think Egwene was supposed to become disillusioned with Siuan in general during/following her captivity in the Tower, as she works for reconciliation, because Siuan is the worst advisor in the setting since Mordeth. She is the author of the conflict between the Aes Sedai, for her own personal vengeance. There are plenty of signs in the text suggesting that Elaida is not so different from Siuan or Egwene, and the latter in particular takes a lot of actions that mirror or duplicate Elaida's supposed worst crimes against the Tower. As part of her getting her focus on the right conflict, which should have been in parallel with Rand getting his personal issues straight, she should have rejected the whole course of action she pursued from LoC through KoD. She subtly does that in tGS, to a degree, but in a very contemptible way, wriggling out of responsibility for her part and blaming everyone else. Her condemnatory speech to the rebels after she is raised by the loyalist Hall is particularly risible, considering that collectively, the objects of her tirade balked and dragged their heels at doing most of the things she berates them for, and Egwene herself schemed, lied, tricked, maneuvered and ultimately commanded, them in taking those actions. It's the same thing with her histrionics with the Hall when she is raised, the spirit of her ideas in direct contradiction with what she tells the rebels, and her "defense" of Silviana being pure sophistry. The best thing you can say about all that blather is that it paints a picture of a sociopathicaly dishonest and manipulative woman, and might have been intended to show how far lost she has become in the pursuit of her political ascension. If Jordan had anything to do with the scripting of her plotline in tGS, that had to be his intention, to be her equivalent of Rand's behavior after Semirhage gets her hands on him (and his attack on Graendal's HQ & threats against the Borderland rulers are far more justifiable than Egwene's conduct in the Seanchan raid).

For the political side, once she was the consensus Amyrlin, she should have been in the position of a compromise candidate, not the universal hero with the moral high ground (because she has done nothing to earn it, even in the errant perspectives of in-story characters: she has waged war against the Tower, ruined the harbors and her efforts against the Seanchan are not impressive to sophisticated and experienced politicians, who scorn combat as the province of dumb thugs). This should have led to constant frustration in her efforts to make reforms and pursue policies, because after Elaida and after Siuan was deposed for her own high-handed and unilateral actions, the Hall is not going to take the new Amyrlin flexing lying down, especially when she was only chosen because they couldn't stand any of the other choices, or their rivals would never have allowed preferable candidates through. They are not going to agree to major changes to Tower procedures or policies, and they are not going to vote away their own power or toss out checks on the Amyrlin's authority on her say-so.

Jordan's writing is very big on partial victories, and compromises and hard work being necessary to achieve goals, he does not go for dramatic speeches that sway people to give the protagonist everything they want. I believe Jordan's intention in writing the original bargain Nynaeve & Elayne made with the Sea Folk to be a lesson in the costs of high-level political dealings and a warning that the hot streak the girls had been riding for a while was coming to an end, and they were not going to get their way by showing up and asking for it, or with a feat of creative channeling, and that not all goals could be met by driving off the Black sisters or defeating a Forsaken. I also utterly reject the idea that he would simply have the Sea Folk walk back the whole bargain in order to give Egwene a cheap win at no real cost.

To me, Egwene's straw-man debates with Gawyn and Nynaeve about her authority and the effect their recalcitrance can have, make no sense in ToM, because it's simply not an issue, because Warder bonds are firmly established as strictly private, and even one of the strictest sisters can have a Warder back-talk her in the Hall of the Tower without losing face in the Sitters' eyes. Siuan needed 10 years of Moiraine running amok before she started to have political problems, and it was arguably a sign of her own being captured by the system that she put it on Moiraine. There is certainly no real sign that the narrative endorses Siuan's view of the relationship & political issues, since Moiraine feels not the slightest remorse and promptly bails on the meeting to avoid telling Siuan things she is keeping from her. In the story we got, Egwene is getting everything she could wish, there are no problems with her campaign against Mesaana, and the Sitters vote for her proposals for the most painfully stupid reasons I can imagine an educated adult putting to paper. What possible reason could she have for demanding Nynaeve, Elayne and Gawyn jump through hoops to maintain her reputation? That sort of demand makes much more sense in a story where she is experiencing constant political frustration and administrative headaches (Sanderson promptly tossed all the issues with a massive and on-going influx of novices of all ages down the memory hole).

Egwene calling on Nynaeve and Elayne to attend her in the Tower would also create conflict with Elayne. Jordan has seeded too many conflicts between Andor and the White Tower, and between Elayne's two sets of duty, in the series for that not to come to a head in the finale. Egwene's is not the only plotline or character arc where lots of potential conflicts were handwaved away. Elayne is trying to rule one country and claim another, behind two very dubious and fraught coalitions, that are largely loyal to other parties. As awesome & loyal as Dyelin seems to be, she is wrong in every disagreement with Elayne from WH to KoD. Even her support of Elayne at the end is ultimately expressed as an aspect of her conservatism and resistance to change. In Cairhien, she's going to be working with a Red sister who is sworn to Rand, and will see that as two strikes against Elayne, given her anti-Rand policies and positions in Andor. And where she had to suppress and conceal their relationship in Andor, that's going to cost her in dealing with Sashelle and and of Rand's partisans in Cairhien (and there are hints here and there that the commoners and servants and soldiers hold him in rather higher regard than their lords and ladies do). In Cairhien, Elayne herself is a compromise candidate, with the Damodreds and their allies ready to accept her for the father she doesn't remember, their rivals willing to accept her because her name isn't Damodred, whatever remains of Colavaere's allies resenting their own downfall under Dobraine in Rand's name, for Elayne's sake, and some of Dobraine's allies expecting some sort of reward or primacy of place for their efforts in the interregnum. Also, famine. And in the middle of trying to juggle all this political stuff, with the Black Tower conflict heating up in her backyard, and the methods needed to win over Andorans inspiring contempt in Cairhienin, and Cairhienin methods triggering fear of tyranny and intrigue in Andorans, she gets a call in the middle of all this to put everything on hold and dance attendance on the Amyrlin because she can't handle her end, that's going to be when Elayne decides now is the time to draw that line between personal and political authority and responsibility. And Elayne can get away with it as no other ruler in the last thousand years could, because when it comes to Elayne versus the White Tower, the Dragon Reborn, King of Illian and Car'a'carn of the Aiel, and the Lord Captain Commander of the Children of the Light are not going to think twice before taking a side. Right, of course, at the least politically convenient time for Egwene.

With Gawyn, he has been taught, since day one, that in addition to physical protection and military advice, his job is also to tell his principal when she is in the wrong, and that is so not going to fly with Egwene in the middle of all the other problems going on. Sanderson seems to have run with the fandom meme that Gawyn is an idiot, on top of inventing a character issue where he resents Rand over class issues and a sense of heretofore never seen royal entitlement. The funny thing is "I should be the leader and hero, not that up-jumped sheepherder!" is basically Egwene's normal state of mind. So I could see Gawyn going to Elayne at Egwene's behest, or stepping in an volunteering, in an effort to patch things over, and butting heads with his sister, while trying to loyally stick to the party line, because Egwene is pissed that he keeps suggesting her leadership methods aren't the best. Because Gawyn has been taught to be a military commander in what is basically a feudal military structure, which means herding cats on a bunch of nobles to get them to carry out the crown's strategies and campaign plans, whereas up until aMoL, Egwene's political training has been about intrigue and subterfuge, and no so much on coalition-building, and appeasing competing interests.

With Nynaeve, she's generally willing to play along, but that's not always helpful, as Nynaeve is all about the moral with little use for the political. We see what her version of helping with political negotiations is like in KoD where Cadsuane has to rein her in from threatening the nobles with Rand's wrath. Her PoV chapters became much more rare after she broke her block, because she's largely centered and has found her right head-space, that Egwene & Rand are still striving for in KoD & aMoL. And that means she is going to be a lot more confident in calling out the sisters on their bullshit, and have Opinions, however respectfully she might make them known to Egwene, on Egwene's methods. She's been butting heads with Cadsuane for three books. No one in the Tower is going to impress her all that much, and to Egwene, it's going to be like having a loose cannon in the Tower.

I think in Jordan's version, Egwene, around the time Rand is on Dragonmount, and Mat is struggling in the Tower of Ghenji and Perrin is trying to save the Children of the Light while relations with Elayne are at their nadir and Caemlyn is falling to the Trollocs, is going to complete her mini-arc of coming to understand what it means to unify the Tower, to move away from the partisanship that divided it under Siuan and her predecessors, reconcile with the fence-sitting sisters, and after all these problems are worked through, she starts repairing her relationships with Elayne and Gawyn, at the least. Maybe she helps resolve things between Elayne and Perrin as well. I don't think her penultimate climax is going to be simply beating Mesaana and the Black Ajah in direct combat for the Tower, at most that would be a part of the whole unity arc, only tangentially related, in the way that the fight with the Black Ajah was to Elayne's claiming the Lion Throne.

I also think the conflict, if any, between Rand & Egwene at Merrilor is going to be over an arbitrary and nonsensical issue like the Seals, but more the cumulative result of all the baggage they've built up over the course of the series. Egwene is going to be fearing the worst, because I think it more likely that Dark Rand called the meeting intending to lay down the law and crush any resistance to his leadership, but then Dragonmount, whereas he has been observing from the outset her resistance to him and his role in things, and her White Tower partisanship. Their working past that, and coming to accept the changes each has made should be organic as well, the payoff of years of friendship and history, with all their friends in common, from the Two Rivers and Rand's love interests helping to bring them together. It would absolutely NOT be resolved by Moiraine wafting in on a cloud of angel farts quoting Scripture the Prophecies of the Dragon to convince the assembled leaders of the nations to fall into line.

I think the effect of Moiraine's return should have been private and personal, for Rand at least, and maybe Egwene too. And it should have some apologies for how she treated them and used them, because let's face it, she did not go out as a hero, she manufactured a scenario to emotionally abuse and gaslight Rand into believing his weaknesses and shortcomings caused her death, and wrote a letter tacitly blaming him, while also writing one to passive-aggressively guilt Mat into risking mutilation and death to extract her from the situation she contrived to put herself in. In any case, it's nonsense that Rand & Egwene would drop their contentions at her word. Egwene was losing her devotion to Moiraine as a mentor before the end, not least because of disagreements over her handling of Rand, and as Amyrlin, would emphatically make a point that their relationship has changed now, as she does with absolutely every other person she knew beforehand. Part of Rand's epiphany is getting some perspective, and while he'd be thrilled to see Moiraine return, the List should be gone, and only relevance her return should have to that construct is the role she played in turning Rand that way. Her return doesn't solve problems, it's the reward for working past the problems. For Moiraine herself, I think she's learned her lesson as a result of her captivity, and goes into the Pit of Doom with him because she means it now, she accepts that this is Rand's mission and it's his call and she will back him 100%.

A lot of the decisions for Tarmon Gaidon, will, I believe, be made on the basis of the connections and trust built up over the course of the series, and part of Egwene's role would be to legitimize it all for public consumption, by telling people who don't get it, that everything is cool, trust the Amyrlin. For the Battle itself, I could not say, because what Sanderson wrote is the complete opposite of WoT warfare. Instead of heavy emphasis on the fog of war, brilliant plans crashing and burning at the outset, the brutality, and the cost, and especially the chaos, and the lack of control, we got a handful of protagonists playing a strategy game, where every piece moved exactly according to the rules, Mat was in complete control the whole time, and half of the decisive moments were settled in duels. On the issue of Egwene, I do think she would die, trying to do something beyond her grasp. I think Gawyn might die specifically because of an order Egwene gave or a choice she made, which is the strong implication of Egwene's dream of him choosing between two paths that lead to different fates, because of her. As it was, picking a fight with the enemy Forsaken general because he didn't have anything better to do, A. does not fit that foreshadowing, and B. indicates a failure to grow from the again, out-of-nowhere envy of Rand and his role. Telling Galad not to succumb to his own fatal flaw, because it got Gawyn himself mortally wounded, is hardly growth (and why would Galad hate or envy Rand, anyway? At best, his expression of this too-late realization makes Gawyn a shitty sibling for thinking the worst of his big brother). In Jordan's aMoL, Gawyn dying because of Egwene's choice or action (not necessarily error, mind you) fulfils his loyalty arc and forces Egwene to confront a real and personal price, and one that she has not reckoned with before this book. She's considered in the abstract prices for her tactics and people dying from her decisions, but its never come home, especially because she was spared the necessity of assaulting the Tower. Egwene pushed for decisive action, but hesitated over actually pulling the trigger on any such significant acts, and lucked out when the Seanchan swooped in and relieved her of the need to fish or cut bait on the Tower siege.

That's what I think Egwene's arc would come to in the end - a realization that she's only ever paid lip service to meeting toh or the "pay for it" part of taking "what you want", and that the price for her quest for the Amyrlin Seat, and all the dirt she did along the way, using slander against her enemies and false propaganda on her subordinates and allies, declaring war against people she should have been working with against the Shadow, and being a party to perhaps the worst case of "men fighting their own petty battles" with the Shadow looming over the world, it all comes down to what is she going to do with that power and that position. Her rationalization from the get-go, and perhaps even her true motive, though that would denote an incredible degree of arrogance, has basically been to ensure that the necessary steps are taken and the right woman for the job has it. And now, at the critical moment, she has the choice to try to do the impossible to save the world, regardless of the cost to herself, and she can't do anything else. Whether because that is how she operates, to always push, always reach for more, or because she has come to the realization that if she backs down, she was full of shit when she did all the suspect stuff she did along the way, and that all her striving since becoming Nynaeve's apprentice has only been about self-aggrandizement, that she has been taking what she wants all her adult life, but now is being called on to pay for it.

And a flip side to that, is that Egwene, as depicted in the story, who is all about concentration of power on herself, and cares only for accruing more and more power, status or authority, can't survive or have a happily ever after, without a radical change of personality and mindset, without changing into someone no longer recognizable as the woman whom readers love or hate for her irrepressible ambition and determination. To put it another way, Egwene's attitude and mindset are only justifiable in a protagonist of a fantasy story where the fate of the world hangs in the balance, where her drive and appetite for advancement can only be justified as a means to resolve stakes of that magnitude. She is the parallel to Rand, who, as the Chosen One, the prophesied savior, is given a great deal of latitude and approbation for actions that would be unconscionably ambitions or tyrannical in anyone but a man on whom the fate of the world depends (though, ironically, Egwene herself is the least tolerant toward Rand in this regard). It's understood that after the Last Battle, Rand, if he survives, will no longer have the claim to most of his power or authority. Many people swear fealty or promise to follow him, to the Last Battle, as a limiting condition on their service. But such conditions are not applied to Egwene or to her position as Amyrlin Seat. The Aes Sedai who swear fealty to Rand after grossly abusing their power and social position and violating his trust, still only do so until the Last Battle. The Aes Sedai Egwene blackmails with the knowledge of actions taken to help her friend and to further her cause, do not have any such condition that will end their servitude. And Egwene is outraged by Rand's receipt of sisters' fealty. With that kind of mindset and usurpation of power, she had to go. Egwene is the epitome of the Dark Knight aphorism that you die young or live long enough to become the villain.

#egwene al'vere #wheel of time #a memory of light #runaway speculation

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