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markantonys · 2 years

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knife of dreams prologue-chapter 17

GALAD KILLED VALDA AAAAAHHHHHH that scene was so unexpected and so satisfying!!!

this is the first we’ve seen of galad since book 5 if i’m not mistaken. i would’ve liked to see him have more pov throughout so we could get a feel for what it’s like for him among the whitecloaks and see his perspective starting to shift as he realizes that many whitecloaks are not as righteous as they claim to be. i don’t care about sevanna or galina or alviarin or elaida or those random aes sedai hunting black ajah inside the tower or this fuckin ituralde dude or whatever other sideplots have been eating up screentime, i want to see my trakand boys! they are the only secondary characters who deserve pov!

i’m manifesting that this will be the book of trakand boys turning on their Chosen Groups to do what’s right. i know gawyn will find a way out of his pickle and turn on the tower and the younglings and maybe help egwene escape the tower. i know he will! i believe in him! (but since gawyn only shows up in prologues these days and we didn’t get him in this one, what if he’s not in the book at all???? oh perish the thought)

galad describes morgase as “the woman he regarded as his mother” 🥺 “he had thought he would feel satisfaction that his mother had been avenged, but all he felt was emptiness. valda’s death was not enough. nothing except morgase trakand alive again could be enough.” 😭😭😭😭 trakand family reunion when??

galad is now captain commander of all whitecloaks and plans to ally them with aes sedai at tarmon gai’don, though asunawa and the questioners have split off and will no doubt cause problems down the road. i wish galad would just go “the whole system is corrupt!” and destroy the entire whitecloak organization, but that’s asking too much of our Lawful Good boy lmao. makes me curious how this plotline will go down in the show because i’m still feeling the effects of show!whitecloaks being my first version of them, and show!whitecloaks are so vile and evil that it feels unsatisfying and hollow to see galad getting them to help our heroes instead of just burning the whole organization to the ground. much like how it feels seeing rand and perrin prepare to ally with seanchan. i guess it’s all an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” situation and showing how our heroes have to ally even with shitty groups for the sake of stopping the greater evil of the shadow, but still, i don’t like it!

an antagonistic character (suroth) is secretly a darkfriend? groundbreaking.

semirhage has killed the seanchan empress and imperial family and now all of seanchan is embroiled in chaos and civil war. thank you semirhage! if only tuon would conveniently die so then seanchan never gets another empress and can just collapse for good.

bunch of other random shit i don’t care about (and spaced out during the audiobook of) happens in the prologue. too many side characters. my crops are dying.

finally we reach egwene and some life is restored to my crops! she is being an absolute queen about her captivity. unbreakable indeed. she sees the tension between ajahs in the tower and is already thinking of how she can use that to the rebels’ advantage and planning to talk to siuan in TAR. very handy that TAR/dreamwalking can still be done while shielded! “she did not consider herself a prisoner either. she was carrying the battle into the heart of the tower itself. if she had had lips [in TAR], she would have smiled.” that’s my GIRL 😤🥰 maybe i don’t want gawyn to help her escape after all since she doesn’t WANT to escape, she’s got everything under control!

“demandred’s hook-nosed face carried an expression of anger that only made him more striking.” official confirmation that Demandred Is Hot, although maybe this was mentioned already. i’ve seen little of him so far but i feel like he’s my Forsaken Crush. i feel it coming. (we all have a Forsaken Crush, don’t lie.)

“in their own age when moridin had been called ishamael - there was no longer any doubt in [aran’gar’s] mind of who he was” official confirmation that moridin is ishamael! why am i gasping? i already knew that.

so it seems that the suspicion and tension in the white tower and perhaps the split itself is being caused and stoked by the forsaken. kinda don’t like that, ofc the shadow has to be established as a major threat but i wish more of the conflict in this series was genuinely caused by just regular ol human selfishness rather than going “surprise, it was a darkfriend/forsaken behind it the whole time!” so often.

"[aran’gar’s] appetites [for women] had not altered, only broadened [to include men, i think is the implication]” “[semirhage], too, took her pleasures where she found them” and graendal being into it when aran’gar hits on her. the forsaken being the Bad Bisexual Rep we deserve.

no for real there is SO much sexual tension between all the forsaken in this scene (the aforementioned 3, demandred, mesaana) i hope the show maintains and enhances this. just a group of hot evil people who hate and also want to bone every single one of the others.

“‘no!’ moridin snapped, fixing [cyndane] with a steady stare. ‘you would ‘accidentally’ kill him. the time and manner of al’thor’s death will be at my choosing. no one else.’ ... ‘no one else,’ moridin repeated in a hard voice.” “‘that goes for all of you. al’thor is mine. you will not harm him in any way!’” ishamael is not in on the aforementioned sexual tension because he’s too busy having the same one-sided sexual tension with rand he had for all the early books, god bless. (to refresh your memory)

“once, [aram] had seemed too good-looking for a man” usually i think of perrin as the straightest character in the series but then he’ll just come out with shit like this. the Oblivious Bisexual Rep we deserve.

perrin thinks of mat and has a vision of him talking to tuon! confirmed that this happens between the two of them too and not just them and rand. maybe we already saw that in the last book, i can’t remember anything anymore, there’s no room left in wot’s portion of my brain’s memory harddrive.

this is not new information but i have to mention how much i love that perrin’s full name is perrin t’bashere aybara, he and faile both took each other’s names :’)

perrin tells the seanchan that the asha’man know traveling. boy, i sure hope you’re not gonna let them learn traveling from any saidar-users or i swear to god!

“the bearer of this stands under my personal protection. in the name of the empress, may she live forever, give him whatever aid he requires in service to the empire and speak of it to none but me.” love how many different “not to worry, i have a permit [holds up a paper saying “i can do whatever i want”]” official papers there are in this universe jkfgj

faile mentions a fellow (female) gai’shain (arrela) who’s sleeping with a maiden. references to queerness have gotten much more common and explicit in these past couple books, which is nice to see! though always queer women, i don’t think we’ve had anything more than a “maybe that guy doesn’t like women like that” for queer men.

“colors whirled in [mat’s] brain, and for an instant, in his head, he saw rand and min standing beside a large bed, kissing. he stumbled and nearly tripped over his own boots. they had not been wearing any clothes! he would have to be careful thinking about rand...the colors swirled and resolved for a moment, and he stumbled again. there were worse things to spy on than kissing. very careful what he thought. light! the pair of guards...eyed him suspiciously. they probably thought he was drunk...he could have used a stiff drink right then.” JKDJFGKJHJJKDFJG the Disaster Bisexual Rep we deserve. poor mat. poor, poor mat. what a way to find out your lifelong crush has a new girlfriend. also, cinematic parallels to rand being Shook when he walked in on naked mat and melindhra after the darkhounds in tfoh.

now that i’ve moved on from laughing, i’m realizing this is another example of how little interest the characters have in each other these days. last mat knew, rand was romantically entangled with both elayne and avi, yet now he has a vision of him banging min (whom mat had no idea was ever on the table, and honestly i’m surprised he even recognizes her since i think they only met the once in baerlon and his memories of that time are so fuzzy) and doesn’t go “hey, what about elayne and avi?” or anything like that. granted, maybe that’s only because he’s trying not to keep thinking about rand jfkgjh but still. especially now that elayne is his bestie in addition to rand! surely he would have at least a passing care about the state of their relationship, after spending an entire book and a half determined to protect elayne for rand’s sake!

“many among the showfolk were already wondering why mat spent more time with tuon than with egeanin. wondering and disapproving.” you and me both, showfolk.

“with women, you always had to take chances. with a woman like tuon, ten chances a day, and never knowing the odds until it was too late.” or you could just not take any chances. you could just ditch her.

at this point i know i should just accept that this romance is happening and stop beating a dead horse about how ooc and illogical it is, but i literally cannot stop complaining and will make it everyone else’s problem for every recap post for the rest of the series jfgkh

mat waxes poetic about how beautiful tuon is and how much he loves making her smile and laugh and how much he dreams about kissing her. SINCE WHEN??!?!?!?!??!?!!! WHY??!?!?!?!?!!!!??? make it make sense!!!!

“[he dreamed about kissing her] never mind that she called him down as if they were already married.” cementing my theory that, narratively speaking, mat went from genuinely enjoying women’s company to finding them annoying and restrictive because of I Hate My Wife toxic heterosexual marriage culture informing his transition from slut (who enjoys women’s company) to husband (who complains about The Old Ball And Chain)

mat spanking joline 🤮🤮🤮 obviously it wasn’t okay for her to slap him unprovoked, but there is a huge difference in levels of both humiliation and physical pain between being slapped once and being spanked like a child dozens of times in front of people.

and inexplicably, mistress anan and the other aes sedai take mat’s side and say that joline deserved it??? where is mistress anan’s Woman Solidarity Against Mat the one time i actually wanted it?

everyone mat’s with now is making him worse. can you imagine him trying to pull this shit when elayne, nynaeve, or egwene were in the vicinity? they would’ve kicked his ass into next tuesday! although pre-WH mat would never have done this anyway. forget enjoying his plotline, even liking him as a person is becoming difficult at this point in the series. that wall falling on him turned him into a different person. look how they massacred my boy.jpg

“‘do you have any idea how these sul’dam did treat me [teslyn] when they did have me prisoner?’ ‘no, since you’ve never gone into detail beyond moaning over how horrible it was,’ joline replied dryly” it’s so gross how the others treat their stint as damane as a minor inconvenience. mat does this too with his whining about them being So Ungrateful To Him for getting them out of the seanchan’s hands and how he Deserves Their Respect. mat they are incredibly scared and traumatized! they have bigger things to worry about than kissing your ass! is this just the characters who don’t know what being damane is like being dicks, or is the narrative itself trying to retroactively make it seem not as bad in an attempt to excuse tuon and her romance with mat? all i know is that this is a stark contrast from how we saw egwene’s time as a damane treated in tgh. (update: i mention this briefly later in the post but in elayne’s pov we do see the damane system as traumatic and horrific again, so maybe it really is just mat’s pov making light of it bc he’s not a channeler rather than the narrative itself doing so.)

“‘you’ll want to be seeing to your own horses.’ mat wanted no such thing. the most wonderful thing about having coin was not what you could buy, but that you could pay others to do the work.” and what happened to all your disdain for nobles who act like that, mat??? in general i feel that mat’s laziness and hatred of doing work have been exaggerated in recent books. from a later chapter: “just the sight of [the laborers] made mat’s own back ache. they reminded him how much he hated work.” and there was another line in the same vein somewhere in this chapter chunk, but i can’t find it again. the jacket summary for this book says “to get [tuon] to safety, he must do what he hates worse than work” like, to say that in the SUMMARY. a lot of mat’s negative traits have been exaggerated in recent books and he’s starting to feel like a caricature of himself. everyone says that sanderson did that to mat in his books, but rj’s already started doing it if you ask me.

“he had to make her see him as something more than Toy. marriage to a woman with no respect for him would be like wearing a shirt of black-wasp nettles day and night. worse still, he had to make her care for him, or he would find himself forced to hide from his own wife to keep her from making him da’covale!” MAT. THAT IS NOT A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP. JUST DITCH HER AND RIDE AWAY.

i’m thinking about what we were discussing on my last recap about how it would make so much more sense if mat/tuon was an arranged marriage (for example as part of perrin’s deal with the seanchan - mat then would accept the marriage for a logical and in-character reason, wanting to help his friend rescue his wife, rather than just. going along with it inexplicably as he does in canon) and yeah. his whole “since i’ll be stuck with marrying her, i need to find out what she’s like as a person and get her to like and respect me so my marriage won’t be awful” thing would make 100% sense if it was a marriage arranged for political/alliance reasons that he had no choice but to find a way to live with, but the way it is in canon, he completely brought all this on himself by refusing to ditch tuon when given a dozen easy opportunities to do so.

“‘i want you [aludra] to come with me. i know somebody who’ll be happy to pay for making as many of your dragons as you want. he can make every bellfounder from andor to tear stop casting bells and start casting dragons.’ avoiding rand’s name did not stop the colors from whirling inside his head and resolving for an instant into rand - fully clothed, thank the light - talking with loial by lamplight in a wood-paneled room...‘and if he isn’t interested,’ again the colors came, but he resisted, and they melted away” “‘the dragon reborn.’ the colors swirled and despite his fighting them again became rand and loial for a moment. this was not going to be as easy as it had seemed.” mat has SUCH A HARD TIME not thinking about rand compared to perrin, it is genuinely hilarious jfkgh also, i’m still waiting to see where the “mat is a bad friend to rand and always runs away from him” claims come from because even now he’s STILL thinking about going back to rand with new weapons that will help him!

“i will take you with any name you do care to use so long as you be my wife” not bayle domon out here being the king of romance 😭

“he soon told them to stop bringing him rumors about rand. fighting the colors in his head was too much effort, and he lost that fight as often as he won. sometimes it was all right, but sometimes he caught glimpses of rand and min, and it seemed those two were carrying on something awful.” mat is rand/min-phobic too, god bless. like come on, it’s bad enough i have to put up with their relationship in their own povs, now i have to hear about it in mat’s too??? poor mat. poorer me. also, crying over mat having such trouble Not Thinking About Rand that he has to institute a rule where nobody is allowed to talk to him about rand jkjfgh my man that is a CRUSH perrin is rand’s friend and fellow ta’veren too but has NEVER had this much trouble not thinking about him!

“the eelfinn had gathered the memories they had planted in his head, but how could they harvest memory from a corpse?...maybe they created some sort of link to any human who visited them, a link that allowed them to copy all of a man’s memories after that right up to the moment he died...burn him, the bloody foxes were inside his head right then!” okay mat just drew a TON of wild conclusions out of nowhere and i’m bewildered! i’m 99% sure they’re all true from vague things i’ve seen you guys say about the eelfinn, but i have no idea why mat suddenly realized all these things right then (all that happened was that he had a memory of dying and thought “huh, it’s weird i don’t have any memories of other men’s childhoods.”) i thought the memories were his past lives, not just random guys who visited the eelfinn in the past? how does he know this? how does he know the eelfinn harvest memories? how does he know they’re called eelfinn, for that matter? he’s never called them that before!

okay i looked it up and i discovered that the aelfinn and eelfinn were indeed first named in TSR, but it was by birgitte to perrin in TAR. i’m putting on a cone of shame for insisting so adamantly that they’ve never been named before, but in my defense i can’t be held accountable for paying attention to anything that happens in perrin chapters. and mat never heard about that since he hasn’t seen perrin since then, and from what little i could find on google mat first calls the snake people aelfinn in WH and there’s no explanation of when or how he learned that name. i’m positive he called them snaky/foxy people for several books after TSR. positive! surely i’m not just misremembering! maybe birgitte told him offscreen at some point in acos? anyway, i had to read this whole paragraph several times because mat just pulled so much random knowledge out of his ass and i’m still confused where he got it from lmao from what i can recall, he’s never once mentioned anything about memory-harvesting in his previous angsting about the eelfinn and has always thought about the memories as being from his own past lives.

“he was not sure he really wanted to dance away [from tuon] anymore” WHY NOT “but want and wish as he might, he was well and truly caught” YOU LITERALLY AREN’T, YOU COULD DITCH HER AT ANY TIME

“[tuon] saw [the aes sedai as] two escaped damane and a marath’damane, and she had no use for either until they were decently collared. her phrase, that.” mat does not seem bothered by this.

“sometimes [noal] interjected comments on mat’s play, that he was exposing himself on the left, that he was setting a fine trap on the right, and just when tuon looked ready to fall into it.” i love noal, he’s just a weird grandpa who came out of nowhere and just hangs around all the time being weird and awkward. i think i read that he’s jain farstrider, and even if i hadn’t it’s been kinda obvious with the way he talks about jain farstrider in this chunk of chapters and all the info he knows about far-off lands, but i’m interested to see how he ended up where he is now.

the three aes sedai come to tell tuon to return to seanchan and carry out a treaty for peace, and tuon collars all three of them. to his credit, mat attempts to talk her down and takes the collars off himself when she doesn’t listen and later buries the collars so no one can use them again, but he doesn’t react NEARLY as strongly as i would’ve wanted him to, or as the past mat even of winter’s heart would have.

mat watching tuon literally enslaving people: “she looked a bloody leopard staring at three tethered goats. and strangely, more beautiful than ever.” 🤮🤮

“[teslyn] looked as though she could not believe he would actually remove the [collar]” and does that give you a wakeup call about your recent behavior mat? no? okay.

“i want them to stop annoying me, toy.” “i think they’ll agree to that after this. you will agree, won’t you?” when joline says nothing: “‘i could let precious keep you for a few days until you change your mind.’ joline’s collar clicked open in his hands. ‘but i won’t.’” 🤮🤮🤮

like fr tuon tries to enslave the aes sedai for annoying her with attempts to broker peace between randland and the seanchan, and mat acts like both sides were equally in the wrong? he doesn’t even seem to care about the seanchan invading his home. tuon’s comfort is more important to him than the chance of stopping the seanchan, i guess.

mat spends the next day juggling for tuon and telling her jokes, like a fuckin court jester. i am almost at min levels of “please find some self-respect” although i don’t think it would ever be possible for any other character to fall THAT far. on the other hand, at least rand is worthy of being simped for!

some weird thing happens with a dead people sighting and then a peddler gets sucked into the pavement. no clue what just happened so i’m just gonna move on.

random sidetrack: how fun would it have been if mat and elayne had been with the circus at the same time and he got to watch her tightrope act? with her sexy outfit? i wish!!!

“[if aes sedai found out tuon was a seanchan lady] in all likelihood, tuon would be on her way to tar valon before he could blink. as a ‘guest,’ of course, to help stop the fighting. no doubt many would say that would be for the good, that he should hand her over himself and tell them who she really was” me, i’m many “but he had given his word.” UGH mat keeping his promise to rand to protect elayne = sexy! mat keeping his promise to protect tuon = not sexy!

“‘i shall probably make [tar valon] my capital. i shall have you show me the city, toy. you have been there?’ light! she was a tough little woman. gorgeous, but definitely tough as nails.” haha nothing like your girlfriend talking about her plans to conquer your entire continent, am i right lads? what a quirky and sexy flaw!

“‘there’s no need for that, with me or anyone else,’ [egeanin] drawled, bending to take amathera by the shoulders and draw her to her feet. amathera rose slowly, hesitantly, and kept her eyes down until egeanin put a hand beneath her chin and raised her head gently. ‘you look me in the eyes. you look everyone in the eyes.’” so good to see egeanin making a genuine effort to change her ways and treat everyone as an equal! if only tuon could get the same character development. or ANY character development.

“[juilin] disliked any seanchan, for what they had done to amathera.” “there was a hint of a challenge in his gaze. it was clear that to him, egeanin had further to go to prove she no longer saw amathera as stolen property.” JUILIN IS THE ONLY ONE IN THIS GODDAMN PLOTLINE WITH SOME GODDAMN SENSE AND A CONSCIENCE!!! THANK YOU JUILIN finally a solid reason other than “i think his name is pretty” to explain his presence among my list of favorite side characters.

“‘and when [atha’an miere women] are out of sight of land-’ [noal] cut off abruptly and cleared his throat, eyeing olver, who was stacking the snakes a foxes on the board’s corners. ‘what do they do then?’ olver asked. ‘why...’ noal rubbed his nose with a gnarled finger. ‘why, they scramble about the rigging so nimbly you’d think they had hands where their feet should be. that’s what they do.’ olver oohed, and noal gave a soft sigh of relief.” finally someone is being age-appropriate with olver! thank you noal! good grandpa! or actually great-grandpa, since thom is grandpa and mat is dad.

thom finally reveals the letter from moiraine, which is written in the most dramatic and cryptic fashion imaginable, bless her.

“‘my dearest thom.’ who would have thought moiraine, of all people, would address old thom merrilin so?” not any reader, that’s for sure, mat jdkjfgh i’m glad he’s as baffled by this ship as we all are.

“mat may refuse. he does not hold me in the affection you seem to” momraine 💔💔 “if you see lan again, tell him that all of this is for the best. his destiny follows a different path from mine. i wish him all happiness with nynaeve.” 💔 but also ❤️

olver just so happens to remember that birgitte just so happened to tell him that the eelfinn live in the tower of ghenjei, and when noal describes what legends say it looks like, mat just so happens to remember that he just so happened to pass it on domon’s boat in eotw. birgitte also just so happened to tell olver how to get into the tower since there’s no opening. all very convenient.

“he had never really trusted moiraine, or liked her either. only fools trusted aes sedai. but then, if not for her, he would be back in the two rivers mucking out the barn and tending his da’s cows. or he would be dead. and there old thom sat, saying nothing, just staring at him. that was the rub. he liked thom. oh, blood and bloody ashes. ‘burn me for a fool,’ he muttered. ‘i’ll go.’” ❤️❤️❤️ mat truly becomes 10x better the moment he’s away from tuon or the 3 aes sedai.

tuon wants mat to take her to a tavern, which is a long-held matlayne dream of mine! how dare she! tho i will say that tuon going “so when is there going to be a fight??” the whole time they’re there is hilarious jfkgjh

when mat is afraid the seanchan farmers in the town might recognize tuon: “toy, i have met many farmers while visiting the country, but they very properly kept their eyes on the ground even if i allowed them to stand.” mat went into conniptions over Arrogant Nobles whenever elayne so much as lifted her chin too far for his liking, yet tuon says shit like this and he is SILENT, even in his thoughts. i hate it here!!

from a little later: “‘nobles...’ he trailed off, clearing his throat. he could hardly tell her nobles were fools with their noses so high in the air they could not see where they were stepping. she was who and what she was, after all.” and yet you never had a problem saying such things to elayne even though she’s the most down-to-earth noble in the entire series and is your ally and your friends’ friend rather than an invader of your homeland.

when thom talks about how unfortunate it is that people don’t mind the seanchan bc that means it’ll be harder to get them out: “mat glanced at tuon. how did she feel hearing thom talk about her people so?” WHY DO YOU GIVE A SHIT HOW SHE FEELS!!! HER PEOPLE INVADED YOUR HOMELAND!!! GOD!!!!

“[the seanchan] mean to kill [tuon] when they find her [bc they think she’s an impostor]” cool, let them.

“he was going to do whatever was necessary to make sure she was not in danger of being broken. whatever it took.” WHY??!?!?!?!!

mat almost dies because he Can’t Kill A Woman, deep sigh. tuon kills her for him, thank you tuon for having at least a modicum of sense unlike some people.

“even rand was not ta’veren enough to make this happen. the colors whirled, and [perrin] splintered them unformed.” mat: you can stop thinking about rand? perrin: what, like it’s hard?

“‘if this is what happens to you when you get with child,’ aviendha said, adjusting the dark shawl looped over her arms, ‘i think i will never have any.’” oh boy do i have news for you

“the high-canted saddle of her dun pushed her bulky aiel skirts high enough to bare her stockinged legs to the knee” i should’ve been keeping track of the number of times elayne has remarked upon aviendha’s legs being bared while riding. it’s been a Lot of times.

“elayne had insufficient soldiers to hold six leagues of wall” “her greatest fear at present was that [arymilla] would succeed in bribing [mercenary] companies still inside the walls” “‘you [birgitte] don’t have to lead every counterttack yourself.’ ‘and who else is there? my officers are inexperienced boys or else men who came out of retirement...except for the mercenary captains, anyway, and there isn’t one i’d trust without someone looking over his shoulder. which brings us back to: who else but me?’” “she could not afford birgitte falling over from exhaustion. light, she wished gareth bryne were there. egwene needed him, but so did she.” and *i* wish mat and the band were here!!! goddammit!

“this siege hardly gave her time to mourn her mother. or lini, her old nursemaid. rahvin had murdered her mother, and likely lini had died trying to protect her. white-haired and thin with age, lini would not have backed down even for one of the forsaken.” TRAKAND FAMILY REUNION (including lini ofc) WHEN???

“and how would you have stopped me?” “by tying you up and having [aviendha] sit on you” birgitte says as IF elayne would’ve considered it a bad thing to be tied up and sat on by aviendha

“she wished she knew how mat was.” MATLAYNE RIGHTS ❤️❤️❤️❤️ “and dear thom. and poor little olver. every night she offered prayers that they had escaped the seanchan safely.” man i WISH 😭😭

we see elayne having pregnancy-induced channeling troubles, interesting. this will definitely cause problems later.

“smiling, aviendha turned her face up to let the rain run down her cheeks. ‘i love to watch water falling from the sky.’” 🥺🥺

some dude guybon, who is “little short of beautiful,” shows up with 10,000 soldiers and elayne promotes him to birgitte’s second in command on the spot although she’s never met him before. please let the suddenly-and-conveniently-appearing hot guy be genuinely there to help and not a darkfriend, please. also, i can think of another hot young general with lots of soldiers who would be of great help to elayne right now and who would have no chance of being a darkfriend 😤

maybe Woman Solidarity really is a thing, bc while male readers are always complaining about elayne Being Too Reckless and Endangering Herself Needlessly while pregnant, i’m empathizing hard with her frustration over everyone treating her like glass for being pregnant and her stubborn determination to prove that she can still do things and am of the opinion that she has done nothing wrong ever in her life.

i feel like elayne’s mood swings are just normal human emotions for someone under a great deal of stress and poor elayne is just gaslighting herself (and to some extent being gaslit by others) into thinking it’s all pregnancy mood swings.

100x more empathy for damane and disgust for slavers in 1 page of elayne crossing paths with a random freed damane than in several chapters of mat hanging out with his own allies who were once damane.

“men or women, aiel wept unashamed when they felt the need” aiel culture says fuck toxic masculinity 😌

“‘it’s custom in seanchan to strike a girl’s name from her family’s rolls when she’s collared, and the poor woman feels she has no right to the name she was born with. jillari was given with the collar, but she wants to keep that.’ ‘there are more reasons to hate the seanchan than i can count,’ elayne said heatedly.” where is this energy in mat’s chapters where it is most needed????

“elayne reached out without looking, and found aviendha’s hand waiting to take hers, a comforting grip. she squeezed back, unable to imagine the grief of losing aviendha. they shared a quick glance, and aviendha’s eyes mirrored her own feelings. had she really once thought aiel faces impassive and unreadable?” ROMANCE!!!! MARRIAGE!!!!

i hate that warder bonds between 2 women are inexplicably and illogically Different than warder bonds between a man and a woman, and i especially hate that the difference is that the emotion mirroring is stronger and the 2 women are always setting each other off, because Women Be Overemotional And Irrational, of course.

one of the sea folk accidentally blurts out criticism of another sea folk in front of elayne and is then flustered about it. elayne is ta’veren, i tell you!

“elayne threw back her head and screamed as loudly as she could, a howl of pure outrage and fury. she screamed until her lungs were empty, leaving her panting.” JSKDJFGHKJHKJ GOOD FOR HER i laughed SO hard at that. elayne’s primal screams of rage are something that can be so personal. (it happened once before in tfoh at the circus and i loved it just as much then, this poor woman really deserves to Scream on occasion. for that “this piece of media is allowed 1 usage of ‘fuck,’ where would you put it?” meme, i would definitely give the 1 allotted fuck to elayne.)

“‘do you think i should wear wetlander clothes, elayne, since we are going to meet these mercenaries?’ [aviendha] asked in tones of great reluctance...elayne hid a smile of her own, no easy task since she wanted to laugh. her sister pretended to disdain silks, but she seldom missed an opportunity to wear them. ‘if you can bear it, aviendha,’ she said gravely.” THIS IS SO PURE aviendha getting into fancy clothes sparks joy, min getting into fancy clothes does not spark joy. (because avi’s is about her assimilating into wetlander culture and finding things to like about it, and also being given the opportunity to explore her own sense of style for the first time after spending much of her life in the “uniform” of a maiden or wise one, whereas min was happily settled in her own style and changed it purely to mold herself into her idea of what rand would think is hot.)

avi is careless about being naked in front of the maids but elayne adjusts her own towel carefully because “essande saw her in her skin every day, and sephanie too, but it was nothing to let happen without reason” she does not say a peep about any concerns over AVI seeing her naked without reason though 👀👀👀

elayne on pregnancy soreness: “oh, how she wished rand were near enough to share the full effect of her bond with him.” GIRL SAME

in describing the sitting room, elayne mentions the table “where she and aviendha took most of their meals” and all the books in the room, saying that “they often read here of an evening.” the domesticity of it all 😭😭 they’re married!!

avi turns out to have a skill, possibly a Talent, for knowing the function of ter’angreal just by touching them. handy! tho i wonder why this hasn’t come up before bc i think she’s been helping elayne with the ebou dar ter’angreal for a while. also, what happened to avi’s other Talents of unweaving and of seeing weave residues? we haven’t heard about those after their brief time of relevance in POD. i guess that while egwene, elayne, and nynaeve are relatively solid in their Talents, avi’s just a catch-all for whatever random Talents are necessary for the plot at the current moment lmao

“‘oh, light!’ [aviendha] exclaimed, flinging her arms around elayne. ‘i never thought! i have great toh to you! i never meant to endanger you or your babes! never!’ ... ‘you have no toh to me. it was you i was thinking of. you could have died, or burned yourself out.’ aviendha pulled back enough to look into elayne’s eyes. what she saw there reassured her, for a small smile curved her lips.” MARRIED

THE WISE ONES ARE TAKING AVI AWAY FROM ELAYNE NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO this was my LAST ship standing i can’t lose it!!!!! i’m devastated!!!!!!!! how will i survive with NO ships to sustain me??? i know that cauthor and randlayne reunions won’t happen until book 14, so dear GOD the matlayne reunion better be soon!!!!

“aviendha leaped away from the embrace, flushing furiously” “elayne took her sister’s hand in a firm grip, and aviendha squeezed back” “elayne wanted to run after aviendha too, to grasp every moment with her” MARRIED

rand can send letters via asha’man to bael but not to elayne or avi?? good god! MIN got letters from him when he was away in illian, and she already knew where he was and what he was up to (and she whined that it was only 2 short letters and that rand was too busy for her).

avi: “i will try to visit you [elayne] as often as i can.” nadere: “strange to speak casually of visiting from so far. to cover leagues, hundreds of leagues, in a step.” are people finally going to take advantage of Traveling to hang out with each other while in two different locations and plotlines?? too much to ask for rand to do this with elayne, of course. (elayne can’t since she doesn’t know where exactly he is, but he knows she’ll be in caemlyn for the foreseeable future - and he’s just been chilling in that manor in tear for at least a few days and has had plenty of time to pop back to caemlyn for a visit but just hasn’t! dammit!) anyway, i hope we actually will get to see avi visit elayne in the future because i cannot HANDLE the prospect of them ALSO being separated for the rest of the series. my last ship standing dammit!!!

when elayne gives avi angreal to take with her: “‘you shame me, sister. i have no farewell gift to give in return.’ ‘you give me your friendship. you gave me a sister.’ elayne felt a tear slide down her cheek. she essayed a laugh, but it was a weak, tremulous thing. ‘how can you say you have nothing to give? you’ve given me everything.’” ROMANCE!!!! MARRIAGE!!!!!!! genuinely one of, if not THE, most romantic lines in the entire series to date! you could take all of avilayne’s canon interactions and just change “sister” to “wife” and it legit would come across as such a strong romance without a single kiss ever needing to be exchanged. like yeah female friendships in this series are much more intimate than male friendships are allowed to be, but even then avilayne is SO different from and more intense than all other female friendships in the series. not even mat would want to bet against the odds of their relationship being made romantic in the show, now that i’ve seen how INSANELY homoerotic it is in the books, i consider it an absolute guarantee that the show will make the abundance of subtext into actual text.

“tears glistened in aviendha’s eyes too. despite the others watching, she put her arms around elayne and hugged her hard.” we know how huge it is for an aiel to hug somebody in front of others!! “‘i will miss you, sister,’ she whispered. ‘my heart is as cold as night.’” avi’s not gonna let elayne outdo her with romantic lines! “‘and mine, sister,’ elayne whispered, hugging back equally hard. ‘i will miss you too. but you will be allowed to visit me sometimes. this isn’t forever.’ ‘no, not forever. but i will still miss you.’” “‘may you always find water and shade, sister,’ elayne replied. the aiel way had a finality about it, so she added, ‘until i see your face again.’ and as quickly as that, they were gone. as quickly as that, she felt very alone. aviendha’s presence had become a certainty, a sister to talk to, laugh with, share her hopes and fears with, but that comfort was gone.” 😭😭😭😭

****spoilers for the series endgame in terms of me referencing characters who i know survive the last battle**** it has finally occurred to me to be very worried about the future for avilayne. when avi becomes a full wise one, will she have to stay with the aiel permanently? will she have to go back to live in the waste? i am PRAYING that after the last battle enough aiel decide to remain in the wetlands and caemlyn specifically (i mean unless the aiel all die in the last battle since their destruction is prophesized, oh fuck so many things to worry about!) so that avi can be a wise one to the aiel in caemlyn and still live with elayne! rand is included in all this too, of course, but i’m less certain of him ending up in caemlyn post-last battle since iirc the amol epilogue summary i read back in december while the show was airing only said that he was gonna wander the world (pls don’t tell me anything more specific, i already regret everything i DO know about the series endgame lmao i wouldn’t have read the epilogue summary if i’d known i would read the books, i had no intention of reading them and figured it’d take 10 years to find out how it ends once the show got there, and i read a cauthor oneshot that had a brief post-canon scene of mat thinking about rand in a way implying he was dead (yes it was tagged as post-canon spoilers, yes it’s my own fault for going “that sign can’t stop me because i can’t read” and reading the fic anyway) and i was like RAND DIES??? SAY SIKE RIGHT THE FUCK NOW so OBVIOUSLY i had to look up for sure whether it was true, i couldn’t bear it!)

“elayne did not realize her shoulders had slumped until she straightened them. her sister was gone, yet she had a city to defend and a throne to gain. duty would have to sustain her now.” THE FACT THAT THIS IS THE EXACT SAME WAY SHE THINKS ABOUT RAND

“her reasons for not countering [the rumor that mellar is the babydaddy] had changed - she no longer had need to protect her babes, rand’s babes” why not?? they would still be in danger if it was known they were the dragon reborn’s kids. and elayne has known the whole time that min’s viewing said they would be born healthy but this didn’t prevent her initially not wanting it known rand is the dad.

the palace is changing, corridors moving and vanishing and appearing. maybe related to that thing of the guy mat saw sink into the pavement.

“a falcon [map marker] showed where the goshien were. or had been. were they gone yet? [elayne] slipped the falcon into her belt pouch. aviendha was very much a falcon.” ❤️❤️❤️

“‘they’re gone, or going,’ elayne told [birgitte]. there would be visits. aviendha was not gone forever.” 😭❤️

in all rand’s “i’m so dangerous to my loved ones!” fretting, why does he never once think about the fact that hundreds of asha’man, many of whom may well be traitors to him (and darkfriends tho i’m not sure if he knows that much), are right on elayne’s doorstep because he put the school there?

“again someone seemed to think she had answers she did not. but then, that was what it meant to be queen. you were always expected to have an answer, to find one. that was what it meant to be aes sedai.” baby ❤️

“she often found herself staring at a page without seeing a word, thinking of her sister, or starting to say something to aviendha before remembering that she was not there. she felt very lonely, which was ridiculous. sephanie stood in a corner...eight guardswomen were standing outside the door to the apartments...but none of them was aviendha.” elayne misses her wife!!! so do i!! i will say, i’m not pitting avilayne and randlayne against each other bc i love both equally and it’s not randlayne’s fault that the narrative robs them at every turn, but it’s kinda hilarious how elayne is so much more cut up about her “sister’s” departure than her boyfriend’s and babydaddy’s. (granted rand’s departure is no longer fresh and she was much sadder and more worried about him and missing him more in previous books, in this book her entire chapter chunk has been one Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day during which she only thinks about rand to go “burn him for knocking me up!” because she’s in a bad mood.)

elayne cries upon hearing that reanne corly was murdered and chides herself over Pregnancy Mood Swings, sweetheart crying over a friend’s murder is NORMAL! you’re allowed to have emotions!

#wot #wot book spoilers

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