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#twot book spoilers
hazelcephalopod · 22 days
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So I’ve gotten back into reading TGH and reached chapter uh… I’ll put that later. Anyway here’s the summary—
“They go to Stedding Tsofu to find a Waygate. Waygate is firmly blocked by Machin Shin. Their journey seems for naught. But at least we get more Loial lore, and learn Ogier women just arrange the marriages and tell the men who they are marrying. Mat -full cringe failboy he sometimes(often) is- says human men would never let a woman boss them around like that. Rand mutters about Mat being wrong. Everyone else presumable at least side eyes him. Because he is wrong. Verin is right there telling everyone what to do. Rand remembers the woman’s council bacually betrothing him to Egwene before he knew what was happening. Fun times. They realize they have to use a portal stone to get to Fain. The Ogier happily show them the portal stone nearby -anything is better then the Ways. The boys keep insisting they are not ta’veren or Dragons or Aiel anything like that. Everyone nods and then ignores that and talk about them being ta’veren and how they’ve basically got no choice but to live in their wake. Rand is reminded again he can in fact channel, in fact doing so with little resistance after being asked -possibly s first? He is also unnerved meeting several Aiel women. Because they tried to kill them and also well… damn does he look like them. Aka “The ever increasing eroding of Rand denial copium receives several serious blows in a few days.”
I’m currently mid Ch 37 “What Might Be”, portal stone icon I believe.
Oh! And just for fine to cover it… Also Fain delivered that Horn, Turok was like “you’re probable lies amuse me for now. Perhaps I will give you to the Empress. Let me describe the terribleness of the royal court. Nvm you’re way too eager about that.” And Fain is just internally grinning and steepling his fingers like “ah ha. Yes give me more information. Give me more access to your leaders. You play right into the plans I have made and am making right now. And will make in the future.” Hilarious.
also…
I’ve decided that Hurin is a lil bit of a dipshit simp. Yes he has sniffing powers. And a wife. And children. But he’s a Gilear if you will. Also probably brain mushed by ta’veren a bit. Selene didn’t show up! (Good) Oh and how deeply I am not looking forward to the parts of Mat featuring “a tale of his sad little misogyny even if it often makes him look foolish. Still a bit too cringe” -at least that’s my fear. We shall see.
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nellyrue · 2 years
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Reading The Eye of the World finally
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lostxplorer · 7 months
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I honestly don't know why Lanfear looks like she's going to start signing some symphonic metal at any given moment but I don't care and I personally thing it's the best thing they've ever done
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iviarellereads · 2 months
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Wheel of Time full series spoiler thoughts on EOTW 39-43
A probably semi-regular weekly bonus to my reread blog, since sometimes you realize things on reread that just make you need to yell in a full spoiler space.
I'm hesitant to say it outright in the main chapter, but I believe Gill's men think Rand would be good to have on their side in a fight precisely because his past life is starting to leak through. We've seen some of the stray thoughts Rand can't trace the source of, it wouldn't surprise me at all if RJ thought Rand might start comporting himself like a real blademaster, especially with the influence of ta'veren over him.
The Warders with the Reds still bother me. Sure, not all the Red Ajah are fully man-haters, but why are there so many Warders with them in this when none of them take Warders? Are there just unattached Warders hanging around to guard the Red on these trips or did RJ just not have the world hammered out yet? Another thing I'm glad the show is smoothing over a bit.
Logain's laugh, as Rand sees him, and as he sees Rand and knows that he's not the Dragon, but that he's about to see the world burn. So chilling.
ELAYNE! And Gawyn and Galad and the rest of the Caemlyn Crew, but ELAYNE! Cinnamon roll princess. The show has her EXACTLY right, brewing illicit beverages under her bed and dressing like a Disney princess in hiding. I'm a little sad that her first meeting with Rand was so abrupt at the end of season 2 of the show, but I'm fascinated at how it's under similar context but completely reversed circumstances: she's busting in on him and introducing herself for the first time in the show as just "Elayne" no Daughter-Heir or title or family name.
I don't think we ever get a real, like, confirmation that Gawyn takes up his role as First Prince of the Sword after her coronation, do we? Like, the world kind of rolls right from her accession war to the Last Battle, and we know he Travels back and forth from her to Egg a couple of times, but he's all Egg's at the end, not hers. Galad's off leading the Whitecloaks. Which leaves… who? as her First Prince.
Gawyn saying Elayne should marry someone from the Two Rivers, and then the narrative describing him as "babbling". Someone just got hit by ta'veren to give us that hint.
I still find it so fascinating that SO MANY PEOPLE take Elayne's side totally unthinking about Galad, though. Like, we're so primed to hate a goody-two-shoes as a whole-assed society that we just hate him with her the whole way, for the most part. It wasn't until my last reread that he really grew on me. (Gawyn… SIGH. I have a lot to say about Gawyn, but like Mat, he never grew on me, though unlike Mat I think Gawyn's potential was entirely wasted by the lack of any single conversation with Egwene about the bloodknives. We'll get there, someday, but MY GIRL WOULD UNDERSTAND, DUDE, JUST TELL HER.)
The rest of this week is mainly just catch-up, but there are a few fun moments. Egg being SO JEALOUS of Elayne is funny when she'll give Rand up to her willingly in a couple of books. Moiraine sitting in the chair by the fire, seeming to be in a throne, when she was first in line to the throne of Cairhien as the Aiel War ended.
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near-dareis-mai · 9 months
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Hi, so I was wondering if you've read twot books or spoilers and can tell me what happens with Siuan and Moiraine in the books? Like, I know they don't end up together and each of them has a man but they were friends so what happened to that? Did it end? How? I tried to look for the spoilers myself but I couldn't find anything specific about them and I know they're barely in the books but I'm really curious about how their relationship ends in canon or if at least they end up on good terms or what and I don't know who can I ask and you seem really nice so maybe you can help me? Or point me in the right direction to where I can find the answer?
Spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time book series
Anon, I’m very surprised you haven’t been able to find anything about these two because I’ve seen many posts about it, especially on tumblr, but I tried my best to summarize everything you asked for. It got a bit long, because we’re talking about a story that spans 15 books, but uh, enjoy. (You will not enjoy this.)
The short version is:
Moiraine and Siuan start their quest for the Dragon Reborn when they are 22/23 years old. They are Accepted (studying to be Aes Sedai) in the White Tower when they both hear the prophecy of the Dragon being Reborn. They become Aes Sedai very soon after this, and kickstart their quest to find the Dragon Reborn by Moiraine riding out of the Tower to physically search for him and Siuan staying in the Tower and learning to be a spymaster so she can do information gathering for the search. At this point in time, there’s no real doubt - unless you’re reading the text with blinders on - that Moiraine and Siuan love each other and are romantically/sexually involved with each other. These bitches gay. -
The main book series starts 20 years after the above happens. By this time, Moiraine has searched all over the Westlands for the Dragon Reborn, before finally finding viable candidates at Emond’s Field. By this time, Siuan is the Amyrlin Seat. At this point, there’s no real hint in the text that they’re still romantically involved. However, the text makes it very clear that they’re each other’s closest friend, they’re still very much devoted to their joint cause, and to each other through the difficulties arising from that cause. -
Strictly in the book series, it’s never really gone into detail what happens to the relationship in the ~20 years when Moiraine is (mostly) out of the Tower searching and Siuan is (mostly) in the Tower spymastering. I think you are led to infer that while they remained devoted to their cause and to how they are tied to each other by their cause, their actual romantic relationship supposedly either ended soon after Moiraine first left the Tower to search or gradually fizzled out. Also of interest here is that it seems to be a belief held in-world by the Aes Sedai and out-world by the author of the books, that these kind of "youthful" relationships between Accepted, while definitely being sexual and affectionate, shouldn't be considered "real relationships" and were merely stepping stones to a "real" relationship when they mature, usually with a man (issa yikes, chief). Even disregarding that, a truly satisfying explanation is never given of just what happened. -
By the end of the main series, Moiraine has been massively depowered due to a term of imprisonment in a magical other-realm where it’s explicitly stated that she went through severe mental torture. After her rescue from said realm, she gets comparatively sidelined by the narrative, and gets married to Thom, a man she has very little on-text interaction with before that. -
By the end of the main book series, Siuan is, uh, dead. But not before she is deposed from the Amyrlin Seat, stilled, then un-stilled but depowered, made an unpaid servant (hey there’s a word for that, isn’t there) to a lord on a technicality over an oath, gets spanked by said lord for misbehaving, falls in love with that lord in a very Stockholm-ish romantic progression, agrees to marry said lord, mentors Egwene as the new Amyrlin Seat, does a bunch of daes dae’mar-ing to ensure Egwene stays in power, and then dies at the last battle in a throwaway death.
The much longer TL;DR version is below the cut:
The Wheel of Time series consists of 14 books in the main series, with each chapter in the book written from varying third-person points of View. Moiraine and Siuan both have some chapters in their point of view through the series, but only four chapters in the entire main book series where they actually interact with each other, all of them in The Great Hunt (Book 2).
(However, Robert Jordan also wrote a Moiraine-centric prequel novel called New Spring, which takes place 20 years before the main book series, which is gloriously gay and gloriously Siuanraine, and I will get to it at the very end of this post, because it deserves its own section.)
Back to the main book series:
The two chapters in which Moiraine and Siuan first interact are Chapter 4 and 5 of The Great Hunt (Book 2). They are from Moiraine's PoV, and the essential gist of them is a) Moiraine is at Fal Dara following the events of The Eye of the World (Book 1) b) Siuan comes to Fal Dara for a state visit as the Amyrlin Seat c) Moiraine is summoned to see Siuan privately and all the other Aes Sedai who came along with Siuan thinks Moiraine is being chastised for her waywardness in the meeting, but in private they actually embrace warmly, and Siuan mentions that Moiraine is the only person with whom she can remember who she used to be when she was younger and not the Amyrlin seat. They also discuss that their conspiracy to find the Dragon together will have both of them stilled if the other Aes Sedai find out. Then they discuss Rand and various other matters of political importance, and then at the end of the second chapter they hug again before Moiraine leaves, and Moiraine thinks of Siuan as “my dearest friend”. Also, it’s mentioned that Moiraine and Siuan feel a tingle when each other channels, which is something only two female channelers very close to each other feel and even then it’s supposed to be temporary, whereas Moiraine and Siuan’s had lasted for over 20 years and counting.
So at this point, while it’s not explicitly stated that these two were gay for each other, at least when younger, just the way they were written already set a lot of gaydars pinging. To set further context, the two chapters described above (which are from the second book in the series) are the first substantial Moiraine PoV chapters we get in the entire series, and Siuan wasn’t even in the first book (though she was mentioned in passing, but only as the Amyrlin Seat, not as Siuan). We got a tiny peek into Moiraine’s PoV at the very end of the first book, but for most of the first book (The Eye of the World) she’s very much shrouded in mystery, a figure of awe and mystique, with even some hints alluding that she might actually be a Darkfriend that might secretly be working against everything she said she was working for. So the two chapters described above from The Great Hunt (Book 2) are the first time we actually get a look into who Moiraine is internally, what drives her, what her foibles and truest feelings are, the very intense feelings that lie behind her emotionless mask, and it’s very interesting to me that Robert Jordan thought that it was necessary for Siuan to be there for these chapters, that she was the person who could wrangle a show of true emotions and sentiment from Moiraine, who is so tied up in not showing any part of herself to the world that can be used against her.
The next (and final) two chapters where they interact are in Chapter 7 and 8 of The Great Hunt (Book 2). A lot happens in these two chapters, including Moiraine and Siuan’s find-the-Dragon-Reborn plot being found out by an Aes Sedai who used to teach them, but crucially to the Siuanraine dynamic is at one point the Aes Sedai deduces “Moiraine could not do this alone, and who better to help than her girlhood friend who used to sneak down with her to snitch sweetcakes.” Again the important things to note here that is already established by Book 2 that a) Moiraine and Siuan were the closest of friends when they were younger and studying at the Tower to be Aes Sedai and b) This closeness is intrinsically tied into why they have taken this quest together, their trust in each other throughout the years despite so many lengths of time apart when mistrust could have fostered between them, and how they can be truly equal with each other despite Siuan’s title as the most powerful woman in the world and despite Moiraine hailing from a powerful and wealthy noble house that once used to rule Cairhien.
After this, Moiraine and Siuan do not meet each other again in the main book series.
Moiraine’s story in the main book series after this: For the next 12 books in the main series, Moiraine PoVs are few and far in between (not enough) and mainly concerned with Rand and with the events of the main plot, until the Fires of Heaven (Book 5). Near the end of Fires of Heaven, Moiraine seems to “die” when tackling Lanfear (a Very Bad Girlboss) into a timey-wimey-wibbly-wobbly magic doorway. At this point, we are given to think Moiraine is dead dead, and we have to wait six books later until The Knife of Dreams (Book 11), where we learn that Moiraine is not dead but is imprisoned in another realm (the realm of the Aelfinn and the Ellfinn) and there’s still a chance (but not a surefire chance) of bringing her back alive). In Towers of Midnight (Book 13), the rescue actually happens, Moiraine comes back. Moiraine has 9 PoV chapters in the entire main series before her "death", and two very small PoV snippets in Book 14 after her rescue, which IMO is woefully small given her importance in the narrative.
A few things to note about Moiraine’s story before her rescue/return from the other realm:
1. When Moiraine seems to “die” near the end of The Fires of Heaven (Book 5), she passes Lan’s bond to an Aes Sedai friend of hers, Myrelle, in a hail-mary gambit to save Lan’s life from the heavily depressive urge a Warder would get after their Aes Sedai dies. Myrelle does questionable things to keep Lan from giving in to this urge, and because of this as well as because of the passing of the bond itself, Moiraine and Lan’s relationship fractures in a way that is never repaired on page even after she is rescued, partly because the narrative in the last three books didn’t seem to think their relationship deserved the page time to even have a talk with each other that could be a step forward in that recovery.
2. Moiraine is aware of her fate before she tackles Lanfear through the magic doorway, because she’d seen (admittedly hazy) visions of multiple versions of the future due to plots reasons that’ll take too long to explain, and therefore knew that she had to tackle Lanfear in the doorway and be presumed dead, for future events to pass in a way that would lead to the Light’s victory.
3. Moiraine jumps into the magic doorway in Book 5, and it’s interesting that her decision to do this comes after Siuan’s deposal and reported “death” in Book 4. She really said death is not getting you out of this relationship mfer. (I’m kidding, bookcloaks.)
4. Moiraine thinks Siuan is likely dead when she jumps into the doorway, as Siuan is reported dead after being deposed from the Amyrlin seat. An interesting part here is Moiraine’s response when Egwene tells her of the news of Siuan’s deposal, stilling and presumed death:
“There is a saying in Cairhien, though I have heard it as far away as Tarabon and Saldaea. ‘Take what you want, and pay for it.’ Siuan and I took the path we wanted, and we knew we would have to pay for it eventually.” (The Fires of Heaven, Chapter 15)
The interesting part is Egwene is bemused by Moiraine’s seemingly callous reply to the demise of her oldest friend. To me, this ties back to a certain scene in New Spring where Lan thinks Moiraine is utterly callous and cold when she doesn’t openly react to the betrayal and death of an Aes Sedai she had once respected/cared for, but once he bonds her as her Warder and gets access to her emotions, he realizes that despite her emotionless facade she’s actually hurting very badly inside. (New Spring, Epilogue Chapter)
A few things to note about Moiraine’s story during and after her rescue/return from the other realm:
1. When Moiraine comes back after the rescue, she has one big moment where she reconciles the Dragon (Rand) and the now-Amyrlin (Egwene) during a major disagreement, and this reconciliation is crucial in bringing all the forces of the Light together into a unified Coalition to fight the dark. But aside from this, Moiraine is unfortunately... benched. It’s like the narrative post-rescue didn’t know what to do with her aside from “Yay, mom’s back!” She’s basically benched to being a cheerleader from the sidelines, which is... a choice.
2. Moiraine comes back from Sindhol (the magical timey-wimey realm of the Finn) significantly lower in power than she used to be. However she has a bracelet angreal that will allow her to channel a lot more, to an extent even greater than she used to be able to at her full power, but it’s still annoying that she had to be depowered like that for no real plot reason, especially when the plot immediately scrambles to point out the angreal as if to say “See! She’s not really depowered!” Just... narratively useless and annoying.
3. Moiraine never gets to reunite in the books with Siuan, the person she started this whole quest off with. Not a single conversation. It seems an odd narrative oversight to not have a bookend scene near the end of the series where the two people who started the quest together have a discussion about how everything panned out twenty years later.
4. Immediately upon rescue from Sindhol, Moiraine professes herself to be in love with Thom and marries him right away. This is regarded by many readers to be the most egregious pair-the-spares relationship out of the whole series. Before this, Thom and Moiraine shared one major scene alone, which consisted of them speaking in subtle daes dae’mar terms about their individual histories (The Shadow Rising, Chapter 17), as well as a couple of blink-and-you’ll miss it interactions here and there. Moiraine does know from a vision by Min that she’ll marry Thom, so there’s the added weight of Moiraine - a woman whose entire life is shaped by prophecy - marrying a man that prophecy said she’d marry. Overall, while the hints are there from early books of a Moiraine-Thom endgame, and the more astute readers definitely picked up on them while reading, narrative hints are not the same as relationship development. There isn’t really any scene of Thom and Moiraine actually enjoying each other’s company, other than an aside comment from Thom that she laughed at his gleeman jokes at one point, and the scene mentioned above of them daes dae’mar-ing around each other in The Shadow Rising, where Moiraine sounds “distinctly amused” when they were verbally sparring (which could be read as her being amused by how far out of his depth he is trying to play the Game of Houses against her, but YMMV.) Juxtaposed against this is Thom’s (justified) wariness against Aes Sedai and his various attempts to undermine Moiraine’s authority with the boys during the early books due to this wariness, which was what personally made me uninvested in their romance, because while his wariness may be justified, his actions don’t exactly bode for a lasting relationship with a woman who is Aes Sedai personified. (Also, when Moiraine marries him, Thom mentions his dislike for Aes Sedai, and Moiraine says that for him she’d throw away the bracelet angreal and give up the Power, which... why is a powerful woman throwing her power away for love always seen as romantic. Why is it almost always a woman who gets a romance arc like this. Why.)
5. Upon rescue from Sindhol, it’s very explicitly said that Moiraine suffered very severe mental torture while in Sindhol, but then the narrative refuses to give her the narrative space to talk about it. In the same scene, the male PoV character muses of her state post-imprisonment and post-mental-torture as “Humbled, cast down. That made her seem stronger to him for some reason.” (Towers of Midnight, Chapter 57) which just... plays into this tediously recurring idea in fiction of suffering being good/necessary and being depowered being a good/necessary thing, but it’s especially glaring here with the gender/power dynamics in play.
Siuan’s story in the main book series:
Siuan’s story arc is too extensive to go fully into so I’ll try to summarize key points:
1. The first couple of Siuan PoV’s we get are mainly ramp-up chapters showing her side of the search for the Dragon Reborn, and of awaiting news from Moiraine on how shepherding Rand is going. It’s noted that Siuan was born a fisherman’s daughter in Tear, and because they fear and revile all channelers in Tear, she was bundled off to Tar Valon on the very day it was discovered she could channel, and she has lingering bitterness from being forced to leave her home this way. It’s noted that she’s quite proud of where she comes from, and keeps her furnishings simple as Amyrlin.
“Oh, they do hate it, child. Hate it, and fear it. When they find a Tairen girl who can channel, they bundle her onto a ship for Tar Valon before the day is done, with hardly time to speak goodbyes to her family.” The Amyrlin’s murmur was bitter with memory. (The Dragon Reborn, Chapter 29)
(Also, she fucking hates horses, which is amusing because Tear is known for its horses. And also amusing because Moiraine loves horses.)
2. Siuan was made Amyrlin at 30 years old, the youngest Amyrlin ever until Egwene comes along in the main book series. At the point when the book series starts, Siuan has been Amyrlin for about 10 years. She has a Warder named Alric. While it's not stated in the books, Robert Jordan (the original author of the book series) stated in his notes that Siuan met and took Alric as Warder when she went traveling for a brief period of time outside the Tower after she was raised to Aes Sedai.
2. Siuan’s story takes a major turn in The Shadow Rising (Book 4), where she’s deposed as Amyrlin Seat in a coup by Elaida, stilled in a sham trial held by Elaida, and left for soon-to-be-dead along with her keeper Leane. Siuan and Leane are rescued by Min. Siuan’s Warder Alric is murdered during the coup trying to defend her. After hearing that all of the Blue Ajah, most of the Green Ajah, and substantial members from all other Ajahs except the Red had fled the Tower in protest of the illegal coup, Siuan resolves that instead of dying (owing to the severe depression that stilling comes with) she’ll find where they’ve fled to instead, which she eventually puzzles out is Salidar, a small village in a country called Altara.
3. Upon being stilled, Siuan’s appearance turns very youthful, making her look like she’s about 18 years old, despite her being ~42 years old. This means she’s unrecognizable. Here’s something she says about her new face:
Moiraine herself wouldn't recognize me with this face. (The Gathering Storm, Chapter 41)
(It says a lot to me that this is from Book 12, seven books after Moiraine has been presumed dead, at a point in time when Siuan and Moiraine’s romantic relationship is supposedly definitely over for decades now, and yet it’s still Moiraine whom Siuan defaults to as the person who she should count on to recognize even when she’s unrecognizable. It’s like even when the narrative doesn’t want to linger on their closeness, it can’t help but have them set each other up as the standard for intimacy/closeness.)
4. While escaping with Leane, Min and Logain, Siuan runs afoul of Lord Gareth Bryne, an Andoran nobleman and general. She ends up giving an oath of servitude to him to escape imprisonment and then running away to find Salidar, with the understanding that she’d complete the term of servitude after she was done with her Dragon Reborn cause. He ends up being infatuated with her (when he’s 60 years old and he thinks she’s 18 years old, mind you), and chasing her all the way to Salidar, where he makes Siuan his unpaid servant as the fulfillment of the oath. There begins a tedious arc where Siuan falls in Stockholm-love with this man, and ends up turning into a teenager personality-wise, literally running away if he so much as looks at her, or alternately throwing tantrums at him, which is a very weird narrative U-Turn compared to the 22-year old Siuan from New Spring - a prequel book set 20 years before the main series - who spoke rather maturely and realistically about relationships, and who Moiraine specifically said was very good at controlling her temper.
5. Siuan’s personality in general takes a very weird narrative U-Turn after Gareth Bryne hunts her down in Salidar. The woman we meet in The Great Hunt, who spoke with elegant pathos about Fal Dara being built for war in the midst of all that beauty, turns into a prudish and immature teenager whenever she comes into proximity with Bryne in the latter half of the books. It's as if the narrative is trying to change her into some imagined ideal of what a love interest for Bryne should be - virginal, prudish, inexperienced - except it's like fitting a square peg into a round hole because Siuan was already established as none of those things. It’s just... very weird, and very jarring because it’s like there’s two Siuans, the normal one who’s mentoring Egwene and taking care of business around Salidar and the teenager who comes out when Bryne is around or being discussed.
6. In Lord of Chaos (Book 6), Nynaeve heals Siuan of the stilling, even though stilling was previously thought to be un-healable. However, Siuan is restored to much lower strength in the Power than she used to be and given that the Aes Sedai work on a strength-based power structure, she’s very low in the totem pole even after being healed from stilling. Also, she’s still Lord Gareth Bryne’s unpaid servant. Also, the narrative makes sure to mention that she had to beg on her knees to be accepted back into the Blue Ajah.
7. Siuan never has a reunion with Moiraine in the books. But Siuan does think this in Book 12:
She didn’t regret her life. Yet, at this moment, passing army tents—holes and broken ruts in the path shaking the cart, making it rattle like dried fishbones in a kettle—she envied Moiraine. How often had Siuan bothered to look out of her window toward the beautiful green landscape, before it all had started going sickly? She and Moiraine had fought so hard to save this world, but they had left themselves without anything to enjoy in it. (The Gathering Storm, Chapter 12)
(Crucial to mention that at this point here, Siuan thinks Moiraine is dead. That is to say, she thinks Moiraine is not in this world. The world in which there is nothing left for Siuan to enjoy. The poison for Kuzco. Kuzco’s poison.)
(Also crucial to mention, it’s after this moment of stock-tacking that Siuan makes the decision to actually pursue an “entanglement” aka a relationship. Again, very amusing how even as the narrative actively avoids having Moiraine and Siuan meet again, it cannot help but hold them up as the standard for each other that needs to be stepped over to move on to something else.)
8. By the end of Book 12, Siuan has accepted to marry Gareth Bryne, and made him her Warder (in a situation where he basically corners her into it in a high-stakes moment where Siuan can't really refuse.)
9.  In Book 14, the final book in the series, during the Last Battle, Siuan says how proud she is of Egwene as her legacy, and then dies in a farcically throwaway death by saving Mat from a burning building. If that seems abrupt to you, it is even more abrupt in the narrative.
So, that’s how Moiraine and Siuan’s stories end in canon. Moiraine depowered, married to a man who can’t help but speak of his distaste for Aes Sedai even as he’s marrying one, and estranged from her Warder who she was closest to aside from Siuan for 20 years. Siuan depowered, dethroned, Stockholm-ed into love with a man who spanked her like a child for misbehaving, and then dead in a throwaway scene.
New Spring (NEW MF-ING SPRING)
Robert Jordan wrote a Moiraine-centric (and Lan-centric) prequel novel called New Spring, which is chronologically situated roughly 20 years before the main book series, when Moiraine and Siuan are roughly 22-ish years old and Lan is roughly 26-ish years old. New Spring has 22 chapter chunks from Moiraine’s PoV, 8 chunks from Lan’s PoV, and 1 small chunk of Siuan PoV. New Spring covers Moiraine and Siuan hearing Gitara’s prophecy, being raised to Aes Sedai, starting their search for the Dragon together, Moiraine escaping the Tower to search for the Dragon on the road when the Aes Sedai show plans of putting her on Cairhien’s throne, and meeting Lan on the way, who is returning home from fighting the Aiel War, Moiraine and Lan having misadventures together, and the book culminates with Moiraine and Siuan deciding that Moiraine will continue the search on the road while Siuan will use her newfound position in the Tower as the mentee of the Blue Ajah spymaster to facilitate Moiraine’s search from the Tower. In the final scene of the book, Moiraine seeks out Lan again, reveals to him the truth about her search and the prophecy of the Dragon being Reborn, and asks Lan to become her Warder, which he accepts.
New Spring has its flaws and there are some (non-Siuanraine-related) moments that make my skin crawl, but if you are a fan of the Siuanraine ship or Lan/Moiraine brotp from the show, this is the book you want to read. The main book series has flashes of both these dynamics here and there, but New Spring is where you really delve into just how strong Moiraine’s feelings for Siuan used to be when they were younger, and also into how she meets Lan and decides to make him her Warder.
New Spring is... a jewel, the book of my heart. It’s a delight to see all three of these characters when they were young. It’s interesting to read about Moiraine’s social fauxpas/mishaps and her temper and how she chastises herself for the mishaps even when others don’t even notice, and how you can already see how this tendency is going to develop into the Moiraine we see twenty years later in the book series, who is so closed off that she seems stone-hearted to others, when it fact she’s feeling things very deeply. It’s a delight to see Lan grousing about Tairens and various other soldiers not showing the proper courtesy needed, not following proper form. It’s a delight to see Siuan coming up with various zany ballsy plots ranging from secretly keeping a notebook of potential Dragon Reborn candidate names right under the Aes Sedai’s nose to buying a bunch of mice from a stableboy right after she’s passed her Aes Sedai test, to put into Elaida’s bed, under the reasoning that it wouldn’t be dignified to do this after she’s officially raised Aes Sedai so this is her last chance.
But most of all, New Spring is... super gay. Maybe it’s not explict explicit about it, but it’s impossible to read New Spring and not come out realizing just how terribly in love Moiraine and Siuan used to be, twenty years ago. The entire book is like a Siuanraine fanfic. If you read no other book in the series, if you’re a Siuanraine fan, anon, please read this book.
(In a book-only sense, it’s also utterly heartbreaking to read New Spring, because you get the sense that this is what Moiraine and Siuan truly gave up: the closeness they had to each other. That, even though they didn’t want to, in the twenty years to come they’d both turn to other people for affection, and get closer to other people, and that this change would creep up on them so slowly over twenty years that it’d have happened before they even noticed that it had happened, or had space to mourn it.)
In New Spring, you learn that Moiraine and Siuan arrived at the Tower on the same day, and that they’re within a year of age, with Siuan being slightly younger. They were entered into the Novice enrolment book on the same day. They graduated from Novice to Accepted on the same day, in three years time, which was the fastest anyone had done it (a record shared by Elaida who came a few years before them) until Nynaeve/Egwene/Elayne all break it twenty years later. They were also raised from Accepted to full Aes Sedai on the same day, in three years time, which was again a record matched only by Elaida and broken by Nynaeve/Egwene/Elayne twenty years later. Siuan and Moiraine remained in lockstep in their strength in the Power as well, and were in their prime two of the most powerful Aes Sedai in the White Tower, matched by very few others until the events of the main book series.
I can quote so many passages from New Spring to show how gay it is, but I’ll restrain myself to four:
She had never been as close to anyone as she was to Siuan. Or loved anyone as much. - New Spring, Chapter 6, Moiraine PoV
The sight of Moiraine always made her smile. Cetalia had been wrong in one particular. She was not a pretty little porcelain doll; she was a beautiful little porcelain doll. - New Spring, Chapter 12, Siuan PoV
Siuan could have kissed her. In fact, she did. - New Spring, Chapter 12, Siuan PoV
“Novice and Accepted, she was sent to my study more often than any three other girls. Except for her pillow-friend Siuan. Of course, pillow-friends frequently get into tangles together, but with those two, one was never sent to me without the other. The last time the very night after passing for the shawl.” Moiraine kept her face smooth, kept her hands from knotting into fists, but she could do nothing about burning cheeks (...) And spreading out all these intimacies! (...) How close she and Siuan had been was no one’s business but theirs. - New Spring, Chapter 17, Moiraine PoV
(The last one especially is important because they’re specifically mentioned as being pillow-friends and pillow-friends was confirmed both in text and out-of-text-by-the-author as being a term used for a sexual relationship, so at that point this goes from simply “Is anyone else getting a gay vibe...” to “This is 100% canon.”)
Anyways, a lot obviously happened in the 20 years between New Spring and the main book series, but I thought it’d be nice to end on a high note.
I hope that answered your question, anon!
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argentvive · 7 months
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Rand al'Thor in S2 of Wheel of Time
I wrote about Rand as the Dragon (Reborn) in Season 1 here:
And for some comments about Ep 2.1 see here:
We get a lot of time with Rand in Episodes 2-5, but not a lot of new alchemical imagery until THIS showed up.
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This is in the dream sequence with Lanfear in 2.5.
The alchemical process is often depicted as a wheel; in fact, one of the names for the Great Work/Magnum Opus is opus circulatorium. (In her dictionary of alchemical imagery, Lyndy Abraham transates the Latin term as "the circular work of the elements.")
The raw material of the Philosopher's Stone, the prima materia, and in a story, the protagonist is tried and tested and tortured in many different ways. One is being tied to a wheel, as here in the Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit (Book of the Holy Trinity, c. 1410), top right.
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And here (same source):
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Since this was only a dream sequence, Rand wasn't actually physically tortured.
In a previous episode, we see Mat stabbing Rand to death--again, not in reality, but in one of Min's visions. You begin to see how useful it is for an author deploying alchemy to include dreams and visions in the story. If you stab or behead or crucify your hero every few chapters, he or she is not going to make it to the end of the book.
For stabbing, I like this image from Speculum Veritatis (1725), which shows both the king (one of the symbols for the Philosopher's Stone) and the Serpent (a symbol for Mercurius, the prima materia) being stabbed. In other words, first the Philosopher's Stone-to-be is stabbed in its initial, primitive, snake form, then it is stabbed in its final, elevated, kingly form. Like many alchemical illustrations, this image shows a sequence of events. In this case, you read the story from right to left.
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Finally, it seems that Rand's having red hair IS a marker for him as philosopher's stone-to-be, or in the term TWOT uses, the Dragon Reborn. Logain notices right away that Rand has red hair, which he's tried to shave to disguise himself. You could argue that Rand's action there also fulfills the Hero's Journey stage of "refusing the call."
I must say I am enjoying Season 2 more than Season 1. Maybe because I've figured out who the main characters are finally.
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onaperduamedee · 2 years
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« [Moiraine] felt... more alive. Part of her wished she could hold saidar every waking moment, but that was strictly prohibited. That desire could lead to drawing more and more, until eventually you drew more than you could handle. And that either killed you, or else burned the ability to channel out of you. Losing this... bliss... would be much worse than death. »
- New Spring by Robert Jordan.
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stevenrogered · 2 years
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Zoë Robins and Daniel Henney as Nynaeve al'Meara and Lan Mandragoran
THE WHEEL OF TIME 1x08, “the Eye of the World”
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althcr · 2 years
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me immediately if i see any hate towards rand coming friday:
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What if al'Lan Mandragoran gives Nynaeve his Golden Crane signet ring and calls her mashiara on screen, what then
Who will do cpr on me
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melszone · 2 years
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I've just finished reading new spring and i can't believe moiraine and siuane loved pulling pranks together when they were younger like it makes sense but it's also so funny. anyways gonna start the first book now, im excited.
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hazelcephalopod · 9 months
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TGH Ch 30: Daes Dae’mar
The Cairhienin sun symbol. 
Hello! I’m back. So I did loose the rest of this chapters tbh. Now I’m planning on being a little less, uh, thorough for this resurrection of my read thru -lol we will see how that goes.
disclaimer: there will be spoilers, I will tag them but this is a book from 30 years ago that I am desperately trying to finish. I am very ADHD and this helps me do that. Also, it’s my first read thru but I am somewhat familiar with the story and what is going to happen, probably not enough to not be surprised tho. Happy reading!
All WOT spoilers. 
Sum. … last I remember Rand was running from some Trollocs and causing many problems in the Fireworks Guild trying not to be caught. Lanfear -my beloathed- was there. Now he’s trying to rescue Hunin and the horn from the fire in his Inn. Will Lanfear appear again?! Will they safely escape their burning inn?! Find out, or remember by reading all my quips -well half of them- for this chapter of The Great Hunt! 
Oh no the Inn is one fire
Loial really is well named. 
Oh if only there was a way for someone to help put this fire out. If only there was some means, perhaps some magical ability to control the fire and the air and clear out the smoke and flame. Hmmm
“But he’d risk the taint” let’s be honest there’s very little hope for him there. 
Poor Moiriane really was/is trying to help. I may not agree -or outright despise- some of her methods but she’s truly is trying to help best she can, both the world and Rand himself. She coulda just taken that banner and hidden it but has allowed him to choose what to do with it.  
Give him back his fucking clothes though! I don’t care if they suck! Or that the new ones are better -it’s been years(?) and yes I’m still mad about it! (Also yes it’s a me problem!)
The flute! 
Is a Reader equivalent to a Wisdom? Idk and neither does Rand! (I appreciate that as a writer)
Wtf?! Mat and Perrin and Ingtar! Yay! Bros back together again! And Ingtar, an adult! 
Well Rand has really had it, hope Hurin will be ok
Lanfear did not appear and I am not sad about it. Really it’s a shame that I do not like her because I can recognize her as peak girlfail trying to girlboss poorly, but it’s like, ma’am plz you are so cringe and he is like 17. I think I need to just view her under vampire rules -still a cringe girlfail but perhaps tolerable. Find out and… idk, I check the tags? Truly no reliable way to find anything on this hellsite. 
This chapter was great fun. Suffering, reunions, decisions! What else could one ask for?
PS: I think I may just post a chapter at a time. We will see how that goes. I may post more than once a day depending on how fast I can read, write, and edit these. Really the editing is the hardest and longest part. Tho I think I may just not try as hard to edit them this time around to speed things up and make it more fun -I will try to make it coherent-ish?
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nellyrue · 2 years
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Reading The Eye of the World finally
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lostxplorer · 7 months
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Yeah, I don't get what they did with Siuan. We've didn't really see her this season and now this. Don't get me wrong I love a good betrayal but this didn't feel right. The show has the tradition of doing something then explain it later, so I hope the writers will give us an insight on what has changed, I'd like to understand what's going through Siuan's brain. Why did she make those decisions.
Show, don't tell, please.
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iviarellereads · 2 months
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Wheel of Time full series spoiler thoughts on EOTW 29-38
A probably semi-regular weekly bonus to my reread blog, since sometimes you realize things on reread that just make you need to yell in a full spoiler space.
It's really fun to look back at the stedding as, oh, this is literally a little piece of another dimension. It might've grown the local seeds and supported the local animals, but it is obviously disconnected from the local reality, to block the One Power and all.
So many references to Hawkwing sending armies across the sea, and yet nobody really believes it, or expects the Return.
The farmer gave Rand the dark, plain scarf… and then Rand wears it around his mouth… almost like a… black veil on this Aielman… OK that's a bit too much ellipsis for me to keep going but I had to squint and see if the words really meant what I thought they did.
In Play For Your Supper, one of the songs Rand names is "Coming Home From Tarwin's Gap", now how would a name like that have made it as far as the 2 Rivs?
Rand starts having little thoughts on the road that he can't quite track the source of. "Too late now." in Four Kings, for example. LTT starting to slip in. Or the taint madness, if you prefer that explanation for the hallucinations. Either way.
Ishy treating oblivion as a reward. Cute.
I feel kinda sneaky putting Mili Skane's name down in ch 33. It's kind of a spoiler, we're not told it, but I like tagging the characters that appear, for future searchability. If she ALSO appears later in the series, well, I wasn't lying about the Companion entry.
Almen Bunt reminded me that Elayne's kids could have a stronger claim to the throne than she did, because of the bloodliney shit Andoran nobles use to measure their kin-distance from the first queen, but only if everyone involved admitted Rand's lineage publicly. And, only because it was Rand's body that she conceived with.
Which gets me on to how weird and icky the Moridin body swap is, because besides everything else, we don't talk enough about how the Dark One resurrected Ishy as Moridin into somebody else's corpse, that body's original soul had his own family and life, and first the DO took it to punish Ishy with continued existence, and THEN Moridin and Rand swapped balefires and then bodies so Rand's in some completely random dude's face and genes.
(I only had about 5.5 hours of sleep last night as I write this, can you tell?)
At any rate, EOTW 34 cracks things wide open for any show-firstie who looks at the X-Ray feature or the episode credits. Episode 1x07 lists Tigraine Mantear instead of Shaiel, so when the first season was finished, seeing so many people go back and start reading the books and be like, well hold on now… That was precious and priceless to witness.
“The Queen is wed to the land,” Thom said as brightly colored balls danced in a circle, “but the Dragon . . . the Dragon is one with the land, and the land is one with the Dragon.” For this to appear here, with Almen Bunt, when his next appearance is just after Zen Rand emerges and the Dragon is one enough with the land to offer a bounty of apples from the orchard on Bunt's sister's farm… Same chapter, same day, still sleep deprived, and I need a moment to just sit in this feeling of beautiful symmetry.
No doubt I'll come back to it when the quote comes up, but: Thom was twice Morgase's age when they were together. Given the dates we have as long as the Fandom.wiki is properly sourced because I don't want to go doing extra digging in the Companion and stuff, that means that 14 years ago, Morgase was 27 and Thom somewhere in the 50-60 range, 55 being a solid guess, putting her at 41 and him at 68 around the start of the series. I'm still very, very glad the show agreed with me that there was no need of him being so old, especially when his love interests skew so young, Mo being the exception but she still looks young.
So much of chapter 36 is just "yep, setup." I daren't even start listing or we'll be here all day and this post will be much longer than I try to keep them, even for two-weekers when the first week's not quite long enough to justify a post. But the one that gets me is Rand finding it funny, the idea of him wanting to be a king, when he will end up the de facto ruler of a decent chunk of the Westlands.
37 and 38 do little in the way of setup but to continue setting up just how much Byar's gonna nurse that grudge for the next 12 books or two years. Well, that and finally showing Perrin's golden eyes. Mo asks if this was foretold, and well, we know it was… just not in a prophecy she'd have seen. Verin has, though.
I will say, I prefer how Egg and Perrin rescued themselves in the show, even if the wolf stuff maybe could have been moved forward into season 1 to make it make a little more sense to show-onlys.
And, do we think Mo was Warder-compelling Lan not to go after Nyn? Or just reminding him that it's out of character and out of keeping with his guiding principles? I'd like to think Mo treats Lan better, BUT she does hand off his bond to Myrelle without telling him later soooo…
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tiabwwtws-art · 2 years
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I'm manifesting midseries stuff happening in the show Now. Pspsppss Asmodean come here
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