#wheel of time reread | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

butterflydm · 2 years

Text

wot reread: lord of chaos (chap 32-chap 46)

mostly only has spoilers through lord of chaos but at the very end (and separated out by some spoiler warning space) I’m going to talk about some things in AMoL that one of these chapters makes me think about (not a positive thing, fair warning! and it does go into some plot/character detail including epilogue/endgame details)

1. Everyone is in a bad mood in Cairhien, between Elaida’s embassy being there and three Shaido Wise Ones coming to hang out in the Wise One tents. Egwene goes to try to visit the Sea Folk and hopes that Rand has seen them, because he’s their Coramoor and it would be useful if he popped in to get them on his side and... Egwene, have you, you know... told him that it would be useful? Anyway, they refuse to see her. Egwene is not having a good day. They dunk her in the river and she has a fit of temper about it to rival any of Rand’s, dunking the three Sea Folk women back in return.

2. It’s been seven days, so Egwene now gets to go to the meeting with the Salidar Aes Sedai along with the Wise Ones and she gets a big surprise in the form of an immediate summons to Salidar. The Aes Sedai suggest Egwene get to them quickly by entering TAR in the flesh, which the Wise Ones protest against, but Egwene agrees to try.

3. ...and we soon also discover that Rand happened to be there at the same time (he has been popping in from time to time to check on Callandor) and overhears the location of the Aes Sedai and thus finally of Elayne. And Siuan helpfully showed Egwene a map of Salidar’s exact location too.

4. As she hurries to leave, Egwene makes sure to send a gai’shain with a goodbye note for Gawyn. She does not appear to consider the idea of leaving a note for Rand (since she has no idea that he already knows she’s leaving), which is another saddening illustration of how far apart they’ve grown emotionally. The Wise Ones enter, and she tells them she has no time for punishments as she must be on her way. They tell her that they have no standing to punish her anymore - she has been summoned by her sisters and is Aes Sedai again now, not an apprentice.

5. Egwene comes to the realization that they are not disappointed in her for being willing to enter TAR in the flesh against their recommendation -- they are disappointed in her lie. She realizes she could get away with just this one lie between them and leave it like that, but instead confesses to all the lies that she has told since the first time she met Amys, tells them she has toh, and asks them to help her meet her toh.

6. We flip over to Mat’s PoV, where he is playing Snakes and Foxes with Olver. We learn that he always has Olver roll the dice when they’re playing this game together, so that Mat’s luck won’t affect it. That’s actually pretty sweet. Olver doesn’t bug me this time around, at least not yet. I think that’s maybe an artifact of me being older and having a nephew around his age. He actually DOES feel more age-accurate than a lot of kids I’ve read in books, at least so far. And Mat is GENUINELY good with him here, in an age-appropriate way. We don’t have the “lol Mat is teaching a child to swear and leer at women” ‘comedy’ hours yet. Wondering if that happens later this book or if it’s something that changes in ACoS. Because Mat is just genuinely being a good responsible dude here (and didn’t deserve Aviendha making disappointed faces at him later).

7. Rand has arrived (with two Maidens and Aviendha)! Olver has a touch of hero-worship, it seems, from how he reacts to Rand. Mat notes that Rand’s face is hard but his eyes have a “feverish” light, perhaps of excitement or eagerness. Mat notes the glimmer of one of Rand’s dragon tattoos peeking out from under the sleeves of his shirt. That is a very sexy detail for you to notice for us, Mat, and I appreciate it.

8. Rand wants to talk to Mat ‘alone’ (which includes Aviendha), so they go to Mat’s tent. Mat is slightly nervous around Rand sometimes still (which is fair enough when Rand acts like this tbh, some characters could stand to be MORE nervous around Rand when he acts this way) but more concerned that Rand is changing their plan on him. Mat can still feel Rand’s ‘ta’veren’ tug on him at times, he notes. For their original plan, Mat is heading to Tear and taking over the armies from Weiramon, but Rand tells him that he needs to pick up Elayne and take her to Caemlyn instead. Him and the whole Band.

9. He wants Mat to ride north with Elayne and try to gather the Dragonsworn up along with him as he goes (and Aviendha is going to go with him, because she has ‘reasons’ to talk to Elayne). “Mat could almost believe [Rand] was sick or in pain.” Mat doesn’t know that Rand is in pain pretty much constantly. Actually, does Mat even know that Rand has a never-healing wound? Probably not, since no one communicates in this series, especially not about their trauma. This series would have been ten books shorter if the characters only communicated with each other properly.

10. Rand has so little information about the Salidar Aes Sedai that he thinks Mat can just waltz in, offer them Rand’s protection, and then whisk Elayne away to be crowned. If he had more INFORMATION, he would be able to make BETTER CHOICES. Please get this man a spymaster. He desperately needs more information.

11. But Mat is very aware that Rand set on a course can’t be easily swayed from it (and Rand is clearly in a Mood, though not a dark one, but a driven one) and says he and Band can be ready to leave in two hours. He asks Mat to stay close to Elayne and keep her safe until she is able to be coronated and sit on the Lion Throne. Mat, of course, doesn’t buy that this is all business -- he remembers those three days when Rand and Elayne were “canoodling in every corner of the Stone”. Do you, Mat? That’s funny, I thought you were trying to avoid Rand and not pay attention to him at all during your time together in the Stone. Guessing you were paying attention to him after all.

12. And here is Mat’s promise: “I won’t let her out of my sight until I plunk her down in the Royal Palace”. Oh! And Rand DOES tell Mat that his sister is off to train to be Aes Sedai, so Mat does know that his sister can channel. Oh, and Rand also warns Mat that Egwene might be in trouble because he thinks the Aes Sedai in Salidar found out that she was pretending to be Aes Sedai. So Mat wasn’t pulling the idea that she was in trouble out of nowhere (and even EGWENE thought she was in trouble before she actually arrived). Rand says again, “Remember, don’t leave [Elayne’s] side until you reach Caemlyn”.

13. It takes Mat only this one conversation to realize that Aviendha has feelings for Rand, and that makes him nervous about her wanting to talk to Elayne. Mat’s picked up on their feelings for each other before, too, though only subconsciously -- he got annoyed after the attack on Cold Rocks Hold when they abruptly stopped before embracing each other. And AVIENDHA thinks Mat is funny, btw. Honestly, all the Aiel probably would think Mat is much funnier than Rand is -- Mat’s brand of wry fatalism is very Aiel.

...oh, and Mat did forget to mention the dead Tuatha’an to Rand. The destroyed wagons and “tell the Dragon Reborn” written in blood. I personally absolutely do not remember what that was actually about, so I don’t know how important it was that Mat forgot to tell Rand.

14. Back over to Egwene’s storyline, she’s done letting the Wise Ones beat her to work off her toh towards them. Every Wise One or apprentice that she told (not implied but told) that she was Aes Sedai to is someone that she had toh towards. Once the toh has been met, it is as if the offense never occurred, and the Wise Ones tell her that she is welcome to return to them, if the Aes Sedai do not want her anymore. And Bair offers to meet her in TAR, share info, and continue to teach her. I will keep an eye out to see if that happens. Amys would not be teaching her any more, as she said she would not if Egwene went to TAR without her permission. Amys also reminds her that she has toh to others who are not currently here: Rhuarc, Melaine, and Aviendha. ...I don’t believe Egwene mentions this to Aviendha the next time she sees her, lol.

15. “We are always more afraid than we wish to be, but we can be braver than we expect.” Some last words of wisdom for Egwene from the Wise Ones! And Egwene figures out how to create a Gateway from the waking world to TAR, congrats, Egwene! For Rand, I think it was only a short step from there to figuring out how to create Gateways from place to place in the waking world.

16. It’s somewhat amazing to me that they expect her to be able to do this never-before-done thing and then still expected her to be their puppet figurehead. Though I guess the months of Elayne and Nynaeve keeping their heads lowered while offering up miracles and discoveries may have had an impact there in addition to the manipulation Siuan and Leane were doing (haha, I forgot to mention that Siuan attempted to course-correct at the last moment once she was un-stilled and tried to become Amrylin again, but she got smacked down). Anyway, Egwene gets there in one night via TAR and is told she’s gonna be Amrylin.

17. It is literally Not Allowed to turn down the summons to become the Amrylin Seat. Hmm. I wonder if that stems from the original conception (back in the Age of Legends) of the Aes Sedai as ‘servants of all’. But, yeah, they’ve picked her and so Egwene doesn’t have a choice about it.

18. I have to admit, now that it’s essentially all said and done, it DOES kinda crack me up that Egwene, Elayne, and Nynaeve successfully got away with pretending to be Aes Sedai Sisters for several books, were never actually caught (by anyone who told on them), and the Aes Sedai still don’t know they did it. It really puts quite a puncture in the ‘all-knowing’ reputation of the Aes Sedai, which has gotten several punctures by now, but this is one of the funniest. They truly did Fake It Until They Made It. Also, I wonder if the Elaida’s embassy ever wonders what happened to Rand’s mysterious Green Ajah Sister and why she suddenly disappeared (half of them still assume she was Moiraine putting out a lie about her Ajah). It bothered me when Egwene was actively lying to people that I liked (the Wise Ones) but it’s just funny now. They got away with it!

19. And Jordan gives us yet another ‘women-only’ ceremony/ritual that includes nudity. *sigh* See, again, this is another case where if there was just one ceremony where women were inexplicably needing to undress... okay, ceremonies are weird sometimes. But SO MANY of these ceremonies that involve women include random nudity, yet corresponding ‘men-only’ ceremonies do NOT involve inexplicable nudity. It’s also SUCH A WEIRD REQUIREMENT because... they are Aes Sedai. They can literally sense that everyone else there can use saidar. If they really wanted to ‘prove’ things, they could just have everyone present embrace the Source and they would all see the glow of saidar around each person. I’m also pretty sure the only reason Jordan DIDN’T write this scene as fully-nude for everyone was because he remembered that Egwene had recently been beaten with a belt, which would be pretty obvious to everyone if she had to take her skirts off.

20. Egwene always notices when women are pretty. She has already realized that the Salidar Aes Sedai mean her to be a puppet ruler and they don’t actually care about her opinions re: Rand or anything else. How does Egwene know “the blend of respect and familiarity that could be expected of an old retainer”? She was raised in the Two Rivers, then she was a novice in the White Tower, and then she was among the Wise Ones. Old retainers are not really anything that’s in Egwene’s past experiences. In Elayne’s past experience, sure, but not Egwene’s. Weird little moment there that feels like a characterization blip.

21. Egwene takes the opportunity of being raised as Amrylin to declare that Nynaeve, Elayne, Theodrin, and Faolain are all now full sisters, raised to the shawl, which was something she added to the speech that Sheriam wrote for her. She’s also thought of a very good excuse for why she raised them -- it validates Egwene also being raised, so there are fewer questions about Egwene being a big exception. Egwene’s fake earnestness is paying off for her really well so far.

22. She asks for Elayne and Nynaeve to be brought to her so that the three of them can speak in private. Egwene is done with wanting to make Nynaeve jump for her (now that she wants to have friends and not just underlings) so asks them not to stand on ceremony with her in private. Elayne hugs Egwene (after being told “You’re the only two friends I have” and Nynaeve remains silent for a while and there’s no mention of a hug between them, though maybe one is implied? tbh Nynaeve seems unsure and diffident during the entire conversation, which just makes me sad. She perks up a bit towards the end but it’s still kinda uncomfortable for me to read.

23. Once again, all of the information that Egwene knows about Rand is shared freely with Elayne and Nynaeve, but Egwene never shared any information about them in return with Rand. The one-way street of info sharing just frustrates me so much. “they agreed that he was wading waters deeper than he knew” because NO ONE WILL TELL HIM “and needed someone to guide him before he stepped into a hole” MAYBE SHARING INFORMATION WOULD HELP.

24. Amazingly, Nynaeve and Elayne manage to have an entire side conversation about Min being in love with Rand and thus how lucky it is that she gets to go see him and spend time with him without Egwene picking up on the subtext at all (all Egwene picks up is the already-known information that Elayne is in love with Rand). Egwene remains hilariously oblivious to all Rand-related romantic subtext (she was front row and center for so many Rand x Aviendha interactions and never picked up on it there, either). The three of them also have a brief discussion/argument over Rand’s Exact Words about the Lion throne.

25. Sadly, even though Egwene says here that now Elayne is Aes Sedai, she can just go to Rand, Nynaeve and Elayne argue that the Bowl of Winds is more important. I am so starved for Elayne x Rand interactions. My crops are dying. And I know it won’t get better for ages and, even then, there’s only a brief fall of rain before the drought starts up again. @fedonciadale mentioned in the comments of one of my recent reread posts how much more meaningful the BotW plotline would be if they really DID need to link with a man to use it and... yeah, agreed. It would feel much less like an annoying macguffin/excuse that way and would enhance the intended themes of the series.

26. Ah. Nynaeve and Elayne tell Egwene about Moghedien now. Egwene thinks: “One of the Forsaken, prisoner. Not tried and executed. As suspicious as Rand had become, if he ever discovered that, he would never trust Elayne again.” Well, FUNNY STORY, lol. While Nynaeve is fetching Moghedien, Egwene tells Elayne about her plans to ‘open enrollment’, essentially, for the White Tower, and do their best to actually find every possible female channeler in the Westlands. Egwene tells Elayne that she didn’t ‘betray’ the Windfinders but, unfortunately, she kinda did, even if by accident, as Egwene absolutely is including them in the women she wants to pull into the Tower. Elayne argues that, at least, Windfinders should get special protection like Egwene is planning for the Aiel. “No Sea Folk women bundled off by Aes Sedai whatever they will.” Elayne asks if this open enrollment is in response to Rand’s amnesty and Egwene says it partly is.

27. Once Egwene has the bracelet on, she quietly threatens Moghedien until the fear inside her drowns out everything else that Egwene is getting from the a’dam. Egwene confirms with Moghedien that she would Travel by doing basically the same thing she did to get to TAR, making the two places ‘similar’ until they overlap. Egwene thinks that she plans to keep the bracelet on day and night (she doesn’t end up doing this).

28. The Black Ajah have a sister in Romanda’s camp (Delena), though Romanda doesn’t know that, of course. And then we learn that Delana is ALSO in Lelaine’s camp, so she has been pulling triple-duty as a spy (wait, she’s in Sheriam’s camp, too, she’s a quadruple agent at this point). Poor Delana is begging Halima (Asan’gar) just to let her pick a side, because she’s worried about getting caught. In other spy news, Siuan is going to work Lelaine’s side for Egwene, while Nynaeve works Romanda’s and Elayne works on Sheriam, all to convince them that the other factions want to stay put so that their faction will vote to finally start the march against Elaida.

29. Back to Mat; they are in the rough area of Salidar and headed that way. It’s been three days since Rand dropped them all off. We learn that Olver tried to stab Aviendha on their second night all together and she took his knife away while Mat tried to explain the difference between Shaido and the rest of the Aiel. Olver still glares at Aviendha constantly and she seems uneasy around him.

30. Mat is not only having them fly the Band of the Red Hand banner, he’s also flying the Dragon banner and “al’Thor’s banner” (the ancient Aes Sedai banner). He’s Rand’s general and I’m just... sorry, I’m having a moment of frustration because I like this so much. He is ALREADY flying the Dragon banner at this point in his story, book 6.

31. Mat is worried that the reason Aviendha is sharpening her knife is because she plans to kill Elayne so that she can take Rand for her own. Mat also gets the distressing information that there are potentially four hundred Aes Sedai in the village, plus they already have an army twice the size of the Band. Rand needs reliable information! He shouldn’t be trying to do all his own spying for himself! Sorry, I know I keep banging this drum, but it keeps being relevant. Whenever Rand makes a really big mistake, it’s generally because he doesn’t have enough information (and it’s especially annoying when his ‘allies’ do have that info but refuse to share it with him). Anyway, Mat has the Band dig into a defensive position so that Salidar knows they aren’t here to attack.

32. Mat wants to wait for them to come to him -- safer that way, but Aviendha heads off in the direction of Salidar and he can’t let her go alone, so he follows with three of his men. Interestingly enough, he does have the bannerman carrying the Dragon banner and “al’Thor’s banner” come with him, though he has them furl the banners. Maybe to show as proof to the Aes Sedai that he comes in Rand’s name if need be? Also, confirmation here that Aviendha is “nearly as tall” as Mat. “Nice legs, but he would not have involved himself with another Aiel woman even if she was not moonstruck over Rand.”

33. A bunch of Aes Sedai swarm Aviendha, since they can sense she can channel and start asking her questions about the Aiel. Nynaeve appears and takes him to the “Amrylin Seat” and of course he doesn’t believe that Egwene is the Amrylin? He knows that she was pretending to be Aes Sedai but was really just Accepted less than a week ago. All of Mat’s assumptions here are perfectly logical... the real issue is that he is incredibly abrasive and insulting about it all and assumes that Egwene needs him, personally, to save her. Also, Egwene was pretty obviously hoping to overawe him with her new position and is miffed that it didn’t work. So it’s basically the Stone of Tear rescue all over again, and I kinda feel like both sides are in the wrong, like I did back then. He tries to manhandle Egwene but they try to manhandle him too (with the One Power) and are startled when it doesn’t work. Haha, it does crack me up when Egwene gets surprised that Mat knows random things about the power (like about Traveling).

34. Mat has had random thoughts on the prettiness of various women, but Elayne is “pretty as anything with that golden hair” with only her ‘condescending smile’ to detract from it for Mat.

35. Swapping to Egwene’s PoV after Mat finally believes that she’s Amrylin and she’s surprised that he only looks surprised and sweaty instead of trapped. She has a lot of questions about Rand and asks none of them, for whatever reason. Even after Mat does believe she’s Amrylin, he’s still worried about her, because he doesn’t think this group has much of a chance against the White Tower and likely assumes even more that the ‘so-called’ Amrylin’ is a puppet. Egwene turns the tables on Mat and does her best to convince him that he’s the one in trouble who needs her help. (and calls him “Dragonsworn”, which makes him yelp indignantly and makes me sigh regretfully).

36. Egwene is more angry at Mat when he’s right than when he’s wrong (she dislikes his tone). Mat and Elayne also have a great setup for enemies (or annoyances) to lovers here. He thinks she’s pretty but insufferable and she doesn’t understand why Rand likes him so much. They have officially Rubbed Each Other The Wrong Way and will now embark on a journey where they will realize Actually They Aren’t So Bad And Maybe Are Even Admirable.

37. I have no notion of how Egwene and Nynaeve square these two thoughts: “he had been the most irresponsible boy in Emond’s Field, maybe in the Two Rivers” and “if he gives his word, he keeps it.” Do they... do they know what being responsible means? I guess they’re making a distinction between honoring current responsibilities vs volunteering for responsibility. Anyway, they are going to manipulate Mat into being Elayne’s bodyguard in Ebou Dar so that Egwene can use the Band of the Red Hand for her own purposes. It is very clever... and it’s also more cold-bloodedly manipulative of Mat than anything that Rand ever pulled on him imo, using one of his own best traits against him to trap him into doing something he would never agree to normally. Nynaeve is against the idea (not out of consideration for Mat, mostly because she doesn’t want him along) but the other two talk her ‘round.

38. Again, we get the note here from Egwene that Mat only chases women who want to be chased. And that’s coming from someone with a bias against his behavior, too.

39. Mat is talking to Thom, who advises him to stop trying to rescue people who insist they don’t need to be rescued. This is good advice and Mat is absolutely never going to take it and will continue trying to rescue people who neither want nor need his help because they have no interest in ‘escaping’ from the place that they occupy. But I see the seeds here of what the narrative will use to trap Mat in the future. He absolutely has a rescuer complex and it will absolutely keep landing him in trouble (and I do want to note again how incredibly apt his Prime!verse backstory changes apply to this behavior that we see him show over and over). Thom does convince Mat that the best way of ‘rescuing’ Egwene & Elayne is to help them accomplish what it is that they want, rather than what he wants for them. Again, I see how this applies to the future and I am side-eyeing it heavily.

40. Aviendha and Elayne talk. Aviendha confesses to Elayne that she loves Rand and that she slept with him, and explains that she has toh to Elayne for this, because of the promise that she made to Egwene on Elayne’s behalf. She offers to let Elayne either cut her with her (very sharp) belt knife or whip her with a branch. Elayne does feel tempted but tells Aviendha that she has no toh towards Elayne. She lies and says that she doesn’t mind if Aviendha loves him too, which Aviendha takes as an an offer to become first-sisters so that they can share Rand as sister-wives. Elayne tells Aviendha about Min... and then has to talk Aviendha out of the two of them working together to kill Min. Aviendha says, “I must get to know [Min]. I will not share him with a woman I cannot love as a first-sister.” I have bad news for you, Aviendha.

41. Ah, and after that, we swap to Min’s PoV, as she enters Caemlyn with the Salidar embassy. This particular thought from her is very yikes: You’ll be whatever you think he wants you to be. Damn, girl, please find some self-respect somewhere. That’s... that’s just sad. Honestly, it will be so easy for the Prime!verse to do better with Min (and Rand x Min) than the books did because... yikes. “She hated the very idea of women being weak when it came to men”. Yeah, I have bad news for you too, Min.

42. Min snuck away from the Salidar embassy so that she could go to the Royal Palace alone to see Rand. We learn here that Min has a “pair of daggers” that Thom taught her how to use while she was in Salidar with him. In good news, Min DOES find Rand physically attractive now. His face is beautiful and she doesn’t want to stop staring at it. It took her four books, but she finally found a second thing that she likes about him! Beautiful face (LoC), silky hair (TGH). I’m excited to learn if she ever likes his personality; will keep you updated.

43. It would be remiss of me not to mention that Rand is definitely happy to see her. He’s had the occasional thought about her (though always as an ‘even Min’ rider to a thought about Aviendha and Elayne), having previously noted that he felt like she wasn’t confusing, unlike every other woman in the world. He tells her here that he feels like he can tell her things that he can’t say to anyone else “not even Mat or Perrin” and it is WILD that he places Mat and Perrin on the same level there, considering how different his relationships with the two of them have been throughout the series so far. Is the series really going to try to pretend that Mat and Perrin been the same amount of close to Rand from this point going forward? Again, WILD. I mean, relationship revisionist history isn’t unknown to Jordan -- we have five different versions of Egwene and Rand’s pre-canon backstory, some of which are completely incompatible -- but I will... keep track. Because I suspect this is an example of Jordan telling us how things are going to be in the future rather than actually accurately describing how it was in the past.

44. Min gives Rand the letter from Elayne and our girl is ALL OVER THE PLACE. First off, she is absolutely not reconciled to the idea of sharing Rand with Min, as she asks him to think of Min as she does, like a sister. And she tells him that she’s made her feelings clear which... she knows she hasn’t. He views himself as having made a “clean break” with his feelings for Elayne and absolutely NOTHING she says in the letter makes it clear she loves him? Again, it feels like Elayne’s letters serve as a plot device for Rand to have sex with someone else relatively guilt-free. If she’d straight-up written: “I meant everything I said in the first letter I wrote you; the second was an impulse that I regret. I hold you close to my heart and look forward to when we will see each other again, and I hope you feel the same.” it seems like it would have been much less likely that he would sleep with Min later on. But he’s Fated To Have Three Girlfriends, so Elayne isn’t allowed to actually say what she really feels.

45. Okay, so then Min straight-up climbs into Rand’s lap to try to ‘prove’ to him that she’s a woman. She pokes at the subject with him and gets him to admit that “maybe” he loves both Elayne and Aviendha. Then he tells her that the fact that he loves them means he won’t go near them. “Any woman I love becomes a target too”. He does tell her about what Lan said, saying “When a man like that falls in love, the best gift he can give her is to put as much distance as possible between himself and her”. At that point, Min says that she’s his friend (because being his friend is less likely to get her sent away from him, I assume) and then “wriggled around on his lap” and tells him that she will convince him “I am not a man or a horse” and she wants “drool on [his] chin and a stammer in [his] voice”, which makes him laugh. Once she realizes her attempt to play at being Leane didn’t work as she’d hoped, she gets quiet and “prim”, though she stays sitting on his lap. (and after all his talk in earlier books about how Min wasn’t confusing and he found that comforting and relaxing, he’s already getting frequently confused by her)

46. She tells him there are nine Aes Sedai here from Salidar (meant as an honor but... how is it possible that they didn’t realize how easy it would be to view them as a threat?) and that it is her opinion (not a viewing) that they mean him no harm. And then, immediately after that, she tells him that Aes Sedai are going to hurt him. Okay... okay, here is a thing about Min’s viewings - what is the point of telling Rand this when there is no way for him to stop it? Literally all telling him this will do is amp up his paranoia against ALL Aes Sedai, since Min can’t even tell him which Aes Sedai are going to hurt him. In some ways, Min’s presence almost makes Rand’s mental health worse, because her viewings tend to magnify Rand’s fixation on prophecy and amplify his paranoia. Like, I am all for Sharing Information With Rand, you know this, but that’s so that he can actually USE the information for something, to help make better leadership decisions. “Aes Sedai are going to hurt you at some point in the future” is only going to make him jump even harder at the shadows around him. It’s much too vague to be of any use at all! Though I guess it’s kinda funny that someone is finally Telling Rand Things and I’m just, ugh, not those things, lol. But I want him to get Actionable Information and not Vague Warnings.

47. Sulin comes in and sees Min perched on Rand’s knee and is horrified (she drops the tray she was carrying). Rand DOES realize what Sulin is thinking and deliberately makes sure that Min stays on his knee to drive home the point to Sulin that things are over between him and Aviendha. (so he IS very aware that it’s generally considered a flirtatious behavior, he’s just determinedly taking Min at her word that she’s here As A Friend). Notably, even though he said earlier that he felt like he could tell Min pretty much anything... he’s decided that he’s not going to tell her about his special relationship with the Maidens. So that’s a huge chunk of his life that he’s already pre-emptively declared off-limits. Sulin makes a point of saying that the only person who ‘should’ be doing anything about Min hanging all over Rand is Aviendha... which did not appear to be the Maidens’ attitude before this exact moment in time when it was no longer narratively convenient for potential girlfriends to get chased off.

48. Melaine has come to let Rand know that Egwene left! I’m glad that someone thought about telling him, even if Egwene didn’t think of it herself. She also straight-up TELLS Rand about Salidar. She says they refrained from telling him more about the Aes Sedai there before at Egwene’s request, but she’s gone now so they can tell him that, actually, the Salidar Aes Sedai SUCK. Or, as she puts it they are “froward, undiscipled, contentious, and full of themselves beyond all reason.” Haha, the Wise Ones did NOT share those opinions with Egwene. Understandable. Rand very much notices that their deference towards Aes Sedai seems to have evaporated. Melaine tells him to be wary of the Aes Sedai from Salidar and that they need a ‘strong hand’.

49. lol, the first example of “pregnancy test Min” appears in this chapter. It becomes her most common type of viewing, I think, or at least it feels that way. She’s here to be everyone’s pregnancy test. Anyway, Melaine is gonna have twins. Congrats, Melaine. Interestingly, Rand IS already aware of Min’s tendency to blame everything in the world on him (weirdly, I have seen Min explicitly praised on reddit for ‘never blaming Rand for her own choices’ when she has textually done that consistently, at least so far throughout the book series to this point, and not only that, Rand has even noticed that she does it).

50. Aw, Rand helped Mat’s dad with horses giving birth. It’s... interesting how now that Min is Rand’s (almost) Official Main Girlfriend (going by screentime), she’s pretty much completely dropped her whole Not Like The Other Girls routine and is diving into all that stuff head-on, as she giggles with Melaine about how men always faint during childbirth. After this, it kinda feels like her Not Like The Other Girls thing is just surface-level stuff like wearing tight breeches instead of skirts. And it also kinda feels like this first appearance of Pregnancy Test Min is to make the Wise Ones approve of her and not get mad about Rand replacing Aviendha literally four days after she left.

51. Once he’s alone again with Min, Rand feels so awkward about it that he impulsively invites her to visit the farm/the Black Tower/the place with all the male channelers. She refuses instantly. Rand doesn’t understand how she can be so comfortable around him and yet so afraid of these other men who can channel, without even having met them. And then she gives him a “friend” kiss on the lips before she leaves. Rand’s view of what she’s doing is that she’s messing with his head because she feels insulted that he said he thought of her as a friend and not a woman. So, yeah, his memory of her as the “one non-confusing woman in the world” was just as inaccurate as her memory of him was (someone who would be happy to take advantage of having three girls in love with him).

52. Min shows off her new knife trick before she leaves. It is... interesting that just as soon as Rand loses his brunet(te) non-channeler somewhat sarcastic confidante who uses knives, he immediately gets another one (only this one gets to kiss him because this one is a woman). Lots of interesting things in this chapter tbh.

53. Rand notes to himself that if he adds Verin and Alanna to the Salidar total, then there are eleven Aes Sedai in Caemlyn, not nine, and only two short of being enough to hold even the strongest male channeler. Then he heads off to the farm alone, without bringing his Maiden guards. The combination of Rand’s paranoia with his recklessness is really stressing me out, y’all.

54. There are now over a hundred students at the farm, which Rand learns they are now calling the Black Tower (to ‘balance’ the White Tower). Rand gives them the name asha’man, which means guardian for truth, justice, and right for all. They have ranks now - soldiers for beginners, Dedicated for the next rank up (wears a small silver pin shaped like a sword), and then Asha’man once they are fully trained (gold and red pin shaped like a dragon). Taim is Not Happy that Rand is interfering with how he’s training the students, btw. And LTT still desperately wants to kill Taim.

55. The head of the Salidar delegation is terrified of Rand after their first meeting so that’s, uh... that’s going great. It was also super-obvious to her at a single glance of Rand and Min in the same place that Min was “a woman who had tossed sense out the window and was riding her heart at a gallop” and is definitely not here on the side of the Aes Sedai. And Alanna has immediately told the Salidar delgation about her bonding of Rand. So, the list of people who know that Alanna bonded Rand currently is: Rand, Alanna, Verin, and at least three of the Aes Sedai of the Salidar delegation (but probably all of them). Rand hasn’t told anyone (yet?). Merana is of the opinion that “what Alanna had done was little short of r*pe”. Alanna also notes that she can constantly feel Rand’s half-healed wound in his side and every time she dwells on it, it makes her want to weep (so this is probably what she’s thinking about every time that Rand notes that it feels like she’s been crying).

56. And they are approaching the nobles here in Caemlyn to try to secure their loyalty and support, just as Elaida’s delegation is doing in Cairhien. Even Merana, who considers what Alanna did to be essentially r*pe, admits to herself “had it made al’Thor biddable, she would have held her nose, and her tongue [about Alanna forcing a bond on him]”. They are not quite as bad as Elaida’s people but they still very much want to leash and control Rand.

57. Over to Mat’s PoV. He tries to set up his men to stay independent by telling them to pay for everything and accept no gifts. He also has them hang the banners - the Dragon banner and “al’Thor’s” banner - outside the stable that they’re sleeping in for the night, which is a firm declaration of allegiance. When he’s out dancing for the night, to try to show the Aes Sedai that he’s not bothered by them ignoring him, ‘Halima’ tries to channel at Mat and his medallion goes cold, which readers can take as confirmation that the medallion works on saidin as well as saidar. Though Mat doesn’t realize it.

58. One of the lives in Mat’s head was a songwriter. I actually quite like the rhyme scheme of ‘give me your trust’, though it is a depressing song! Apparently, that memory belongs to someone who was betrayed by the love of their life, so they wrote a song about how trust sucks. Trust is the color (sound/taste) of death, though. There’s something very evocative about it. Also, this vibes with a potential way that his story could have gone in the future.

59. Oh, wow, even the next day, Mat’s hip hurts from how hard Nynaeve kicked him. Ouch. He worries and wonders over which Aes Sedai might have tried to channel at him. He doesn’t believe it was Egwene and probably not Nynaeve, but he has no clue what Elayne might be willing to do. Myrelle asks Mat, in a round-about way, to be her Warder, and he declines, honestly very politely. “No, but thank you for the offer.” He accidentally asks Siuan to dance, then does dance with Leane, who kisses him. Mat has a dream about Siuan, Lean, Myrelle, and Hamila that night but unlike Rand’s dreams, we’re not supposed to assume that this must mean he’s required to romance all four of them. A dream can just be a dream.

60. Myrelle asks him again that night to be her Warder and he lets her know that she’s the third woman that he’s rejected that day. Then he gets summoned before Egwene and told that his only choices are to accompany Nynaeve and Elayne to Ebou Dar, or to be sent off on his way and not to see Elayne. Given his promise to Rand, Mat feels that he has no choice whatever and tells them that. Mat is under the impression that he will be back with the Band soon, and Mat takes Nalesean, Talmanes’ man Nerim to do valet’ing stuff, Vanin and some cavalrymen who were good at being Redarms, and Olver along with him. He leaves Talmanes in charge of the Band, with orders to shadow the Salidar Aes Sedai if they start moving somewhere. On the Aes Sedai side of things, we have Elayne, Nynaeve, Aviendha, Birgitte, Thom, Juilin, plus 2 additional Aes Sedai and a Warder.

61. Thom and Juilin both apologize to Mat for avoiding him the last few days -- Elayne made Thom promise not to talk to him, and Nynaeve said she’d punch Juilin if he did. And, like Rand, Mat is incredibly frustrated by being kept in the dark by Aes Sedai secrecy. And, just like Egwene felt with him, Mat is even more frustrated by Elayne being right than he was by her being wrong. There is a brief moment here when, despite his frustration with everything, he sees that Egwene is being ignored by her own people and makes a point of kneeling and kissing her ring and doing all that ceremony, which she appreciates. Then he’s frustrated again a moment later when she’s still not willing to tell him anything about this bodyguard trip he’s doing for her. Both Mat and Egwene are each mentally worrying that the other one is going to get into trouble. Egwene “felt a pang of regret for using [Mat]”.

62. Wow, first time Perrin has shown up since the Prologue. Let me check the page count real quick... almost 700 pages ago. That’s longer than my copy of TFoH is in its entirety, so he’s actually been missing from this book for longer than he was missing from TFoH, technically. (and “over two months” on the road, we learn a bit later)

63. The Saldaean man guarding the gates at Caemlyn recognizes Faile as Perrin & co approach. We see the further progression of Aram as Perrin’s attack dog that he’s never figured out how to treat like a traumatized young man. Also, re: Faile “[Perrin] dreamed of living in a small house with her, somewhere in the country, away from cities and strife”. Their desired lives still seem to be very incompatible. If Perrin tried to live in a small house in the country, Faile would immediately start inviting people to settle the area around around the house and turn it into a proper manor with servants (this is basically what she was doing in the Two Rivers). Perrin is aware that Faile wouldn’t like his dream, though he attributes that to her being “adventurous” when it really seems more about her belief about living according to her station now that she’s claimed it.

64. Perrin does talk here about his version of the ta’veren pull -- he describes it as an itch between his shoulders, a need to be near Rand, but a duty and an obligation. It’s much less dramatic than what Mat described (and we could try to say that Perrin is less dramatic than Mat, but he actually can be Very Dramatic sometimes; usually involving Faile).

65. Rand is in super-chipper mode as he greets Perrin and Faile (he kisses Faile when he congrats them on their wedding, even! lol, I guess that makes sense, since Min has now put “kissing on the lips” in acceptable “friendship” territory for Rand), chattering about the Two Rivers girls that are in Caemlyn right now. Though Perrin notes that he looks tired. Perrin instantly recognizes Min and is grabbing her in a hug, just like Rand did (and he immediately smells the jealousy from Faile over it). Actually, that’s interesting. It’s pretty much exactly the same reaction that Rand had (from the outside, anyway). He also knows her pretty much exactly as well as Rand does, because he was there in Rand’s camp in between TGH and TDR. Perrin actually even actively notices Min’s legs in her trousers without her needing to try to force him to, like she needed to do with Rand. Also, Min update: she is wearing floral perfume. She curtsies now, too.

66. Perrin’s description of how Rand looks: “hope was gone but you went on fighting because the cost of giving up was too great”. ...Perrin’s memory sucks, wow. He thinks here that Faile “always called him Rand before now” not “Lord Dragon” but she definitely tried calling him “Lord Dragon” in TSR (I just double-checked my copy lol); it’s just that Perrin would correct her and then she would try to say “Rand” for a while. “The Lord Dragon” is definitely her default and she was very eager to try to separate them as quickly as possible to get Perrin out of danger from being around him.

67. Min and Faile leave, and Rand and Perrin are alone. Perrin asks after Mat and learns that he’s supposed to be bringing Elayne (and maybe Egwene and Nynaeve) to Caemlyn. Then Rand asks Perrin to go to Tear for him to babysit his army and Perrin realizes that Rand’s mood keeps changing erratically and he worries about Rand’s grip on sanity. But Rand talking and talking like this to summarize events for Perrin does summarize them again for readers at the mid-point of the series, lol. Aww, when Perrin invites him to visit the camp of Two Rivers’ people, Rand says, “I can’t protect you or Mat, but I can them.” Honey. It’s the same reason that he didn’t go to the Two Rivers in the first place, why he’s trying to avoid being near Elayne or Aviendha, but it remains heartbreaking.

68. Perrin meets Bashere and gets to learn the fun news that Faile is not actually old enough (in her culture) to get married without her mother’s permission, which she is apparently currently trying to get.

69. I wonder if Gaul, Chiad, and Bain experienced... culture shock integrating back into the Aiel here in Caemlyn. When they left with Perrin, it was before so many changes in Aiel society. I hope we get to hear their reactions to the changes.

70. Perrin literally feels put out by Faile showing affection to the dad that she’s been separated from for months. You spend almost every waking minute with the woman, sheesh. Let her give her father a kiss on the cheek.

71. Perrin keeps thinks about what a great bosom his mother-in-law has. Please stop. Anyway, obviously Perrin and Faile pass the tests and remain married. Saldaean culture gives me a headache tbh, so that’s probably all I’ll say on that, lol.

72. Min comes and goes from Rand’s rooms as she pleases (the Maidens have decided she gets free rein as well), including being allowed to walk in on him in his bathtub and talk to him there. She also keeps “bouncing” onto his lap whenever he’s sitting on a chair. She gets to be treated differently than literally everyone else who has tried to make a move on Rand post-Aviendha interest gift Because Reasons I Guess. Honestly, my least favorite part of the Aiel & Maidens guarding Rand is how little they respect his privacy and it really does get highlighted here, with Min being allowed to walk in on him when he’s naked and vulnerable, without anyone asking his permission first.

73. Much like Egwene, Rand feels guilty for the way he thinks about his friends these days. They are very similar.

74. Rand also noticed that Min will go against her own morals for him now -- she says she doesn’t like telling people other people’s viewings but will do it for him if he asks (I feel like she did this for Siuan all the time? lol). Oh, and all during this conversation, Lews Therin is mumbling about friends betraying him or potentially about betraying his friends. Now is also when Min warns Rand that Perrin will need to be there for him ‘twice’ or ‘very bad’ things will happen. She also tells him that she saw (not a viewing; saw physically) Merana in the window of one of the nobles’ estates on her way to visiting him.

75. lol, does Min really thinks she has the Salidar Aes Sedai fooled and they think she’s out walking the city and not mooning over Rand? Wow. She rolled a Nat 1 on her insight. Merana figured out what was up there the very second she saw Min in a room with Rand. And Min is still kissing him on the lips each day when she says goodbye. He directly tells her “I wish you wouldn’t do that” but she makes it clear that she’s going to continue.

Anyway, Jordan makes a point of having Rand firmly place Min on the “Elayne and Aviendha” scale of not-friendship and not the “Mat or Perrin” scale of friendship. It’s funny, before this reread, Rand x Min was my least favorite of the pairings in Rand’s situation but still something that I remembered liking, but I... I actually am straight up not liking it this time around, which is a change from what I remember. And all of these games she’s playing with him are especially weird because the narrative keeps trying to tell us that SHE’S the straight-forward one of the women that he’s romantically-attracted to. She absolutely is not?

76. After Min leaves, Rand and Lews Therin have a fight about whether or not LTT is dead. LTT maintains that he is alive but deserves to be dead.

77. One of the Aes Sedai in Caemlyn, Demira, just got murdered, I think. Maybe kidnapped, but probably murdered. By a group of “five or six Aielmen”.

78. Oh, here is where we learned that Bain and Chiad went majorly against custom to teach Faile handtalk. So she, of course, uses it to gather info about Rand. See, Perrin has a spymaster who gathers information for him. He doesn’t particularly appreciate that Faile is a spymaster, but she absolutely is, and a very ruthless and effective one. Anyway, Faile wanted him to know “what [Rand’s] doing behind Perrin’s back” so she does feel pretty much the same about him as she always did; Perrin was just engaging in revisionist history earlier by trying to pretend that Faile used to feel warmly about Rand.

79. Oh, Demira wasn’t murdered! Good for her. Ah, it’s a set-up to make the Salidar Aes Sedai believe that Rand is willing to nearly kill them to warn them off him. And they completely fall for it. Ah, interesting, in the wake of Demira’s near-death, Verin takes charge of the embassy. (and Demira wants to “teach” Rand a lesson btw). They decide to watch him for now and “let him stew” when he sees no obvious reaction.

Book fourteen (final book) spoilers below

SPOILERS FOR A MEMORY OF LIGHT, all the way through to the epilogue

Disclaimer that all of this is based on my memory and I have only read AMoL once (though I plan to read it again during this reread). So while my opinions are quite strong here, I am open to changing them if the books are not the way I remember.

There have already been several times when my reread has shifted my opinion of something, sometimes for the better (cauthor is so much more intense than I remembered!) and sometimes for the worse (my feelings on rand x min have plummeted!).

So, our last Cauthor scene has happened. I call it the last Cauthor scene because the dynamic that’s grown between them during these earlier books isn’t really present in their reunion scene, imo, unfortunately, not from what I recall.

Whether it’s because Sanderson wrote it and didn’t have a handle on their friendship or it’s because Jordan wrote it and had forgotten their dynamic (or was deliberately writing it differently), it rang hollow to me, very generic. It felt like the writer just went “wait, what do childhood friends sound like?” picked a dynamic at random (’friendly rivals’ in this case) and just slapped it into the scene without considering the individual relationship or characters at play. At least, from what I remember, anyway (but the fact that every random WoT dudebro on reddit seems to go “yeah, it’s so realistic; it’s just like me when I get back together with my bros from childhood” makes it even more obvious that it’s inaccurate for Rand and Mat lol).

It’s a funny enough conversation, if considered in isolation from the characters and their relationship, but I wasn’t reading the books for their comedy value.

Seriously, just compare chapter 33′s intense, complex (if somewhat unhealthy because they are two very traumatized young men) dynamic to the “lolz anything you can do, I can do better” bro competition of AMoL and there are basically ZERO emotional similarities. The depth that is at display in all their interactions from the first six books is absent from AMoL, and their reunion (IIRC) is all centered around talking about the plot-things they’ve done in their time apart and around Tuon (which is also plot-related).

And I have loved Mat and Rand’s dynamic so much in this reread! So it’s sad to say goodbye.

I think I loved it the previous times, too, because the relationship my brain inserted for them pre-reread was “estranged best friends”. But they aren’t actually estranged at the point when they part here and they both expect to see each other again very soon (so they don’t even say a real goodbye, the way that they did in TFoH), so I’m guessing it’s going to be all those books of separation and then the lackluster reunion that made it feel that way to me before.

Anyway, pouring one out to losing my favorite relationship dynamic from the first half of the series and it never getting replaced for either of the characters, as far as I can recall.

(and, as @essie007 pointed out to me, and I feel like it’s probably true, as I can’t think of any, but I’ll keep an eye out during my reread -- that we don’t really get ANY intense male friendships in the second half of the book series; that just gets stricken from the series completely once Rand and Mat split up here and Mat gets sent off to be sold into Heterosexual Monogamous Marriage to a Slaver by the Pattern. WOMEN are allowed to have close female friends still, in the second half of the series, but men are not allowed to have close male friendships; women can be vulnerable in front of other women but men can only be vulnerable in front of women as well, and mostly only their wife/GF).

Though, ironically, on simply a surface level, Mat and Rand do both get ‘replaced’ by their respective ‘main’ heterosexual romances. I don’t think the dynamics are at all similar (which is what I get invested in) but “brunet(te) non-channeler who loves knives* and has protested that they aren’t a hero and has resigned themselves to loving someone because of a prophecy and has mystical knowledge of other people’s lives and hides their affection behind insults” describes both Min and Mat; and “leader of nations, most powerful person in their sphere of influence, and someone who deliberately projects an icy exterior and is intensely invested in the meaning of prophecies and organizes their lives by them, and who has tried to hide from the fact that they are a (potential) channeler” describes Rand and Tuon.

(*Min’s knife thing is new as of this book, LoC)

Again, once the reader gets anywhere under the surface, the characters and dynamics are very different, but it is... uh, interesting that the one-line descriptors can be so similar.

I’m gonna try to keep track and see if there’s an actual moment/event in the series when Mat stops aligning himself with the Westlands/Rand and starts aligning himself with the Seanchan/Tuon or if it’s one of those characters changes that happens off-screen. Will keep you updated. (I assume the first chance this would have to happen would be Crossroads of Twilight, so we’ll see if I remember to check in) Because, at this point in time, not only is he obviously very Westlands-orientated (the Seanchan aren’t even on his radar), he’s doing all of this on a promise for Rand, literally having sworn himself to the Dragon for a service aka Dragonsworn, as Egwene accused him of being, and he flies both of Rand’s banners without even needing to think about it. But in AMoL, iirc, he not only is mostly Tuon/Seanchan-focused over the course of the book as a whole, he also acts like it’s a Last Battle Only Exception when he finally decides to fly the Dragon banner again, and he literally skips out on his friend’s funeral so that he can set up a fireworks show to appease his slaver wife (who does threaten to kill him if he misbehaves, so it’s not like he’s wrong about her needing constant appeasement to satisfy her ego; he has her number clocked, it’s just a depressing and isolating number).

Though that leads me to mentioning that an additional frustration to me is that Mat becomes this legendary General of the Ages to win the Last Battle... and he almost immediately gets handed off to the fascist slave empire by the Pattern. The fascist slavers essentially have ownership of the greatest general in history, plus have decided to commander Min, who can see pieces of the future. And that just... kinda sucks for the Fourth Age? Like, what a way to start the new Age off shitty, you know? And he barely gets to do any general’ing for Rand at all (he doesn’t even get to finish out his VERY FIRST intentional plan for Rand)! I would certainly like to believe that Mat (and Min) would refuse to use his talents against the Westlanders in order to aid the cause of slavery, but it’s honestly still horrible if he goes back to Seanchan with Tuon and helps her re-create the broken slave empire under her iron fist.

In addition to that, there’s the weird way that, from what I remember, some of the later books start treating Tuon and the Seanchan as if being a slaver is just a personality quirk that people have to get used to and not hold against them on a personal level. I don’t remember exactly when that happens (I do think it’s still treated appropriately in Winter’s Heart, at least) but, yeah.

So the implication is that Mat (and Min) will help out Tuon because they like her as a person and will just ignore that helping her is also forwarding the cause of slavery, which is all kinds of character-breaking for me. Again, again, this is from what I remember and I was pretty annoyed at the whole concept, so maybe Mat (and Min) do show more push-back than I recall. We will see. From what I remember, Tuon actually DID abduct some Aes Sedai Sisters from the White Tower during her slave raid in The Gathering Storm, which means that Min (and possibly Mat) are potentially going to see familiar faces in leashes post-canon, especially likely for Min, who spent months living at the Tower (two separate times).

But, regardless, at a certain point, sticking with Tuon is essentially enabling and condoning her choices and actions, imo. If you chose to stay married to or become BFFs with a slaver, you are allowing the slavery to happen with your approval. (potentially necessary disclaimer: I am speaking in the Watsonian context of treating the world and characters as if they were real, and I am not speaking about readers who enjoy Tuon as a character; I like my own fair share of villains and evil characters myself, though I did not personally enjoy Tuon before due to a variety of things that will probably get mentioned in my reread posts but kinda boil to ‘i wish she had a character arc’ and ‘i would probably like her better if she had a different scene partner than Mat’; we’ll see if I like her any better (or worse?) this time around!)

And it really felt like, after establishing how horrible the Seanchan were in earlier books, it was so jarring in the final books (and especially in AMoL) to see so many characters basically just roll over for Tuon and give her whatever she wants. Rand’s ‘negotiation’ with her lasts a single conversation, Min protests the terms but not the concept of Tuon abducting her to the Seanchan side (or at least not enough that I recall), and Mat is a whole mess that I will get to in my reread lol.

But... Zen!Rand shouldn’t be pushover!Rand, you know? For me, it doesn’t make Tuon look strong-willed; it makes the other characters look inexplicably out of character and weak (I mean, he can handle Cadsuane easily but somehow just Doesn’t Bother Trying with Tuon at all?).

Rand concedes so much and Tuon concedes so little, and the ending just feels so ridiculously lop-sided in Tuon’s favor - she gets to keep everything and all the land that she stole; she gets to keep everyone that she abducted & tortured; she gets the best general who has ever lived; she gets an inside look into the future; and she potentially has an heir on the way so that the slave empire can continue on enslaving. She’s got more potential to hurt a larger number of people than most of the Forsaken do during the canon book series and has shown willingness to do that in order to get her way. And the books try to tell me that Tuon talking to Rand at all was a Huge Enough Concession that she apparently doesn’t need to make any more, which is, you know. Bullshit. And some of this is definitely an artifact of the ending needing to be hurried up and compressed, but it’s still a pretty ugly thing, altogether.

Mat’s storyline does have a few highlights from this point forward, from what I remember -- markantonys’ first read of the series has convinced me that not all of Ebou Dar will be horrific for him lol, and there’s the Tower of G. of course, but wow am I not looking forward to the “how I accidentally married a slaver and talked myself into being in love with her” storyline. Just... really not looking forward to that. Perrin’s storyline in the later books Slogs but Mat’s is... depressing.

Just a slow march into Mat getting locked into a (metaphorical) prison for the rest of his life, successfully getting leashed by the Seanchan woman from Egwene’s prophetic dream. And by the time he even meets Tuon, he’s been (literally) beaten down by the Pattern and horrifically ‘trained’ by Tylin and has mostly given up on fighting his fate. And realizing who she is during his final attempt to escape really does seal his fate in his own eyes, I think, because he doesn’t even try to fight in CoT/KoD from what I recall; he just does his best to make his fate more bearable by trying to get Tuon to fall in love with him. It tracks but it’s... it’s a tragedy not a romance, and so the framing by the books feels jarring to me, just as it does when it tries to flavor Tylin’s behavior with Mat as a comedy. The Pattern won and Mat lost, and it makes me so sad. And the most annoying thing about it (not the most depressing, which I already talked about) is that even though it’s set up as if it’s supposed to be a marriage alliance, it doesn’t even work for that purpose? Mat ends up being given away by the Pattern for nothing in return and Rand still has to hammer out his own agreement with Tuon. Mat and Tuon’s ‘romance’ was both annoying and pointless in the end.

So, yeah. this is a tough chapter for me, because of what it makes me think about for the future.

I do also want to note here that Mat leaves Rand’s storyline before Min shows up (he leaves in chapter 33 and she arrives in chapter 41). The last time Mat and Min were in the same location was the end of TGH, after Falme, when Mat was still pretty heavily influenced by the dagger and Min was in the early stages of her Rand-obsession (and Mat briefly glimpsed her in Baerlon but did not talk to her at that time). They did not have much time, opportunity, or motivation to become friends. So Mat and Min’s magically-appearing-out-of-nowhere friendship later on is probably the biggest of the character continuity errors in the series. I get why it’s there (they are being jammed together in the endgame with Tuon and the Seanchan and there is very little time for them to Build a Relationship) but it’s very jarring from what I recall that they suddenly remember this old friendship together that never existed (iirc) and where they mention traits/items about the other person that only happened after the last time they saw each other (which, again, was the ending of book two). I actually almost wonder if there was a draft of LoC where Mat wasn’t supposed to leave here yet (maybe he actually was allowed to finish out the distraction plan) and he and Min DID originally get to know each other before he went off to the Seanchan storyline, and Jordan just never had a chance to update his AMoL notes about them because he was focused on the current books. Because they literally miss each other by roughly four days, in story.

I will also say, having just reread books 1-5 (and most of 6) makes it extremely extremely difficult for me to believe that post-canon Rand actually is just going to straight up retire to wander the countryside and leave both Mat and Min in the hands of the Seanchan? That sounds fake. Who is that guy? Not our Rand. The first time I read AMOL, I was just relieved that Rand survived past the prophecies and that the series actually got an ending but I feel like I will probably be reading it with a more critical eye this time lol. Like, I want Rand to have time to process his trauma (and my pipe dream of therapy for him), but it seems out of character for him to just not care that Mat and Min are living with slavers now and potentially might get whisked away to a different continent to be completely trapped and surrounded by slavers.

(actually, does post-canon Rand actually know that Tuon has ‘claimed’ Min as hers? I cannot remember if he found this out)

#wot #wheel of time #wheel of time reread #lord of chaos #wot book spoilers #wot spoilers #cauthor #mat cauthon #rand al'thor #still disappearing from the tags so i censored a word to see if that fixes the issue #wot reread

50 notes · View notes

butterflydm · 10 months

Text

wot reread: a memory of light (chapter 38-epilogue)

spoilers for a memory of light!

Well, the rest of the chapters have fewer pages in total than chapter 37 did, so this is going to be my last full reread post, though I do have a couple of follow-ups planned.

My timing ended up being pretty good, even though my original intention was just to reread books 1-3 in anticipation of the second season of the show. And now I’ve still got over a month to get good and excited about everything the show will be bringing to the table.

1. We go back to Rand, still deep in his conversation with TDO. The chapter “the Last Battle” really revolved around the battle between the forces outside Shayol Ghul, because it ended when the commander of the other army finally was killed (though there are still a ton of his forces to take care of, the head of the snake was cut off and so was the person who fancied himself Demandred’s replacement).

2. The ‘let go’ that Rand is hearing in his mind is in his father’s voice, and the meaning expands here -- let them sacrifice. it is their choice to make. And then Egwene’s voice -- am I not allowed to be a hero too?

Because this is something that Rand has been resisting over the course of the books -- basically ever since he accepted that he will be the sacrifice, he’s struggled with knowing that he’s not the only one, with knowing that other people are sometimes even sacrificing just to get him here, to this place. And, I imagine, with his tentative plans to maybe even survive this ‘sacrifice’, that’s going to make him feel even more guilty about other people giving up their lives in this fight.

3. He talks in dialogue with Egwene’s voice in his head (given that he’s existing around and between reality, it might really be Egwene’s voice too). He is not in charge of protecting her. He decided to take that charge on himself, back in EotW, but it was never his to claim. Let us die for what we believe, and do not try to steal that from us.

4. And so Rand takes himself through his list again, backwards, this time, releasing his feelings of shame for failing to save them, releasing his need to protect them. Letting go of the mountain that has been crushing him for the majority of the series.

He hadn’t realized how large it had become, how much he had let himself carry.

...

Ilyena was last. We are reborn, Rand thought, so we can do better the next time.

So do better.

5. And now Rand, as he stands surrounded by all time and nothing at the same time, comes to understand that the Darkness was never a being, never an entity of its own. It is the between of everything. It can only win if no one is willing to keep fighting against it.

6. Mat gets the news of Lan’s reported death. As he did with Egwene and with Elayne, he swallows the grief and doesn’t let it show to anyone else, instead using the news to spur the army onward to attack the now-stunned foe.

7. Rand tells TDO that he can’t win, and TDO argues that it has Rand in its grasp right now, and Rand says that that’s missing the point, because it was never just about his victory. The people he lists:

Morgase (?) - a woman, torn and beaten down, cast from her throne and made a puppet

Thom - a man who remembered stories and took fool boys under his wing

Moiraine - a woman who hunted truth before others could

Perrin (?) - a man whose family was taken from him, but who stood tall

Nynaeve - a woman who refused to believe she could not Heal those who had been harmed

Mat - a hero who insisted with every breath that he was not a hero

Egwene - a woman who would not bend her back while she was beaten and who stone with the Light for all who watched

Rand realizes -- “it was never about beating me. It was about breaking me.”

8. Okay, I have to say. I have to! But this is... this is literally also how the Seanchan work. This is their philosophy of life -- to take people and break them to the Seanchan’s purpose. As I’ve said before, there really is no way around the fact that the Seanchan are going to be the Great Evil of the Fourth Age. There are just too many Shadow-Seanchan parallels! Maybe Mat and Min can slow the train slightly but I don’t think they can actually put the breaks on it.

9. But back to now -- Rand and TDO watch the battlefield, where Mat is fighting -- Tam at his side, then Karede and his suicide-slave troops, then Loial and the Ogier. “Outnumbered three to one”. Mat is shouting in the Old Tongue: For the Light! For honor! For glory! For life itself!

I will take a moment to be glad that, despite the first half of this book trying so hard to align Mat with the slavers for whatever fucking reason, he’s not fighting for the slavers in this battle. That he actually did become the General of the Forces of the Light, not primarily the General of the Slavers. Looking back, it really does feel like the change was signaled when Mat first took off his Seanchan clothes and put back on his Two Rivers coat*. That seems to have been a visual cue about his change in characterization -- how he started pushing back more against Tuon, forcing her into more compromises, and standing more aligned with the Forces of Light rather than pandering to the slavers all the time. idk, maybe forcing Mat over to Ebou Dar at the start of the book was Sanderson’s way of trying to finally create a synthesis between the horrible Mat of CoT & KoD and the non-horrible Mat of the earlier books, and he felt like he actually had to take Seanchan!Mat to his worst conclusion before bringing him out again? It still really sucks that the Mat and Rand reunion happened during our low point of Mat’s characterization, though.

(* which appears to have been triggered by the ‘not pleasant’ conversation that Mat and Tuon had after Tuon berates him for not telling her that Egwene was briefly enslaved by the Seanchan. After that (off-screen) conversation, Mat starts being much more combative re: the Seanchan -- after that conversation is when he has his bitter/sarcastic thought that he’s not done much to convince Tuon to stop using damane and when he suggests to Min that she mislead Tuon about her viewings to try to soften her stance on Aes Sedai; so I think we can safely give Egwene credit for the turnaround in Mat’s characterization -- I wish that that conversation between Mat and Tuon hadn’t happened off-screen! like so many important emotional moments!, but it seems like perhaps that was a watershed moment for Mat)

Rand and TDO watch, and TDO taunts Rand “the son of battles. I will take him [Mat!]. I will take them all, adversary. As I took the king of nothing [this is Lan, I assume]”.

10. Mat thinks about how he knows he can win this battle, despite the horrible odds. He just needs “a favorable toss of the dice”.

And, not too far away, with the Trollocs outside his hiding place, Olver gives up on the idea of trying to get the Horn to Mat, and lifts the Horn of Valere to his lips.

11. First Mat, and then everyone else, hears Rand’s voice -- he calls out Shai’tan as wrong, telling everyone that Lan isn’t dead. And just after he says that, Mat hears the familiar golden and clear note of the Horn of Valere.

...wow, the Seanchan feel so superfluous to requirements right now. They didn’t show up until after the final combat was engaged, after Rand had his final necessary epiphany, after the Horn was blown (they have still not shown up, technically).

I’m going to take a moment to daydream about a world where Tuon’s nature as marath’damane was revealed and accepted, so she really did flee with the Seanchan (so that she can try to recover from this blow to her powerbase) and the Seanchan never returned to the Last Battle. This would be a much easier way to de-tangle Mat from the Seanchan than whatever he’s gonna need to actually do post-canon.

12. The Heroes of the Horn return and our first sight of them is Birgitte coming to save Elayne from Mellar, with a shining silver arrow. 😍

Birgitte standing over her own corpse kinda cracks me up. Good for her! It’s also probably the first time she’s felt like herself in books and books.

“That was the bloody Horn of Valere!” Mat announces to his troops. “We can still win this night!” Inside, he marvels over how the Horn was sounded without him, showing that one of the things that he’d believed that he was permanently tied to isn’t tied to him after all.

Well, if that knot can be untied, Mat, maybe another one can be as well.

13. Between losing Demandred and the appearance of the Heroes of the Horn, the Shadow are now the ones who are on the defensive, with some Trollocs breaking and trying to run away.

The mist of the Heroes forms near Mat and he feels a moment of worry, wondering if maybe someone on the side of the Shadow summoned them. Hawkwing rides up to Mat, and tells him, “Do take better care of what has been allotted you. Almost, I worried we would not be summoned for this fight.”

I know, right? The lack of urgency in the Mat-in-Ebou-Dar half of the book about actually getting him to Merrilor to blow the Horn was really frustrating to me too!

When Mat confirms that this mean they’re fighting for the Light, Hawkwing tells him, “We would never fight for the Shadow.” The rumors about the Horn are wrong -- I feel like we learned this back in TGH as well but, you know, Mat was dying at the time, so I don’t blame him for not remembering.

Yeah, here’s the line: “We have come to the Horn, but we must follow the banner. And the Dragon.” So it was Rand, Perrin, and Mat who learned that. But, like I said, I don’t blame Mat for not remembering.

14. Hawkwing and Amaresu both scold Mat for not showing Rand enough appreciation for saving his life. Honestly, so fair and legit for Mat to finally be on the other end of a scolding like that. “I have seen you murmur that you fear his madness but all the while you forget that every breath you breathe - every step you take - comes at his forbearance. Your life is a gift from the Dragon Reborn, Gambler. Twice over.”

Mat feels so scolded. As he deserves.

He’s told that they can fight here because they have Rand’s banner and because Rand is... technically sort-of kind-of leading them... from a distance.

Amazingly, Mat takes a moment out of this encounter to marvel at how pretty one of the heroes is and then Remind Himself again that he’s married. He really does have to keep Reminding Himself. One of these days, he’s not going to remember to Remind Himself until after he’s already slept with someone else. It’s been more subtle in this book than in ToM, but Mat is still constantly checking out Every Other Lady around him.

15. Olver gets dug out of his hole by Trollocs but Noal, now one of the Heroes, arrives to save him. I don’t care about Noal, and Jordan definitely didn’t do enough to build up their relationship in CoT & KoD, but I still got a little misty at the tiny orphan child feeling grateful that one of the people who ‘abandoned’ him has finally come back.

16. haha, this next chapter is called ‘wolfbrother’ so I guess that Perrin is finally gonna wake up. But first, we have Elayne!

She’s able to wriggle lose enough to make the medallion copy shift away from her skin and fall to the ground, and now she can embrace saidar again. Elayne apologizes to Birgitte but Birgitte laughs it off, “Why do you mourn, Elayne? I have it all back! My memory has returned. It is wonderful! I don’t know how you stood me these last few weeks. I moped worse than a child who’d just broken her favorite toy.” Ah, yeah, that confirms that Birgitte’s spiral into bitterness was not meant to be a reflection of Elayne but on the dark place that Birgitte was in, with her loss of memories, I think. But it’s a shame that it feels like parts of the fandom just took Birgitte’s unrelated bitterness as a reason to slam on Elayne more. My girl gets so much undeserved hate.

And Elayne and Birgitte will ride back into the battle together. Not as Aes Sedai and Warder, but as friends. 😍 😍 😍 😍

17. Aviendha! I’ve missed you! Her timeline isn’t advancing as quickly as it has been for those further away from Shayol Ghul, so not as much as happened here in the valley. She can feel the channeling inside the Pit of Doom - “a quiet pulse”. Oh! The wolfbrother of the chapter’s title is actually Elyas, who Aviendha runs across now. The Darkhound Wild Hunt is happening, and hundreds of wolves have come to fight back against them.

Aviendha is about to go fetch channelers to help bring down the Darkhounds, when she spies Graendal a bit higher on the slope, with some Turned channelers, and Aiel guards under compulsion. Aviendha alerts her companions (Amys & Cadsuane) and then begins the fight against Graendal.

18. Elayne has a sword again. Where is she getting these swords? I’m just gonna assume it’s made out of Air or something. More useful than the sword, Elayne creates a banner with the Power, the red lion of Andor, lighting up the night.

19. [Mat] remembered, within those memories that were not his, leading forces far grander. Armies that were not fragmented, half-trained, wounded and exhausted. But Light help him, he had never been so proud.

...

This was the moment he had been seeking. It was the card upon which to bet everything he had. Ten to one odds, still, but the Sharan army, the Trollocs and the Fades had no head. No general to guide them.

...

Elayne’s death had been a lie. Her troops had been in disarray - they had lost more than a third of their soldiers - but just as they were about to be routed by the Trollocs, she rode into their midst and rallied them.

20. Catching up with Moggy! Hi, Moghedien. I bet your Last Battle is going pretty shitty. She kicks Demandred’s abandoned corpse. Oh, his devoted Shendla just left his body there to rot? Yikes. For Moghedien, she discovers that now that so many of the Chosen have been killed off, TDO is ready to let her have a taste of that sweet sweet True Power.

She disguises herself as Demandred and heads to the Sharan forces. I have to admit, given how open Min has been about her Talents, it’s kinda astonishing that Moghedien doesn’t know about her viewings. Min will tell anyone who stands still for five seconds, plus Tuon announced her as a Doomseer and has been plumping her up for the past whatever-number of chapters.

Moghedien starts to gear up for her role as Fake Demandred...

...and then she gets a blast of cannon/dragon-fire in her face from the Band’s part of Mat’s plan.

21. Instead of the Band leaving their caves to fight; channelers are opening them up brief windows to shoot through. Aludra is placed up on a high location with a spy-glass, giving orders to the channelers for the next locations for the booms. Honestly very clever.

22. As Aviendha fights in the valley, plants grow to cover her passage.

They had come right when she had needed them to hide her approach. Happenstance? She chose to believe otherwise. She could feel [Rand], in the back of her mind. He fought, a true warrior. His battle lent her strength, and she tried to return the same.

Determination. Honor. Glory. Fight on, shade of my heart. Fight on.

😍 😍 😍 😍 😍 😍 😍 😍

23. Aviendha kills a Compelled attacker, only realizing it’s Rhuarc after she has struck the fatal blow. She kills him moments before he would have killed her, and only her shoulder gets injured.

She does her best to convince herself that she only killed a shell. That Rhuarc was already dead.

There is a burst of determination from Rand (Strength, Aviendha) and her fatigue leaves her, and she refocuses on the fight.

24. Aviendha studies Graendal and decides on her approach -- she creates a spear made out of fire and light, and some other weaves in reserve -- and charges for Graendal. See, this makes a lot more sense that Elayne randomly having a sword, because this is a weapon and Aviendha knows and has trained in most of her life. I think that Sanderson Just Likes Swords tbh.

I really love the description here because of how it brings back Aviendha’s Maiden roots as she launches her attack on Graendal. The ground explodes underneath her (her legs get pretty destroyed, it sounds like), but she’s leaping up already aimed like a spear herself, and she sinks the spear into Graendal’s side just as Graendal is using the True Power to Travel... and because they’re touching, she goes along with Graendal when she Travels.

25. Mat rides with the Heroes of the Horn. He gets them to confirm that he isn’t one of them. He can see Elayne from where he is.

Mat saw Elayne’s banner glowing above them in the sky, crafted of the One Power, and caught a glimpse of someone who looked like her riding among the soldiers, hair glowing as if lit from behind her. She seemed a bloody Hero of the Horn herself.

26. And then the great battle is over, at least here on the battlefield.

He would have to thank Tuon for returning. He did not go looking for her, though. He had a feeling she would expect him to perform his princely duties, whatever they might be.

Hmm.

27. He does feel that tugging. Rand needs him. He tries to convince himself that this was his part, out here, and whatever is going on where Rand is... that’s Rand’s business. The dice are still tumbling in his head. This part here manages to capture Mat’s double-think in a way that I didn’t feel like came across in the actual chapter when we had the Rand & Mat reunion.

After trying to talk himself out of it, Mat ends up saying that he’s a fool because “I need to go to Rand.”

As a parting note, he asks Hawkwing to go have a conversation with “their Empress” (Tuon), and hmm, interesting. Okay, I need to break this down a bit.

So, one of the things that gave Tuon the big jollies back in the negotiation chapter with Rand was Mat referring to the Seanchan forces as “our forces”, which she basically interpreted as “haha you’re mine now, no take-backs”. And here, he does not call the Seanchan empress “my” Empress. He says she’s “their” Empress. The Empress of the Seanchan, who he is not currently identifying with, it would seem. So. That’s interesting.

We don’t get to see the conversation between Hawkwing and Tuon, of course, but what would Mat assume about what Hawkwing would tell Tuon? Why would Mat send Hawkwing to talk to her? The Heroes of the Horn follow Rand, pretty explicitly. They literally just recently scolded Mat for not appreciating Rand enough. They are aware of current events in the world and of the Seanchan Empire.

Which is to say... of course, Mat is assuming that Hawkwing will try to set Tuon straight on how to be an Empress without abusing millions of people under her power. Hawkwing told him that they would never fight for the Shadow. I think it’s reasonable for Mat to assume that he would disapprove of slavery. And Hawkwing’s hatred of Aes Sedai in his lifetime was canonically influenced by Ishamael, if I recall correctly, so the idea that Ishamael’s corruption is still influencing him in his Horn-form just seems like kinda silly to me. So. That’s my stance on that. Mat has clearly stated in recent chapters that he disapproves of the damane system, in particular, and that he wants to influence Tuon to soften her stance on Aes Sedai. So we know what Mat’s motivations are in sending Hawkwing off to talk to her. And it kinda fits Mat’s pattern of trying to use other people to influence Tuon to be less awful.

28. Rand has thought about Mat often, here in the battle with TDO. He thinks of him again -- Beneath them, on the battlefield, the Trollocs had fallen, beaten by a young gambler from the Two Rivers.

29. Oh, hey, Perrin just woke up. Page 853. He went to sleep on page 670. Nice long nap. Missed... a lot of stuff.

He learns that the battle at Merrilor has been won, but the battle at Thakan’dar, outside of Shayol Ghul, rages on. He gets his exhaustion washed away by one of the Aes Sedai and goes physically back into TAR (where he left Gaul to guard the cave where Rand fights).

30. In the waking world, Thom is the one guarding that cave entrance and he ponders the various ways that the ending of the world can be turned into a song, once this is all over.

31. Mat goes to Grady and tells him that he needs to be taken to Shayol Ghul. He’s brought Rand’s banner with him. Hanging out with Grady are Olver and Noal. The dice are still tumbling in Mat’s head. As far as I can tell, they haven’t stopped since Elayne asked him if he knew what he was doing.

Mat, on thinking about Noal/Jain becoming a Hero of the Horn:

Well, you wouldn’t find Mat trading places with him. Noal might enjoy it, but Mat wouldn’t dance at another man’s command. Not for immortality itself, no he wouldn’t.

Another data point that I’m placing into the pile.

Grady says that Traveling is wonky in that direction. Can’t be done.

Mat won’t accept that as an answer, and he gets Grady to take him (and Olver) as close as they can get -- a Seanchan scouting camp, a day away.

32. lol, we get a tiny glimpse into Fain the mist god-demon here. This just feels so anti-climatic, to still have Fain around at a time like this. Anyway, he’s basically a walking Shadar Logoth at this point. Fain kinda suffers from the same issues as Slayer, in that it feels like he’s a villain that the story grew past and yet he hung around anyway.

33. Gaul has been standing alone against Slayer all this time in TAR, fighting against him and protecting Rand, on his own, while Perrin was taking his restorative nap. But now Perrin is back to help. On the plus side, because of the time dilation stuff, only two hours has passed for Gaul in here.

34. Since he couldn’t take a gateway to Shayol Ghul, Mat is going by dragon to’raken. And, yes, Mat takes time out of his terror at being up so high to notice how pretty the morat’to’raken is, even as he thinks that anyone willing to do this must be “completely insane”. Olver, who is riding with them, is having a great time, though.

From up high, Mat sees a mist covering the valley below and gets a tingling that tells him... it’s about Fain and the dagger.

35. Then their to’raken gets hit by arrows, killing the rider or knocking her out. Mat undoes his straps and climbs over to take the to’raken’s reins. So he’s... he’s riding the closest thing that this world has to a dragon. Subtext, fun for the whole family.

He does his best to give them a gentle landing. It is not terribly gentle.

36. In the aftermath of the crash, Mat thinks that kidnapping Tuon (aka marrying her) is the worst decision that he’s ever made. Hmm. And this is after she ‘returned’ to the battlefield per their plan.

“That,” [Mat] finally groaned, “is the worst bloody idea I’ve ever had.” He hesitated. “Maybe the second worst.” He had decided to kidnap Tuon, after all.

And he doesn’t undercut that thought with any kind of caveat. He just lets it stand as he moves on to the next thing. Another interesting data point.

37. Mat literally panics when he realizes that Rand’s banner has gone missing during their dragon to’raken flight. Why does it seem like Sanderson is so much better at writing Cauthor-related scenes when Mat and Rand are separated from each other?

Olver points out that the swirling clouds above them are forming Rand’s sign, and then he blows the Horn again, for good measure.

38. Rand breaks out of his frozen battle with TDO and re-enters his own body. “From his watching of the Pattern, he knew that although only minutes had passed here since he’d entered, in the valley outside this cavern, days had passed, and farther out into the world, it had been much longer.”

He points Callandor at Moridin, and Moridin promptly throws a knife at Alanna.

Broke back to consciousness by Nynaeve’s herbs, Alanna pulls herself together long enough to release the bond she forced on Rand before she dies.

...I kinda feel the need to point out that Moiraine has done nothing but be a battery for Rand since she entered the cave with him.

I also feel bad for Alanna, who really disappeared from the story once Min was bonded to Rand and could take over as Cadsuane’s Rand mood-ring, and now is only here so that she can die. I have extremely large beef against Alanna for forcibly bonding Rand but it feels like the story really should have used that beat even more than it did, rather than it disappearing after WH.

39. Perrin kills Slayer. Finally. And then he pulls back out of TAR and is “on the rocks in the valley of Thakan’dar”, near where the Aiel are gathered.

40. Mat leaves Olver with the Heroes and meets up with Perrin at the mouth of the cave. So, yes, Mat and Perrin get another reunion. Why does Perrin! Get all the reunions! This is what I was talking about when I said how annoyed I was that Mat thinking about Rand tugging on him wouldn’t end up with any good payoff. All we get is yet another Mat and Perrin reunion.

That Rand is literally inside that cave and yet the three ta’veren do not reunite here is honestly somewhat infuriating for me. Genuinely those two things: the Emond’s Five reunite and the ta’veren three reunite should have been at the TOP of Sanderson’s priority list! There is a lot that I have enjoyed about AMoL but there are just way too many important emotional moments that were either skipped or didn’t happen at all but should have happened.

And, fuck, letting Mat and Rand have a scene that doesn’t take place during Mat’s weird Ebou Dar adventure. That would have been nice! Once Mat decides that he’s not going to be a lapdog for the Seanchan/Tuon anymore, his storyline and his PoV get so much better and so much more enjoyable and I am just... eternal bitterness that our only Mat & Rand reunion was plopped into our most lapdoggy-Mat era.

Mat came here specifically to protect Rand and then he never sees him! That is just fucking awful. They deserved a better reunion. What was the point of having the Heroes scold Mat if we didn’t actually get to see Mat and Rand interact again after it? This is kinda a place where the epilogue is mostly at fault -- Mat just strolling off to plan a fireworks show for Tuon post-Last Battle conflicts pretty hard with him spending time with his dying best friend, tonally-speaking -- but that really just makes it all the more frustrating that the only Cauthor reunion took place when Mat was in his worst Seanchan-era.

41. Aviendha attacks Graendal with an exploding gateway; and Mat kills Fain/Mordeth/etc.

And Perrin almost takes off to go searching for Faile but manages to resist the urge: If Rand died, then he would lose Faile. And everything else.

Yes. I have tried to yell this at the fictional characters so many times: if the world dies, then so does your sweetheart! It’s nice that Perrin finally listened.

42. And for his final trick, Moridin grabs Callandor, and Moiraine and Nynaeve spring their trap, using the flaw in Callandor to take control of the ‘circle’ that Moridin has accidentally formed with them. With Moridin having pulled the True Power, Rand is now able to enter the link, and Moiraine and Nynaeve can feed him all three sets of Power: saidar, saidin, and the True Power. Light explodes from him, and from Shayol Ghul, as Rand uses the True Power to protect himself as he reaches through the Bore and grabs onto the Dark One.

43. We get a quick beat of people reacting to the light:

Elayne is on the battlefield of Merrilor, as they search for the living among the dead. She feels the “swelling of power in Rand” and her attention focuses on him.

Thom shields his eyes as the light bursts from the entrance to the Pit of Doom.

Min appears to have managed to get away from the Seanchan for now, changing linens for the wounded, perhaps also on the Field of Merrilor.

Aviendha is drawn back from the darkness of near-death by the light and the warmth of Rand inside her, and realizes that her explosion twisted the compulsion weave so that Graendal compelled herself to worship Aviendha. Awkward!

Logain sees the light and knows that it’s what was meant by the message that Egwene sent, and he breaks the seals on the Dark One’s prison.

44. In TAR, Perrin runs across Lanfear. Together, they walk into Shayol Ghul, and we learn that she apparently compelled Perrin a little while ago? He’s able to pull out of it by reminding himself of his duty and of Faile, and he snaps her neck, killing her.

*squints at the scene*

Yeah, I mean. That’s certainly still what looks like happened? Sorry, Sanderson, I’m not seeing your hints here about Lanfear tricking Perrin and surviving.

45. Rand holds the Dark One in his hand. Or the representation of his hand. And, once again, when Rand tells TDO how pitiful he is, all I see are echoes of the Seanchan:

You would have enslaved me as you would have enslaved the others. You cannot give oblivion. Rest is not yours. Only torment.

Rand can feel himself dying, his life blood slipping away. Realizing that the world that he’d seen without the Dark One would have been the truth, he knows that he cannot kill it. So he thrusts TDO back into his prison, braids saidar and saidin together to reforge a new shield onto the Bore.

With this new form of the Power, Rand pulled together the rent that had been made here long ago by foolish men.

He understood, finally, that the Dark One was not the enemy.

It never had been.

(because it only reflected the evil that people were already capable of)

46. The black hole inside the cave expands, as Moiraine and Nynaeve run for the safety of the cave entrance.

47. And now we are at the epilogue.

Much like I did with The Last Battle chapter, I’ll take the epilogue in sections by character. Rand & co will go last, this time.

Perrin

The spirits of the dead wolves fade back into the dream. Perrin voluntarily worries about Rand? Wow, that feels kinda out of character for Perrin, who has always been way better at pushing away thoughts of Rand than Mat has been, but I guess let’s go with it. It seems to exist to tell us that Perrin no longer sees color swirls and no longer feels any tugging towards anything. “Those seemed like very bad signs.”

“Have you sent for the three?”

What a weird way to ask “do Rand’s girlfriends know that he’s dying?”

I’m going to take a minute and count up the PoV & page counts everyone gets in the epilogue.

Rand: 3 PoVs (4 pages total)

Mat: 2 PoVs (1 1/5 pages)

Perrin: 3 PoVs (6 1/5 pages)

Loial: 1 PoV (3 pages)

Moghedien: 1 PoV (1 page)

Nynaeve: 1 PoV (2 pages)

Birgitte: 1 PoV (1 page)

Tam: 1 PoV (1 page)

Min: 1 PoV (1/2 page)

Cadsuane: 1 PoV (1 page)

That’s a lot of Perrin, comparatively-speaking.

Anyway, Perrin finds Faile, happy ending, etc.

...oh, I just looked it up and Sanderson answered some questions about the epilogue (tor[dot]com/2013/01/23/brandon-sandersons-wheel-of-time-answers-from-torchat/)! He added Perrin’s and Loial’s scene(s). Ha! I knew that Loial was a Sanderson addition because he uses “Matrim” instead of Mat (that is, imo, by far the easiest ‘tell’ of a Sanderson scene -- someone using ‘Matrim’ when they normally wouldn’t). And the Perrin scenes make sense too because it really builds off of and finishes the narrative thread that was at play earlier in the book for Perrin, which was presumably all written by Sanderson.

Mat

Mat strolls away from the aftermath of having killed Padan Fain, calling the dagger “a gamble I don’t want to touch”. The dice stop rolling in Mat’s head after he decides not to pick up the dagger. Hmm. Mat avoiding becoming the new Fain for the Fourth Age?

After that, we skip to his scene with Tuon. And there are only those two scenes with Mat in the epilogue -- killing Fain and finding out that he’s been baby-trapped into the Seanchan Empire. Though Perrin confirms in his own PoV scenes that he no longer gets the swirls or the tugging, we don’t get the same kind of confirmation in Mat’s (very short) scenes.

I will say that there is more subtlety in Mat’s ending here than I had remembered -- I was extremely unhappy about his ending but this marriage is pretty troubled already in the text, and so it’s not really the book that tries to pretend this is a happy “babies ever after” ending for Mat; I feel like that’s maybe more of a vibe that I got from fans at the time, rather than from the text. There are a lot of “male power fantasy” fans who just really like that Mat ends up married to an Empress and commanding vast armies, I think, at least from what I’ve seen around the internet (and especially back when the series was originally published).

And Mat specifically forces a grin at the news that Fortuona is pregnant, so he’s not genuinely happy about it (and we got things in recent chapters like Mat thinking that kidnapping Tuon was the worst idea he’d ever had).

But, honestly, I do still hate that it happens. I hate it up one side and down the other. It sucks as an ending for Mat so much. Miserable marriage, awful wife, horrible shackles tying him to a terrible fascist empire built on slavery.

That being said... just Tuon’s rule is incredibly fragile, this marriage is also incredibly fragile (which is probably why Jordan slapped a baby in there to begin with -- otherwise, given his general misery level in many of the Seanchan-related scenes, it’s difficult to see how Mat could bring himself to stick with Tuon for long enough to do whatever plot-related things Jordan was imagining would have happened in the outriggers -- the baby is a trap for Mat, not from Tuon but from Jordan).

There are still so many things about the Seanchan that could end up being deal-breakers for Mat if he finds out about them!

(ex. Bodewhin Cauthon is never mentioned in the books after Knife of Dreams, so it is entirely possible that she is among the new damane who were taken by the Seanchan in recent days, and Mat might end up seeing his sister with a collar around her neck post-canon. How would he react to that? And to Tuon’s unwillingness to let her go?)

In addition to Mat potentially seeing people he knows and cares about in collars, we also have the possibility of him learning just how brutal Tuon’s attack against the White Tower was (there isn’t any indication that he knows about the attack at all yet); or Talmanes telling him about Verin’s letter and Mat realizing how damaging his fear of Aes Sedai has been for the world; or further in the future there’s Mat’s potential reaction to the lethal political wrangling that Imperial heirs are meant to get up to (he was disturbed enough that Galgan liking him only means that subpar assassins will be sent against him -- when he realizes that Tuon might well encourage their own kids to kill each other to win her favor, it’s very hard to see him brushing that off). Plus he’s regained his sense of disgust over the damane system. So there are a lot of powderkegs waiting to be blown sky-high for Mat, post-canon.

idk, Mat’s storyline is maybe the one where I most have to untangle whether I dislike it more because I feel like it was executed poorly or if I dislike it because it sets up a situation that will never get resolution. And how connected are those things?

A big frustration that I’ve had with how Jordan and then Sanderson handled Mat’s storyline over the course of the last few books of the series was how many shortcuts were taken with his character and how artificial forcing him into the Seanchans’ arms has felt to me.

a. Mat getting trapped in Ebou Dar and then all the characters involved taking a vow of silence when it came to telling Rand about it. Mat getting trapped in Ebou Dar is plot nonsense: relatively forgivable. But having multiple characters being given the opportunity to change that situation and just... not bothering to do it is... that’s a characterization issue. It severely impacted my feelings about Nynaeve for Jordan to turn her into the kind of person who just doesn’t bother to tell Rand that his best friend was left behind in that kind of perilous situation. Plot manipulations... that’s just how the plot works. But over and over, characters got broken or bent for the purpose of jamming Mat into the Seanchan storyline.

b. Setalle Anan is a minor character, so I get why people don’t care about her, but she’s a character who pretty much completely reverses her characterization between WH & CoT (in WH, she is anti-slavery and finds Mat charming and trustworthy; in CoT & KoD, she protects and waits on Tuon while treating Mat like the dangerous one, including betraying Mat’s secrets to Tuon -- and her betrayals are never acknowledged by the text in any way; she just keeps on being treated as if she’s a friendly supporting character) and, from what I could see, it’s just so obviously done in order to protect Tuon from ever having even a sliver of character growth rather than it making sense for Setalle Anan’s character.

c. We keep tiptoeing up to the brink of Actually Having A Plot Happen with the Seanchan and then backing away at the last minute without really having a good reason to do it. Incredibly frustrating. This was one of my main annoyances with CoT & KoD. And in AMoL, both Rand and Egwene inexplicably back down when they have Tuon on the ropes and off-balance.

d. Mat’s teleportation to Ebou Dar in-between Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light. I’ve talked about this one a lot but yeah. It’s just... really bad? I do suspect that Sanderson couldn’t figure out any way to actually make it believable that Mat would go to the Seanchan and that’s why he had it all happen off-the-page. But the careless damage that it does to Mat’s characterization is just horrific. Mat gets ripped out of the action of the first third of the book, and doesn’t get to the Last Battle itself until the book is more than half over. Once Mat is actually engaging in the Last Battle, his characterization steadies a lot but especially those first four chapters with Mat, it feels like we’re only working with half of his characterization and the other half has vanished somewhere in-between ToM & AMoL.

(and if Mat hadn’t been cut-and-pasted from the Tower of Ghenjei over to Ebou Dar, then we would have had a full reunion at Merrilor. So I’m annoyed/bitter about that too)

I could keep going but... let’s keep it at four issues for right now so that we’re not here all day, lol.

All of those issues are problems that I had with the execution of the storyline.

I am not inherently opposed to depressing endings for characters that I love but... it has to be done well. It has to make sense. And Mat’s ending just... required cutting away too many parts of him (and other characters) for it to make sense to me.

But though it is not always handled well (to put it mildly), Mat’s storyline with Tuon (and Tylin before her) is an example of the ‘typical gender roles are swapped’ done in a way that is more down to the very core of his storyline than a lot of other storylines, which are more on the surface.

He’s much less politically powerful than his spouse and needs to use guile, intrigue, and manipulation to get his way and try to persuade her to a gentler and kinder path than her warlike nature naturally aligns towards.

He undergoes something of a gender-swapped version of “The Taming of the Shrew” storyline, in which a fiercely independent person gets coerced/’tamed’ into being a properly submissive spouse (or, depending on your interpretation, into pretending to be one) -- many of the tricks that Tuon and Tylin use are similar to what Petruchio does to Katherine in the play. Mat gets publicly humiliated and starved by Tylin into submitting to her (which is what Petruchio does to Katherine during/after their wedding), and isolated away from his past connections during his time with Tuon, where he constantly has to act to try to figure out how to appease her without provoking her temper (Petruchio compares taming Katherine to falcon-taming, but Tuon would probably compare it to horse-training or damane-breaking), and Petruchio changes her name from ‘Katherine’ to ‘Kate’, which fits pretty well with Tuon’s insistence on never once calling Mat ‘Mat’.

Plus Mat getting his name changed to indicate that he now ‘belongs’ to Tuon’s people fits into this general category -- and historically, in the culture that Jordan belonged to, that’s normally a role given to women, to be given a new name that shows that they are now of their husband’s people and not their father’s; it’s usually their last name but, in the not too-distant past (and maybe currently in some places as well, idk), at least in the USA, women were often referred to as Mrs. “husband’s first name” “husband’s last name” with none of their own name making it into the address.

But a lot of the issues that I have with how this was written is that it felt like Mat was behaving like his hand was forced even when it wasn’t. Which is definitely a writing issue -- it’s a similar issue to the one that I have with the Rand & Min romance, for example, where Min desperately chases after something even though she doesn’t really want it at the start. Prophecy gets used as a way to skip actually writing important character or relationship beats, instead of prophecy being one of many tools in the writer’s kit.

So, yeah, it really is the execution of the storyline that is the biggest problem for me with Mat & Tuon, and the way it feels like he is pulled away from his other attachments whether or not that makes any narrative or character sense.

I really hope that the show does better with them, and with Mat in his endgame (should we get there, etc.).

I will say that I do think that Sanderson handled the romance better than Jordan did; the main problem was that it was already fundamentally broken by how the relationship was written in CoT & KoD, imo (the KoD collaring chapter in particular made me despise them as a pairing and my feelings never recovered from that moment). But in Sanderson’s books, we actually see the effects of Tuon compromising with Mat during various points of the Last Battle (though we see don’t actually see their private discussions and/or arguments that lead to those compromises), and there’s always a throughline showing how miserable the Seanchan lifestyle is for Mat, and those are two things that were majorly missing from CoT & KoD for me, but that make sense as the only way to make the romance even half-believable for Mat’s pre-established characterization from WH and earlier.

The three big issues that I have with Sanderson’s Mat are: the terrible first chapter of TGS (with the gross sexism); the terrible first chapter of AMoL (now featuring inexplicable teleportation); and the deep deep disservice done to Mat and Rand’s friendship (Rand got a personal goodbye with EVERYONE important to him EXCEPT Mat! And Mat got a personal reunion with everyone important to him, except Rand! All they got was the negotiation scene that was ultimately all about Fortuona and the Seanchan treaty, with Mat and Rand’s friendship being the set dressing around the scene).

But the relationship with Tuon honestly... makes a lot more sense in this book than it did in CoT & KoD (once we work past the brain-breaking logistics of the first chapter or so). There are TONS of hints that Mat has uncomfortable vibes going on underneath his casual exterior, plus Tuon actually does make some attempts at compromising with him, and if the well hadn’t been poisoned by how much I despised CoT/KoD-era Mat & Tuon then... I might have had a chance at enjoying AMoL-era Mat & Tuon for the toxic trainwreck that it is.

But, like all the characters & relationships in AMoL, we skip some pretty big moments in the Mat & Tuon relationship -- we see the effects of them compromising but we never actually see them coming to that compromise in private, which I feel like we needed after how unyielding and frankly how annoying Jordan made Tuon about everything.

We do end up with a Mat & a ‘Fortuona’ who remain at cross-purposes -- Mat continues to think of and refer to her as ‘Tuon’ while Fortuona has kinda reversed from thinking of him as a ‘buffoon’ to instead believing that he has the same kind of practical motivations behind his choices that she does, which is also not accurate. But Sanderson did add in some actual give-and-take to their relationship, which Jordan never seemed willing to do, so the AMoL-era Mat & Tuon is a lot more genuinely engaging for me, even if I do still think that they are one of the most obviously doomed fictional marriages that I have ever seen.

Final Mat-related question for the moment: the Seanchan Empire is based on authoritarian governments throughout history, so does how the Seanchan Empire operates mimic the behavior of a cult?

The popular model for cults is the BITE model, which was developed by a man who was deprogrammed from the Moon cult in 1976 (Steve Hassan). It’s an acronym:

Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotion control. BITE.

Do the Seanchan seek to control people’s behavior? (yes) Do they seek to control the flow of information that the people under them learn? (yes) Do they seek to have their members reject critical thought and only apply to the group-think? (yes) Do they manipulate the emotions of their followers, usually instilling fear or paranoia about outsiders? (yes)

We know from earlier books that the Seanchan culture =/= the Seanchan Empire. There are constant civil wars and uprisings in their native land. This is explicitly why they are such good soldiers, because they are always fighting each other. Yet they present themselves as a monolith when they come to the Westlands, bragging about how they’re here to bring ‘order’ to a lawless continent. What they say about themselves does not match the truth of what else we know about them.

How does the Seanchan Empire exercise its control over its people? Everything I included here is something I think we’ve see the Empire do, but I did bold ones that are particularly blatant in the text.

Behavior control: Control types of clothing and hairstyles; permission required for major decisions; rewards and punishments used to modify behaviors both positive and negative; discourage individualism; encourage group-think; impose rigid rules and regulations; punish disobedience by beating, torture, burning, cutting, rape, or tattooing/branding; threaten harm to family and friends; encourage and engage in corporal punishment; instill dependency and obedience; kidnapping; beating; torture; murder

Information control: Distort information to make it more acceptable; systematically lie to the cult members; minimize or discourage access to non-cult sources of information; ensure that information is not freely accessible; control information at different levels and missions within group; allow only leadership to decide who needs to know what and when; encourage spying on other members; impose a buddy system to monitor and control member; report deviant thoughts, feelings, and actions to leadership; ensure that individual behavior is monitored by group; extensive use of cult-generated propaganda

Thought control: require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth; adopting the group’s ‘map of reality’ as reality; instill black and white thinking; organize people into us vs them; change person’s name and identity; use of loaded language and cliches which constrict knowledge; encourage only ‘good and proper’ thoughts; thought-stopping techniques to shut down reality testing: denial, rationalization, justification, wishful thinking; rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism; forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy; labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful

Emotion control: teach emotion-stopping techniques to block feelings of homesickness, anger, doubt; make the person feel that problems are always their own fault, never the leader’s or the group’s fault; promote feelings of guilt or unworthiness; instill fear, such as fear of: thinking independently, the outside world, leaving or being shunned by the group; ritualistic and sometimes public confessions of sins; phobia indoctrination: inculcating irrational fears about leaving the group or questioning the leader’s authority, no happiness or fulfillment possible outside of group; shunning of those who leave; being told there is never a legitimate reason to leave.

“Destructive mind control can be determined when the overall effect of these four components promotes dependency and obedience to some leader or cause; it is not necessary for every single item on the list to be present.“ (in this case, that would be to the Empress, ~may she live forever~)

(all taken from freedomofmind(dot)com -- not linking because sometimes outside links make tumblr act weird about posts)

On the page, we witness the slow process of Leilwin née Egeanin pulling away and deprogramming from the Seanchan Empire, and then in this book, it feels like Mat has begun that process as well. And it feels like they started the same way -- because of a massive overreach by Tuon, the leader of the cult/Empire. Leilwin née Egeanin gets humiliated and punished by Tuon for no reason; just because Tuon felt like being a brat that day, and that moment of humiliation -- the re-naming and the forcing of the jewelry on her in a way that treated her like a slave -- was really what made Leilwin née Egeanin start to pull away from the other Seanchan and go into the path that eventually led to her being, however briefly, Egwene’s Warder.

For Mat, it really seems like whatever happened in that ‘not pleasant’ discussion that he and Tuon had after she berated him for, essentially, prioritizing Egwene’s privacy over Tuon’s desire to get information from him... that discussion (that we didn’t get to see) really seemed to lead to the more combative Mat who refused to back down and roll over for her. Mat still feels a level of protectiveness and affection for Tuon through the rest of the book but he stops letting her push him around and he starts acting like he cares about doing something about the slavery system in the Seanchan Empire again, which was a part of him that we lost at the start of CoT and I have hated so much that we lost in his character. But it slowly grows back over the course of the second half of AMoL.

Again, my big regret here is that the Mat & Rand reunion happened before Mat started his spine regrowth program. Even though Mat does start to push back on Tuon more here, he still never finished several of his character arcs that were set up over the course of the entire series: namely his own mistrust of Aes Sedai and his fear of Rand as a channeler. Both of those fears were things that he was actively working in the text and that he abruptly backtracked on when Tuon was introduced into his life (because being chill with channelers and being chill with people who enslave channelers is contradictory and so Jordan decided... to go with being chill with slavers). So those are two flapping loose ends for his character at the end of this series that never got to fully be addressed because the ‘romance’ was prioritized over Mat’s characterization.

Loial

Loial is looking for people to help him with accounts for his book and “Perrin ignored me and Mat cannot be found”.

Mat just completely disappearing from the Westlands side of things to go set up a fireworks show for Tuon (and asking Aludra to be the one to set it up, which just seems kinda mean, considering that the Seanchan pretty much completely eliminated the Illuminators) is just... frustrating. Apparently Mat visited the battlefield here “smiling and healthy” but then vanished. So, in theory, there’s an empty place here where Mat might have visited Rand and talked to Elayne & co one last time, since Rand is in the main healing tent on this battlefield.

Loial also notes how odd it is that Elayne and Min don’t seem to feel any urge to go in to hold Rand’s hand while he’s dying (Aviendha is getting her legs looked at). I know, Loial! They’re the worst fake-grievers who ever lived, I swear. If the whole point is to trick people into thinking Rand is dead, then it might be a good idea to... actually try to trick people?

Moghedien

In which Tuon’s people are already breaking the terms of the treaty by snatching up channelers from the battlefield at Merrilor. No hundred years of peace, Rand. I’m sorry.

Rand (& all those who say ‘goodbye’ to him, or who don’t)

Rand leaves the mountain, slipping on his own blood and carrying a body. Shayol Ghul is trying to close before he can leave and he only barely makes it out in time before the cave snaps shut behind him.

Moiraine tells Rand that he did well, and Nynaeve tries desperately to keep him alive, but eventually, and without ever waking back up, ‘Rand’ dies.

Elayne, Aviendha, and Min do the absolute worst job of playing grieving widows ever. Like, if Rand had actually died, I could understand this better. Because they might really be in shock. But they know he’s alive! And their whole job is to convince people that they absolutely believe that he’s dead! Just... pinch your arm until you start crying! This is literally the most suspicious way that they could have gone about things -- Nynaeve is already extremely suspicious of how they’re acting. Seriously, she’s gonna wiggle the truth out of them pretty much five seconds post-epilogue.

Birgitte comes to say goodbye to Elayne because she’s about to be reborn... and to mention that she’s tossed away the Horn of Valere. Sure hope that Elayne doesn’t regret that in ten years when they’re at war with the Seanchan!

Tam hopes that now his son can get some rest. My hope is that Rand will, you know, go and talk to his dad after he’s had a chance to recover from the stress and trauma of the Last Battle. Also, Tam... you’re gonna have grandkids. No thoughts on that, I see. Still no thoughts on that.

The funeral scene frustrates me to pieces.

Honestly, the most frustrating thing about the funeral scene is how easy it would have been to casually mention that Mat and Perrin were there? Like, that’s ONE SENTENCE. Just... the erasure of those years of friendship, because heterosexual marriage, in Jordan’s fictional world, meant that close male-male friendships just stopped existing. It’s depressing. That CADSUANE is considered to have more right to be at Rand’s funeral than his childhood friends who were also vital parts of the Last Battle. It’s insulting. And apparently Tam organized it? But he couldn’t be bothered to invite his kid’s best friends. Definitely a place where Sanderson should have done some editing of the original epilogue. One sentence is all that was needed.

*sigh*

I do think that Sanderson did try to set up why Mat wouldn’t have gone -- we have seen Mat, in several of his recent PoV scenes, swallowing his grief over losing people he loves and not letting it appear to affect him openly, even as it rocked him deeply, so Rand’s death would be another of those gut-punches that he would do his best to pretend didn’t happen. But, fuck... it just sucks that the friendship between Mat and Rand is such a sublimated thing in this last book, when Rand and Mat both got to much more openly deal with pretty much every other important relationship that they had (though I will note that Rand and Sulin never got a reunion either! Rude!).

Perrin didn’t get anything like that kind of subtextual explanation, but Perrin actually did visit Rand’s healing tent while he was dying, so at least he got that much. *shrugs*

Min thinking here about how the assembled people expect a ‘show’ of grief -- yes, they have all found it exceedingly odd that none of you appear to be grieving the man you said that you loved.

Rand wakes up in his new body, washed clean of the wounds that he’d taken over the course of the series. No more missing hand; no more agonizing pain in his side.

I have to admit “she left me some money” feels like a pretty anti-climatic way for Alivia to “help Rand die”? She wasn’t really involved in his “death” at all -- it was really Moiraine and Nynaeve who were the ones who ‘helped’ him die. I mean, any one of Min, Elayne, or Aviendha could have left him some money, since they all know he’s alive. I wonder if Jordan was originally thinking that Alivia would be the one joining Rand & Nynaeve for the cave journey, and it was Sanderson who decided that Moiraine would be more appropriate? Nothing distinctively Moiraine happens in that cave, not the way that Nynaeve was needed to be there to heal Alanna without using the Power. Like, this poor woman was harassed by Min for a handful of books because of that prophecy and all she did was leave Rand some money! Min better find her and apologize to her! (I already know that she won’t)

Haha, so confession: my brain edited out that new!Rand had lost saidin. My brain was just like “nope, of course he can still channel”. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of Rand not being a channeler at the end of the story, so that part I’m not thrilled about. He does have his newfound ability to use the threads of reality to basically channel anyway, though. Or at least I assume that’s what the pipe scene is about.

And then his thought, too, about ‘which’ of the women will follow him - yeah, you’re right that thinking that means you’ve gotten a swollen head! They all have responsibilities! Though since Rand leaves so abruptly here, there’s a lot that he doesn’t know, and the two things that most affect this specific question are: the extent of Aviendha’s injuries and the extent of Min’s involvement with the Seanchan. Literally zero of them is in a position to go chasing after Rand, even if they wanted to! Rand is the one who has no obligations and can easily visit them if he wants (well, maybe not ‘easily’ if Min does end up in the Empire).

But I can still remember, wow, what a relief it was that he was alive at the end, and free and unbound. The rest can be... adjusted by post-canon theories.

In terms of ‘things that aren’t covered but that we can probably assume’:

It does look like Elayne ended up with all three of the medallion copies -- the one Mellar used on her, the one that was on Birgitte’s body, and the third was with Lan and she probably reclaimed it (there’s nothing to indicate that Mat spoke with Lan and got it back), so the slaver empress never gets that medallion that Mat wanted to give her back in ToM. Tragic.

Despite Elayne and Tam speaking frequently over the course of AMoL, they somehow never speak about the whole grandkids issue. I feel like we can assume that this happens at some point, post-epilogue? Elayne and Aviendha both seem like they would go back to Caemlyn to rebuild. And Tam doesn’t really have a reason to go back to the Two Rivers at this point, so I can see him ending in Caemlyn too because: grandkids.

Technically, Min has slipped the Seanchan net at this point and could just not go back if she wants, so she can either go back to the Seanchan or she could go to Caemlyn with Elayne & Aviendha, but if she does stay away from the Seanchan, Tuon is going to try to get her back. Unless she was super-turned off by Min actually standing up to her in front of all the Blood and hastily makes Selucia her Truthspeaker again. That’s another possibility.

Ah, since we were told earlier that Melaine was about ready to give birth and Birgitte tells Elayne that she’s about to be reborn: Melaine might be her mom. I feel like Birgitte being reborn as Aiel sounds kinda fun.

I feel like Rand would not actually enjoy traveling all on his own after a while, given what we know about him, so he would probably end up visiting Caemlyn. And given how suspicious Nynaeve already is in the epilogue, I’m going to guess that she knows the truth by the time Rand goes to Caemlyn.

If Mat decides to leave the Seanchan behind at any point, he will probably also go to Caemlyn, and Mat and Rand can finally have a good reunion.

All in all, there are things about the ending that don’t thrill me but there are also things I really like. And having an ending at all helps in terms of sparking the imagination for fanfiction or meta or... an Amazon Prime television series. I don’t think we would have ever gotten the series if the books had stayed unfinished.

The epilogue checklist (and my theories about how it affected AMoL)

So, while reading AMoL, it felt like Sanderson took a couple of shortcuts in order to bruteforce the characters into reaching their epilogue endpoints, because there simply wasn’t enough time for it to happen naturally. This is my list of things that I believe got shortchanged due to “writing to the epilogue”:

Fortuona is pregnant in the epilogue: at the start of AMoL, Mat gets teleported to Ebou Dar without any kind of narrative or logistical explanation (contradicting his PoV chapter in the ending of ToM, where he was planning to return to Caemlyn, which would have thrust him directly into the main stories at play in the prologue & early chapters). I feel like part of it is that Sanderson really wanted to get that bun in the oven as quickly as possible.

“they expected something from the three of them; a show of some kind” : There’s just a wide acknowledgement in the epilogue that literally everyone knows that Rand has three girlfriends, so everyone just already knows in AMoL that Rand is in a relationship with three women now. No need for anyone to have emotional reactions to it, please! (not even Rand’s literal dad!) This one also ends up being weird because it seems to change from moment-to-moment whether or not the whole army knows that Rand has three girlfriends (if everyone knows already, why is Rand playing spy games with Elayne?).

Min is Fortuona’s pregnancy test: Min instantly respects ~Fortuona~ as an empress even while thinking that she doesn’t normally respect nobility. Bizarre, considering Min’s own history with the Seanchan from Falme.

Mat kills Fain: we got two super-quick glimpses of Fain earlier in the book to set up this moment but Mat had so much other stuff to do that Sanderson couldn’t really do more than say: yeah, Fain exists and he’s bad, lol.

Minor elements I think were affect by the epilogue:

Rand is still pondering over the idea of choosing between Elayne, Aviendha, or Min: we get Rand’s going “am I allowed to love three women? idk sounds fake” when he and Aviendha sleep together in chapter 4, which just was kinda silly. I think the epilogue is also the genesis of the vibe where Rand appears to consider “having sex with Min for months” to not be any kind of “choice” when it comes to the three women, but having a romantic interlude with Aviendha or Elayne would signal a choice -- because the epilogue acts like the situation between Rand and each of the three women is roughly equal, so “months of sex with Min” appears to hold the same emotional weight to Rand as “pining from afar with two nights of intense passion” does when he thinks of either Elayne or Aviendha.

Mat has no thoughts about any of the Westlands characters: I think that this is more of a subconscious effect -- as he focused more on the final book, I think Sanderson focused on the relationships highlighted in the all-important epilogue... and the only person that Mat cares about in the epilogue is himself *cough* I mean, Fortuona, of course, lol. In both TGS and in ToM, Mat’s deep affection for various Westlands characters was constantly on display, as shown in his own ‘loves lying to himself’ way. This gets curtailed in AMoL, especially in the early Ebou Dar chapters.

I think I’m going to let myself might let myself marinate over the various books before I post a final list of my personal ranking of the books.

One thing that I’ve really noticed is that, more than any other character, the quality of Mat’s storyline has a huge impact on my overall enjoyment of the book. In CoT & KoD, Elayne and Egwene (both of whom I love), got pretty good stories. But Mat’s story was so bad that it made it difficult for me to enjoy the good parts. But maybe some time just letting myself think about the series as a whole will balance out my thoughts. Does that make Mat my favorite character or just my most impactful character? idk. I feel like Elayne or Rand would more consistently hit the top of my favorites.

Overall top five characters throughout the entire series:

1. Elayne

2. Rand

3. Egwene

4. Mat (might be higher if not for CoT & KoD)

5. Nynaeve (might be higher if she didn’t basically disappear after she married Lan)

Then, moving on to the next favs, I think there’s more uncertainty there for me:

6. Verin, probably, but it could be Moiraine. Let’s say they tie.

7. Aviendha and Siuan can both go here. Both generally very good and interesting characters.

8. You know, I had a real turnaround with Gawyn in this reread of the books; I’m gonna put him here. He can share this spot with Leilwin née Egeanin.

9. Loial, probably. Needed more PoV; that would have been nice. I’ll put Faile here with him.

10. For more minor characters, I gotta give a shout-out to Narishma (favorite Asha’man), Sulin, Pevara during her Black Ajah Hunter phase, Olver is really good in his sections here in AMoL, Asmodean for being my favorite fail-Forsaken and Moghedien for sticking it out until the very end, Elaida honestly very fun PoV as far as villains go, Teslyn and Joline for being troopers and enduring Mat Cauthon at his very worst, my girl Berelain who always deserved better, the ‘Finn in general always lots of fun, Aludra and Juilin who always kept their integrity intact.

#wot #wheel of time #wot reread #wot book spoilers #wot spoilers #wot amol spoilers #wot a memory of light spoilers #mat cauthon #rand al'thor #elayne trakand #so it really feels like the 'main characters' of the actual last battle #were rand mat egwene and elayne #with everyone else being more of a secondary character #who helped the one of those main four storylines #posting this today because ao3 is being slightly iffy right now #so i'm going to post the next chapter of voice on thursday #and just give ao3 some time to work out whatever the connection issues are

139 notes · View notes