Wheel of Time discussion

Originally posted on /r/wot

⚠️⚠️ FULL SERIES SPOILERS ⚠️⚠️

Original Post ----------

At the end of the Third Age, when Rand is gearing up to start the Last Battle, he announces his plan to break the seals of the Dark One's prison as the battle commences. He believes this is the only way to forge a proper prison for the Dark One, rather than patching the faulty prison from the Age of Legends.

Egwene see the plan as madness, and it's pretty common in the fandom for people to lampoon her choice to do so, often citing it as an example of how annoying and self-righteous she is as a character.

But I contend that she is not at all wrong to call Rand's plan out and push back against it, and what we are supposed to take from this story beat and it's resolution isn't that Egwene was wrong and had to listen to Rand, but that Rand and Egwene are both partially right, and are both partially wrong. They succeed by listening to and trusting each other, avoiding the same folly that takes place at the end of the Age of Legends.

The situation presented to us on the precipice of the Last Battle has symmetry with the events leading up to the Hundred Companions strike on Shayol Ghul. Lews Therin Telemon and Latra Posae Decume find themselves at an impass: Lews Therin wishes to strike directly at Shayol Ghul and attempt to re-seal the bore, while Latra Posae finds the plan far too dangerous. She wishes to use the Choedan Kal to restrain the Dark One's influence to a given area, but has lost the access keys.

When Lews Therin decides to assault the Bore alone, Latra Posae and the women refuse to help. This choice often gets pointed to as what cost the world a full victory and resulted in the opening the Dark One needed to taint saidin. I often see it remarked that if only Latra had agreed to go with Lews, The Breaking could have been avoided.

But I believe that there is strong evidence that Latra's refusal to join Lews, her instinct that the plan was incredibly reckless, was a choice that saved the world, and allowed for eventual victory against the Dark One at the end of the Third Age, because unlike Rand, Lews did not have access to the True Power.

If Latra Posae had gone with Lews to the Bore, without the True Power to protect them, both halves of the One Power would have been tainted by the Dark One's counter-stroke.

Let's look at how the True Power is used by Rand in the final moments of the Last Battle From A Memory of Light:

> > > This was the most dangerous part of the plan. Min had figured it out. Callandor had such flaws, such incredible flaws. Created so that a man using it needed women to control him, created so that if Rand used it, others could take control of him … > >

> > > Why was Rand to need a weapon with such flaws? Why did the prophecies mention it so? A sa’angreal for the True Power. Why would he ever need such a thing? > >

> > > The answer was so simple. > >

> > > “Now!” Rand yelled. > >

> > > Nynaeve and Moiraine channeled together, exploiting the flaw in Callandor as Moridin tried to bring it to bear against Rand. Wind whipped in the tunnel. The ground quivered, and Moridin yelled, eyes going wide. > >

> > > They took control of him. Callandor was flawed. Any man using it could be forced to link with women, to be placed in their control. A trap … and one he used on Moridin. > >

> > > “Link!” Rand commanded. > >

> > > They fed it to him. Power. > >

> > > Saidar from the women. > >

> > > The True Power from Moridin. > >

> > > Saidin from Rand. > >

> > > Moridin’s channeling the True Power here threatened to destroy them all, but they buffered it with saidin and saidar, then directed all three at the Dark One. > >

> > > Rand punched through the blackness there and created a conduit of light and darkness, turning the Dark One’s own essence upon him. > >

> > > Rand felt the Dark One beyond, his immensity. Space, size, time … Rand understood how these things could be irrelevant now. > >

> > > With a bellow—three Powers coursing through him, blood streaming down his side—the Dragon Reborn raised a hand of power and seized the Dark One through the Bore, like a man reaching through water to grab the prize at the river’s bottom. The Dark One tried to pull back, but Rand’s claw was gloved by the True Power. The enemy could not taint saidin again. The Dark One tried to withdraw the True Power from Moridin, but the conduit flowed too freely, too powerfully to shut off now. Even for Shai’tan himself. > >

> > > So it was that Rand used the Dark One’s own essence, channeled in its full strength. He held the Dark One tightly, like a dove in the grip of a hawk. > >

> > > And light exploded from him. > >

Emphasis mine.

In this passage, the use of the True Power is explicitly called out as the reason that the Dark One cannot taint saidin again. Saidar is not explicitly mentioned, but just like Rand, Lews and the companions would likely have been linked with women, channeling saidar , and thereby exposing it to the same counter-stroke that tainted saidin, without the True Power to insulate it.

This theory is strengthened by a later passage:

> > > Rand yelled, thrusting the Dark One back through the pit from where it had come. Rand pushed his arms to the side, grabbing twin pillars of saidar and saidin with his mind, coated with the True Power drawn through Moridin, who knelt on the floor, eyes open, so much power coursing through him he couldn’t even move. > >

> > > Rand hurled the Powers forward with his mind and braided them together. Saidin and saidar at once, the True Power surrounding them and forming a shield on the Bore. > >

> > > He wove something majestic, a pattern of interlaced saidar and saidin in their pure forms. Not Fire, not Spirit, not Water, not Earth, not Air. Purity. Light itself. This didn’t repair, it didn’t patch, it forged anew. > >

It's clear the actual prison was re-made using saidin and saidar. So why was the True Power, and Callandor, so crucial to Rand's success this time around if he could have succeeded without it last time, if not for the women? If loss had soley been caused by the lack of Women Channelers, Rand would have had no need of the True Power or it's sa'angreal.

Rand is using the True Power to insulate both halves of the One Power against another taint, something Lews would have been unable to do in his day. If the women had agreed to be there, they would have made a perfect prison for the Dark One, but at what cost? Saidin AND saidar would have been lost, which would have been disasterous on so many levels; it would have been a fate worse then the Breaking and a flawed prison for the Dark One.

Beyond the immediate force multiplier for the Breaking, and taking all channelers off the board in the Third Age, and making it impossible to still or gentle rogue channelers, since anyone capable of doing so would be mad themselves -- it also would have made it impossible to cleanse the source again, removing the use of the source from humanity for all time. Rand uses a coil of clean saidar to shove tainted saidin through as part of the process for removing the Taint. From Winter's Heart:

> > > Awkwardly, forcing himself to work gently, to use the unfamiliar saidar’s own immense strength to guide it as he wanted, he wove a conduit that touched the male half of the Source at one end and the distantly seen city at the other. The conduit had to be of untainted saidar. If this worked as he hoped, a tube of saidin might shatter when the taint began to leech out of it. He thought of it as a tube, at least, though it was not. The weave did not form at all as he expected it to. As if saidar had a mind of its own, the weave took on convolutions and spirals that made him think of a flower. There was nothing to see, no grand weaves sweeping down from the sky. The Source lay at the heart of creation. The Source was everywhere, even in Shadar Logoth. The conduit covered distance beyond his imagining, and had no length at all. It had to be a conduit, no matter its appearance. If it was not . . . > >

Emphasis mine.

Latra may not have had a better plan than Lews, but she was right when she felt that Lews was going off half-cocked to the Bore, to fear that there was information they may be missing. Lews and Latra refused to work together, and in doing so, they are only able to halfway save the world.

Through Lews' heroics, the Dark One is stalled for an Age, buying time, but at a terrible cost: the male half of the True Source.

Through Latra's abstention, saidar is spared, but the Dark One's prison is not complete, doming the World to his influence and another apocalyptic showdown.

Let's return to the Third Age. Rand and Egwene are at the same impass. Rand wants to go off, half-cocked, and break the seals immediately. Egwene doesn't want to break the seals at all.

But Rand has learned something from his past life: the folly of not listening, because Lews Therin knows what happens when he doesn't allow his impulses to be tempered. From The Eye of the World:

> > > He was still touching saidin, the male half of the power that drove the universe, that turned the Wheel of Time, and he could feel the oily taint fouling its surface, the taint of the Shadow’s counterstroke, the taint that doomed the world. Because of him. Because in his pride he had believed that men could match the Creator, could mend what the Creator had made and they had broken. In his pride he had believed. > >

Egwene and Rand come to a compromise, they agree to trust each other. Egwene agrees to trust Rand's instincts that the seals must be broken, and Rand agrees to trust Egwene's instincts that now is not the time to break them. To let Egwene be a hero too, a mistake he made not just with Latra in the previous Age. From A Memory of Light:

> > > Of all those to turn to the Shadow, Demandred’s betrayal seemed the most tragic. The man could have been a hero. Should have been a hero. > >

> > > I’m to blame for that, too, Rand thought. If I’d offered a hand instead of a smirk, if I’d congratulated instead of competed. If I’d been the man then that I am now … > >

Both sexes having to work together to temper and strengthen each other, to check each other's worst instincts, is a core theme of The Wheel of Time. The lack of symbiotic balance between Lews' hot-headness and Latra's caution is what loses the day. Pinning the failure of the previous age solely on the women for not doing what the men wanted would be just as would undercut one of the core themes of The Wheel of Time.

Rand and Egwene's compromise, their trust each in other's instincts and cooperation is what lets them succeed. Neither of them is right, but each has part of the right idea -- Rand needs the seals to be broken to reforge the prison anew, but if he had broken them at the beginning of the battle I can't see how it would have ended well. Egwene's insistence that he dial that back allows for them to be broken by Logaine right as Rand is ready to launch his final attack.

To reduce the story beat to Egwene not sucking it up and doing what Rand wants because he's right is to miss the point and in many ways, get the message backwards.

Figured I would start moving over some of my high effort posts to the fediverse. This is a post I originally made on the /r/wot and then posted to [email protected]. Hope it's all right that I'm re-posting here.

Original Post ----------

Padan Fain gets ganked like a chump at the last battle. His incidental death disappointed many fans.

Yet if we peek below the surface of Fain's demise, I believe hints of a subtle design in the Pattern emerge that can be spun forward into implications about the Creator's deepest convictions.

The theory I'm about to lay out rests on an existing theory many of you will be familiar with: Fain as a backup Dark One.

Let's review:

In the depths of Shayul Ghul, Rand is grappling not just with the Dark One, but with himself. He enters the fray determined to destroy the Dark One for good, and throughout the battle is challenged with visions of the meaningless existence he would leave for the world, were he to achieve his goal.

At this point, the Pattern can't rely on what Rand will choose, so it has Fain on standby to take the Dark One's place if needed. And just like the pattern shanked the False Dragons it produced after Rand took up the mantle, as soon as Rand chooses not to destroy the Dark One, the Wheel unceremoniously disposes of Fain; it's clear the burgeoning God is no longer needed to spin the Pattern as intended. Mat is just a convenient nearby tool it has arranged to complete the task.

A few passages back this up:

> > > [Padan Fain] was not reborn yet, not completely. He would need to find a place to infest, a place where the barriers between worlds were thin.There, he could seep his self into the very stones and embed his awareness into that location. > >

At that moment, Fain is going towards the Mouth of Shayul Ghul to kill Rand. Rand is at the perfect place for Fain to infest: the Bore. The Pattern aimed him like an arrow towards where it needed him at the Last Battle. And it did it all the way in book one, when it tricked the Dark One into imprinting Fain on Rand.

Let me say that again.

The Pattern tricked the Dark One into helping create and maneuver His own replacement.

I mean, just look at Faine's new name for himself:

> > > Shaisam rolled onto the battlefield at Thakan’dar. > >

Shaisam. Looks a lot like Shai'tan, huh?

There's a few implications I LOVE about this theory. Let's look at another passage:

> > > The process would take years, but once it happened, he would become more difficult to kill. > >

> > > Right now, Shaisam was frail. This mortal form that walked at the center of his mind … he was bound to it. Fain, it had been. Padan Fain. > >

> > > Still, he was vast. Those souls had given rise to much mist, and it—in turn—found others to feed upon. Men fought Shadowspawn before him. All would give him strength. > >

This snippet implies that although Fain is vulnerable, he's approaching the amount of power he can weild. His power is, if not equal to, at least comparable to the Dark One when the Pattern composts him. This makes sense. The Pattern's need for him was imminent if the Dark One was to be destroyed; there isn't a TON of time left for him to rank up his power.

Which leads to a conclusion: the Pattern could have also easily disposed of the Dark One at any point in the story. It just doesn't. Instead, it keeps the Dark One just contained enough to allow the universe's inhabitants to live their lives while having the choice to give into evil or not. If we think about it, walking that line likely takes even greater dominance than simply defeating the Dark One outright.

This solves another problem. We know that in other turnings of the Wheel, the Champion of the Light went over to the Shadow. In those turnings, the war was a draw. From the Crossroads of Twilight book tour:

> > > Robert Jordan: Yes, the Champion of the Light has gone over in the past. This is a game you have to win every time. Or rather, that you can only lose once--you can stay in if you get a draw. Think of a tournament with single elimination. If you lose once, that's it. In the past, when the Champion of the Light has gone over to the Shadow, the result has been a draw. > >

That always struck me as weird. Can you imagine if god-tier Rand had gone over to the Shadow? How could that possibly end in anything other than a decisive loss on the Light's part? It strains credulity that the Light could eek out a draw from such a situation over and over again through eternity. Statistically, if the light has triumphed an endless number of times (because if they hadn't, the universe wouldn't exist) it' not an unlikely win, it's an inevitable one. It has to have a 100% chance of happening, because even a 0.00001% chance of the Light losing existed, it would have happened long before the turning we get to see.

The Creator stacked the deck. The Wheel could handle Darth Rand going over to the Shadow like it easily handled Fain. As easily as it could handle the Dark One. It's not fighting against The Dark One, it needs the Dark One to fulfill its purpose and spin the Pattern, because the Pattern is dominated by the interacting lives of those grappling between choosing the Light or the Dark. It's preserving the Dark just as much as it's preserving the Light. In fact, the Pattern needs the Dark so badly the creator set up the Wheel to spin out new Dark Ones the same way it spins out Champions to fight them.

Speaking of which, Fain's existence as the waiter-in-the-wings has a counterpart on the light. Nakomi's inclusion in the story may seem unrelated -- and often puzzling -- at first, but it plays directly into the worldbuilding here. If we accept that The Pattern has positioned her to take up the mantle of Champion should Rand fall — either to death, or despair — she and Fain as a pair reinforce that the conflict between light and dark is the greatest purpose of the Pattern, and must be kept going at all costs.

I'm not going to belabor how CLEARLY this paints the same picture Rand ultimately embraces: to the Creator, the choice between right and wrong is essential for being human to be meaningful.

Instead I want to examine the differences between Fain and the Dark One. The fact that they even are different is interesting. Fain is able to corrupt Trollocs and Mydrall with his power, and it changes their appearance and demeanor. From A Memory of Light:

> > > [Faine's] drones stumbled down the hillside, cloaked in mists. Trollocs with their skin pocked, as if it had boiled. Dead white eyes. He hardly needed them any longer, as their souls had given him fuel to rebuild himself. > >

The Dark One's followers are fueled by greed and ambition to a tee. They want to dominate others to their will, they want Immortality to rule the world.

But Fain / Mordeth's / Shaisam's 'followers'... those he has touched like dagger-Matt, Shadar Logath, Faine's Whitecloaks -- they're disheveled where the Forsaken are polished, Paranoid where the Forsaken are conniving. Fevered where the Forsaken are cold. Isolationists where the Forsaken crave the spotlight. Give into base instinct where the Forsaken plot.

There are theories that Elaida and Masema were touched by the Dagger, and they exhibit these same tendencies which make them feel pretty distinct from the Forsaken.

If Fain really is meant as a possible replacement, then that means the Pattern might need that replacement. If there's even a miniscule chance Fain might be needed, then given eternity, there's an almost certain chance that the Dark One we know is not the first Dark One. And Fain is different from Shai'tan. So the Dark One before Shai'tan was likely different from Him as well.

Why would the Wheel allow variance in the Shadow and what it brings out in people if it needs things the way they are to spin the Pattern?

Maybe it isn't chance, maybe it's a design feature.

The Wheel of Time offers reincarnation as a way to help people get better in each life, to build on what they learned in the past.

Shai'tan tempts and stokes a very particular part of His followers: the hunger for power and acclaim.

Shaisam would stoke their paranoia and distrust.

And people would grow the most from experiencing both types of temptation and darkness. A rotating cast of Dark Ones makes the turnings of the Wheel varied enough that souls can keep growing.

And while I'm not sure this is what Jordan intended, I think it's an interesting possibility in the text.