So um...maybe I went a little unhigned after watching episode 2.07 and wrote a whole piece about how it could make sense for Siuan to believe that Moiraine (and Lan?) have turned to the dark?
First of all, I should preface this by saying that I don’t 100% believe that this is what happened, or that this is the thought progress Siuan went through, but it seems at least plausible? Many have suggested that seeing Moiraine channel is what made Siuan believe that she could be a darkfriend, and that would explain Siuan enforcing the sacred oath despite Moiraine's pleas, but it didn’t sit right with me as the only explanation because Moiraine never directly told her that she was stilled, and therefore did not directly lie to Siuan about it.
But taking a few steps back and looking at the whole episode, and even the previous episode, and considering the possibility that the seed of doubt had been sown in Siuan from the moment Lan told her Moiraine had been stilled for months, it started to make more sense to me how the episode could unfold the way it did. Maybe I’m giving more credit to the writers than what they deserve and this is not what really happened at all, but it was an interesting thought experiment to go through.
Now, starting from episode 6. Siuan has been corresponding with Moiraine for 6 months after the Eye of the World, and not once has Moiraine even hinted at being stilled. Lan then appears out of the blue one night to stop her carriage, telling her that Moiraine has been stilled ever since taking Rand to the Eye of the World.
Now, that simply does not compute for Siuan. Her and Moiraine keep secrets from everyone else but never from each other. For 20 years they have shared this mission and the Moiraine she knows would not keep something so big from her, or so she had thought.
So what does mean for Siuan? Either Moiraine has been stilled for six months and she hasn’t said anything to Siuan about it, or something even more sinister happened at the Eye of the World and the Dark One somehow got to Moiraine.
For the first time in her life, Siuan has to seriously doubt Moiraine, and by extension she also has to doubt Lan: because why is Lan the one to tell her that Moiraine has been stilled? If it’s a lie, of course it makes sense to send Lan to tell it, because if Moiraine herself was caught in a lie, it would immediately be obvious that she has broken the three oaths.
And so Siuan arrives in Cairhien, with 14 Aes Sedai in tow, because she doesn’t know what she is dealing with and whether she is entering a trap or not. She needs to see Moiraine, alone, to determine where they stand, but she can’t go there without reinforcements and a back-up plan.
It’s telling that she doesn’t disclose to the other Aes Sedai why they are there. As she tells Liandrin: “We’ll have to wait and see.” Even Siuan isn’t sure at this point what she will need the 14 Aes Sedai for, if for anything other than show. It will depend on her meeting with Moiraine.
Then she meets Moiraine, and immediately opens with “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me you’d been stilled?” because that’s what it all boils down to.
She desperately wants to believe Moiraine and needs to hear her explain why she has not communicated this monumental thing to her before, but she finds Moiraine distant and defensive. They are alone but Moiraine isn’t talking to her. She is avoiding answering anything and is in fact countering Siuan’s questions with questions of her own (an effective way to avoid having to lie) and no matter how closely Siuan is looking (and she is looking very closely) she cannot glean the answers from Moiraine that she’s looking for.
As a last resort, she approaches Moiraine and tries to directly appeal to the love they share, the mission they share together and Moiraine visibly flinches under her touch before surrendering to it.
The change that has happened in Siuan's expression by the end of the “interview” is noticeable:
She still may not fully believe that Moiraine has pledged herself to the Dark, because that would be a huge leap, but it’s an option she now has to take very seriously and act accordingly.
Next she has to meet Rand. She is in no mood to have a real conversation with him, nor give him a pep talk like she did to Nynaeve and Egwene. She just needs to find out what she can and learn if Moiraine has actually held any part of their deal and taught him how to channel - the answer: she has not. Rand is completely useless and unprepared, which happens to be hugely convenient for the Dark One.
Siuan now knows what she must do: the Dragon Reborn must be separated from Moiraine, for the sake of the mission, if there is any chance that Moiraine is now a darkfriend (and maybe for Moiraine’s sake as well, because maybe things are not as bad as they seem and there is still something that can be salvaged) and at the moment, the best action Siuan can see before her is to fall on Tower protocol, especially, as Siuan has found during her interview with Rand, the Dragon Reborn is still weak and easy to control. They had tried their way and it now seems to have cost her Moiraine. What else is there to do now but try the other approach?
When Moiraine enters the room again, Siuan meets her, not as her lover, but as the Amyrlin: cold and detached.
When Moiraine asks “have you forgotten that day” it clearly affects Siuan. She has not forgotten. But has Moiraine?
“Of course I’ve not forgotten, but YOU were supposed to be with him”
Now, it’s unclear to me if Moiraine is imprisoned with Rand, or if she is there with him by her own will, but clearly she is at least under surveillance. Leane tells Verin not to let Moiraine get close to her, implying that Moiraine is now considered a threat. Presumably these are instructions from Siuan.
Things are already bad, but they are about to get worse, and confirm Siuan’s worst fears which she still might not have fully allowed herself to believe.
Lanfear is on the loose, and Moiraine and Rand escape. Verin seems to be in on it too. The person that Moiraine recently spent several months with. (I’m not sure if Siuan knows that's where Moiraine was, but since she and Moiraine did correspond during those months, I assume Siuan was aware of her whereabouts.) It doesn’t look good.
Siuan rushes to find Moiraine and Rand because it’s now of paramount importance that they don’t leave the town together. The best case scenario remains that Moiraine has simply lost her mind due to being stilled, but the worst case, and now a seemingly very possible scenario, is that she could be worse than that. But still, Siuan has not let go of all hope and she goes alone to deal with the woman she loves - to try one more time to either reason with her or stop her by force.
She finds her at the waygate and arrives just in time to see that it’s Moiraine - the supposedly stilled Moiraine - who has opened it. Whatever hope she was still clinging onto is gone.
“You lied to me about being stilled.”
Moiraine denies it but what value do her words have anymore if she has pledged herself to the Dark and broken her oaths? And she looks utterly unhinged too. This is not her Moiraine.
But also Siuan can’t play her hand and directly accuse her of being a darkfriend because what good would that do? If she is a darkfriend she can lie, so her words are worth nothing.
But there is another oath that Moiraine has made directly to Siuan. Maybe that’s been broken too, but it’s all Siuan has now.
Moiraine is begging her not to, and it’s almost enough to break Siuan’s resolve, but she can’t know anymore what Moiraine’s motivation is. Is she begging her not to enforce the oath because it’s wrong, or because it would reveal that she is no longer bound by it, or maybe there is even a possibility that she still is bound by this oath because her deal with the dark one only included freeing her from the three oaths of the Aes Sedai, and now being commanded by Siuan would simply prevent her from taking the Dragon Reborn to Ishamael?
Siuan's command works and it hurts her more than anything to watch Moiraine being moved against her will by a force she cannot resist, but maybe there’s also some relief in seeing that the oath is still in place. Maybe, just maybe, Moiraine has not turned to dark after all?
When Siuan looks at Moiraine after the deed is done, she sees her Moiraine again and she is beyond sorry for what she has just done. There is a fleeting moment where things could have been said and misunderstandings cleared, but it's too short. There is not time, because Lanfear appears before any of those things can happen.
Siuan doesn’t have any answers yet, but one thing she knows is that she’s not going to let Lanfear go unopposed. It was a valid effort but completely useless. Siuan gets tossed aside as easily as she herself had just knocked out Lan.
Now, I don’t know how Siuan interprets the last things she sees before passing out, whether she believes now that Moiraine remains true to the mission and can appreciate the fact that Moiraine having managed to win Rand’s trust is a good thing. She is awake to see Lanfear about to attack Moiraine, and to see Rand stand between them, which should suggest that Moiraine and Lanfear are not working together, but then Moiraine does go with her to the ways, so it’s open for interpretation I guess, but that doesn’t really matter in the sense that it’s something that must be dealt with later. What matters more is what Siuan believes up until the moment she forces Moiraine to close the gate.
If this is what happened, it kind of makes sense to me. But I guess only time will tell what the real story is.
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