notwitternat replied to your post: I was always weirded out by the fact that Lews...
idk though, I just feel like they’ve said enough to indicate that the Amerlyn came from the Tamerlyn so if the Amerlyn calls the Aes Sedai her daughters, it is a valid extrapolation to presume the Tamerlyn might have called others their sons and daughters too. Plus, the fact that Lews really doesn’t think of them again leads me to feel like that’s a more fitting read of the situation… Like, if Egwene went mad and killed a bunch of her Aes Sedai/Accepted/Novices and then was healed from the madness later, she, too, would mourn using language like “her daughters, all dead,” covering anyone from the youngest novice to the oldest of the kin although, again, LTT is mad as balls soooo he could also just have had actual children and never think of them again lol
Metaphorical rather than literal children would make for a more satisfying read, perhaps, but given the actual quote I’m not sure I agree that it’s a more fitting one.
Quoting the relevant passage again here for reference:
Everywhere lay lifeless faces he knew, faces he loved. Old servants and friends of his childhood, faithful companions through the long years of battle. And his children. His own sons and daughters, sprawled like broken dolls, play stilled forever. All slain by his hand. His children’s faces accused him, blank eyes asking why, and his tears were no answer
First, we’re specifically given his children as a distinct part of the description/listing of the dead. Servants, friends, companions...and his children. Not a general ‘all his children’, or a reference to children and no one else.
That, combined with the way the next sentence places further emphasis on his own sons and daughters, to me reads like a very specific ‘these are his literal children’, in the most direct way it can short of actually saying that.
And then it continues, with the reference to ‘broken dolls’ and ‘play’, as if to reinforce the horror of ‘this man killed his actual children’.
If all that were omitted, and we went straight from Everywhere lay lifeless faces he knew, faces he loved to His children’s faces accused him, I would probably be more on board with this (and, really, I would love for it to work, I just...can’t make it fit for me).
But the other issue I run into is that while yes, it’s a valid extrapolation that Amyrlin is derived from Tamyrlin and that perhaps the one who holds the title of Tamyrlin also referred to people as ‘children’ or ‘sons and daughters’, at this point in time a new reader doesn’t have that information, or anything close to it. Which is fine; there’s plenty in this prologue that doesn’t really make sense until later, but this passage specifically seems designed to hit a reader with the full impact of the horror of what has happened (which is why, I think, his children are mentioned at all: the killing of children is considered by most to be one of the most abhorrent of crimes), and in that context I struggle to think of a narrative reason why it would have another meaning that, at this point, a reader isn’t in a position to figure out. Especially because it’s not something we come back to later, so there’d be no twist or realisation for it to be foreshadowing.
Anyway, mileage will of course vary, and if that reading works for you that’s absolutely fine (and I honestly do wish it worked for me, because the way I read it bothers me), but uh...those are my 2 cents that no one asked for.
