The Androl Problem
So! Something I’ve been meaning to get around to for a while.
Androl original appeared in Winter’s Heart with a few lines, reporting to Logain. Toveine had a point of view where she looks at him, thinking about for all he’s wearing a signet ring (traditionally something on nobles do) he looks more like he’s an apprentice who shaved off his mustache. It’s during a scene where the men loyal to Logain are reporting to him on things. That’s the only time we see him before Towers of Midnight. And easy enough moment to miss.
Excluding that moment he’d been named, everything else was a creation of Sanderson’s.
So, you may be staring at me. Then what’s the problem?
The problem is Sanderson quite literally gave Androl too much to do.
Androl was the result (in part) of Sanderson wanting to do something with a character who actually was, for lack of better term, a true teleporter. Someone who actually took full advantage of how to use Traveling. So Sanderson took a canon Asha’man (Androl) who’d had limited screen time and could serve as a blank slate for his writing purposes. Which is exactly what he did.
Okay, neat, great. Honestly gotta agree a character like that needed to exist because wow. Was Traveling underutilized when it came down to it. Taking advantage of named character who had limited affect on the previous storyline to do that made sense.
The thing with Androl is that in many ways Sanderson used him to fill in basically any hanging plot threads that Jordan hadn’t given to a previous character. So things like the fight for the Black Tower, he used Androl to lead that. He used Androl to save the Andoran forces. He used Androl to get the seals. He used Androl to do the double bond shit with Pevera.
Androl, Androl, Androl.
Androl, a character who basically had no previous affect on the plotline now has an absolutely massive one. And we know, per Sanderson’s own words, that Androl and everything he does is his own creation, though he is filling in the blanks for certain plot threads that remained from Jordan’s writing, such as the Black Tower stuff. So yeah, Sanderson deciding to use what’s basically his OC to fill some of that makes sense.
What’s aggravating is how much that then meant Androl overshadowed previously introduced Asha’man, such as Narishma. It’s heavily hinted early on that Narishma is going to be important in the future (he’s fucking mentioned in the Prophesies of the Dragon), but during the Last Battle we see him maybe twice, and he doesn’t do anything distinct beyond heal Lan post his fight with Demandred. On the other hand, Androl seems to have his hand in everything *but* the fighting at Shayol Ghul. Yes, that’s an exaggeration, but not as bit of one as it really should be.
Seriously. I understand the desire to have your OC do things, but you can’t over do it.
The other thing is, that in Androl’s ‘backstory’, Sanderson also had him have too many adventures. Seriously though, it seemed every time he and Pevera spoke, he brought up a different thing he did and none of them where anywhere near each other. She does too, but she’s also a hundred plus year old Aes Sedai, so she’s had the time to do a lot of shit. The issue there is, per Toveine’s point of view in Winters Heart, Androl should be only in his twenties. Based on her mental description of him (looking like he could be an apprentice), it means he looked young. Almost every apprentice who appears on page is implied to be under thirty. But if you don’t remember Androl’s original appearance, based on all the things he tells Pevera it would be fair to think he was closer to his late thirties, early forties. And men generally start channeling on the later side of things, so he shouldn’t even be slowing that soon (I think Androl may even have been specified as not starting to channel on his own but needing to be taugh, in contrast to Logain or Taim).
On top of that was a pretty common issue of Sanderson’s; namely, his habit of dropping and adding random character aspects (hello the fact apparently Mat can’t fucking write a letter that isn’t full of grammar and spelling errors, even though we’ve seen him write on-page before and it was just fine; obviously this is a major pet peeve of mine). Like, a really interesting thing he could have done with the original bits? Explain why Androl was wearing a signet ring, especially with the explanation that apparently he was a leatherworker. Was he pretending to be a noble? Was he actually a noble? Who the hell knows because Sanderson never followed up on that detail.
I would have much preferred it if Sanderson had actually allowed the previous appearing Asha’man to play more major roles during the Last Battle rather than over using Androl (and he was overused). Narishima, again, should have played a bigger role. We never get an explanation for the ‘he will follow after’ stuff; is that supposed to hint he’d eventually lead the Asha’man after Logaine? Again, who knows since Sanderson never wrote anything about that.
(And before someone asks, at some point I will be doing meta about Sanderson’s penchant for dropping character traits/apparently forgetting certain plot threads. Like it wouldn’t be so aggravating for me if I didn’t like Mat so much and found Sanderson to just not be very good at writing him.)
