Yes I'm doing this early while it still occurs to me.
This blog was started because I was/am doing meta on the book series. Yes there will be meta on here relevant to the show once it starts. However, spoilers abound on here for the books.
At this moment as I write (and pin) this post, I'm not sure if I'm going to go back and add tags to all my older posts specifying 'book meta'. There's almost a hundred fifty posts on this blog, and the majority are meta-related. I may do it. I may not.
But I'm warning now, most older posts have spoilers through A Memory of Light.
An interesting thing I'm kind of sad Robert Jordan didn't do is have Berelain, instead of going with Perrin and then having the nonsense that is the love triangle plotline with him and Faile, is have it be she goes with Mat to get Elayne/end up in the Ebou Dar plotline.
Berelain in particular involved in Ebou Dar would get interesting, both in the context of her interacting with Tyelin (both rulers of weak nations, but Berelain arguably in a much stronger position due to her connection to Rand versus Altara's isolation at large at that point). On top of that, if say, Berelain and Mat are involved does Tyelin still target Mat? Or does she leave be since Berelain is the ruler of another country? If she's kept there post-Seanchan attack (say she misses the Traveling ala Mat for some reason, such as having left to run an errand and mistimed things), her and Tuon interacting (both claiming ancestry from Hawkwing). To do this it would make most sense to make the love triangle plotline a matter of Berelain/Mat/Tuon rather than the canon situation, but that could get interesting.
Berelain is a city-state rule who is an ally of the Dragon Reborn and respected by him, who claims to be descended from Hawkwing, and makes use of an Aes Sedai advisor. Tuon is the heiress to a continent spanning empire (and eventual Empress) who is an enemy of Rand's, and owns a former Aes Sedai damane. If Mat's say, already in a relationship/getting somewhere with Berelain, but also has the prophesy with Tuon hanging over his head, how does that go? Or if RJ had decided on this sort of thing, would he have made the prophesy more ambiguous to make Mat be guessing which it's supposed to be about? Would it have still be the canon one and Mat's reluctant/unwilling to involve himself with Berelain as a result?
Also Mat has his own connection to Hawkwing due to being the initial Hornsounder and the way it feels at times like Hawkwing and a past incarnation of Mat's probably lead opposing armies at least some point. That connection is the one that Tuon picks up on rather than Mat's connection to Rand, which always amused me since Mat does arguably have a 'oh fuck' reaction to both questions but she misreads him on the Rand one.
(Honestly it's kind of impressive at no point during the traveling with the show arc did anyone slip up and allow Tuon to realize Mat and Rand do know each other)
It would have been super interesting to see how Tuon would have reacted to Berelain, and it's a genuine pity that in canon we don't get to see how she or the major Seanchan nobility react to her (yes she does interact with some Seanchan at one point but that's left sort of just with a comment and no further which I feel was a waste). Would they take offense and call her a liar? Or would they be more ambivalent/leery of doing that since it's not impossible? It's certainly unlikely, but not impossible (as is one can easily make the claim that there's no reason anyone in the Westlands should trust the Seanchan claims because it had been a thousand years and the reality is even if the Seanchan empire started out ruled by a member of Hawkwing's family, that specific family line could have died out). They may decide she's a liar since it's more politically valuable (if they agree she is, then it causes some issues for the Seanchan invasion justification) but there also is the possibility they wouldn't.
An interesting thing I'm kind of sad Robert Jordan didn't do is have Berelain, instead of going with Perrin and then having the nonsense that is the love triangle plotline with him and Faile, is have it be she goes with Mat to get Elayne/end up in the Ebou Dar plotline.
Berelain in particular involved in Ebou Dar would get interesting, both in the context of her interacting with Tyelin (both rulers of weak nations, but Berelain arguably in a much stronger position due to her connection to Rand versus Altara's isolation at large at that point). On top of that, if say, Berelain and Mat are involved does Tyelin still target Mat? Or does she leave be since Berelain is the ruler of another country? If she's kept there post-Seanchan attack (say she misses the Traveling ala Mat for some reason, such as having left to run an errand and mistimed things), her and Tuon interacting (both claiming ancestry from Hawkwing). To do this it would make most sense to make the love triangle plotline a matter of Berelain/Mat/Tuon rather than the canon situation, but that could get interesting.
Berelain is a city-state rule who is an ally of the Dragon Reborn and respected by him, who claims to be descended from Hawkwing, and makes use of an Aes Sedai advisor. Tuon is the heiress to a continent spanning empire (and eventual Empress) who is an enemy of Rand's, and owns a former Aes Sedai damane. If Mat's say, already in a relationship/getting somewhere with Berelain, but also has the prophesy with Tuon hanging over his head, how does that go? Or if RJ had decided on this sort of thing, would he have made the prophesy more ambiguous to make Mat be guessing which it's supposed to be about? Would it have still be the canon one and Mat's reluctant/unwilling to involve himself with Berelain as a result?
Also Mat has his own connection to Hawkwing due to being the initial Hornsounder and the way it feels at times like Hawkwing and a past incarnation of Mat's probably lead opposing armies at least some point. That connection is the one that Tuon picks up on rather than Mat's connection to Rand, which always amused me since Mat does arguably have a 'oh fuck' reaction to both questions but she misreads him on the Rand one.
(Honestly it's kind of impressive at no point during the traveling with the show arc did anyone slip up and allow Tuon to realize Mat and Rand do know each other)
It would have been super interesting to see how Tuon would have reacted to Berelain, and it's a genuine pity that in canon we don't get to see how she or the major Seanchan nobility react to her (yes she does interact with some Seanchan at one point but that's left sort of just with a comment and no further which I feel was a waste). Would they take offense and call her a liar? Or would they be more ambivalent/leery of doing that since it's not impossible? It's certainly unlikely, but not impossible (as is one can easily make the claim that there's no reason anyone in the Westlands should trust the Seanchan claims because it had been a thousand years and the reality is even if the Seanchan empire started out ruled by a member of Hawkwing's family, that specific family line could have died out). They may decide she's a liar since it's more politically valuable (if they agree she is, then it causes some issues for the Seanchan invasion justification) but there also is the possibility they wouldn't.
Weird thing I just realized; the two members of the Two Rivers crew that Thom spends the least amount of time with (has no real major or semi-major plotlines with) are Perrin and Egwene, aka the two with dreaming-related abilities. Like I doubt there's an actual connection there, it's just kind of an interesting coincidence.
One of the advantages of the TV show is it arguably does a lot better job, since we can literally see it, of 'showing' us the Age of Legends having a stronger 'sci-fi' bent then the more straight up fantasy of the 'present'. Like compare how LTT (in the flashback) and Ishamael (all the time) are dressed versus how the Third Agers get dressed. I feel like you could plop Ishamael into a standard sci-fi series and it would take a bit to register he's supposed to be from a fantasy series.
It's interesting to think of how when Mesaana got rejected for a researcher's position she got in a sensed forced into (pre-turn to the Shadow) into a 'those who cannot do, teach' situation by being made a teacher rather than a researcher the way she wanted. This wasn't even her going 'well I guess I'll teach instead', this was what she was made to do.
Sort of an idle thought, and honestly triggered by @wheelofgunk's post concerning Rand and the connection to his list of dead women and Lews Therin killing his own wife, (which I 100% agree with) but a kind of interesting detail that struck me after reading it is that of the Ta'varen Trio, the two who end the series unable to kill personally women (when sane) are also the two who have supernatural memory situations.
What I mean here is also Mat, who has his Finn-given memories (and whatever was going on with the Old Blood memories that seemed to have become less and less a thing that mattered after that happened), also hit a point where he couldn't personally kill women even if it meant he could die (as a result of feeling at fault for Tylin's murder). If Tuon hadn't been there in Maradon it's very possible he would have been killed by the female fighter, and during the Last Battle itself he decides to knock a Sharan channeler unconscious rather than kill her even though it would have been completely reasonable (and you know, not involved then enslaving someone).
He's still capable of giving an order for women to be killed (which he does when sending Galad the one foxhead amulet and tells him to start eliminating the Sharan channelers), but he personally cannot do it.
In contrast to both Mat and Rand, Perrin ends the series still able to do it. Oh he certainly hates it, but he is still able to do it when it matters. He even thinks about how he's doing what he knows Rand cannot when he snaps Lanfear's neck at the end. Why I note that of interest is Perrin's the only one who doesn't have the supernatural memories of other humans. He has his connection to wolves obviously, and there's certainly his ability to understand their memories/see them, but it's a vastly different situation then what goes on with the other two (where they're literally remembering other humans' lifetimes).
Rand's issues directly relates to the memories of a man who murdered his own wife, and also was also raised in a culture that abhorred violence towards women. Mat's issues relate to being raised in that same culture, and his survivor's guilt over Tylin's death (since the gholam killed her while looking for him). But Perrin never hits that point. And it's just kind of interesting because he does have that difference between himself and them.
You talk about Perrin at his state of mind in the end but this is with no relation to the reveal by Brandon Sanderson what exactly happenned there, right? Does this reveal change anything?
Honestly no. I think Perrin still would have been able to do it even if she hadn't Compelled him. As is she was making a gamble on how Perrin's mindset would be versus say, Rand or Mat (though Mat's also the only one of the trio she completely would fail against anyway since he's unCompelable due to his fox head) that would have failed if he hadn't been the sort capable of doing so anyway.
Otherwise Perrin would have picked up on how the Compulsion was still there, because he'd be able to look back at his own actions and go 'wait what the hell did I just do!?' Not even so much in the sense at later horror of his actions, but the sense of 'wait that wasn't like me'. But if there's already a part of you capable of doing something, then you are much more likely to miss something like Compulsion happening (especially if you thought you already broke through).
As much as I love certain details of Wheel of Time and it's use of some fantasy tropes, I do have to sigh over the use of two specific tropes that we can really blame on Tolkien and should probably either not been used or better explained what was going on.
Namely a) creation of a made up language and b) the Special Old Blood.
Firstly with the created languages, almost no one does it as well as Tolkien did, which is completely understandable since the man was a legitimate linguist and honestly at times the Lord of the Rings and it's related books can feel like 'did you create these languages for the world, or did you create the world as an excuse to create your own languages?' We can get a sense of how languages can change, the amount of languages that are around, etc though from what he did. We see there were multiple languages. We can get a sense of how things shifted around. We can figure out why all the languages don't have the same base, etc.
Wheel of Time doesn't have that.
Wheel of Time we've got no real explanation of how the hell we went from the Old Tongue to the modern language, or how the hell *everyone* speaks the same modern language even when it make no sense; the Seanchan should not be speaking the same language as the main continent, not with a thousand years of no contact like that. The Aiel also honestly shouldn't be primarily speaking the same language either (since they're so isolated in the Waste) or the Sharans (since again, isolated empire). Even if you use, for the Seanchan at least, the argument of 'well since the ruling class are claiming descendant from Hawkwing, they'd try to keep their language as purely close to his as possible!' it falls because. Well. Languages just shift over time no matter what. Compare even just Old Enligh versus modern. Chaucer can be an experience to read.. But Shara doesn't even have that potential excuse. We get the implication that the language is widespread in Shara even though even if you're using the excuse 'well there's trade going on between them' then really it should only be the traders who are fluent since they'd need to be. The average Sharan would have no reason to speak the same language. Same with the Aiel really; the traders should but not everyone else.
Like from a meta standpoint it makes sense since it simplifies writing. RJ this way doesn't have to justify the characters learning multiple languages to interact, just understand accents and maybe differences in slang. But it still would have been nice if at least someone pointed out how weird it is to not have any issues.
The other really big issue of use of a Tolkien-trope is the Old Blood stuff. Okay thank you for implying incest/genetic bottlenecks give special powers for real how the hell didn't the Two Rivers literally just inbreed themselves out of existence if they're intermarrying that rarely with outsiders? It's been apparently three thousand years of them pretty rarely doing it and that population has shrunk a lot since it's peak pre-Trolloc Wars (and we're never given much sign there was ever a real large bounce back) But here's also the bigger issue.
What the every loving fuck makes a difference between Old Blood versus not in the first place?
With Tolkien and the men of Gondor/Andor we actually *do* have an explanation of what's going on there. The nobility are either descended from a population that originally lived on that world's version of Atlantis (not too far from its version of Paradise/Heaven though still separate) and had been given additional special blessings by the gods, or intermarried with a literal different species (elves). It makes sense that there's a difference that gave specific abilities (longer lives most notably). There was fuckery abounding. That sort of fuckery was not abounding in the Wheel of Time's world.
It's just like...RJ implying unintentionally(?) that Incest Gives You Powers.
Where are these outside lineages that are apparently weakening the gene pools channeling ability-wise, or making it so you don't have a genetic memory of speaking Old Tongue? (Which also there why doesn't that seem to be a thing that effects the Aiel, the Old Tongue genetic memory thing?* They're literally described as being of 'ancient blood' and of all groups really should have something going on there since of everyone their the closest to being the same group as they would have been during the AoL). Hell, the Cairhein citizens are descended from the people who gave the Aiel water during the Breaking. We're not given any implications however they've got the Old Blood specialness going on even though the Aiel are literally able to identify them as being the specific descendants of that group and not anyone else even though there's what? An almost two thousand year difference or so at that point? So what is going on here beyond RJ wanting 'well there's something special here'?
Okay the answer probably is just 'Rj wanting something special here' but you get my point.
In reality it's probably just one of those 'he wanted to build out his world' and how at least with the language thing there would have been a different headscratcher otherwise of 'wait how are they still speaking the same language after three thousand years?' It just would have been nice if we got additional details (not necessarily even in the main books, but in the indexes or side notes we see) to explain a bit more what was going on there, with things like the evolution of languages or how/why everyone speaks the same language even in the present excluding accents.
*Compare how Rand needed a translator when speaking with the Finn versus Mat not needing one even pre-getting his memories (which also, interesting implications for how Brigitte makes a comment in a later book that strongly implies that *shouldn't* have been a thing in the first place, that level of understanding for Mat). Rand's described in prophecy of being 'ancient blood raised by Old'. He really should be able to do the language thing too, but then again this seems to be a thing that most strongly effects Mat versus all the other Two Rivers residents which again has interesting implications I'm going to look at in a different meta.
Sort of an idle thought, and honestly triggered by @wheelofgunk's post concerning Rand and the connection to his list of dead women and Lews Therin killing his own wife, (which I 100% agree with) but a kind of interesting detail that struck me after reading it is that of the Ta'varen Trio, the two who end the series unable to kill personally women (when sane) are also the two who have supernatural memory situations.
What I mean here is also Mat, who has his Finn-given memories (and whatever was going on with the Old Blood memories that seemed to have become less and less a thing that mattered after that happened), also hit a point where he couldn't personally kill women even if it meant he could die (as a result of feeling at fault for Tylin's murder). If Tuon hadn't been there in Maradon it's very possible he would have been killed by the female fighter, and during the Last Battle itself he decides to knock a Sharan channeler unconscious rather than kill her even though it would have been completely reasonable (and you know, not involved then enslaving someone).
He's still capable of giving an order for women to be killed (which he does when sending Galad the one foxhead amulet and tells him to start eliminating the Sharan channelers), but he personally cannot do it.
In contrast to both Mat and Rand, Perrin ends the series still able to do it. Oh he certainly hates it, but he is still able to do it when it matters. He even thinks about how he's doing what he knows Rand cannot when he snaps Lanfear's neck at the end. Why I note that of interest is Perrin's the only one who doesn't have the supernatural memories of other humans. He has his connection to wolves obviously, and there's certainly his ability to understand their memories/see them, but it's a vastly different situation then what goes on with the other two (where they're literally remembering other humans' lifetimes).
Rand's issues directly relates to the memories of a man who murdered his own wife, and also was also raised in a culture that abhorred violence towards women. Mat's issues relate to being raised in that same culture, and his survivor's guilt over Tylin's death (since the gholam killed her while looking for him). But Perrin never hits that point. And it's just kind of interesting because he does have that difference between himself and them.
So the forces of the Shadow, otherwise known as 'Dark Academia' otherwise known as 'this is what happens when you don't give enough funding', otherwise known as 'lab safety failures', otherwise known as...
if I've learned anything from Wheel of Time, it's that forget the politicians - it's going to be slighted academics and a hedge fund manager who are gong to destroy the world
I'm contemplating again which Forsaken will likely appear in the show and here is both my list and reasoning:
(I think I've done this before but I'm musing on it again)
Ishamael/Moridin: Well he's already appeared, so like, this is a 'no shit Sherlock' one
Graendal/Semirhage: I think these two will get merged, though no clue which of the names they'll use. They're both the doctor Forsaken, and you can easily smush their falls to the Shadow as she was the greatest healer of the age and an ascetic, have the fact she's a torturer revealed, and then have her indulge in *all* her vices once gone Forsaken.
Moghedien/Mesaana: Merge them since tbh they're both the two most involved in causing problems for the Aes Sedai, and you can even make it that whichever name gets used, you make it so the cowardice aspect of Moghedien is why she hunkers down in the White Tower, where she's less likely to be noticed/able to do a wider array of manipulations.
Sammael/Bel'al: Okay seriously we all know exactly why these two idiots need to just get merged, and I would assume that it's most likely Sammael's name would get used since he appears longer in-series/has more of an effect. You can still have him based in Tear/Illian, just have it be he runs from Tear, barely avoiding Moiraine's attack and faking his death and go to Illian. You can even still have him use the same appearances between countries since due to how long he'd be a lord in either country it's not like the other would necessarily know.
Demandred: His storyline as a Forsaken is one of the better for point blank mystery of where the fuck he is, and honestly I think they'd want to keep the fact that there were multiple people who turned to the Shadow who did it for resentment towards LTT, plus he's the most competent general. By far. It also helps keep up the mystery of if Taim is a Darkfriend/Demandred or not (since Taim has to appear to be the opposite of Logain). I just truly don't think they'd merge Sammael, Bel'al and Demandred into one character.
Lanfear: Seriously they can't cut her. They literally cannot with the role she plays.
Asmodean: Since the mentor plotline/Rand accidentally acquires a pet Forsaken. Also so we get a sense of just how *petty* a reason people could have turned to the Shadow.
Ones you can cut from the show proper:
Aginor: They can just have references to dead Forsaken and have it be that he already long since died (assassinated by the Light in hopes of preventing creation of new Shadowspawn?). Honestly half his role really came across as 'I am in the present' for pretty much the entire series.
Rahvin: Graendal is known for mind control/Compulsion, just have that aspect of Morgases plotline be on her.
Which ever Forsaken name/literal Forsaken isn't used for the merged ones
Ones I'm on the fence about:
Balthemal: I was originally going to put him on the cut list, but then there's the issue of the Aran'gar stuff. Then again there, there's the issue of how he (nor Aginor) didn't appear during the Eye of the World stuff, and thus it's sorta a question mark over how he'd die in the show/timeline then of things.
