Welcome back to my re-read, recap, and reaction to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. This post will only have spoilers through the current chapter.
You can find my previous chapter recaps HERE.
Chapter 46: Other Battles, Other Weapons
NOTE: The following chapter summary comes from wot.fandom.com
Point of view: Rand al’Thor
Aviendha is trying to get Rand to rest, but he wishes to get dressed and head to Cairhien before the time the nobles have planned so he can catch them off guard. Aviendha is sitting on his clothes with her skirts spread out to hide them but he spots a cuff and has her move so he can dress. Asmodean returns, riding his mule and leading Rand’s horse. On the way to the city he passes by some of the twenty thousand Shaido prisoners who will become gai’shain. He also notices many Aiel are wearing a scarlet headband, but is unsure what it means. He passes by Kadere‘s wagons where Moiraine is inspecting the ter’angreal, as usual.
Rand passes through the burned Foregate, then the gates of the city while word of his coming races ahead to the palace. As he rides along, the citizens and refugees cheer wildly. Meilan, the leader of the Tairen nobles arrives and explains the arrangements he has made for Rand at the palace. The nobles from Tear meet him in the courtyard, where he greets some warmly to get them off balance and watching each other. He enters the Grand Hall where the Tairens are grouped in front while the Cairhienin are in back.
Rand asks for a chair rather than sitting in the throne, indicating the throne is meant for someone else. He orders all the nobles to rearrange themselves by rank instead of by nation. The Tairens are unhappy, seeing their power base stripped away. The nobles of both nations then come forward to swear allegiance to Rand. As the procession continues Rand ponders his next step: going after Sammael.
REACTION:
Man, that Pevin biography was short but brutal. Fantasy can glamorize war but here Jordan also shows the individual impact of a war torn society. Every move the guy made resulted in death for his family, each time at different hands. When he was the last one standing, he ended up the bannerman for The Dragon Reborn (who in this world is something like a combination of antichrist and messiah.)
This is the chapter wherein we learn that some of the Aiel are forming a society called the Siswai’aman – which means “Spears of the Dragon” and implies that Rand owns them. Asmodean and Lews Therin both confirm the “ownership” interpretation.
It did not seem possible to own people, but it if was, he did not want to. ‘All I want is to use them,’ he thought wryly.
First, this is kind of an interesting moral distinction on Rand’s part. and I appreciate that he is aware of the distinction’s thinness. How much different is absolute sovereign power, with an intention to use people in ways that will kill them, really different than slavery? Rand doesn’t want to own those people, but at the same time, he wants to rule and use them. For the world’s own good. Does it make a moral difference that he’s right?
Second… I guess we’ve seen enough of Randland by now to know that there is no slavery, but that fact is remarkable. The Aiel do not have slavery, either. The Seanchan effectively enslave the damane, but as they genuinely do not believe damane are actual human beings, the dynamic – though reprehensible – is still different than how we might view slavery.
The “doorframe ter’angreal” gets mentioned again in this chapter. That object is the Chekov’s Gun of The Fires of Heaven. When and how will it be fired?
I want to care more about the “court intrigue” plot in Tear/Cairhien, but I just can’t get there. I don’t think it’s that Jordan doesn’t write it well. It’s just that he includes so much scope in the story as a whole that all of the Game of Houses stuff feels like distraction. It was a good joke, back in The Dragon Reborn, when Rand inadvertently played the Game of Houses but now Rand’s intentional efforts to confuse the nobles just feels like a joke that’s been told too many times.
Further, the ta’veren plot armor that makes a lot of the rest of the story interesting works against these plot arcs. I know their intrigues aren’t going to work. It’s more entertaining for me to see how fate keeps an arrow off-target than for me to see how scheming doesn’t work because the Pattern doesn’t want it to work. The stakes just never feel high enough with the bad guy nobles for me to *really* care. Jordan would have to spend too much time on these plots, raising the stakes, to get me to the point of caring.
Summarizing this section, though, Rand won’t claim the throne here (unlike Tear) and he intends the throne for someone else though he does not say who. On the one hand, Elayne makes sense here given her parentage and her relationship with Rand, but on the other, she’d have to rank behind her mother. So maybe he intends to put Morgase on this throne? I can’t imagine that he’d hope to put Moiraine on the throne.
Jordan does a cool bit of writing at the *very* end of the chapter. He flips the narration so that the reader gets to see Rand from the perspective of the nobles. When we spend a lot of time inside the head of a character, we often don’t see how they are perceived. Jordan is a master of putting readers into the POV outside our main characters (on occasion) and letting the readers know how they come across. We go from interacting with an impatient, distracted Rand, to viewing a tall, intimidating youth with a cold light burning so brightly in his eyes that it makes the nobles stammer.