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 16: A Touch on the Cheek
NOTE: The following chapter summary comes from wot.fandom.com
Point of view: Matrim Cauthon
Mat decides to visit Elayne and Nynaeve, so he goes to the front entrance of the Tarasin Palace. The dice are rolling in Mat’s head. After a long trek through many corridors and stairways, being handed off to one servant after another, Mat stumbles across Joline Maza and Teslyn Baradon of the White Tower Aes Sedai. Then Adeleas Namelle, Sareitha Tomares, and Merilille Ceandevin of the Rebel Aes Sedai arrive. The two groups of Aes Sedai start a tug-of-war with Mat’s coat as the rope. The servant Laren returns to summon Mat to see Queen Tylin, which ends the Aes Sedai confrontation in a stalemate.
Mat gives a flowery greeting to Tylin without realizing that he is speaking the Old Tongue. Tylin allows him to compose a message to Elayne and Nynaeve which he seals with the signet ring he hastily bought when he was following the Darkfriend Mili Skane. He notices that it is a fox startling two birds into flight. He decides to tell the queen that Carridin, the Whitecloak emissary, is entertaining Darkfriends, which she accepts. Tylin tries seducing Mat, gently touching his checks until her son, Beslan, enters. He announces that he’s won another duel, but accidentally killed the man and owes condolences to his widow. Tylin introduces Beslan to Mat and suggests they become friends.
REACTION:
Mat visiting the Tarasin Palace is something like dropping a fox into a henyard. Except that the hens here peck hard and don’t realize or respect that he’s a fox. In a scant few minutes, he almost starts an Aes Sedai fight between the White Tower and Salidar Aes Sedai.
“Don’t fight over me. There’s enough to go around.” Lol. This is why Mat’s the most entertaining character in the series.
Speaking of foxes… in addition to his medallion, he now also has a signet ring with a fox on it. The ring also features two ravens in flight – just like his ashandarei has two ravens engraved on it. Mat got the weapon and his memories from a fox-y people, too. Between this and his gambling / luck, Mat is taking on more and more of the characteristics of a trickster god (i.e. someone like Loki.) The ravens, his prowess as a battle commander, and the fact he was “hung for knowledge” seem to associate Mat with Odin (Odin sent two ravens – named “thought” and “memory” out into the world to do his bidding.) Let’s remember Mat’s ashandarei again:
“Thus is our treaty written; thus is agreement made.
Thought is the arrow of time; memory never fades.
What was asked is given. The price is paid.”
Jordan is very obviously connecting Mat to Odin and possibly also to Loki. That’s some heady stuff there. Rand is pretty obviously King Arthur primarily (al’Thor pulled the sword from the Stone; al’Thor had a tumultuous relationship with the magic-wielding [E]’gwene al’Vere.)
The most notable thing in that Aes Sedai squabble, IMO, is the fact that Joline speaks on a topic that gets too little attention from everyone else in the series. It’s *unheard of* for three ta’veren to come out of the same village, and nevermind that one of them is the Dragon Reborn. The extent to which so many characters in this story just sort of over-looked Mat and Perrin (including Sammael in the previous chapter) absolutely baffles me. I am inclined to think that most of Randland doesn’t really believe in the whole ta’veren thing, even if they say they do, and even if it’s literally identifiable by some people with a specific One Power Talent. Joline is one of the first people who seems as though she takes seriously what everyone says that they believe.
Seriously… every corridor of power should be completely freaked out by this topic. Three ta’veren – one of them the Dragon Reborn – along with two of the most powerful female channelers in millennia from one backwater village. (Imagine if a President of the United States, a Pope, the greatest general of all time, an acting / singing / dancing A-list celebrity, and a woman who cured cancer all came from the same tiny town and were all within a few years of each other. There’d be ENDLESS conspiracy theories about it, along with scientists the world over studying how it might have happened.)
Mat meets Queen Tylin and maybe for the first time in the series, he is completely out of his depth when dealing with a woman. She lets him leave a note for Nynaeve and Elayne and then starts the process of seducing him Well, that’s not the right way to put it. She’s not interested in him giving in. She starts the process of taking him.
If you reverse the gender roles here, and a 40-something king strokes Min’s cheek (for example) you’d be outraged as a reader. I think we’re supposed to think that Mat earned this somehow, but we’ve never seen him chase anyone who did not want to be chased. Mat pretty clearly does not want this. Before it goes farther though, it gets interrupted.
Before we’re too hard on Tylin, at least so far, *she* has no real reason to believe that Mat does not want her attention. She described him pretty accurately and that description sounds like someone who would not hate this situation (or at least not entirely hate it.) I also think it’s likely that she’s playing politics. It can’t feel great to have warring factions of Aes Sedai stirring up the waters in her palace and Mat is an oar she might be able to row… so to speak.
In any case… the Ebou Dar plot arc is off to a tense and interesting start.
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