#[NO SPOILERS BEYOND *Knife of Dreams*.](https://www.reddit.com/r/WoT/wiki/index/post_flairs#wiki_the_eye_of_the_world_.2F_et_al.)
##BOOK DISCUSSION ONLY. HIDE TV SHOW DISCUSSION BEHIND SPOILER TAGS.
If this is a re-read, please change the flair to **All Print**.
* * *
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/WoT) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I kind of like it, we go from 'wow these people are fantastic geniuses' to realising that most of them are selfish, petty, etc. just like normal people. If they were all perfect Gandalf then it would be boring and there wouldn't be any conflict.
Also, they take pains \[despite there internal dramas\] to keep the public image of serenity, dignity and authority - which also feels natural to me \[fight amongst yourselves, but in public maintain dignity\]. Remember, in the books we are seeing the private and dirty laundry of these people, most people will never have that kind of insight.
They were being HEAVILY sabotaged by the Forsaken (and their Black Ajah cronies), and by Fain's influence on Elaida for most of the series. The tower is united and mostly cohesive before Elaida becomes Amyrlin and after she was captured but never during her reign.
I‘m actually not sure how united the Tower is under Siuan. The system topples very quickly during the coup, which indicates deeper pre existing fracture lines. I find it striking that even on a question as fundamental as the Dragon, Siuan acted in secret. How the Tower acts when Dragon is reborn is very much its reason for existence, and yet, apparently no Amyrlin ever managed to nail down an official strategy or stance. In the real world, nations have emergency plans for all sorts of contingencies, many of them highly hypothetical. That the Tower lacks even the rudiments of a plan re the Dragon - the most important contingency possible - is a dramatic strategic failure in my opinion.
The reason for this is twofold: part is the influence of the Black Ajah, as you point out correctly. But a large part is certainly the compulsive backstabbing disorder of most Sisters.
I'm not saying the tower was perfect, it still had the black ajah eating at the seems (the black ajah are pretty much the cause for the tower fracturing as it did). But consider that these are EXTREMELY unusual times. It's the end of the world. It's not like it just fell apart for no reason. In any normal times Siuan's tower would have been perfectly stable and united.
I don't think it would be possible to have the tower stable during these times as long as the black ajah existed. The only reason Egwene was able to unite the tower was because she was also removing the black ajah thanks to Verin's work.
This isn't the real world with modern logistics and communications and beauracracy. Comparing them to modern day governments and expecting them to perform at that level is ridiculous.
Especially when there's a large secret faction that are secretly colluding to subtlely weaken and corrode everything about the tower.
And even if the tower was fully united and cohesive, Nobody actually agreed or understood just how the dragon would be reborn and what that meant or how to respond. There was dozens of different theories.
Siuan also did have plans. But Rand being so strongly Ta'Veren was definitely not something anyone anticipated even though maybe they should have. And they had no idea how to deal with someone like that. All their plans basically meant nothing.
And Siuan chose to not reveal the knowledge she had about the dragon being reborn because she already knew how much power the black ajah had. She knew the former amyrlins were murdered very quickly for this knowledge. You can argue she should have done more to expose the black ajah and yeah of course she made mistakes but it's not a simple thing.
Give more credit to the black ajah here. More than 20% of aes sedai are of the black. They are free to kill and torture to obtain their ends and they have sisters who are sitters. Siuan does as well as she does because she is so secretive and becomes a target for the black to pull down (she also makes unnecessary enemies because she's so secretive but I digress).
Around 1 in 5 women of the white tower are untrustworthy and actively so. That will have an effect on every discussion, advancement, rule making and endeavour of the light. Ishamael has also been actively working against them so several thousand years as well. So the forsaken deserve some credit here too.
The white tower we see is relatively weak because it was never allowed to be strong. The compulsive backstabbing of the other sisters is most likely the culture that results from of all this. I imagine open and honest and cooperative sisters tend to die early (and "peacefully"), while the secretive ones manage to go unnoticed. The novices and accepted see that culture and imitate "proper" aes sedai.
They were always that way. They project an image of competence and unity to the world, but now that our heroes are more involved with AS we're seeing that it was all a sham.
Randland is a thoroughly broken and dysfunctional place. The Darkfriends and other forces of the Shadow have been destroying it quietly for a thousand years. Almost all the institutions are corrupted and the White Tower is no different. Moiraine tells us this in EotW world when she tells Egwene that being a channeler doesn’t change who you are and that there are women with all different kinds of personalities and goals at the White Tower.
It’s not rushed or bad writing. There are certainly many things to criticize in WOT. But Jordan’s portrayal of the outdated and broken institutions in his societies aren’t one of them. They’re a central part of his theme and one where his writing is exactly what he seems to have intended.
While I’m not a fan of Moraine she is definitely an outlier among Aes Sedai.
Since I can’t properly remember what’s happening at this point in the books I will say Moraine is kind of close (but not the best example) of what an Aes Sedai SHOULD be while someone like Cadsuane is a closer example (but maybe still not the best example) of what they actually ARE. Or maybe what they aspire to be.
Jordan was an Episcopalian who served in Viet Nam. When you remember those two facts, how he portrays certain powers in his world makes a lot more sense. E.g. the corruption and supercilious self-absorption of the AS (which of course bares no relation to the Holy See in the Vatican) or the number of leaders who make terrible decisions for petty or selfish reasons at the cost of the lives of commoners.
The other thing to keep in mind when looking at how Jordan handles characters is that they are all flawed and human. There are no perfect people and even the closest one to the perfect paladin paradigm is there to show you how insufferable someone like that can be.
It is all part of the growing disillusion and bursting of the bubble around our intrepid Emond Fielders. At first the Aes Sedai are mysterious and inscrutable, but as our heroes grow in power and experience, they turn out to be people with the same foibles and blind spots as everyone else; just more hidebound to an institution that has some serious flaws.
It is really the same thing with the Forsaken: they are built up as these legendary boogeymen, but turn out to be powerful people who gave in to pettiness, pride, jealousy and other base instincts who are very flawed. Remember when Myrddraal were scary black riders that smacked of the Nazgul from *The Lord of the Rings*? Now they're just one of many irritants the occasionally pop to bother our protagonists; usually in larger numbers to be a bother at all.
I guess we (readers) and the EF5 happen to know Aes Sedai more in the later books. First is "WOW!! The supreme leaders of magik and politics!" Then we see how human they are. The same happens to other chanellers.
It's not bad writing, it's completely intentional. The Aes Sedai have seen themselves as 'in charge's for thousands of years, but haven't had a real unifying cause since Hawkwing's siege( no, I don't think the Aiel war counts given their involvement). The Ajahs themselves and then the individual sisters all technically answer to the Amyrlin but in practice do their own thing. On top of that, their hierarchy is largely based solely on strength in the Power rather than actual competence.
So, you have an entire organization who all operate independently but defer to whoever is strongest, who all think they should demand respect from everyone else in the room, and the events of the world around them are quickly spiralling out of their control. They have grown complacent and now that it's time to act the dysfunction inherent to how they've been operating is basically paralyzing them. It is of course not all their fault, the Black Ajah has been pushing things in this direction for almost as long as this incarnation has existed.
Moiraine's competency is shown to us first specifically as a contrast against the norm of the Tower that we get later on.
The split in the tower and the end of an age hurt the confidence of a lot of Aes Sedai and cadsuane verin and moraine and eladia best capture what Aes Sedai should be, but even then moraine still swore to obey Rand if not thought about like the sisters of dumais Wells.
#[NO SPOILERS BEYOND *Knife of Dreams*.](https://www.reddit.com/r/WoT/wiki/index/post_flairs#wiki_the_eye_of_the_world_.2F_et_al.)
##BOOK DISCUSSION ONLY. HIDE TV SHOW DISCUSSION BEHIND SPOILER TAGS.
If this is a re-read, please change the flair to **All Print**.
* * *
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/WoT) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yeah IMO Jordan's overall plan was to show AES Sedai as wise and powerful and scary. Show basically how the world sees them. Early on at least.
Then around book 5 he planned to slowly show the readers that these were just people. They had all the same flaws as regular people and can be just as petty and shortsighted. Part of this is starting in book 5 we start seeing "behind the curtains". The wonder girls start becoming, at least technically, full Aes Sedai and we start having more PoVs from Aes Sedai general. Also the ideal of what Aes Sedai can be, Moirsine, "dies" so that kinda signals a shift in a way.
But IMO he went a bit too far. He showed too many cases of their weaknesses and not enough cases of decent AES Sedai (outside of the wonder girls who don't count) to balance it out. So many readers get the impression that Aes Sedai in general are petty and flawed rather than just the usual amount you would expect in any group of powerful people.
It doesn't help that both the Black Ajah and Fain's influence on Elaida (and then Elaida's influence on the rest of the tower) was sorta polluting the data and causing a lot more negative qualities to surface.
#[NO SPOILERS BEYOND *Knife of Dreams*.](https://www.reddit.com/r/WoT/wiki/index/post_flairs#wiki_the_eye_of_the_world_.2F_et_al.) ##BOOK DISCUSSION ONLY. HIDE TV SHOW DISCUSSION BEHIND SPOILER TAGS. If this is a re-read, please change the flair to **All Print**. * * * *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/WoT) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I kind of like it, we go from 'wow these people are fantastic geniuses' to realising that most of them are selfish, petty, etc. just like normal people. If they were all perfect Gandalf then it would be boring and there wouldn't be any conflict. Also, they take pains \[despite there internal dramas\] to keep the public image of serenity, dignity and authority - which also feels natural to me \[fight amongst yourselves, but in public maintain dignity\]. Remember, in the books we are seeing the private and dirty laundry of these people, most people will never have that kind of insight.
I guess Tolkien had his motives to write Gandalf as a perfect being (he's a Maia, not a human). But chanellers are humans.
Aes Sedai are seriously dysfunctional. The tower lacks a unified strategic objective, and any kind of united front.
They were being HEAVILY sabotaged by the Forsaken (and their Black Ajah cronies), and by Fain's influence on Elaida for most of the series. The tower is united and mostly cohesive before Elaida becomes Amyrlin and after she was captured but never during her reign.
I‘m actually not sure how united the Tower is under Siuan. The system topples very quickly during the coup, which indicates deeper pre existing fracture lines. I find it striking that even on a question as fundamental as the Dragon, Siuan acted in secret. How the Tower acts when Dragon is reborn is very much its reason for existence, and yet, apparently no Amyrlin ever managed to nail down an official strategy or stance. In the real world, nations have emergency plans for all sorts of contingencies, many of them highly hypothetical. That the Tower lacks even the rudiments of a plan re the Dragon - the most important contingency possible - is a dramatic strategic failure in my opinion. The reason for this is twofold: part is the influence of the Black Ajah, as you point out correctly. But a large part is certainly the compulsive backstabbing disorder of most Sisters.
I'm not saying the tower was perfect, it still had the black ajah eating at the seems (the black ajah are pretty much the cause for the tower fracturing as it did). But consider that these are EXTREMELY unusual times. It's the end of the world. It's not like it just fell apart for no reason. In any normal times Siuan's tower would have been perfectly stable and united. I don't think it would be possible to have the tower stable during these times as long as the black ajah existed. The only reason Egwene was able to unite the tower was because she was also removing the black ajah thanks to Verin's work. This isn't the real world with modern logistics and communications and beauracracy. Comparing them to modern day governments and expecting them to perform at that level is ridiculous. Especially when there's a large secret faction that are secretly colluding to subtlely weaken and corrode everything about the tower. And even if the tower was fully united and cohesive, Nobody actually agreed or understood just how the dragon would be reborn and what that meant or how to respond. There was dozens of different theories. Siuan also did have plans. But Rand being so strongly Ta'Veren was definitely not something anyone anticipated even though maybe they should have. And they had no idea how to deal with someone like that. All their plans basically meant nothing. And Siuan chose to not reveal the knowledge she had about the dragon being reborn because she already knew how much power the black ajah had. She knew the former amyrlins were murdered very quickly for this knowledge. You can argue she should have done more to expose the black ajah and yeah of course she made mistakes but it's not a simple thing.
Give more credit to the black ajah here. More than 20% of aes sedai are of the black. They are free to kill and torture to obtain their ends and they have sisters who are sitters. Siuan does as well as she does because she is so secretive and becomes a target for the black to pull down (she also makes unnecessary enemies because she's so secretive but I digress). Around 1 in 5 women of the white tower are untrustworthy and actively so. That will have an effect on every discussion, advancement, rule making and endeavour of the light. Ishamael has also been actively working against them so several thousand years as well. So the forsaken deserve some credit here too. The white tower we see is relatively weak because it was never allowed to be strong. The compulsive backstabbing of the other sisters is most likely the culture that results from of all this. I imagine open and honest and cooperative sisters tend to die early (and "peacefully"), while the secretive ones manage to go unnoticed. The novices and accepted see that culture and imitate "proper" aes sedai.
Good analysis.
Tower isn’t united when Siuan is in power at all. The reds were pissed because of Moiraine’s actions and even the Greens sided with them on occasion.
They were always that way. They project an image of competence and unity to the world, but now that our heroes are more involved with AS we're seeing that it was all a sham.
Randland is a thoroughly broken and dysfunctional place. The Darkfriends and other forces of the Shadow have been destroying it quietly for a thousand years. Almost all the institutions are corrupted and the White Tower is no different. Moiraine tells us this in EotW world when she tells Egwene that being a channeler doesn’t change who you are and that there are women with all different kinds of personalities and goals at the White Tower. It’s not rushed or bad writing. There are certainly many things to criticize in WOT. But Jordan’s portrayal of the outdated and broken institutions in his societies aren’t one of them. They’re a central part of his theme and one where his writing is exactly what he seems to have intended.
Nice analysis. People forget that all the major institutions and nations are heavily influenced by darkfriends and Forsaken.
While I’m not a fan of Moraine she is definitely an outlier among Aes Sedai. Since I can’t properly remember what’s happening at this point in the books I will say Moraine is kind of close (but not the best example) of what an Aes Sedai SHOULD be while someone like Cadsuane is a closer example (but maybe still not the best example) of what they actually ARE. Or maybe what they aspire to be.
The more time you spend with them, the more you see them for what they really are: human.
Jordan was an Episcopalian who served in Viet Nam. When you remember those two facts, how he portrays certain powers in his world makes a lot more sense. E.g. the corruption and supercilious self-absorption of the AS (which of course bares no relation to the Holy See in the Vatican) or the number of leaders who make terrible decisions for petty or selfish reasons at the cost of the lives of commoners. The other thing to keep in mind when looking at how Jordan handles characters is that they are all flawed and human. There are no perfect people and even the closest one to the perfect paladin paradigm is there to show you how insufferable someone like that can be.
It is all part of the growing disillusion and bursting of the bubble around our intrepid Emond Fielders. At first the Aes Sedai are mysterious and inscrutable, but as our heroes grow in power and experience, they turn out to be people with the same foibles and blind spots as everyone else; just more hidebound to an institution that has some serious flaws. It is really the same thing with the Forsaken: they are built up as these legendary boogeymen, but turn out to be powerful people who gave in to pettiness, pride, jealousy and other base instincts who are very flawed. Remember when Myrddraal were scary black riders that smacked of the Nazgul from *The Lord of the Rings*? Now they're just one of many irritants the occasionally pop to bother our protagonists; usually in larger numbers to be a bother at all.
I guess we (readers) and the EF5 happen to know Aes Sedai more in the later books. First is "WOW!! The supreme leaders of magik and politics!" Then we see how human they are. The same happens to other chanellers.
It's not bad writing, it's completely intentional. The Aes Sedai have seen themselves as 'in charge's for thousands of years, but haven't had a real unifying cause since Hawkwing's siege( no, I don't think the Aiel war counts given their involvement). The Ajahs themselves and then the individual sisters all technically answer to the Amyrlin but in practice do their own thing. On top of that, their hierarchy is largely based solely on strength in the Power rather than actual competence. So, you have an entire organization who all operate independently but defer to whoever is strongest, who all think they should demand respect from everyone else in the room, and the events of the world around them are quickly spiralling out of their control. They have grown complacent and now that it's time to act the dysfunction inherent to how they've been operating is basically paralyzing them. It is of course not all their fault, the Black Ajah has been pushing things in this direction for almost as long as this incarnation has existed. Moiraine's competency is shown to us first specifically as a contrast against the norm of the Tower that we get later on.
The split in the tower and the end of an age hurt the confidence of a lot of Aes Sedai and cadsuane verin and moraine and eladia best capture what Aes Sedai should be, but even then moraine still swore to obey Rand if not thought about like the sisters of dumais Wells.
#[NO SPOILERS BEYOND *Knife of Dreams*.](https://www.reddit.com/r/WoT/wiki/index/post_flairs#wiki_the_eye_of_the_world_.2F_et_al.) ##BOOK DISCUSSION ONLY. HIDE TV SHOW DISCUSSION BEHIND SPOILER TAGS. If this is a re-read, please change the flair to **All Print**. * * * *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/WoT) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yeah IMO Jordan's overall plan was to show AES Sedai as wise and powerful and scary. Show basically how the world sees them. Early on at least. Then around book 5 he planned to slowly show the readers that these were just people. They had all the same flaws as regular people and can be just as petty and shortsighted. Part of this is starting in book 5 we start seeing "behind the curtains". The wonder girls start becoming, at least technically, full Aes Sedai and we start having more PoVs from Aes Sedai general. Also the ideal of what Aes Sedai can be, Moirsine, "dies" so that kinda signals a shift in a way. But IMO he went a bit too far. He showed too many cases of their weaknesses and not enough cases of decent AES Sedai (outside of the wonder girls who don't count) to balance it out. So many readers get the impression that Aes Sedai in general are petty and flawed rather than just the usual amount you would expect in any group of powerful people. It doesn't help that both the Black Ajah and Fain's influence on Elaida (and then Elaida's influence on the rest of the tower) was sorta polluting the data and causing a lot more negative qualities to surface.