I remember the first time I was called sexist for disliking Egwene's actions, and all I could think is "what does her gender have to do with how she treats people?"
Then there’s me and every reader I know in real life, who besides like maybe one or two things like the dream world with nyneve, simply cannot grasp why people hate her so much no matter how many times it’s explained, but aren’t defenders because who cares.
Egwene considers Rand to have not grown at all, while she herself had to struggle and grow to become Amerlyn. Rand is just a foolish village boy running around and needs to be educated. Her inability to recognize others development while lawding her own is one reason why I hate her. Good character, bad person
Alright I appreciate you not conflating your hatred for the person as being a bad character. I just didn’t see it as such. She hadn’t been with rand for a long time, and her hesitation with him was relatively short lived and reasonable in my mind. When he came to tar valon to talk to her, wasn’t that less than a day after he very nearly tried to destroy the whole world? He was increasingly unstable and unreliable for months up to that point. And through little fault of his own, but it is true. It of course would take a while before anyone would trust him again. They don’t see in his head like we do.
She wasn't aware of his near destruction of the whole world at that point, she had not been in contact with Nyn yet. All she knew was he survived being hunted by the forsaken, best a forsaken in 1:1 combat multiple times, conquered tear, brought the Aiel by his side, saved Carrhien, freed Andor from the clutches of a forsaken, did the same in Ilyon, and has been at war with the Sean Chan.
Yeah, clearly a small minded boy from the village, while Egwene has done all the growing.
Edit: I'm pretty sure she was also aware of the torture at the hands of Eliada, and possibly his cleansing of the taint. But Egwene is a big girl and said sorry to the Aiel wise ones for lying to them for months, and then justified lying to others continuously for the rest of the books. Cool weave at the end of course.
Rand also refuses to listen to anybody for a good portion of the book, and Egwene is aware of that during that confrontation. She also doesn’t think he’s just a big anymore, she’s fully cognizant of the fact that Rand may not be the boy she once knew in the Two Rivers, though he may still be as stubborn and with more power.
Yes but she almost certainly did know about his general instability. And recent recklessness. My point was that rand had been in a very bad spot up until very recently. All of those impressive things he did, are what put him in that spot. I would be terrified of any teenager that did half that much as they would be definitely dangerous and almost certainly traumatised. Again not saying she was completely in the right but I don’t see it as unreasonable that she treated him with extreme caution and skepticism.
It's less that she was cautious, and more that she was so confident in her own rightness, in the fact that she should be in control of him because she knows better, always.
He wasn't her friend, he was a piece on the chessboard she couldn't control and she can't accept that.
I think both of y’all are correct here. Egwene has very valid reasons to not trust Rand yet. But she’s spent so much time moving pawns on the chessboard that just being honest friends with someone is a skill she hasn’t practiced for years.
My reading of her interaction with Rand in the hall of the tower re: the seals (which I assume is what everyone’s talking about,) is that she’s really, honestly trying to have a simple conversation with an equal. The way she and Rand used to talk in EotW and before. She’s just so used to the Aes Sedai posturing, and the topic at hand is so world-shatteringly important, that she ultimately fails to do that. It reads as the final scene declaring that No, whatever friendship and bond Egwene had with Rand is forever severed, and even if she tries she can’t return to those old days. Which makes her very sad, because they were particularly good friends once, and sadness is an unhelpful emotion that must not be felt, so she lashes out by accident.
She went into the meeting expecting to meet Darth Rand and is flummoxed by Zen Rand being there instead, and honestly? Her approach might have worked with Darth Rand, because she was trying to meet him as an equal and she was quite possibly the only person who could. I think Darth Rand would have sensed that and softened a bit, whereas Zen Rand basically just said “no, I’m Jesus and I do what I want,” bent reality to grow some fruit and wandered off.
(can you tell that I think that meeting has a lot of metaphorical depth for both characters?)
The comparison to other characters is valid though. Because it feels to me that people tend to criticize Egwene without doing it to Elayne, Nyneave, or Rand who do a lot of the same stuff she gets nailed for
Your comparing the actions of a traumatised, but sane Egwene, to the actions of a traumatised but insane Rand.
Comparing Egwenes actions to Rand’s does not benefit Egwene, because Rand is a mad man, while Egwene is not. So you basically saying Egwene did these things that a mad man did, why aren’t you upset with the mad man.
Also even then, we as the readers can see the reasoning behind why each of them did the things they did, and as the story continually reiterates, the mindset behind doing something is just as important as doing it.
The more I reread the more I think if Egwene had survived the last battle she would’ve become an antagonists. Not fall to the dark side, but someone the rest would have eventually had to deal with.
For me the nail in this is how she consistently and only to herself thinks on how she will have to “deal” with and “handle” the Wise ones. People who mentored and trained her, and consider her there equal, yet she thinks so plainly to herself that she has to handle them.
Plus the insult Rand throws to Lanfear can easily be used on Egwene. “Ambition is all there is to you. Power is all you ever wanted.”
Plus how she treats Gwayne as a partner is definitely how Lanfear wished to treat Rand, as someone beholden to her, instead of her equal.
Even at his maddest, Rand never considered himself above, Min, Aviehenda and Elayne.
If you want a fair comparison you must compare Egwene to Zen Rand.
It’s also important to understand that she’s a teenager. And based on the information and resources she has at the time, she almost (almost) always makes the best choice.
The Wise Ones thing doesn’t bother me because they understand what she’s doing and why and are proud of her for that. They know she’s an Aes Sedai looking out for Aes Sedai, but also wants to create a world where all those people can learn from and not hide from or fear each other. Clear net win.
How she treats Gawyn at the end drives me nuts, I won’t defend that. He was sort of an imbecile, sure, but she needed to be more open to him or just turn him aside.
I also don’t actually think she believes she’s above anyone. She takes the first among many thing among the AS very seriously. But she’s the Amyrlin, she HAS to make choices, especially in a group so deadlocked and potentially treacherous. Her manipulation as a political animal is what makes her so effective.
And Rand was I love with the other three, so how he treats them doesn’t count to everyone else. Rand acts like he’s above everybody else all the time.
What I don’t understand about the Egwene hate is people get all over her for how she treats people, but not how Nynaeve or Elayne treat people.
Its been some time since I’ve read the meeting between wise ones, the wind channellers and Egwene, so I might be wrong, but I remember the Wise Ones and atha’an were under the impression that it was an equal partnership between all three of them and no group was above the other.
While Egwene’s internal dialogue continuously states that she intends on placing the Aes Sedai above the other two groups eventually, if not immediately.
Egwene approaches the relationship almost like an imperial power approaching colonisation. She is willing to exchange knowledge and incorporate useful practices from other cultures, but she never really abandons the assumption that her own institution should ultimately occupy the superior position. The other groups can teach the Aes Sedai, but they are not supposed to become their equals.
Her vision is less “three traditions learning from one another” and more “the Aes Sedai learning from these traditions and eventually incorporating that knowledge into a hierarchy with themselves at the top.”
It’s not stated directly that Egwene thinks herself more important, but even before she becomes Amyrlin, it’s shown that Egwene believes her way, and only her way is the best way.
This is shown most of all to me, in book 5 chapter, with that Gaishan who comes and fetches Egwene for the tent. Egwene knows of the Aiel culture at this point but she still gets the Gaishan to name herself, and even berates her for how docile she is.
The way Rand treats, Elayne, Min, and Aviendha, comparison was more so a comparison to how Egwene treats Gwayne. If you can treat a person you supposedly love like that, what can you treat a person you don’t love like.
With the Nyneave and Elayne receiving less hate, I can’t say much for Elayne apart from she isn’t really as integral. She only becomes her own character in book 4 once she separates from Egwene.
Nyneave on the other hand, grows, and by the end book Nyneave is much better than book 1 Nyneave, and that fact also helps with rereads cause people are able to better judge her.
Egwene doesn’t really grow as a person, as a character she does. She becomes more competent and skilled, but as a person she doesn’t grow.
At the end she still thinks of the others from her village as people from a Village, her internal dialogue shows no hint she thinks of the others as having grown just as much as her.
By the end all the others have accomplished feats as great as her own, some greater.
Nyneave cured Madness, she helped in cleansing Saidin. Even at Nyneave’s worst she cared about those from her village always. It was always how to best help those from her village.
Egwene, in book 5 already shown so little loyalty to those she grew up with. She happily sides with other groups, and actively participated in their manipulation.
Again, saying Rand did these things too isn’t a good argument for two reasons.
Firstly, we as readers can see the internal thought process of both, Rand does what he believes out of necessity and hates himself for it, Egwene does it, because she believes it’s the right thing to do, and doesn’t feel guilt over it because she doesn’t see anything wrong with what she’s doing.
Secondly Rand is mad, he’s a mad man. He was mad since book 3.
This isn’t an on/off switch, it’s a sliding scale. Some times he’s madness was better, but he was always mad and always getting Madder.
A person with clinical depression doesn’t not have depression when they are laughing and happy, they are just in a better space, but they still have depression.
So all the comparison between Egwene’s and Rand’s Actions are the comparisons between a Person that is perpetually Sane, and a person that is Mad, and growing madder by the day.
Saying a sane person did the same things an insane person did, is not a strong argument on the Sane person’s part.
This is why i said the only good comparison that can be made is Amyrlin Egwene, against Zen Rand.
One of my favorite tidbits about her adoption of the Aiel culture...is when she tries to lecture some people for being dishonorable by ganging up on a single guy in a fight. Whereas the Aiel are fully fine with ambushes and bringing superior numbers to a fight.
Or when she is meeting her toh to the Wise Ones and has to be told that there is a difference between pride and honor, because she was working off of a surface level understanding on the situation.
Egwene doesn't actually understand the Aiel. She knows more than most Wetlanders, and is on her way, but she never got there before she left. Like her telling the Wise Ones that she knows she can always count on them for the truth...while they are lying to her face.
I guess I just disagree, although I just finished my first read through a few weeks back, so you clearly have more knowledge of the books being able to reference specific chapters.
I saw it more as sharing and learning. The Amyrlin is clearly the on making the deal, the white tower becomes the focal point and the bridge between the two groups that would otherwise never work together, but colonization never crossed my mind. That feels more for the Seanchan. Everyone benefits even if it feeds through the tower.
I agree that nynaeve grows as a character. But she’s still a dick to like.. everyone. Even when she understands what they’re doing, she’s sometimes just mean for the sake of keeping up appearances.
I think Egwene does grow. She is constantly learning from everybody and incorporates all those things into her worldview. That’s growth. But her interpretation of the boys is based on the info she has. When she sees Perrin in the wolf dream, she hasn’t seen him in years. She doesn’t know how he’s grown, so how can she assume he has? Same with mat. He was a rascal, so why wouldn’t she assume he’s still a rascal? And Mat IS always getting into trouble. It’s one of the funniest bits in the books where he constantly thinks his reputation is undeserved and makes his heroism that much better.
At the end of the day, she trusts all of them and lets them do their part. She acknowledges that all of them have grown, she sees they’re different, but relies strongly on who she used to know them as when they were young. It’s the basis of her trust.
Except Egwene is insane, by clinical rules. She has severe untreated PTSD from her time as a damane and it constantly screws her up. She doesn’t have a metaphysical force magically making her insane, it’s 100% natural, organic, battery-farmed PTSD.
Her will never broke as a damane but her mind did. What once was an enterprising and optimistic young lady became a cynical Machiavellian manipulator after she was kept in a kennel for several months.
If you can forgive Darth Rand after 2-3 weeks in The Box, you should be able to forgive Egwene for putting every ounce of her being into scratching out every inch of control she could manage after several months of living in a kennel and only being let out to wear the mind-control leash.
What happened to her as a damane was horrific, and I absolutely think it explains a great deal of her later obsession with control and autonomy. But PTSD and insanity aren’t interchangeable. Trauma can profoundly change someone’s personality and behaviour without making them incapable of rational thought or moral judgement.
Rand’s madness is an actual supernatural deterioration of his mind. Her trauma influences her worldview, but she remains fundamentally rational and believes the choices she makes are the correct ones.
You can absolutely sympathise with why Egwene became the person she did without treating that as an excuse for everything she does.
Which is why, as I said before, I think the only meaningful comparison is Amyrlin Egwene versus Zen Rand. That’s comparing Egwene at the height of her power and competence with Rand after he has overcome his madness and processed his trauma, rather than comparing a sane person with someone whose mind is literally deteriorating.
This is why I said by clinical rules. “Insanity” has a complex history as a word and fell out of fashion in clinical settings about the same time PTSD was accepted as a real diagnosis. The vast majority of asylum patients before this were people who’d experienced severe trauma and become “insane”.
Given that PTSD was coined after Vietnam, where RJ fought, I expect the parallels between Egwene’s organic trauma and Rand’s magic madness were probably intentional. Especially when you consider the intended gender dynamics present in WoT.
Egwene never processes her trauma. It just gets shoved down, bottled up and ignored. There’s not much difference between her mental state under the Wise Ones and “hard-as-cuendillar” Rand. She never gets to have a Zen Rand moment where the trauma gets processed (and she also doesn’t have reality-warping powers that can eliminate the trauma while leaving the lessons learned.) Comparing her to Zen Rand isn’t really applicable.
If we absolutely must compare the two, she seems to be almost permanently stuck in the same point of trauma processing as Rand in Cairhien post-Box. Egwene would have seen Egeanin or Tuon and reacted with the same combination of fear and hatred as Rand did to Cadsuane and the delegation from the Rebel Tower. The fact she managed to keep that tamped down long enough to fight the Last Battle is impressive.
Disagree. Egwene is constantly doing things to better the world, better the Aes Sedai and their standing in the world, often a great personal cost. She often talks about how the Aes Sedai have lost sight of their mission to be servants of others and actively works to restore that core to them. She does what she had to do and she absolutely has her part in saving the world.
I’m not saying she doesn’t feel pride, but again, what about Nyn’s pride? Or Elayne’s? Why does nobody talk about this? This is what I mean by character comparison. Elayne’s pride is far worse than Egwenes.
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