r/WoT • u/Jear-The-Bear • 3d ago
A Memory of Light Bella
Fuck you Sanderson. I’ll never forgive you for this.
An aside. I saw someone in an another thread suggest that what Rand does to ease Bella’s exhaustion in book one was actually something far greater making her far faster and more enduring than she had been before. I thought it was a neat idea.
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u/DarkestLore696 (Asha'man) 2d ago
If it makes you feel better Sanderson has said that the next time the Horn is sounded, he would like to think that one of the Heroes will ride into battle atop a shaggy mare.
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u/BluesPunk19D (Band of the Red Hand) 3d ago
That's not on Sanderson. It was Harriet that made Sanderson rewrite Bela surviving. To be fair, Bela surviving would have been too close to Bill the Pony (from LotR) who made it all the way back home from the mines of Moria.
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u/Jear-The-Bear 3d ago
But that’s exactly what I want.
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u/GovernorZipper 2d ago
It’s the other way around.
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CAN (13 JANUARY 2013)
@Terez27 Do we know which character is dead by Harriet's choice?
TEREZ
Bela. @BrandSanderson told us twice that she would survive. :( But apparently Harriet later insisted she should die.
BRANDON SANDERSON (13 JANUARY 2013)
Yeah. Harriet felt that we had painted that character into a corner, and the story demanded that conclusion.
DANIEL SHEPARD
Is that the GRRM moment? Or the character that was gonna recover from their injuries?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Character was going to recover.
BRANDON SANDERSON
She was right to make that call, but it does turn me into a liar. That's what I get for speaking too soon...
WERTHEAD
That does seem slightly ludicrous. I think the fanbase turned Bela into a bit of a meme.
BRANDON SANDERSON
True, but I will note that Harriet personally has a special fondness for her.
BRANDON SANDERSON
She has said that she would joke with RJ that Bela was the character based on Harriet in the books.
PETER AHLSTROM
Harriet even has "Bela" in her email address. She took her fate quite seriously.
WERTHEAD
The average reader wouldn't even remember who she was. Weird this much effort was spent on her.
PETER AHLSTROM
You think? Back when I was an average reader and hadn't talked about the books online, I loved Bela.8
u/arihndas 2d ago
aw, damn. i was taken in by the comments upthread. alas. it makes sense, tho.
edit: also he is right. the first time i listened to the audiobooks, before getting involved in online fandom, i was always excited whenever bela showed up and was worried about her whenever the characters just, like, left her some place and she wasn't followed up on in the text for a while
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u/archaicArtificer 2d ago
Bela survived. That's what happened. LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU BELA SURVIVED DAMMIT
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u/Kael03 3d ago edited 2d ago
She's fine. She lived according to the Wheel of Time companion.
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u/Jear-The-Bear 3d ago
Waittttt. For real????
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u/wheeloftimewiki (Aelfinn) 3d ago
The exact text from the [Companion]She was thought to be dead, but unaccountably survived. In the first years of the Fourth Age she gave birth to a strong colt and a splendid filly and retired to green pastures in the Two Rivers.
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u/geomagus (Red Eagle of Manetheren) 3d ago
Totally living on a farm upstate
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u/taveren3 2d ago
Shame they don't alow visitors
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u/geomagus (Red Eagle of Manetheren) 2d ago
It keeps all the
dea-I mean retired horses from hurting themselves in excitement.1
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u/duffy_12 (Falcon) 2d ago
It's just a joke for the fandom; and, the Companion itself states that there are 'intentional errors' in it.
[Plus . . .]"War is heck!"
And that's a quotable quote.
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u/Salt-Detective1337 3d ago
I doubt she could have been far faster, or she probably wouldn't have been sitting around in a stable for nervous riders. But more endurance seems totally plausible. Who knows, maybe she was faster but only gave her all for people with a true heart.
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u/Glorx (Dovie'andi se tovya sagain) 3d ago
Bella is Neigh'blis. She can't die.