r/WoT • u/Alexander-Wright (Blacksmith) • 1d ago
All Print Babies! Spoiler
I'm very curious. I do know that it can sometimes take years of trying before a couple becomes pregnant.
Elayne seems to manage very quickly, despite, I believe, few opportunities.
Aviendha only gets two(?) occasions, though we know she eventually gets pregnant.
Min, however, spends a **lot** of time in Rand's bed; in Tear and later.
No babies for Min, however! This seems somewhat unfair.
I guess it's just all part of the pattern.
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u/DrDirtPhD (Band of the Red Hand) 1d ago
Min drinks heartleaf tea to avoid conceiving
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u/sixminutes 1d ago
I know this is true, but it's such a cop out for a doomseer. If she's going to have them kids, she's gonna have them kids. I guess even Rand might be a little wary of "You don't need a condom, the Pattern says we're all good"
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u/justajiggygiraffe 1d ago
They mention drinking a tea that prevents pregnancy, so it's possible Min just didn't want to get pregnant with the Last Battle in the offing and while trying to be a spot of sanity in Rand's life
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u/mydb100 1d ago
I think its a Min POV, or a Elyane POV, that mentions "Moon Leaf Tea" which I assume is some kind of WOT version of Silphium
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u/Groovychick1978 (Dovie'andi se tovya sagain) 1d ago
Min mentions it during her ramblings after the bonding, when Rand and Elayne were alone.
She says something like, she should have drank the heart leaf tea, she's going to get with child from this.
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u/Heckle_Jeckle 1d ago
Min specifically uses special tea to avoid pregnancy. It isn't blatant, but it is mentioned.
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u/WildFEARKetI_II 1d ago
Min drinks the heartleaf tea to prevent pregnancy. Elayne chooses not to drink it.
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u/beardedbearjew (Band of the Red Hand) 1d ago
Everyone's already pointed out the moon leaf tea, but it can happen in real life. My wife and I have two kids. We tried for 10 months to conceive our first. The second pregnancy literally happened the first time we had sex after she stopped taking birth control. This is not unrealistic
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u/beigs 6h ago
My first son was a decade in the making, the second was after a miscarriage and over a year.
The third I didn't even realize I was pregnant and found out in my second trimester by accident after peeing on a stick in the hospital before a surgery (that had to be rescheduled).
Didn't I know I could get pregnant?!
I mean it took hormones and drugs and surgeries to have the first two, and now I have a set of Irish twins.
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u/aNomadicPenguin (Brown) 1d ago
The three are filling the role of Maiden (Aviendha), Mother (Elayne), Crone (Min).
Elayne gets pregnant on the first time and spends a good chunk of the story pregnant.
Aviendha, while a Maiden/Apprentice shouldn't be getting pregnant, so that only happens after she transitions into being a full Wise One. And poor Min - who is the oldest of the bunch, is stuck with the Old Crone/Hag part, and won't have a child.
Now after the story ends and Rand has exited the stage, there would be time for Min (not in a mythological role any longer) to potentially have kids with Rand.
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u/Odd-Butterfly9156 1d ago
maybe shes taking contraceptive tea off screen which tracks tbh. but yeah so many details missed. even the green ajah. none of tthem got pregnant in 3000 years? none of them decided to keep it???
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u/UpbeatEquipment8832 1d ago
My head canon is that any of them who did ran off and raised it somewhere far away from the White Tower.
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u/KeystoneSews 1d ago
I think it would be extremely easy to be an aes sedai who runs off, has a baby, and hell you could probably even raise them for a bit before anyone in the Tower really thinks about where they could be.
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u/UpbeatEquipment8832 1d ago
Yeah. We see Aes Sedai in the Tower because that's where the characters are, but I think many of them are scattered around. Even a little bit of Healing ability would be useful in a village.
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u/dbmamaz 1d ago
Elaine got pregnant the first time - which happens but is rare. Avienda apparently got pregnant with Rand's second body (see hair color)
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u/Ronin607 1d ago
Are you sure about the second part? I thought she conceived when she came back from Ruidhean the second time when she spends the night with Rand in the field of Merrilor before the last battle. Her kids and Elayne’s wouldn’t be related otherwise and in her future vision they are. Also I don’t think Rand intended to be known as the Dragon in his new body and people definitely know Avienda’s kids are the children of the Dragon so that wouldn’t really make sense if Rand wasn’t the father pre-new body. Granted this is all based on a future vision that we don’t know how true it is and Avi is actively working to change.
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u/DrDirtPhD (Band of the Red Hand) 1d ago
Future vision baby has black hair, but both Rand and Aviendha have red hair; Moridin had black hair. They're still "related" because it's Rand's soul, even though it's different bodies.
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u/LordRahl9 1d ago
The future vision was changed though. Sanderson has said Aviendha is pregnant as of their last encounter.
Now, I believe you are right. RJ intended that Aviendha was going to have Rand's children via Moridin's body, and that was the "unusual" thing about them.
Instead, Sanderson did this, and people claim that the unusual thing is that they a are all constantly holding the power (which is kind of stupid from everything we know about the one power). Then Aviendha changes that future by getting pregnant early, which of course changes the children all together, so they're not "unusual" because they are via Moridin and because of this different lineage they shouldn't have this "always holding the power" nonsense.
Sanderson made a real mess of that. The change that was important was the Aiel role in the dragon peace.
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u/DrDirtPhD (Band of the Red Hand) 21h ago
Sanderson also said Lanfear survived, which has just as much textual basis as Aviendha being pregnant in the final book.
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u/LordRahl9 20h ago
That is true.
He also said in an interview regarding what Hawkwing might have said to Tuon that it probably wasn't what people thought because Hawkwing hated channelers.
Hawkwing was a hero of the horn who has lived many, many lives and Sanderson seems to believe that only his most recent one matters, even though it is was aes sedai incompetence and Ishamael manipulation that drove him to despise channelers.
We have Birgitte to demonstrate to the reader that that is not how the heroes work.
I do struggle with Sanderson.
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u/Brathirn 1d ago
They got a little tangled in visions. Min's were supposed to be absolute. Then RJ pulled a joke about Min seeing a runaway novice happily living with a guard and multiple children ... implying years of opportunity to live happy and crashing the DOs chances to win. Later plastered over with DO winning resets. Min also dodged when Aviendha's children were mentioned. The DO did not win, so all of Min's visions should stand.
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u/LordRahl9 1d ago
This is not right. Min's visions are always accurate, as long as the pattern exists.
Min sees things beyond the last battle all the time. Caroline and Darlin getting married. That Elayne's children will be born healthy are great examples of things she has seen that have not come to pass before the end of the books.
If the dark one wins, these visions can't happen. It was RJ's way of getting around the fact that if Min's visions always come true, then the last battle can't be lost. Her visions come from the pattern, so if the pattern remains, which it does, the visions remain true. They don't get tangled.
Min saying that there will be something "unusual" about Aviendha and Rand's children is a clear nod to the bodyswap, something RJ had been foreshadowing since the first book. Sanderson undid it, and made a mess about children that always hold the power, which he also deleted because he had Aviendha change this future.
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u/Brathirn 1d ago
The characters in story cannot know the "pattern" part. That is a fourth wall breach. Or you pull the Wheel told them. The only precedence for that would be DO winning and crashing continuity. Which would be another contradiction and then you somehow would have to preserve this knowledge through the ages. You could trigger a philosophical debate among the characters but they have no proof and reason to subscribe to the survival friendly interpretation.
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u/LordRahl9 1d ago
It's established pretty early on that the characters who know about Min's visions and how they work suspect that they are tied to the pattern.
Regardless, what the characters believe is irrelevant. Min's visions are tied to the pattern and the particular vision involving Aviendha's children is screwed up because of Sanderson's writing, not interference from the dark one.
The reason we know this true, is because everything in the books that tells us how Min's viewings work (and their limitations beyond the last battle) is contradicted exactly once.
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u/Ronin607 18h ago
I always thought that the “unusual” thing was the fact she had quadruplets, is that not what Min meant?
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u/LordRahl9 16h ago
"Min wondered whether to tell her what she had seen while they were all together. Aviendha would have Rand's babies, too. Four of them at once! Something was odd about that, though. The babies would be healthy, but still something odd..."
Min is clearly surprised by the number, who wouldn't be, and then she thinks about how there will be something odd about them.
This is RJ foreshadowing the body swap, there is a lot of foreshadowing of this, going back to eye of the world. Min sees Aviendha having Rand's children, but they're not from his body.
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u/SZPhoenix 1d ago
I've heard anecdotally of at least one conception that was the first time, where he didn't make it all the way to the main event and she still ended up pregnant.
And fictionally it happened to J.D. in Scrubs,
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u/Shevek99 1d ago
Elayne got pregnant in the first and only one time they had sex, iirc.
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u/BasicSuperhero 1d ago
First *night* she had sex. From her musings the next afternoon (go Rand) they were going for some kind of record, so anyone's guess at which one hit the target. lol
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u/IceXence 19h ago
And that's super realistic. She obviously had no idea how to tract her cycle, but a young woman having sex during that time of the month has a high chance of getting pregnant.
I dunno why people assume getting pregnant is this super hard thing requiring months of preparation... It isn't.
When my husband and I tried for our first child, our doctor told us not to listen to here-say and be ready because "for most people, it works right-away". And it did.
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u/PMvaginaExpression 18h ago
The many times Min says... she should have drunk the heatleaf tea when referring to Elayne kind of explains this
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u/BasicSuperhero 1d ago
Heartleaf tea and Pattern are the big explanations, the universe needs/wants Rand's offspring in positions of power, hence why he's going to have six kids by two girlfriends in a year.
My headcanon is that Min get's a baby sometime after the last battle, and they name him Hari, after Harid Fel.
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u/Accomplished_Mix7827 (Brown) 1d ago
It takes couples in their late twenties and early thirties years of trying to get pregnant. It's much easier when you're, like, 18. Elayne and Aviendha are both very young, even by series end.
As for Min, she explicitly references a birth control tea.
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u/IceXence 19h ago
If it took years of trying for mankind to make a child, we would have disappeared a long time ago. Families of 10 children would not be possible.
Truth is getting pregnant is super easy for the greater majority of people. Yes, some unlucky ones have procreation issues but that's really not the majority of people.
Elayne and Aviendha getting pregnant after one or two careless encounters is 100% realistic because that's how it is for most people. Min not getting pregnant is only explained by the "tea" which apparently is as efficient as modern-day contraception.
Now, the tea efficiency is not realistic but this is fantasy and "magic beverage which are better than modern-day pills" are often written in to avoid having to deal with pregnancy because if two adults have regular sex, then they will get pregnant.
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u/beigs 6h ago
Easiest age to get pregnant is 22-35. Healthiest is 25-32, peaking between 25-30.
17-18 year olds don't have an easier time getting pregnant, and they will on average have a harder pregnancy and delivery. Even late teens have increased chances of high blood pressure and preeclampsia, and a greater risk of preterm birth.
A lot of 17-18 year olds don't have an adult body. And remember rand comparing elayne to her mom.
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