I'm not going into the rest for now, but...


Lil, you act as if Rand's pain, and his reaction to it or lack thereof is going to affect only him. That is totally incompatible with the fact that this man is the savior of the world. What he does, how he does it, everything will have a major impact on the world.

Your morphine to a dying patient analogy is good. Let me expand on it. Rand is on morphine. He's doing his best to suppress pain, emotional and physical. This bottling up of pain has already led to one big problem... Rand doesn't control his temper well anymore. Granted that in many instances, he has a right to be angry, his displays of temper, the only kind of release he allows himself, do him and his cause no good. the last thing he needs is some genuine followers of his shunning him as a tyrant.

But this is scarcely the greatest problem. The worst "pain" Rand feels is that while he wastes away his body and soul to keep the world alive, the world shows no sign of wanting to help him. There is a deep sense of frustration that was again reinforced in this chapter.

We saw in KoD that this frustration has led him to a point where he thinks that absolute obedience brought on by inducing fear in his recalcitrant subjects will serve his needs for Tarmon Gai'don. He may seem far from it, at least in his own mind, but his actions clearly show that he has taken his first steps towards estabishing a tyranny.

Need. No longer was it about what Rand wanted or what he wished. Everything he did focused only on need, and what he needed most was the lives of those who followed him. Soldiers to ?ght, and to die, to prepare the world for the Last Battle. Tarmon Gai’don was coming. What he needed was for them all to be strong enough to win.
But the truth was that he needed Min, needed her strength and her love. He would use her as he used so many others. No, there was no place in him for regret. He just wished he could banish guilt as easily.

Both these statements continue a disturbing trend, where Rand shows a taut focus on Tarmon Gai'don, excluding himself from emotions that might "cloud" his judgment and thinking that he must have what he needs. If things carry on so, how long will it be before he things that anything, including his golden moral standard about hurting women, can be brushed aside or destroyed if it helps him defeat the Dark One? Will that translate to a willingness to use the One Power to cow down the opposition?

All this is a major moral issue, but from the example of Shadar Logoth, we know that such thoughts and motivations in the min of an influential person can mean the physical manifestation of an evil in this world so strong it negates the Dark One's own.

Bad enough in a man like Mordreth, who could influence but one city. In the Dragon Reborn, strongest ta'veren ever, the leader of the Asha'man, how much worse can things get?

There's another angle to this. How much more "morphine" can Rand take? There is only so much pain a person can bottle up, and if we can be sure of one thing, its that Rand will face more pain before Tarmon Gai'don. So what happens, say, if Min dies and Rand feels responsible (maybe Semirhage kills her). Can he bottle up the pain of her loss?

I don't think so. Puhed beyond the threshold like that, Rand will shatter. Whether he descends into total madness, or whether he gets pushed even more strongly in the direction of Shadar Logothism, the world will be doomed, and so will he.

Which is why he must learn to laugh and cry. He needs to see that felling pain for the losses he has faced, feeling anger for the deaths he must see, these are his strongest motivators to fight the Dark One.

The Rand of old faced the pain of seperation from his father, yet withstood it and left the Two Rivers. Can this Rand do that? Can he accept that if someone close to him dies so that he may succeed against the DO, he must mourn them, but not let that loss be a cause of guilt?

No. And that is what Cadsuane and Sorilea fear. Cadsuane fears a Shadar Logoth that spreads across the world. Sorilea fears a leader who sees only tools in his subjects.