Having gone back, now that I've read ToM, and looked over some of the spoiler posts (as well as a couple of replies in my own initial reaction post), I see that a lot of people seem to have become deeply upset over Aviendha's experience in Rhuidean. And for the life of me, I cannot see why. I thought that was one of the cooler and more interesting bits in the book. Of course it showed bad things, but they're fairly abstract and unconnected to the events in the series. It's not like mass death or destruction in "reality." Why is this one thing so affecting, compared to all the portal stone lives, ominous foreshadowings, nightmares and other similar, if shorter, not-real glimpses in the series?

One of the most common tropes in the sci-fi/fantasy genre (in MANY media) is the "bleak alternate future" usually serving as a warning to the characters or the audience of a possible way things could go if the characters mess up. This only confirms a point made by Aviendha herself back in tFoH. When she is tending to the unconscious Rand after Sammael smashes the watch tower she says, ostensibly to him, but more truthfully to herself, that he has to survive to give the Aiel a purpose and something new to replace the self-image he has shattered. Not only that, her mysterious visitor brought up these same issues in their conversation on the way to Rhuidean. And yet, Aviendha seems to lack that basic grasp of the situation and cause she herself alluded to back in tFoH (I love how B-Sand's version of a Wise and matured version of Aviendha is so much less insightful than RJ's foolhardy & immature stage of the same character ), and the readers appear to have missed B-Sand's typically sledgehammer-subtle reinforcement of that point.

The chain of events Aviendha foresaw portray a world where things have gone bad, and is no more inevitable than the grim futures forestalled in just about every other property or franchise in the genre. Sure, she says it seems more real and certain than her other experiences of that kind, but that is simply because there is so much prophecy and foresight and hints and whatnot going on in WoT, that this needs to be highlighted for the readers to set it apart from the usual half-understood forebodings that litter the books and give some context to why, with the Last Battle looming, Aviendha is suddenly going to start becoming a pain in Rand's ass, lobbying for her group and bothering him with the fate of a pack of barbarian thugs when he is trying to juggle rival factions to save the whole world.

This unpleasant future can be very easily explained by the absence of the contemporary characters, suggesting they can actually alter the course of events to avert the inevitable end. The last scene Aviendha sees features her and Rand's children, and takes place in the not-too distant future. One of the characters in it, Bruan, is currently a middle-aged man, so it takes place between 20 to 50 years from now, AT MOST. Furthermore, another character is ten years older than Rand and Aviendha's children, and he was alive and old enough to remember when Rand visited Cold Rocks hold. Placing his age at 4-9 years old, that means Rand & Aviendha will conceive their children withing the next 5 years or so. At the MOST, Rand would be 27 when they are born, placing the meeting where his children agree to go war against the Seanchan before his eightieth birthday (and that assumes Bruan is extraordinarily young for a clan chief and lives to almost a century). For a channeler, that makes him a virtual tyro, and the mothers of his children as well. Elayne at that stage would just be coming into her prime as an Aes Sedai, and Aviendha is hardly older than her.

In spite of these reasons why their parents should still be alive and not only a significant factor in their lives, but people of some importance in the world and with the Aiel as well. Yet Rand's own daughter asks a man who crossed paths with him as a child what he recalls of her father. Plainly he has had nothing to do with Aviendha's children, and IIRC, Parda herself mentions nothing of import about her mother. Further, as I mentioned in another post, what of the relationship between Elayne and Aviendha, which seems to have completely failed to manifest in any sort of connection between their children. The Aiel may be matrilineal, but completely ignoring a shared father, let alone a father who is Car'a'carn of the Aiel would be idiotic. Given their attention to Elayne and aid in her pregnancy, the contemporary Wise Ones seem to feel as much, too. They make a great many concessions to her relationship with Aviendha which seem rather out of character for the "apprentices are scum" atttitude they project in training. If they can ignore the Aes Sedai status of one apprentice, why make so many concessions to the sisterhood of another apprentice with some wetlander (and father-kin to the Treekiller, no less), unless they recognize the reality of Elayne's relationship to their car'a'carn and presumptive significance thereof? Why then does this connection between the Aiel and House Trakand lapse so, even to the attenuation of the ties among the car'a'carn's wetlander and Aiel children?

Plainly this future is something that would never come to pass if Rand and his childrens' mothers (including Min, who had offspring in this timeline and is a figure of some respect among the Aiel for her gifts, and moreso in her own right than Elayne) were still in the picture and involved with their offspring's lives. What is more, Fortuona is gone too. A successor rules the "Raven Empire" in the time of Rand's children, when a 19 year-old Empress would certainly be expected to survive natural causes this far. The removal of Rand & Avienda, not to mention Fortuona, and almost certainly Elayne & Min (and even Egwene - a woman as close to the quadruplets' parents as she would almost certainly be an honorary aunt in the Real World; I would hope she would grow up enough to give SOME feeling to such relationships, and that she would retain SOME respect among the Aiel) from positions of authority and influence in the world so prematurely is hardly a sign of a "happy ending" to the events in WoT. Even if all the heroes retired to a tropical island somewhere to indulge their flute-playing, gambling, blacksmithing, philosophical research, ter'angreal experimentation, horse-breeding, and sundry other interests they have had to put aside to run the world, you would think that their children and grandchildren dragging their various nations into a world war would rouse them to intervene!

Plainly, this is a not a "normal" future, but rather an alternate dystopia demonstrating what happens if the main characters do not survive and stay in charge. As such, it should not be viewed with nearly the horror of a certain or imminent tragedy or catastrophe befalling the main characters. Given the disasters that must certainly befall the current generation of characters to see Aviendha's horrific future come to pass, isn't getting worked up over this grim vision something akin to saying "Well, many of the characters I have followed and enjoyed for over a dozen books have perished in an untimely fashion, leaving behind orphaned children, but I am content in the knowledge that these puling fluid-dripping larval stages of human beings with have long and happy and successful lives - wait, what?! Their grandchildren's descendants will die in squalor and poverty?! HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN?!?!" ? Seriously?

Thinking back, I wonder if the reason I am not getting the grief is because I am not one of those readers clamoring for RJ/B-Sand to kill of a main character just because we want the series to be "cool" like "A Song of Ice and Fire" (look for book five "A Freezing-over of Hell" ANY DAY now! I swear - he's got it half-done! ). Aviendha's future-vision is showing us the consequences of such a wish coming true, and the killing-fans don't like it.