I cannot remember the quote from TGS. I assume you are correct. That's kind of a stupid thing for Rand to say though- of course he wants to destroy the DO.




As he never states that it's not even really misleading. The seals are breaking anyway. His forces are unlikely to become more unified or stronger than they are now. Also SuperRand is the only person on the lightside who knows what the consequences of the DO being "free" are. He is in a better place to make this kind of call than you and definitely than Egwene. and I state, there's s reason we don't have Rand PoVs this book- it would give too much of the game away. All you can infer is from what he has told others. And he has mislead his followers before. A lot in fact, including Min. The fact that before he is meant to be about to break the seals and he's still got people looking for answers to help with his plan implies he probably isn't literally about to break them now, or that he doesn't think it'll make any difference if he does. And he is pretty much the only source of AoL information on the bore now, except the bad guys.




I was keeping my irritation out of it. True she does usually use her advantages, but she can't work out what her Dream means. And whether she does or not, she'll reveal it, I hope, at Merrilor with the leaders of nations watching and when Rand is actually there. That way it will be most helpful as a source of information to him and as an advantage to her. She's got everyone at the meeting, like Rand wanted, without needed it mostly because it'd look less convincing in a letter than pointing out that the seals are there for a reason. And hopefully when she does reveal it, Rand or Min will use it. But I don't think her behaviour is out of Character. Rand predicted the actions he needed and the ones she hasn't done yet that he can't predict make more sense if done in front of Rand as he's the one she needs to convince.



Well so far it's more of a general idea of riskiness (I'm pretty sure rand knows it is risky) than any specific information but I'm sure she will share it with him. We don't know what her dream means yet though we and she can guess! That's another point of the meeting, I hope, to consider people like Egwene's input into the plan against the shadow.




That's kind of the point, he wants the scare factor of the threat of breakingthe seals now to get Egwene's first priority as gathering the nations of the world, and it is the quickest way of forcing those both for and against him to come together. As for the earlier events, I explained myself poorly. We could all see that he would cleanse Saidin, probably with the CK, but did you see him manipulating Cadsuane et al into following him so he had defended? He was going to have to kill Graendal, but did you guess how? He was going to get Asmodean as a tutor but how he set the trap to drive him to Rhuidean?

We know he has to seal the DO in. The point we don't know is how, just like with these earlier events. And though he isn't doing it, Rand can rely a certain degree on making things up as he goes along, as he is in control of the nature of reality and chance.




This is true, I must confess.

Merillor isn't going to go as planned because Rand has ignored the Black Tower too long and Trollocs are attacking Caemlyn, but the point behind it to force people together so that they can actually all communicate for the first time in 13 books still stands and that is artifice on Rand's part and it is natural to me in terms of the expected actions of the characters onvolved