A series of questions might occur in hindsight considering the romantic lives of Rand and Egwene once they departed the Two Rivers. Why on earth are these two together when the series begins? What do they see in each to create the feelings that motivate some of their choices and actions in those early books? And this being a Cannoli post, will this somehow reflect negatively on Egwene? The answer to the last question is, Of course! And by answering the former questions, I will lay the groundwork for my thesis that simply by dating him, and the manner in which she pursued the relationship, Egwene is responsible for the ridiculous mess of his romantic life nowadays, and for the existence of the single worst plot point of Rand’s character arc – his three concurrent, coexisting and theoretically equal love interests. But on the first part of the issue at hand: Why did they get together in the Two Rivers, and how did they let that relationship coast for so long given their apparent lack of real feelings and the ease with which they shed it once they were so resolved?

The question is especially puzzling for Egwene, whose mendacity, rapacious attitude towards status or power and selfishness are strong factors in the relationships portrayed in the books. To put it bluntly, in any relationship, Egwene’s affections have a great deal to do with what the other party can do for her. Why then would she pursue a relationship with Rand, of all the boys in Emond’s Field? He is no wealthier or more influential than anyone else in the Two Rivers, and she appears to have aimed at him well before any issues of physical attraction could influence her decision. In the prologue to the “youth edition” of the first book, titled “Ravens” we see that Egwene’s drive for status and authority began very early, as it already governed her decisions and thought process as a nine year-old girl. She also demonstrates the intolerance for any other authority or even affectionate treatment that could be seen to imply an inequality in status between her and the one behaving so.

From her very earliest portrayal in the series, we see Egwene both driven to positions of status and supremacy and detesting any interaction that implies subordination on her part. The Two Rivers is a small, close-knit community, where everyone knows everyone else’s business, and the community’s influence and authority does not end at the threshold of family domiciles. What is more, the most common living situation is for a large extended family to share a home and work together on their farm. Authority in these family groups, naturally enough, descends from seniority and parenthood. Married couples appear to move in with one of their families, and join the established household, rather than set up their own. If Egwene was to marry a young man from such a family, she would likely move in with his family, and become the junior-most wife in the household, subordinate to her mother-in-law, as well as her husband’s aunts, grandmothers, elder sisters & sisters-in-law and anyone else who had lived there before she did. Her own ascension to dominance over her household would be decades in the making. The other alternatives would be to bring her husband home to follow her father’s footsteps as the innkeeper (and remain in a household where she has been the “baby” all her life), or else marry a young tradesman and have his master’s wife take the place of a mother-in-law (i.e. Perrin’s wife might not have to knuckle under to Joslyn Aybarra, but she’d be living under the thumb of Alsbet Luhann, which does not seem like much of an improvement). And in either of those scenarios she’d be living in the village itself, and directly under the eye and the hand of the Women’s Circle that apparently presumes to busy itself with the domestic affairs of the households associated with their village. Even worse from Egwene’s point of view, she’d ease slightly out of her mother’s sphere of influence and even more firmly into Nynaeve’s.

Rand presents an excellent solution from Egwene’s perspective with his unusual family life. He and his father are the sole members of their family dwelling anywhere near their farm. If Tam has other kin from when he grew up in the Two Rivers (highly doubtful, given his own departure in light of how Nynaeve describes to Rand in Baerlon how families react to young people leaving the Two Rivers), they are not a part of his and Rand’s daily life. The situation of two competent and content males living on their own without female influence or authority is as intolerable to the Women’s Circle and females of their community as it is to the ladies of Pride & Prejudice. It is at a point where the al’Thors are as wary of female interaction upon entering Emond’s Field as if they were entering an inner city neighborhood wearing the wrong gang colors. And perhaps rightfully so – getting a cap in your ass is small potatoes next to a lifetime of hard labor and curtailed freedom, which the doyens of Emond’s Field have in mind for Tam & Rand.

For all intents and purposes, in the gender-segregated world of the Wheel of Time, the al’Thor household is a kind of free city, exempt from the authority and oppression of the gynarchy. The reason for all the relentless efforts at matchmaking is hardly the desirability of Tam as a husband (the longer an adult is on his or her own, the less suited for marriage he or she becomes, as they grow set in their ways and solitude), but rather a desperate attempt to bring the al’Thors under the dominion of the Women’s Circle before their example of freedom starts to stir rebellious thoughts among the captive male population. Egwene wants to marry into that family for the same reason younger sons head out to the colonies or the frontiers – to carve out her own domain and establish a basis for her standing in her native society. Upon marrying Rand, Egwene would have become the ranking woman in their home, and sole holder of the title “Mistress al’Thor.” The Women’s Circle would not have as tight a grip on her, living in such a remote location, and would be forced to allow her a degree of autonomy few young brides in their community are ever afforded. To continue the expansion/colonization metaphor, she would be their equivalent of a proconsul of a distant colony or newly conquered province – a degree of autonomy would be necessary to keep her domain under the rule of governing body and thus they'd have to settle for supporting her rather than exerting direct control.

In all the Two Rivers there does not appear to be much in the way of economic stratification – marrying a guy for wealth or station is futile as few seem to have much more of it than anyone else, and as the innkeeper’s daughter, she is already very close to the top and aware of how little real luxury or wealth there is to gain while remaining in the Two Rivers and how little status either garners among people who are more likely to look down on a wealthy neighbor for putting on airs and getting above himself. With no upward mobility to be gained through marriage, Egwene cleverly sets her sights on the one male of her generation who can provide her with a degree of independence from her elders’ wisdom and authority, and grant her as soon as possible the coveted title which is the highest it seems she can aspire to – Lady of the House. Egwene being Egwene, the notion of earning such a rank or position through serving one’s time and working to climb the ladder is pretty laughable.

Later, of course, we see that she is perfectly willing to throw over this ambition when a new avenue to power is opened up to her by Nynaeve’s recognition of qualities that make her eligible to be a Wisdom (channeling, although neither are aware of it at the time). Wisdom, like Aes Sedai or noblewoman, is one of those vocations or lifestyles you cannot seek out – circumstances beyond a woman’s control dictate her eligibility for those roles, and once it becomes apparent that Egwene is one of the lucky few who can aspire to the highest office a woman can hold in the Two Rivers, Rand can bloody well hang, and who cares if her courtship and marital maneuvers have precluded his finding another spouse?

And that brings us to the question of why Rand went along with this agenda of Egwene’s, at least to the degree it appeared he did early in Eye of the World, or why he retains feelings for her for a couple more books or so. While he is actually much less amenable to the fate selected for him than the Women’s Circle might be aware (and had life continued apace in the Two Rivers without any pesky Tarmon Gaidon issues muddling deep laid plans, the female community of Emond’s Field might have been in for a shock when push came to shove), when the series begins, he is vaguely aware that he is progressing down the road that has been paved for him, and with Loial’s experience as an example, begins to get a glimmer of who exactly was driving the steamroller during that paving process.

As mentioned above, Emond’s Field is a small town and tight-knit community, where everyone is in one another’s pockets. The authority of the Women’s Circle indicates that what is a fairly fluid and informal process of community organization and guidance is actually formalized and codified in their particular case. Even Tam al’Thor dare not defy them too far in matters of their jurisdiction, such as marriages and whatnot. Once Egwene made her case to marry Rand, she got the system on her side, and that was that. Marin was disgruntled over having to discuss it with a man, rather than settling the situation through the female grapevine. The situation was settled and the whole apparatus that managed and governed domestic arrangements in Emond’s Field operated on the assumption that things would turn out that way. Rand was henceforth blocked away from forming any contrary relationships or attachments, so that by the time he is of an age and state of mind to be thinking about a romantic partner, he has been conditioned by the unspoken rules and customs of his community to view Egwene as the only acceptable outlet for, or object of, his sexual urges or romantic feelings. Notice who Rand is currently “with” in the series – Min Farshaw, the very first eligible woman with whom he ever interacted.

Once Egwene or Marin al’Vere advised the female community whom they had selected for her husband, the entire female population of Emond’s Field and possibly the entire Two Rivers, was out of Rand's reach. He was only permitted to socialize with women his selected partner trusted, and no doubt any mothers of girls who might seek to poach Egwene’s claim kept their daughters in line and away from Rand using tactics more subtle than Mistress Grinwell’s, but no less effective. Rand’s own recollection of the couple Nynaeve caught having sex suggests the displeasure of the Women’s Circle with people who circumvent their arrangements, though at the time the transgression was presented as premarital sex to him and others not in the know. With Aviendha’s ignorance of Two Rivers gender arrangements inadvertently giving him a peek behind the curtain, he quickly surmises a hint of the truth, though he does not consider the deeper implications the system had for his own life, that all being in the past, especially as the discussion and revelation take place shortly after Aviendha has assisted in the final step of his liberation from the Emond’s Field domestic regulation system.

Up to that VERY point, Rand’s romantic life has been governed by the cultural mores and practices of Emond’s Field, and the decision made by the al’Vere women regarding his future wife. He is not 100% free, of course, as his relationships with Elayne and Aviendha both began while he was under that influence, and so they still have to free themselves of the impositions of those cultural artifacts on their respective relationships, but after that he jumps right into a relationship with Min and has verbally assented to the others by this point in the series.

Part of the ongoing complications of his romantic life have to do with his own situation leading him to believe that such relationships are beyond his expectations any longer and thus leading him to settle into a passive role in his own romantic life. The other women interested in him have no idea how to approach a man who has apparently switched off his poontang radar. They are from less insular worlds, and are more open, to a certain degree (though not remotely to the point a 20th-21st century real world native would be) to the idea that they could form such a relationship with a stranger. Though their own situations are not so far removed from his that a degree of public sexual modesty is not expected of women, and so they expect a certain mutual expression of interest before proceeding with the pursuit of a relationship. In other words, because neither Min or Elayne assumed from birth that she would marry a man she had known all her life, and because their cultures (or personalities) are not too much more sexually permissive than the Two Rivers, they have certain expectations of reciprocity in a courtship process. They are not automatically inclined to take their case before the secret sisterhood that has been overseeing their upbringing and that of the man in question, but they are also not of the sort to start hitting on a man who shows no interest and is still operating under the assumptions of his prior commitment when such matters occur to him.

Rand & Min don’t get anything started during their immediate time together largely because he still seems to consider himself spoken for and with his state of mind at that point, initiating a romantic relationship might be something akin to disarming a bomb on a trampoline – entertaining to watch at a distance, but not much fun to attempt. Later on, with Elayne, though officially quits with Egwene, shaking off the system under which he has grown up and been conditioned to function in sexual relationships is not so simple. What might be the only piece of accurate advice Egwene has ever given anyone is blown off by Elayne as absurd or at least odd, and even Egwene doesn’t really follow up on it. She makes suggestions as to how Elayne would go about signifying her interest to Rand had they both been in a Two Rivers courtship. While wildly inappropriate to their circumstances and the timeframe Elayne has to operate within, the very unsuitability of those methods should have been a warning flag to the conspirators. They might have worked, however strange it might seem in the Stone of Tear to both Rand and Elayne, because those would have been recognizable indicators. Rand would have known exactly where Elayne was coming from, because she would have been speaking his language. Doing the things Egwene mentions would have been clear signals to a Two Rivers man conveying the message “Our union has been sanctioned by the proper authorities. Deal with it.”

The issue the girls overlooked in their dismissal of these tactics is that Rand and Elayne spoke two different languages when it came to interpersonal affections. The Two Rivers trained Rand to have certain expectations and to look for certain signs at the outset of a relationship destined for ugly-bumping, while the court of Caemlyn trained Elayne for entirely different ways and means, not even excluding direct negotiations through professional diplomats. In his worldview, people just come together and the hows and whys are not questioned, largely because everyone involved has grown up together. The expectations of the community simply shift in a particular way and you go through the ceremony and move in together when the rhythms of rural life dictate. Elayne, on the other hand, is used to more direct and subtle behavior. The possibility of marrying a complete stranger, with very different cultural mores, has always been known to her, while courtship and dalliances among the aristocracy are handled with very different forms of propriety and standards of discretion than in a rural area, where the applications of those two concepts are best expressed as “don’t” and “hide”, respectively.

Complicating matters is Rand’s immediate prior experience of how noblewomen go about such assignations – to whit, Berelain’s attempted seduction. Rand has his nose rubbed in the difference between his sexual mores and those of the nobility and foreign countries the very night before Elayne begins her opening maneuvers, so when she says things like “no commitment” he does not recognize them for the polite fiction for reassurance they are. In his training, the only woman he would have been able to kiss would have been his pre-selected spouse, or the sort of skank who would get physical regardless of the rules. Elayne is hardly the latter, nor is he inclined to see her that way, so the only other place he can go to categorize their interactions is a lesser degree of Berelain’s suggestion of mere companionship and physical pleasure (equally mendacious on her part as Elayne’s denial of commitment, but also a courtesy both parties are supposed to pretend to accept). For Rand and for Egwene, their hometown practices are no more a matter for thought and reflection than the nature of water is to a fish. Rand can no more escape the expectations he has been trained to have regarding relationships than said fish could build a hydraulic system, and Egwene is even less contemplative or analytical regarding systems, beyond ascertaining how to best operate within them. She’s clever enough to use the system to snag herself an advantageous husband, but she’s much less insightful when it comes to divesting herself of a now-superfluous commitment, or assisting a complete alien to maneuver well enough to take her place, any more than the proverbial fish can teach a bird to swim.

Elayne’s outlook is much more simple – he plainly likes her, enjoys spending time with her, is attracted to her and finds her useful, so why the hell would he be glad to hear of her imminent departure unless he doesn’t give a crap about her? And after she has put out (by Elayne’s standards) no less! Unspoken commitments play a much different role in her understanding of courtship. By his lights, Rand is behaving within acceptable tolerances since they are not remotely serious by Two Rivers standards, or her stated rules, and at the same time, he is manning up regarding her. Two Rivers men are seen in the series to have a chauvinistic attitude to women and danger, and the appropriate response for a man who is standing at the bottom of a shit-funnel is to be glad when a woman he cares about is getting some separation. In such cultures, it is generally also considered less than manly to let your attraction to a woman dictate your behavior on important matters (Rand was already concerned that he was dawdling too long in Tear to stay with her, even before Lanfear and the Trollocs reminded him of how much danger he was putting her in by forming a relationship). Therefore, his positive reaction to her departure is not a caddish behavior he should be ashamed of, which is how she perceives it. This spectacular cultural disconnect leads to one of the more amusing & cross-wired correspondences in the series (at least before Brandon Sanderson forgot that Mat IS perfectly literate with bad handwriting), but otherwise is an annoying contributor to the excessive relationship melodrama concerning Rand’s character.

Aviendha is next to be victimized by Rand’s Two Rivers relationship customs. So accustomed is he to the concept of having your mate pre-selected and then behaving virtuously and faithfully, that he pretty much assumes all women not overtly attempting to have sex with him are “safe.” This was basically how things were for every other woman his age in the Two Rivers, and that was how his mind was determined to perceive the only other female peers of his acquaintance, Min and Elayne, regardless of the opinions of his emotions and hormones on the matter. However, by the time he gets to know Aviendha, he is not in a proper position to view all women as off-limits in that manner, because he no longer has any sort of implicit or explicit commitment, having broken the former with Egwene, and refrained from the latter with Elayne (from his point of view). What is more, their interactions are completely unique to his experience. Rand is an authority figure from day one and among the Aiel, such men are circumscribed very carefully regarding the limits and extent of their authority, in particular as it relates to their significant others, and vice versa. Therefore, Rand & Aviendha do not have the same dynamic whereby he falls within the sphere of influence of a particular woman with a preordained role in their culture. The lines of domestic vs. external authority among the Aiel are absolute and strictly delineated, and thus she has no vested interest in asserting any dominance or superiority, but is rather attempting to represent her culture and people to him. Though he does not articulate it as such, later describing their interaction as “a battle” he appreciates it because with a battle, there is something at stake and the outcome is still up in the air. With his interaction with Egwene, there was no battle, aside for clashes over particular issues, because their respective positions relative to one another were predetermined by long-standing tradition. Rand was already in chains, as far as Egwene and their culture were concerned. Their fights were simply deciding whether or not he was to be whipped now, or allowed a respite. With Aviendha, he and she were working out the terms of their association even as they interacted with one another, and their personalities being as they are (him overtly clueless and stubborn but with occasional flashes of insight and her proud, temperamental and entirely opposed to anything outside her own experience or understanding) conflict was the medium of that working more often than not.

As it was, however, he got sucked into seeing her as a partner and equal without realizing this is what actually comprises a grown-up male-female relationship in a free world, as opposed to a farming community run by custom and habit for two millennia where his indoctrinated role is basically labor to support a woman’s household (even if that is not the experience of most mature and reasonable Two Rivers marriages, there is no evidence to support the notion of either modifier being applied to a marriage between Rand & Egwene, fixated as she generally is on getting her due and every bit of authority she rightfully deserves or imagines she does). Meanwhile, as we later see, Aviendha is so fixated at the time on evading marriage and the relationship she believes Rand will dishonorably impose on her that she expends all of her energy fighting the appearances and trappings of the relationship, and encouraging an alternative, that she not only curtails any possibility of his developing new attachments, but becomes personally engaged with the real human being as opposed to the foreigner & figure of mistrust she has created in her mind.

When her overreaction to part of her apprentice test coming true forces Rand to go to great lengths to save her life, both of them are confronted with the fact of how much he has come to care for her. Their subsequent sexual encounter is Aviendha making her peace with her own attraction to him and that aspect of her nature which she had heretofore ignored, and mutually accepting the reality of their relationship as opposed to the fictions each had separately imagined it to be. In the immediate aftermath, their cultural barriers and indoctrination come crashing down all over that reality, however. Rand attempts to fit their relationship into the only slot his experience allows him to perceive as appropriate, while Aviendha seeks to stave off an outcome that would irreconcilably conflict her honor and her personal goals with her desires and social obligations. To do this, she must put off his marriage proposition, though she cannot overtly reject him without the risk of alienating the man she is supposed to be converting to Aiel values or at least sympathies, and denying her own emotional response. In her efforts to (for once) acknowledge his own cultural outlook and put her situation into perspective for him, she casts their quandary in terms she believes he will understand, and draws back the curtain concealing the mysteries of the female societal controls in the Two Rivers a little further for him.

This happens because Aviendha, used to a more equitable or respectful interaction between the sexes, cannot conceive that one gender would impose a different morality on the other, while holding themselves to a secret, alternative standard that is also inconsistent with her (sensible) perception of the status of adulthood. Thus she assumes that the absurd rule that women may obtain and must seek a dispensation from their mothers to indulge in otherwise forbidden premarital sex would be equitably applied to men and their fathers. Implicit in her behavior and assertions to Rand is the rather novel notion of taking personal responsibility for sexual conduct, rather than blindly following the dictates of the herd and letting an emotion- or hormone-driven action lock you into a permanent life choice. Of course, the flip side of that personal responsibility also suggests making conscious choices, rather than allowing base desires to lead you into other responsibilities or quandries that accompany your choices, beyond the simplistic and narrow multiple-choice test offered by the Two Rivers Women’s Circles. The rest of their interactions from then on are heavily influenced by consequences of Aviendha’s impulsive acquiescence to the developments mentioned above. Rand is left once more in confusion about the status of his relationship with a woman, because she is now torn between several different obligations, some of which directly conflict with her own wishes and others align neatly with said wishes, but at the cost of her personal integrity.

Between this episode and his miscommunications with Elayne, Rand more or less learns to shake off his old Two Rivers relationship habits, but both relationships are all but inextricably fouled up by those same customs, or more precisely, by Egwene bringing those customs to bear directly and personally on Rand, in her own premature rush to achieve status and exempt herself from others’ authority. Thus, she is the one to blame for the vast majority of the relationship melodrama that plagues Rand from The Shadow Rising through Winter’s Heart, as well as the absurd solution to most of that drama which becomes the status quo from the latter book on. Without all the tangles and miscommunications caused by Rand’s perceptions of commitments and Egwene’s interference, however benevolently intended or unwitting, in his relationships with Elayne and Aviendha, there is a good chance he would have satisfactorily overcome his misunderstandings and settled down with one of them. Either Aviendha, freeing the rest of the series from the banal fripperies and game-playing Min seems to think is cute, and dealing with each other as equals with no angst, or Elayne, in which their apparent mutual indifference to spending time together would have excised relationship material from the series altogether. Worst case scenario, he’d be with Min alone, and let the other two develop as actual characters without their relationships with Rand overshadowing their own storylines and growth.

No matter how you slice it, everything is Egwene’s fault.