One of the most disappointing things about all the mistakes in Brandon Sanderson's books was their shortcomings in that regard against the expectations that had been built up by the knowledge that he was supposedly working closely with Harriet & Maria and all the people who helped RJ on the real books. How did they let so much crap slip through? How did no one remember that Aviendha's entire character arc in ToM simply retraced the exact same mental path she articulated in one soliloquy waaaaay back in tFoH? How did the same Ajah calculating metaphysical theories and citing obscure principles of mathematics and logic in KoD be reduced to a simpleminded Socratic audience one book later? How did Perrin go from explicitly doubting Jur Grady's claim that saidin had been cleansed in KoD, to answering a statement of that claim with "If you say so, that's good enough for me."? How did Mat forget how to spell? How did Bael come to refer to his homeland as the Aiel Waste? How did Androl happen?

Anyway, as part of my back-checking process while working on the latest Egwene's Evil post, I was skimming "Winter's Heart" for mentions of her I might have overlooked, when I passed through the encounter between Rand and his girlfriends. Thanks to a peculiarity of my Kindle app, the page was in a much different configuration than my old hardcover copy, and at the top was Aviendha's declaration of love, wherein she states "If I can convince my first sister, we will make a bridal wreath for you." I had just re-read that passage a few years ago when developing a theory of interpreting the Aiel, and I remembered it as promising to pick up a bridal wreath that RAND made for her and Elayne. I don't have the real books handy, so I was baffled, until I remembered that Leigh Butler, the writer of the Reread blog on Tor.com, despite all her fuming and protests about gender roles, was really, really into that romantic chick crap. So I went to that source, were she had extensively quoted the chapter, because chick, and sure enough, there was the quote as I had remembered it. “If you make a bridal wreath for my first-sister and me, I will pick it up.”

Now here's the thing. On the surface, the alteration in the e-book makes a kind of sense, since women make the bridal wreaths. But it makes no sense in the context of that conversation, because Elayne just said she wants to marry Rand. So why would Aviendha need to convince her? To share Rand? Hell, at that moment Elayne is the single most pro-sharing member of the quartet, what with Rand being naturally appalled, and Min and Aviendha deciding to get all pissy about one another. Elayne came up with a way to include the other two in the warder bond, and prior to their confrontation seemed more worried about whether or not they liked each other than if Rand reciprocated her feelings. What would Aviendha have to "convince" Elayne about?

On the other hand, what she says in the original version does fit a lot better. She is embarrassed at what she says, but the new version is not all that far afield from Aiel customs. Telling the victim that you plan to propose marriage isn't too much of a violation, especially coming right on the heels of someone else basically saying the same thing. On the other hand, recalling the significance of a bridal wreath in Aiel customs, where the components represent the maker's personality, and a declaration of how she intends to act toward and treat the recipient, the original statement is a much more powerful declaration of her feelings. She is either saying that she will accept Rand no matter how he presents himself to them, even if he is so presumptuous as to usurp her prerogative to initiate the marriage. Or taking it to a really creepy extreme, if the wreath represents the bride, no matter which side makes it, she could have been saying that she would be whatever he wanted her to be, that she would live up to whatever combination of traits Rand wove into a wreath.

Yet, in the process of converting the text to an e-book, someone decided to totally rip out and twist around that passage, replacing it with a redundant and milquetoast expression of affection, that just doesn't fit in with all the extreme declarations of love and commitment everyone else flings around in that chapter.

Why would someone do that? An editor who is not familiar with the material on the level of a fan would not have bothered changing it to that degree, nor would such an editor have caught the aberration of a man making a bridal wreath. On the other hand, someone who doesn't remember how a Warder bond works, or that Hurin saw Seanchan using grolm way back at Falme, or exactly whose entourage Sulin is a member of, is exactly the sort of person who might think "Oh, Jim goofed up here!" and fix Aviendha's line.

What if the people we trusted to keep B-Sand right, didn't actually get the books at all, either?

I'm now wondering what other changes are in the series that I haven't seen. Interestingly enough, despite making fixes in that chapter, they omitted one mistake, namely Rand being barehanded with Nynaeve & Lan, as the former notices the dragons on his hands, and wearing gloves when Elayne & co enter.

Amyloidosis really sucks.