Re: YES!! The SPLIT is important. So why is ENDING the split such a necessary goal? - Edit 1
Before modification by Cannoli at 15/02/2010 01:21:14 PM
Lets see... what can 600-700 full Aes Sedai and 1000's of other channelers do? They could form an alliance with Rand and turn back the hordes of trollocs. The Tower united under Egwene will be critical because she can work with Rand to help defeat the Dark One. Also by being united she can defeat the Seanchen or atleast push them back to keep them from conquering everything while Rand is busy elsewhere. The tower united is definitly one of those "for the future" issues, but it is also critical to the here and now in the story
How can the Tower do what Rand's vastly superior forces won't be able to do anyway? Rand HAS thousands of channelers. He is allied to the Sea Folk, he has 11 clans full of Wise Ones which is about 3 or 4 Tower's worth even after accounting for attrition, and probably closer to five times the Tower's weight (Recall the reactions of the sisters accompanying Perrin to the Wise Ones' enumeration of the Shaido channelers - "Half the Tower from one clan." There were Wise One equivalents of the Meradin, so the other clans probably have similar numbers). Not only that, they are not constrained by the Three Oaths, and understand warfare and combat better. We have seen that Aes Sedai are not all that good at fighting, so they cannot bring much to Rand's aid. How can the 1,000 channelers in the Tower be such a significant weight next to an equal number of Asha'man, 5-6,000 Wise One channelers, plus the double weight of the Kin. Don't forget who has the leaders of that group, and thus the means of rounding up their numbers - Elayne. Rand hardly needs Egwene to sway Elayne in his favor.
All in all, the Tower united benefits the Tower. The additional help they can bring to Rand is negligible and so laden down with caveats and strings attached that a good question can be made as to just how useful it will really be. The re-unification can only be seen as a good and necessary thing from the perspective of the Tower, since it enables them to ride out the world crisis to their best advantage.