First off, be warned. This is not a character analysis issue, trying to decide whether or not it was a smart move by the Pattern placing the majority of the world’s population under the rule in one form or another of a borderline psychotic 21 year old and three teenage girls. Mainly because that is too simple a question (Answer: No. Elayne and Tuon have a combined 37 years of training, Rand is doing just fine and Egwene is giving 1930’s-dictator-style speeches – Hmm. Never mind). I am actually wondering from the standpoint of the narrative, if the ascent of those characters has been made too smooth in terms of the price.

A major theme of WoT is about the price that must be paid to win / survive, and how nothing worthwhile comes easily and half a loaf is better than nothing. Yet, it seems that in a couple of aspects of the story where this theme could be excellently highlighted, RJ has skipped the chance and went in the easy direction. The first of these is the idea of Rand breaking the world and doing so much damage that the only thing worse than the Dragon Reborn is what would happen without him, which shows little promise, as he has mostly been altruistic and not harmed anyone. Almost all the damage done to the world so far has been by the Shadow or else human stupidity and selfishness and cannot be attributed to Rand. In a similar vein, the other aspect is political power. The latter stories could have been used to highlight the theme at play in the prior story. The idea that sometimes you have to do ugly or unpleasant things for the greater good, done hideously necessary actions with a severe human cost, because without them, victory would not be possible. I am not talking about evil acts here, just morally acceptable and necessary ones, with an incidentally high collateral butcher’s bill. An example of this, on a very small scale, would be Egwene killing the to’raken carrying away Aes Sedai prisoners from the Tower. She thinks highly of the Tower and sees these women as her subjects and her responsibility, or as her possessions and adornments to her power, depending on your view of her. However, she has to do what is best for the Tower and the world, and that means killing Seanchan forces and doing what she can to cripple their war machine. If some of her daughters/pets/minions have to die with them, too damn bad. But that example is one of battle where the lines of life and death are clearly drawn, and even right and wrong gives way to a much simpler delineation: “them and us.”

In my view, to stay true to this theme (not to mention the promise of the early books) Rand must take some deliberate action with a high cost in human suffering and lives because it is necessary to save the whole of humanity from the Dark One. Not because he cracked under way too much being dumped on his shoulders and made bad choices and not because they were “on the other side” (such as innocent civilians among the Shaido or Illian or other lands) or hostage to his foes (i.e. the occupants of Graendal’s redoubt), but because it needed to be done.

On a lesser scale, there are the political struggles going on in the world of WoT, by Rand and his present and future allies. The narrative function of these other politically-oriented storylines, should, IMO, highlight or support the themes raised by Rand’s leadership issues. As Moiraine noted when Rand was preparing to address the clans at Alcair Dal, or Loial said about missing Rand’s story while hanging with Perrin, it is all the same fight, and in some way, these other battles and struggles are being fought and other characters are fighting, for Rand as well, regardless of whether or not he is aware of them. And at that time, Perrin was fighting to protect their home village because Rand could not afford to himself and Nynaeve and Elayne were attempting to thwart a plot that aimed at enslaving him.

Now as far as the rise to power of the political characters, it is practically a truism that you can’t gain or wield power without getting your hands dirty, but it seems to me as if that concept has been evaded through plot-contrivances, albeit cleverly explained away through the use of the notion of ta’veren and the established methods of the Pattern. I still can’t help but feel they should have had a morally more difficult road to their current heights.

The political heroes all started without their power and no prospect of getting it soon. Egwene was not even an initiate of the Tower, Rand was a common farmer’s son, Elayne was the daughter of a still relatively young queen who could have ruled for another 30 years (or more when you factor in her slowing), and Tuon was simply one player in an unseen though apparently unsettled ongoing struggle for favor and position in the succession of the Empress. The only one who had to employ questionable means to rise was Tuon, and even then, the background information is careful to let us know that she only assassinated people who tried to kill her first.

As it is, however, the people in charge when the story opens fall well short of what would be needed to lead the world to Tarmon Gaidon. Morgase, no matter how praised by characters who have slept with her, or Aes Sedai who see her in the light of a faithful subordinate, is unsuitable as a ruler. She is temperamental and all too often appears to let her emotions play a disproportionate role in her decisions. Most notably, she deploys her army under a Great Captain to run down her boyfriend who ran off to handle a family emergency without permission. In what is suggested to be a bit of overcompensation for her own failure to achieve the shawl, she is a devout and dedicated ally of the Tower, no matter how disadvantageous that alliance is for Andor’s welfare or her domestic political security (more Catholic than the Pope, more royalist than the king, as it were). Her PoV chapters are a veritable slew of bad decision-making driven largely by an emotional mindset more suited to a teenager with a crush than a woman a year or so away from becoming a grandmother. In addition, the faction which had backed her for the throne, and which was her closest allies (and thus the people whose opinions she had to respect and placate the most) is seen in the mid-to-late books as comprised of the oldest people in general, and the most obdurate and tradition-minded. In other words, she is firmly bound to the status quo, by her ties to factions who hold it most dear and her alignment with the keepers of that status quo, the White Tower.

Unfortunately, the status quo is the problem in WoT. It is a rotting, creaking, crumbling structure, whose occupants will defend it to the death, but is entirely insufficient to the problem at hand, being ill-suited to defend the world from the onslaught of the Dark One, but at the same time, by its very existence, preventing a superior structure from being erected to do the job properly.

Those most invested in maintaining the status quo are the Aes Sedai of the White Tower. While we see many Aes Sedai whose priorities and talents make them useful contributors, for the most part, they eschew Tower politics and are out in the world, acting on the vocations which drove them to become Aes Sedai in the first place. Nynaeve seeks to help and Heal, Moiraine to serve her cause, Verin to seek knowledge (even if we don’t yet know the precise nature of that knowledge), Cadsuane to deal with male channelers, and so on. Unfortunately, the Tower, and through it, the world, is run by an entirely different breed of Aes Sedai – the politician and bureaucrat. The politicians of the White Tower have an interest in maintaining the power structure just as it is. After all, that is what has elevated them to their current heights of power and status. They know how to work it, so they want it left in place. To expect the White Tower to be an instrument in shaking up the status quo is like expecting a championship team to approve of their league outlawing the very tactics they have used to win. And the foremost Aes Sedai is Siuan Sanche – a woefully inexperienced woman with no frame of reference beyond life in an urban fishing district and the insulated culture of the White Tower, who is still naïve enough after ten years on the job to be outraged at a political rival utilizing the letter of the law to ensure she gets her way, rather than play nice and give Siuan a chance to thwart her, and whose one foray into real world politics is far too heavy-handed and lacking the give-and-take of a wise politician or leader, even while her activity in her supposedly exclusive and unquestioned sphere of influence – the oversight of preternatural issues and dangers – is governed by timidity and secrecy. She seems to be so captured by the system and so used to the mindset of the Tower where the Amyrlin is a figure of reverence and respect even if you are plotting against her, that she fails to play nice with outsiders, making proud rulers resentful, and at the same time, seeing the one scheme we know she attempted fall apart because outside of the Tower, her control is not all-reaching, and the world does not fall into a submissive and neat hierarchy and in the meantime, has become so used to the intrigue and scheming attendant on Tower politics, that she is paralyzed and unable or unwilling to act on her near-exclusive knowledge that the Dragon has been Reborn, and Tarmon Gaidon will almost certainly occur in her lifetime (and as she knows he is about 10 when she is raised Amyrlin, almost certainly during her term of office! ). Moiraine has the most charitable attitude towards her, and characterizes her as unwilling to accept the suffering and prices to be paid for the world’s salvation. This sort of attitude makes her too likely to fuss over details and try to minimize the shocks and lose sight of the big picture, which relegates the costs of defeating the Dark One as insignificant.

This is always been the danger of the White Tower to Rand. He is the Dragon Reborn, who has to do whatever is necessary to save the world from the Dark One, but the Aes Sedai are the ones responsible for the condition the world is in, and for maintaining it and keeping in charge of it. They are invested in the status quo, and not through any great iniquity, but simple human nature, will try to preserve the status quo and the world as it is from drastic changes or upsets. They are so used to handling things a certain way they will inevitably try to handle Rand and to fit him into their design of the world, when he is, in fact, a game changer and the factor that changes the whole shape of the equation (and for the better, as that equation previously equaled the dominance of the Shadow). It is easy for the readers to be objective about seeing the whole structure torn apart to start over, but for the Aes Sedai, and particularly the leadership of the Tower (a veritable gerontocracy ), that structure is what they have invested their lives and the efforts of decades to build, maintain and understand. No one in that case will want to accept that all they have worked for is rendered insignificant, that their long-cherished plans will never come to be and the knowledge and situation they have carefully studied and assessed and worked to gain are all useless because the contest and rule are suddenly changed. In such a circumstance, the Tower and the rulers of the nations as well, cannot help but be an obstacle to Rand and his necessitated rise. If nothing else, their incumbency will give them better tools with which to oppose Rand or press for their own agendas to be carried out, regardless of how important those agendas are to the world. We see, for instance, in tGH, how Verin & Ingtar anticipate the behavior of Galldrian Riatin, the reigning king of Cairhien, regarding a crucial artifact for the Last Battle. They do not believe that he would ever let the Horn leave Cairhien, and pass out of his hands as a symbol of his power and glory. There is no real suggestion that he is a Darkfriend or hostile to the main characters or the idea of the Dragon Reborn winning the Last Battle, simply that he is fundamentally unable to sacrifice a little glory and prestige (even if he has ruled for over a decade without the Horn) to the greater good. Supposedly the best and noblest rulers, the Borderlanders, have left their posts and come seeking Rand and find themselves placed at enmity with him, and the only reason any of them have been able to articulate thus far smacks of pique at being neglected. The supposed best faction of Andorans only wants him to leave their country alone and won’t even talk about helping him or cooperating until they have been permitted to exercise their traditional rights and privileges of selecting their monarch on their own. We see also in Tear and Cairhien how some of the best nobles rebel against Rand from day one rather than accept his leadership, and keep it up because they find his mastery of what was previously their domain too bitter a bill to swallow. And this is not even all that malicious a reaction, it is simply in keeping with their habits and acquired reflexes and responses that have worked for them in the past – they are in positions of power because they have made the crushing of challenges to their power almost an instinctive reaction. The high nobles who follow Rand are exceptions that prove the rule – Dobraine comes into the circle of trust when his lifelong rivals begin to reach for prominence above him and he bets all his chips on the one man who can put them in their place; Bashere is far from Saldaea and faces no threat to his position or that of his queen and niece; Darlin has to have his power utterly stripped and reduced to a footsore captive of an Aes Sedai before he is primed to serve the man who raises him up again; Ituralde is facing certain defeat and conquest by the Seanchan when Rand approaches him; Berelain is a captive of her nation’s arch-enemy and greatest threat which Rand then takes by the scruff of the neck, and as soon as she figures out his triggers, switches to helpful-and-professional mode. NO ONE accepts Rand when he is a threat to their position or dominance, unless he has them firmly in his power.

In a similar vein, we have the Empress of Seanchan, with years of rule behind her, absolutely no experience in all that time of having to treat with other rulers, aside from rebellions to be crushed and punished harshly. The idea that she could have been bound to serve Rand as the prophecies foretell for her position is hard to credit, and in addition, we see that she has a probably unsavory character, as evidenced by her taste for an a’dam-specific variant of Russian Roulette, and her perspective on family relations. She holds near-absolute power over an entire continent and her whole culture holds her as the rightful heir to all the lands west of the Dragonwall. She has a highly developed bureaucracy and superbly organized military apparatus to enforce her vision of how things should be.

All in all, these aspects of the leadership of the world make Rand’s own ascension a dubious bet, no matter how necessary for the world it might be. The solution to these issues, of course if for them to be replaced by parties more amenable to work with Rand, and bringing fewer expectations and obsolete habits based on the old status quo to their jobs. Unfortunately, from a narrative sense, it all happens too easily. Elayne is not called upon to show the mettle of her ancestor Ishara and lock away her mother for the good of the country, Egwene does not have to be responsible for breaking the Tower against the inept and unfit Siuan, and Tuon will not have revolt against her Empress to prevent the Seanchan from becoming too powerful an obstacle for the Dragon Reborn to overcome as he tries to unite mankind to face the Shadow. Rand himself is never called upon to depose a recalcitrant ruler or act against entrenched temporal interests and gain the dark reputation the men who called themselves the Dragon Reborn before him did. All he has to do is depose Forsaken or move in to occupy countries fallen to chaos, in both cases enabling him to be the benevolent liberator, only hated or mistrusted by those who envy his status or resent his justice and evenhanded administration.

Instead, Rahvin drives off Morgase’s faction and later Morgase herself, leaving Elayne free to build her own power block after Rand removes Rahvin. Neither Rand nor Elayne are tainted with the overthrow or deposition of Morgase (at the least Rand has deniability), and can work together without the stigma of perceived collaboration with a murderer(ess) to interfere. If he had had to remove Morgase…well Gareth Bryne can accept that with equanimity, having been one of those wronged by her, and currently in service with a foreign power, well-removed from his homelands’ issues, but few other Andorans could or could be seen to embrace him no matter how necessary. Elayne could never cooperate too closely with her mother’s enemy. And if she did the dirty work herself, she would be of suspect legitimacy, with accusations of matricide haunting her reign. Additionally, with her mother’s old pals removed, she owes them no favors for supporting her succession the way Morgase did. As the last to come to her side, she can hold their tardiness over them and favor others in their place, and is free to ignore them as the most likely to be obstructive and excessively traditionalist in the face of necessary survival-mandated changes. The Rahvinite faction initially served her enemies and bore arms against her, which is a stick to beat them with if they try to trade on their coming over to her before the crown was hers, and in any event, they seem like the easiest to buy off or bribe away. The faction that is closest to Elayne and first rallied around her cause is a pack of kids even less experienced and younger than she is herself, all of whom lack her presence and leadership, despite suggestions of potential. She can overawe them, and persuade them to go along with changes far more easily than she could have swayed the habits of her mother’s closest supporters, many of whom were High Seats before Elayne was even born. Whatever the trials and inconveniences she personally suffered along the way, no matter how hard she had to work or how clever she had to be, an almost ridiculously convenient situation developed to put her on the throne with clean hands and no serious political encumbrances or obstructions to her carrying out her agenda. Even her Aes Sedai entourage is wiped out, giving her time to establish herself before the Tower starts trying to tie puppet strings to her. And being Aes Sedai herself, will have ways around that annoyance that few other monarchs in WoT can manage. Most rulers, especially those who come into it young, need to take some time developing their own power and finding their rightful levels of authority, if they ever do. Instead, she begins in an enviable position of authority a normal ruler might have to intrigue and scheme for years to find himself in.

Egwene manages a similarly advantageous position in her own rise. Thanks to her unique road to power, she has never had to join an ajah, and thus has no ties to any ajah, and more important, is not associated with any ajah’s enemies. The Reds can like her because she was never a Blue or Green. Those can like her because she was never a Red. The Browns can like her because she was never a White or Gray, and so on. She will have no automatic opposition in the Hall of the Tower to contend with except for that which she draws on her own, for her own actions and personal issues. Even the most serious division of the Tower, the rebellion, did not drag her into a factional position. Thanks to the fortuitous circumstances of her captivity, she is able to develop a familiarity with the loyalists, rather than have to impose herself as a stranger and outsider. Thanks to the aforementioned ajah circumstances, and her elevation by the rebels associating her with the Amyrlin Seat in people’s minds, she was an acceptable compromise candidate when a vacancy on the Amyrlin Seat opened up by pure luck. She did not have to dirty her hands in setting the ajahs at each others’ throats so badly that they were willing to take a candidate on the basis of “At least she’s not one of those Blue/Red/Green/Yellow etc. bitches.” She did not have to commit an act against the White Tower by removing the Amyrlin Seat herself (whatever the qualities of the women involved in such a transition, what Moiraine told Rand about thrones and pigstys holds true here as well – if forced to remove Elaida herself, she could very well have gone down in Tower legend as Henry IV to Elaida’s Richard II). She was acceptable as a compromise candidate, which means she did not have to build and then appease a coalition as Elaida did (and as we see in tFoH, the coalition members initially took charge themselves, leaving her as a near-figurehead before she managed to assert her own authority), and she managed to be elected by both Halls, meaning she did not have to put either one down or adhere to one group over another. She did not have to show favor to supporters or promote their interests, because with a foot in each camp, she had a place to stand to berate each side in turn and seize the moral high ground, which will be crucial to her own authority. If ex-Salidar partisans object or obstruct her wishes, she can tar them with the brush of rebellion and point to their history of violent opposition to her predecessor . If Elaida’s former adherents get in her way, she can shake her head sadly over their failure to learn from their previous errors, in partaking of the strife and discord within the Tower itself even as enemies gathered beyond the Shining Walls, and wonder who will be the next innocent sister they cast into chains like Silviana, or drove from the shawl and Tower like Shemerin, or the next enemy their squabbling allows to attack the Tower. Even the issue of her Keeper worked out. She could trade up from Sheriam for a more competent and politically attractive replacement, without having to fire Sheriam for ineptitude or juggle two Keepers in the name of equity and be followed around by a visible reminder of the split. Her Keeper is also the one position she could not eschew as she did potential claimants to her loyalty such as the rebel Hall, as the Keeper seems to be held as an adjunct to the Amyrlin, rather than a part of whatever ajah or faction she was identified with before. Like Elayne, Egwene has ended up in a politically dominant position without the unenviable and undesirable means usually necessary to achieve such an end so expeditiously. They did not have to take the onus of removing their good-enough-ten-years-ago-but-unsuited-to-the-challenges-of-the-new-day predecessors, and they did not even have to get their hands dirty reclaiming their thrones from the villains who cleared the way for them. All they essentially had to do was step into vacancies. They were able to shed any supporters who might claim a piece of their administrations or a share in policy decisions, and use the mistakes made during the recent power struggles to keep such groups relatively submissive and out of the way of their agendas.

In a similar manner, Tuon’s rise is fortuitous, though not for her. In this case, it is good for Rand and company. Radhanan of the Seanchan Empire at its peak would have no acceptable reason for acquiescing to any relationship with even the Dragon Reborn other than absolute dominance. Fortuona might be similarly constrained by the cult of the Empress’ superiority, but she, shorn of her homeland and commanding only a newly-conquered rump portion of the Empire has a face-saving excuse, namely the superior power of her adversary. In no way could Radhanan’s position ever be said to be inferior to the Dragon Reborn, at least unless he unified the wetlands, drove all her forces into the sea, and followed them to Seanchan to annex a good portion of THAT land. Realpolitik is sufficient excuse for Fortuona to go along with Rand for the necessary salvation of the world, presuming he can mend the damage of their last encounter. She can even possibly use her inferior position as a stick to her recalcitrant underlings. “Perhaps if you can been more diligent in your conquests, better organized etc, I would not be forced to treat the Dragon Reborn as a near-equal. Maybe if you people weren’t all so busy kissing Suroth’s buns until I came back, you would have given me the werewithal to assert the dominance of the Crystal Throne!” Once again, a transfer of power from the obstructive status quo to a situation more amenable to cooperation with Rand and his agenda is effected with no repercussions for the important characters themselves.

And the same goes for Rand himself. He had Tear fall all over itself to accept him. He moved into the anarchic power vacuum of Cairhien, where things were so bad, people welcomed his invasion. The dangers and resistance he might have faced were swept away by the Shaido, and he gets to play the role of liberator, just as he would when he drove the Forsaken out of Andor and Illian. Pedron Niall talked about losing a lion in the streets, but Rand never even had to do that! For him, the lions showed up out of the blue and did just enough for people to welcome his showing up to get rid of them. Berelain & Alliandre came to him for help, and the Seanchan conveniently arrived to spare him the trouble of having to butt heads with the Children of the Light, the Altarans or Taraboners. Thanks to them, the best elements of the Children are given a new perspective on Rand and are amenable to cooperation, at least for Tarmon Gaidon. It is the same phenomena at work with Galad as well. He does not have to overthrow the Great Captain and respected leader Pedron Niall, instead, that old Padan-Fain-affected obstructionist is removed by Valda, whose own behavior puts him in a position where Galad is the sympathetic figure in deposing him. He does not have to agitate for support and undermine the Children with political maneuvering, he simply challenges Valda to a duel, kills him and has the other Children acclaim him Lord Captain Commander.

While the actual mechanics of the rise to power of these characters are not so simple, with dissidents and unreconciled factions, and resistance to their rule, the characters are never forced to compromise their essential natures or to do grim or bloody deeds or even use unsavory tactics to take power. They are never pitted against loved ones, or forced into the role of villain in the eyes of the world, except of course, in the case of those who don’t know the truth of the matter. I can’t help but feel that in choosing to have his heroes rise so cleanly, RJ missed a chance to play a much more significant variation on his themes of miscommunication, misunderstood heroes and villains, and the prices to be paid for doing what must be done. All the characters have to pay are in hardships or personal discomfiture, never being asked to search their consciences or test their values. While some characters do THINK they have been placed in this position form time to time, their concerns are such that they are easily laughed off by mature readers as the quibbling complaints of naïve youths. Rand doesn’t like having to tell people what to do, Perrin doesn’t like having to make common cause with enemies. Nynaeve and Elayne don’t like having to pay for Sea Folk assistance. Poor babies. These are simply young people learning to grow up and deal with the real world as adults. The scale of tough political decisions to be made is, and should be, much higher, since the stakes are so much greater, with so many more lives and fortunes riding on the outcomes. A character’s distaste for ordering executions is not a moral decision (though their failures to do so would constitute a major moral violation) or a genuine dilemma, it is simply a conflict of personal preferences with obligations. I would have liked to see them forced to grapple with real dilemmas and issues, rather than simply have to confront tougher or trickier foes as they climbed the ladders.