Wheel of Time letter No. 10: What's happening with Egwene?

What are these letters? In 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, I listened to some of the Wheel of Time series on audiobook and wrote letters to my friend Robert about them. I'm putting them on this blog now to share my feelings on these books. This letter references dates long past, and was sent to Robert on Sept. 29, 2020.

Dear Robert,

I’m 10 hours into A Crown of Swords, and here’s what’s happening:

Egwene is having some trouble with the Aes Sedai. The sitters for the rebel Aes Sedai support going to the White Tower to depose Elaida. Egwene is fully aware they’re using her as a puppet and a scapegoat: For now, Egwene represents all of their interests, but if they fail to take back the White Tower, Egwene will take the fall for their failure, leaving the older and more experienced women to continue with their political machinations without consequence. Siuan gives her Aes Sedai etiquette lessons and is hell-bent on making Egwene an even better Amyrlin than she was. Nicola, a novice, and Areina, a woman training to be an archer with Birgitte, try to blackmail Egwene, saying they knew Nynaeve and Elayne were pretending to be Aes Sedai when they were travelling from Tanchico. Egwene rebuffs them by threatening violence, the only way women know how to communicate with each other in this universe.

Anyway, Egwene meets with the Aiel wise ones in tel’aran’rhiod, where they give her some motivation/information on what to do with the Aes Sedai. They encourage her to come back to them instead of being Amyrlin, but she declines. Egwene mentions that the Aes Sedai are loyal to the White Tower, above all else, even countries, and that it would be impossible for the Aes Sedai to swear fealty to Rand, even though that’s exactly what some of them have done. This part made me think about what exactly the mission of the Aes Sedai is. When Siuan was Amyrlin, her goal was to find the Dragon Reborn and help him on his quest to defeat the Dark One, but she tried to carry out this goal with as few people knowing as possible. What exactly is the Aes Sedai’s mission statement as a whole? When Egwene talks about being loyal to the White Tower above loyalty to one’s own country, what does she mean?

Today you sent me a link to an article about the things that the showrunner for the Wheel of Time series is going to change about the books, and I was very excited about a lot of them! Especially when he said, “I prefer polyamory to polygamy!” I’m really happy that he’s making the story more truly modern-day feminist, and that he’s going to include some LGBTQ characters (hopefully!) Wheel of Time is another one of those books that just isn’t gay enough!

Also today was the day I got my audible credit! I got “Crossroads of Twilight,” which means by the end of January, I’ll have the rest of the books! I hope you continue to enjoy these letters because I am enjoying writing them.