Wheel of Time letter No. 9: How Robert Jordan avoids writing actual dialogue

Dear Robert,

I’m almost 6 hours into A Crown of Swords and here’s what’s happening:

A lot of people stand around looking at each other after the battle at Dumai’s Wells, and that was about 4 of the 6 hours I listened to. Robert Jordan writes in third-person limited perspective, where he tells the story through the eyes of one character. Unfortunately, that character doesn’t always have the best insight into what’s going on. 

First, he talks a bit about Sevanna, one of the leaders of the Shaido, who survived the battle and fled. She’s had 3 husbands before, and wants to take Rand as her husband so she can control him as the Car’a’carn (the ultimate Aiel chief.)

Then, some stuff happens with the Children of the Light. Pedron Niall is murdered and Eamon Valda takes over. Things aren’t looking good for Queen Morgase!

Then, the perspective shifts to Perrin, who does not have the best grasp of what’s happening, but can smell everyone. He spends about 3 hours of the book talking about the words that Perrin can parse out from conversations held at a distance, or what people smell like (so that you can tell if they’re afraid or angry or outraged or whatever.) This is a unique perspective, but it doesn’t offer the best insight into what’s happening. Perrin isn’t exactly eavesdropping, so there’s no tension around whether or not he might be caught. It’s mostly him watching people hold conversations he can’t hear. For 3 hours. 

Perrin’s sense of smell then becomes completely useless when everyone goes to Cairhien to depose a woman named Coulavaere, who has put herself on the throne while Rand was away. At first I mistook this character for Couladin, who died suddenly because Mat killed him at the end of Fires of Heaven. Anyway, Rand confronts Coulavaere and breaks her crown. Then, he exiles her to work on a farm for the rest of her life, even though the consequence for treason is death. He just can’t tolerate being responsible for the death of a woman.

On the trip to Cairhien, Perrin is worried about Faile because the wise ones told him she was fine. What they didn’t tell him was that she threw her lot in with Coulavaere! My prediction is that she’s being a spy. Once Coulavaere is safely off the throne, Perrin will tell Faile how cross he is with her, she’ll tell him he can’t tell her what to do, and they will continue being an example of the sort of toxic, contentious relationship Robert Jordan thinks is normal! On the group’s trip to Cairhien, Perrin was thinking about some quaint Two Rivers proverb that went something like, “Being married to a woman is like being trapped in a hornet’s nest: No matter how you move, you’ll get stung!” I feel like these flippant sayings seep into Robert Jordan’s prose and widen the chasm between men and women, leaving no room for understanding. Perrin thinks Faile is some kind of foreign, alien being, and doesn’t make an effort to really speak to her and ask her questions about how she is feeling. He relies on his sense of smell to discern her emotions, and then ends up even more confused. Don’t get me wrong, Faile suffers from her own faults. She seems too immature and one-dimensional to be ready for marriage. I wonder what kind of impression Faile and Perrin’s relationship left on you when you were young? Did you find it as annoying as I do? Or was young Robert like, “You’re right, Perrin, women ARE confusing!”