History Headscratchers / TheWheelOfTime

*** Definitely going to be Egwene, since as of The Gathering Storm, Elaida [[spoiler: has been made into a captive damane for the Seanchan. A fitting end for the power-crazed madwoman]]. Of course, since Rand has also [[spoiler: synched with all of his past lives and presumably gained all the attendant memories and knowledge from the Age of Legends and possibly even before that, it could well be amusing to have "half-trained girls" as AoL channelers call them attempting to berate him as he "stands" before the Amyrlin Seat... a position that he actually held as Lews Therin Telamon, back when it was much, much more impressive]].

** Channeling isn't a product of inbreeding. The implication seems to be that Aes Sedai don't have children...but the Two Rivers are never tested for Aes Sedai, so all the channeling-capable women lead ordinary lives and have ordinary numbers of children. It's not that the Two Rivers is high by AoL standards, it's that everywhere else has been breeding the talent out for millennia much more aggressively.

* What was the point of making teacups and animal statues out of cuendillar -- which evidently happened in the AoL? You'd think the priceless artifacts that collectors had in the books would be more along the lines of knives, wrenches, shovels, etc, since there is some utility in having an unbreakable tool. I can't fathom why someone would think it's a good idea to make a giraffe statute that can be hurled into the sun and remain undamaged.

** Basically Jordans problem was that he assumed that if you know, for a fact, that your religion is real (or at least, that there is strong evidence for it being real), then it isn't really a religion. [[CriticalResearchFailure Said no religious person ever]]. In other words, he had no concept of a PhysicalReligion.

*** They also have a pretty intense KnifeNut culture (at least, Ebou Dar does; Altara is a collection of city-states, so the others could be entirely different) and are generally willing to slit each other in the street at any provocation. It doesn't seem much more to say "a woman killing a man is justified unless proven otherwise" when men and women are perfectly willing to kill each other without much real justification anyway. Even the marriage knife custom is more reminiscent of BloodKnight devil-may-care fatalism than sexism.

*** Yes, it tells you that people don't like bullying, manipulative, arrogant people, and that any time we see someone standing up to them, this is cheerworthy and has nothing to do with the gender of the people in question. The only reason this bothers so many people is because we have been trained in modern times to look at anything which makes women look bad as sexist and wrong, without taking into account that the actions of the characters are rotten and should be decried regardless of their gender. If it were men acting like this, would people be up in arms at Jordan? [[DoubleStandard Most likely not]], and if they were, it would prove the problem was the characters' actions, not their gender. No one gets mad at him for making Semirhage so horrifying and hate-worthy when she is the only black Forsaken, they can tell that the traits he gave her as a villain have nothing to do with her race and are not reasons to attack Jordan for making a black person a villain, so why can't they give him the same benefit of the doubt when it comes to female characters? PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad.

** If it follows the same story as the novels then presumably it's canon. Of course this would hardly be [[ContemptibleCover the first time that the art has nothing in common with the story]].

*** I also disagree. Cadsuane can indeed be very grating and annoying; however, Rand's arrogance and constant belief that he needs to be hard in order to be strong are just as annoying, and I fully believe he did need to be smacked upside the head at a number of points in the series. Granted, he had a right to be angry and suspicious after what the Tower Aes Sedai nearly did to him, but that doesn't justify him being so clueless and irrational as to continually try and insulate himself from his emotions and other people. What's the point of saving the world if [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope in the process]] [[HeWhoFightsMonsters you become just as bad]] [[WhatTheHellHero as the evil threatening it]]? That was summed up best, I think, in Tam's question to him in book 12: "Why do you fight?" The fact Rand's answer, finally, was that [[CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming he was fighting for love and hope]], proves that he ''did'' need to learn this lesson and Cadsuane was absolutely right to bust his balls until he learned it. Does that mean I approve of her methods all the time? No. Or that it wasn't still satisfying to see him tell her off? Hell yes it was. But that doesn't change the fact she was right (though not about the rudeness) and he was wrong.