Discussion YMMV / Thewheeloftime

I'd like to propose adding Cadsuane to the list of Alternative Character Interpretations. On the Character Page she is written down as a foolish, Wrong Genre-Savvy Bully, and that being really her only skill.

For the Overspecialization part, I would very much like to note that Cadsuane has the reputation that any men she Stills, or has a hand in Stilling, have a much better chance at survival than pretty much any other poor Channeler of saidin to have been Stilled in the last few centuries. She probably also has some other skills I forgot, but that is certainly a prominent, and important, one. Especially since one of the men she helped in capturing and Stilling happened to be one Logain Ablar.....

More importantly, however, is the point about bullying and about how that (allegedly) backfired. True, Cadsuane did almost cause Rand to cross the Moral Event Horizon. However, many forget that the key word in that sentence is: almost. Rand, in fact, didn't cross the Moral Event Horizon when confronted with Tam, and the Heroic BSoD that almost balefiring his father caused in him did in fact lead him pretty much directly to his Epihany Therapy on Dragonmount [although, as I've been alluding to throughout this entire paragraph, it was markedly less sudden than usually with that Trope, and in fact came off the heels (hah, Pun...) of his Heel Realization with Tam]. The moment on Dragonmount, in turn, fulfilled Cadsuane's goal of teaching Rand the difference between "strength" and "hardness", which would be absolutely essential during his confrontation with the Dark One during A Memory of Light. In short: in the end, Cadsuane's absolute refusal to take any sort of shit from Rand (which is something entirely different from "bullying" him, by the way) was exactly what Rand needed, and thus, in the end, Cadsuane was a rare, yet classic, case of The Exremist Was Right.

So, any particular reason why Fain, one of the most evil people in the series, got cut from Complete Monster? The only real argument I can see is that his moral agency is dubious, due to insanity/demonic possession, but I think it's pretty clear that Fain's doing evil of his own free will right up to the point when he starts calling himself Shaisam (at which point he dies himself before having the chance to do much in that form). Of course, this is explicitly the personality created from merging the original Fain and Mordeth we're talking, as I don't think either qualifies separately.