Well, I’ve seen it mentioned (by people that pay far more attention than I do) that the actual Crystal Throne is “a giant Compulsion ter’angreal”.
So, that leaves the possibility that he is either Compulsed to do it, or that he feigns being Compulsed to do it.
Thing is, we’re running out of pages, and since Tuon is the Empress she’s nowhere near the Crystal Throne, added to the fact that she’s preparing for a strike on the White Tower, not one to retake her home continent…I don’t see how all of this is going to fit together fast enough.
As far as I know, the Empress is never referred to as “The Crystal Throne”, so it seems to me that kneeling to her wouldn’t count.
I haven’t seen her referred to in specifically that way either so you may have a point. I always took the generic phrase “kneeling to the throne” to refer to the person holding the throne rather than the throne itself. But, if the throne itself has “magic compulsory powers”, as appears to be the case here, the meaning could clearly be far more literal.
Also, an observation/guess:
I took the implication that Rand wasn’t constrained by Egwene or the shielding by the circle of Aes Sedai as evidence that he already has access to some of the Creator’s power similar to the way some Forsaken have access to the Dark One’s power.
Well, there’s a couple possibilities, aren’t there?
One, he’s a Ta’a’veren and everything anyone has said for the last 3000 years says that The Dragon Reborn will face the Dark One at Shayol Ghul. Therefore, Egwene wasn’t going to be able to stop him because The Pattern wasn’t going to allow it.
Two, he has access to the Light Side version of the True Power, and as such it wouldn’t matter if they were to shield him from Saidin, because he could still escape/tear them a new Aeshole (hah!).
Three, he has access to the True Power, and if he gets desperate enough he can use it.
Four, the True Power is just accessing the Creator’s power via the Dark One’s sewer lines rather than just drinking straight from the river. In that case, he has access to the “True Power” without the Dark One’s leave.
Personally, I think that number four is a possibility ONLY because calling anything other than the Creator’s power “The True Power” seems extremely…wrong. Not just Bad Guy wrong, but just plain incorrect.
At the time, it’s implied that Rand’s ta’veren nature is the reason why he can walk around with impunity, but later in Far Madding, he implies that he has the True Power ace up his sleeve.
Rand does not need the Dark Ones permission to use the True Power because he is accessing it through Moridin due to them being linked from having crossed balefire streams with him in Shadar Logoth.
So unless the DO cuts off the TP from Moridin, Rand can still access it.
Maybe, but I doubt it. Remember Serimhage’s last moments? She was freed by Shaidar Haran and given the sad bracelets to capture rand. She succeeds, only to get blown out of reality by True Powrr Balefire.
There’s two reasons for things to play out that way. One, Rand had unintended access to the TP and Semi has truly shitty luck, or two, the entire point was to put rand into a truly terrible situation and then tempt him into using the TP to save himself and Min.
Finally finished it. Things I liked:
[ul]
[li]Rand’s reuniting with Tam after he comes to grips with himself. Brought a tear to my eye.[/li][li]Perrin’s Fight with Slayer, and forging of the hammer.[/li][li]Egwene’s fight with the Black Ajah and the Chosen in the White Tower Dream.[/li][li]Aviendha’s trip to Rhudian and the 2nd trip through the colums. Although I did wonder if anyone would have had the same experience if they tried to go through twice, or if she mucked something up.[/li][li]Rand’s routing of the Trollocs at the Borderland city. Great scene. [/li][li]Matt’s negotiations with Elayne about the Band’s service to her, and the Dragons. Showed a lot of solid maturity to that character and understanding of what was coming.[/li][li]Nynaeve’s trial. I liked how she thought it was stupid to abandon people and refuse to fight agents of the Dark One just to stay focused on a trivial task. It both showed how the White Tower had begun to loose sight of what was really important over the centuries, and how she wasn’t going to accept that. [/li][/ul]
Things I didn’t like:
[ul]
[li]The very very short shrift the Tower of Ghenji got. We’ve been building to that for 3 books now, it deserved more than that. [/li][li]Some of the characters still manuever and plot even though they know the Last Battle is coming. I’m looking at you White Tower. [/li][li]The fact that the chapters basically were out of chronological order. Most of the events with Perrin took place before the events at the end of the last book.[/li][li]Didn’t like Lan’s attitude.[/li][li]Didn’t like having to find stuff out in the Appendix. Both about death of some of the Chosen, and how the Towers from the introduction have an important part to play somehow according to prophecy.[/li][/ul]
I worry that a lot of the loose ends won’t be able to be tied up in a satisfactory way in just one more book. I’ve always thought that when Robert Jordan said he’d wrap it up in one more book, what he really meant was that we’d get a book that left a lot of things out. I just don’t see how Brandon Sanderson can finish everything in one more book. Especially since now someone has to get back to the Sechan empire and do something at the towers from the opening of the book. Unless he just ends it at the last battle, and doesn’t give any details about what happens to anyone or anything afterwards. Which would just tick me off.
I suspect that the “Three become one” line that we keep hearing about relates to Rand somehow combining Sadin, Sadir, and the True Power using Callandor to defeat the Dark One.
Maybe I’m being to meta-y here, but my take on the reaction-sans-explanation was that it was an excuse to have all the non-Seanchan armies gather and Rand can make a big moving speech and whatnot. For me, this scene – the image of all those thousands, from all the countries of the continent, gathering in one place, putting aside their differences to take up arms against the Dark One – makes me shiver in excitement a bit.
When I read this, I was just assuming that he figured he could overpower them, considering he still had the ter’angreal at that point, I think. I don’t mind this explanation, though, or that he trusted his ‘weight’ as a Ta’veren.
I don’t think he can use the True Power any more. I think it’s been replaced by him exuding that ‘goodness.’ Thus, no more “dark shadows” clinging around him but some kind of “light” (and magically growing fruit, grass, etc.). In the last book, it was implied that Hurin could smell that dark shadow, that link to the Dark One. I was looking forward to seeing Hurin’s reaction to Rand interact in this book but I guess we’ll see that in the next one, when Rand apologizes?
I can’t tell if we’re in agreement or not, but I always thought it was the second one. So, Aestivalis, the scene with Rand facing the Northern monarchs showed us that if Rand hadn’t ‘healed himself’ on Dragonmount, he could’ve used the True Power then to rip them and their armies apart. It says nothing about his True Power capabilities since he did, er, rediscover love.
On Matt: Dunno why, but I was rather unreasonably ticked off that we didn’t see him kicking himself for not realizing that his spear was a key sooner and how Noel’s sacrifice wasn’t necessary.
[spoiler]I think the True Power is what was used to create the world by the now absent Creator, except warped and corrupted by the Dark One. The light that is surrounding Rand now would be a purified version.
Maybe the twist to Callandor is that it also allows a male-female pairing to combine with the wielder of the sword. So we could for example have Nynaeve channeling Saidar, Loghain channeling Saidin, and Rand channeling True Power. Rand already asked Nynaeve to be in the bond with him, but a somewhat big deal was made of him being unsure of the 2nd person. Some possibilities:
Loghain like above
Egwene. Perhaps Moiraine will convince her that Rand is right about the seals, and she will end up helping with Callandor. I think it’s more likely that she’ll be fighting in the dream world with Perrin, the wolves, and the wise ones in the final battle.
Moiraine herself. On the other hand she’s weak in the power now, except for the angreal she has. Can you even use an angreal and a sa’angreal at the same time? Obviously Moiraine has to do something important so she fulfills Mat’s prophecy of “giving up half the light of the world to save the world.” I don’t think this is it though.
Elayne or Aviendha. Perhaps, but then it wouldn’t really be surprising, so why the foreshadowing?
Cadsuane. Doubt it, as she’s been more of an advisor than a doer in the series[/spoiler]
It’s not going to have anything to do with “giving up half the world to save the world”. That is just a quite literal interpretation of what Mat did - giving up half the light of the world (his eye) for the sake of saving the world.
Which means that Moiraine is necessary to save the world. Hopefully it’ll involve replacing Egwene’s irritating ass as Amrylin after her head gets blown off her shoulders by an errant thrown badger.
The “three becoming one” I also think involves the three powers. I believe is that the trick to trapping the Dark One again is going to involve either
1 - Using the True Power (ie. The Creator’s power, not the corrupted one) to close the Bore. Which can’t really be corrupted because only The Dragon Reborn can access it. So who are you going to corrupt?
2 - Using the True Power (ie. That Dark One’s power) by somehow tricking him. This first perfectly if Rand can indirectly access it through Moridin. The Dark One gets sealed and corruption isn’t an issue because he’s sealed in with a power that is already corrupted - and everyone instantly loses access to it as soon as he’s sealed anyway.
I don’t think the primary reason for the corruption of saidin was to drive mad male channelers. Rather the seals on the DO’s prison were anchors for the weave imprisoning him, so tainting saidin in turn tainted the seals which is why they are now crumbly and failing.
Totally agree. Which is why the Bore needs to be sealed with something that can’t be tainted by contact with the Dark One (Creator’s power) or something where taint wouldn’t matter (Dark One’s power).
Then The Bore can be reset to the default configuration.
…or…
This one breaks the cycle because somehow Fain actually ends up killing the Dark One.
We’ve already seen Rand use a male angreal while accessing the greatest male Sa’angreal, so I’d say it’s very possible. Back in TSR, at the end when Rand was fighting Asmodean in Rhuidean, they both touch the access ter’angreal simultaneously and are evenly matched up to that point–until Rand remembers he has the man with a sword angreal and uses it to gain the upper hand.
I’d forgotten about that. It begs the question of why, when Eqwene was fighting the Seanchan off, she grabbed the most powerful sa’angreal in the tower rather than every sa’angreal and angreal in the tower.
I suspect, given the progression of the series, that Rand (and possibly Moiraine) never bothered to mention that detail to Egwene (given that up to the time they parted, Rand barely told anyone anything, and Moiraine didn’t really view Egwene as an equal until just prior to the face-off with Lanfear). And I suspect that fact was one of the things the Aes Sedai didn’t know about it, since they didn’t bother to use said technique when healing Mat back in TDR.
Hmmm. Good point. I wonder if it also might be a difference between saiden/saidar. Do we know of any females that have channelled through multiple angreal at the same time? I can’t think of any. Now that I’m thinking about it though even if Egwene didn’t know or wasn’t able to use multiple angreal she should have given some to the accepted she was linked with.
Or she was unfamiliar with the storeroom and its contents and only had a short amount of time to grab angreal and sa’agreal. She took the wand because she was familiar with it – from previous books and I think there was a conversation with Sanche earlier?
Keep in mind that the Aes Sedai are really a bunch of ignorant savages, and they were probably terrified of the things.
The also kept all of those things locked up. You think they’d at least let sisters use them while wandering the dangerous world instead of keeping them hundreds of miles from the Blight.
As I recall, she did tell the first Aes Sedai she saw to go to the storage room and collect any angreal and s’angreal she could find. I suspect that she didn’t want to give Accepted those tools for fear that they couldn’t handle them.