Not Worm - Tumblr Posts
So as it turns out James Somerton did in fact fake his suicide note, and did a bunch of other stuff in the meantime
kinda fucked up how egwene destroyed the confidence and social standing (between themselves) of a woman whom she trusted and respected, to the point that nynaeve has a massive crisis of self-confidence that may have contributed to her being beaten by moghedien, the whole deal with birgitte, and her decision to take the group to salidar and hand over her responsibilities and the threat of the forsaken in tel'aran'rhiod (though smart) in the hands of strange aei sedai who might not even support rand.
all so egwene can avoid punishment by the aiel for dreamwalking when she shouldn't be, because they would cease teaching her as per their threat, and rightly so. iirc she only ever decides that she needs to apologize for misleading them on being a full aei sedai (which is a pretty fucked up thing when everyone assumes everything you say is the whole truth, though the fact that egwene helped rand blow shit up at cairhien should've clued the aiel in that she's not bound by the three oaths like all tower trained aei sedai, and I am certain moraine must've brought that up at least once.) and only ever gets punished for her specific toh in that moment.
it is never reconciled, never apologized for, never explained, and egwene belittles nynaeve twice for almost revealing to the wise ones that she's dreamwalking. i don't think they see eachother again until egwene is in salidar and she is then raised to amyrlin seat, and then egwene places special emphasis on nynaeve not undermining her while she leads the rebel aei sedai.
worse still is how egwene's brow beating worked in preventing nynaeve from figuring out that egwene is hiding something from the aiel wise ones, especially after the blowup from egwene in front of amys, who egwene should really trust with anything said in tel'aran'rhiod, and nynaeve and elayne, who already know she's dreamwalking into elaida's study. its really emphasized a little later when nynaeve gets to salidar and shows that she's an incredibly smart person when she's not being rode over and bullied, and figures out the entire scheme between siuan and leane, something they're keeping from the salidar aei sedai so they can continue to manipulate them, practically instantly.
fucked up. sorry if anyone likes egwene particularly and is defensive regarding her, i like her too and she has many redeeming qualities and as many amazing accomplishments, but this is one of the many things that she's never apologized for. it shows more and more that her story is about a complete abandonment of emond's field to become the most aei sedai she can be, and she's certainly adopted bullying and brow beating to get her way in a topic she knew she shouldn't have gotten her way, but valued knowledge acquired through any means necessary over her personal relationships. the aiel aren't spared here either. she ferrets out their secrets, pushes dangerously far beyond what they've taught her and almost damages her relationship with them too when it becomes impossible to continue the lie.
she doesn't even reveal that she's an accepted until she's no longer going to be in the wise one's camp to learn from them, summoned to salidar, at which point there's no real punishment she can suffer from them, short of death, since she'll have learnt everything she can out of them and won't be able to learn anymore anyway, and despite all her talk of acting like an aiel and fulfilling her toh, I seriously doubt she would've calmly accepted death as her punishment if that was what the wise ones decided, even though any other aiel apprentice would have.
anyway, I know I'm not doing a liveblog, I'm just re-reading the wheel of time books and I'm almost finished with the fires of heaven (book 5). wanted to get this thought out there.