Books The Wheel of Time Reading The Wheel of Time: The Dragon Confronts Despair and Discovers Hope in The Gathering Storm (Part 29) We have reached the end of The Gathering Storm. By Sylas K Barrett | Published on June 9, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share This is the last week of The Gathering Storm, as we finish up the final three chapters. Rand checks out Ebou Dar before fleeing to Dragonmount to have a personal crisis and decide the fate of the world, and Egwene witnesses it from the hole in the wall of the Tower. Will the Dragon Reborn find a reason to love the world, or will he give up on it? Read on to find out. Rand spends the night with some Tinkers camped outside the gates of Ebou Dar. He is surprised to hear that they are considering settling in Altara, a place where they feel safe and respected. The Seanchan even pay them in exchange for giving travelers food and a place to sleep. They are also welcome to other odd jobs such as mending pots and sewing, and have received the protection of the Seanchan rulers, something they have been offered nowhere else. It seems wrong to Rand that the Seanchan lands would be orderly and peaceful, given the horror of what they do to channelers. The next day, when the gates of Ebou Dar open, he goes in, wearing a coat he traded his own for and slouching to disguise his height. Walking through the bustling streets, he mostly ignores the people around him, more focused on the fact that the Tinkers are safe in Ebou Dar while Rand’s own father isn’t safe with him. Rand’s friends feared him; he had seen it in Nynaeve’s eyes.The people here weren’t afraid. Seanchan officers moved through the crowds, wearing those insectlike helms. The people made way for them, but out of respect. When Rand heard commoners speaking, they were glad for the stability. They actually praised the Seanchan for conquering them! He considers that the people here seem mostly happy and prosperous, and that the Seanchan have a better hold on Ebou Dar than Rand does on Bandar Eban. He also tries to push thoughts of what he did to Tam, and what he almost did, out of his mind. To push himself back to the reason he came to Ebou Dar: destroying his enemies, for the good of the world. Lews Therin whispers in his mind that death will be a mercy for those Rand kills. Still, Rand struggles to make the decision to start his attack, holding the access key wrapped in cloth and continuing to walk. He has a plan of how to attack, how to move from target to target by Traveling. Eventually he brings himself to unwrap the access key and seize saidin, but the sickness that hits him is the worst it has ever been. He falls to the ground and throws up, but still holds on to the Power he needs, the Power that makes everything sweeter. He opened his eyes. People were gathered around him, concerned. A Seanchan patrol was approaching. Now was the time. He had to strike.But he could not. The people looked so concerned. So worried. They cared. Screaming, Rand creates a gateway, skimming to a nearby field and then Traveling to the top of Dragonmount. He keeps telling himself that he is destruction, that the Pattern made him to be destruction, and that he just has to accept it. On the snowy peak he channels to have enough air to breath and to warm himself so that he won’t freeze, and then sits down to think. He sits for hours, pondering his existence and holding on to the Source, which he doesn’t dare release, given how sick he became the last time he seized saidin. He was angry. Angry at the world, angry at the Pattern, angry at the Creator for leaving humans to fight against the Dark One with no direction. What right did any of them have to demand Rand’s life of him?Well, Rand had offered that life to them. It had taken him a great while to accept his death, but he had made his peace. Wasn’t that enough? Did he have to be in pain until the end? Rand has tried to make himself hard enough not to feel pain, but it has never worked. Even the wounds in his side, which he was able to ignore for a time, give him pain—pain that seems to grow with each death, beginning with Moiraine’s. Her death is what caused Rand to lose hope. He’s also aware that the little voice of conscience inside him has gone silent since he attacked Tam, and he wonders if he has lost the last remnant of his old self, the last piece of him that knew right from wrong. He takes the access key in his hand, channeling through it as he shouts out into the air that maybe he doesn’t want the Pattern to continue, that perhaps it is just a way to keep humanity suffering for no reason. “What if I think it’s all meaningless?” he demanded with the loud voice of a king. “What if I don’t want it to keep turning? We live our lives by the blood of others! And those others become forgotten. What good is it if everything we know will fade? Great deeds or great tragedies, neither means anything! They will become legends, then those legends will be forgotten, then it will all start over again!” The clouds around him seem to grow darker, a building tempest, as he draws more and more power, more power even than when he cleansed saidin or created Dragonmount, so much that he knows it will destroy him. He thinks that Lews Therin had been right to kill himself, but that he didn’t go far enough. He sees a vision of Ilyena’s body, smells the scent of a world burning. Lews Therin had made a mistake. He had died, but had left the world alive, wounded, limping forward. He’d let the Wheel of Time keep turning, rotating, rotting and bringing him back around again. He could not escape it. Not without ending everything. With enough Power in his hands to unravel the Pattern itself, Rand whispers a question of why. Over and over again he asks why they must live again, as he edges closer to ending that cycle forever. And then, quietly, sanely, Lews Therin suggests that it is so they can have a second chance. Rand remembers Tam’s words, telling Rand he gets to choose the reason he fights, asking Rand why he goes to battle. And Rand realizes that every time a human being lives, they get to love again. He is suddenly flooded with memories of other lives with other loves, and he realizes that he is fighting because he failed to contain the Dark One the first time, and this time he wants to get it right.  The Power within him reached a crescendo, and he turned it upon itself, drove it through the access key. The ter’angreal was connected to a much greater force, a massive sa’angreal to the south, built to stop the Dark One. Too powerful, some had said. Too powerful ever to use. Too frightening. He turns that Power on itself, and the Choedan Kal explodes.  When Rand opens his eyes, he sees that there is a gap in the clouds, and the sun is shining down on him. He smiles, and then laughs, for the first time in far too long. In the Amyrlin’s study, stripped bare of Elaida’s things, Egwene is looking over pages of reports from Silviana—who is proving to be an excellent Keeper—detailing the current state of the Tower and how many losses were suffered during the Seanchan attack. Egwene is disappointed that most of the Black Ajah from Verin’s list escaped, probably warned by the sweep Egwene did through the rebel Aes Sedai camp. Every Aes Sedai left has completed the re-swearing on the oath rod and has announced themselves as not being Darkfriends, which is a relief, except for the fact that Mesaana hasn’t been located. It’s possible she was captured by the Seanchan or escaped the Tower, but Egwene doesn’t believe either to be the case. She is interrupted by Silviana, who asks her to come and see something. She is taken down to the Hall of the Tower, where workers are putting a rose window in to repair the hole blown in the wall. Everyone moves aside so Egwene can see that the clouds have broken, pulling back from Dragonmount and leaving the uppermost peak bathed in light. There was something beautiful about it. The light streaming down in a column, strong and pure. Distant, yet striking. It was like something forgotten, but somehow still familiar, shining forth from a distant memory to bring warmth again. Silviana asks what it means. Egwene doesn’t know, but she orders the calendars to be marked. Something momentous has happened, and eventually they may learn what it is. She and Silviana stand for a time, looking out at the comforting sight. Gonna get myself a t-shirt that says “Verin Was Right.” She told Egwene that the battle wasn’t being fought in the way that Rand assumed it would be. In this final chapter of The Gathering Storm, we see that she was exactly on point, so much so that I think this moment might be the actual climax of the Dark One’s play to destroy creation. There has been a theory marinating in my mind for a while that finally solidified after finishing The Gathering Storm, which is that the Dark One actually cannot destroy the Pattern on his own. I think he needs Rand to do it for him, and that fighting the Last Battle is only a fallback plan or a distraction from the Dark One’s actual goal: to drive Rand to despair and anger so powerful that he breaks the Wheel himself. When you think about it, we have no evidence that the Dark One can actually break out through the Bore. His prison was impenetrable to him before it was drilled, after all—so much so that no one in the Age of Legends even knew he existed. Even once it was drilled, and he was able to reach through and influence the world, he wasn’t all the way freed. Of course we know very little about that time and that fight, but what we have read and what the characters know of the war between the Light and the forces of the Shadow never says anything about the Dark One managing to break free the rest of the way, only that the forces of the Shadow—the shadowspawn and Darkfriends and Forsaken—began to overwhelm the forces of Light until defeat seemed imminent. There is a question in my mind about whether Shaidar Haran is some kind of extension or vessel for some essence or will of the Dark One—a question which may be answered at some point in the next two books—but even if he is, this still shows that the Dark One needs something of the Pattern in order to interact with the Pattern itself. Even with the seals weakening and the Dark One’s ability to affect the world increasing, he cannot reach through the Bore in anything other than a metaphysical sense. This is why the Forsaken must come to Shayol Ghul to bind themselves to him, and why only at Shayol Ghul is the Pattern malleable for such actions as hearing the voice of the Dark One in one’s mind or making cour’souvra; this was true during the Age of Legends as well as more recently, as the Seals weaken. The Dark One is a being of metaphysics, not physics, so if he were able to interact more directly with the Pattern, he would not be limited by physical space or distance as he very much appears to be. Granted, he has been able to affect the weather and blight crops, but I would assume, unless other evidence came to light, that this works just like the bubbles of Evil do: The effect or contagion comes through the Bore and rides along strands of the Pattern until it manifests its effects.  It is understandable that the people of Rand’s world assume that the Dark One, if left unchecked and unchallenged, will eventually be able to break through the Bore somehow and enter the Pattern, free to affect and destroy it as he desires. Knowing as they do that there is a hole in the prison that keeps him from the Pattern and that his ultimate desire is the destruction of Creation, this is a rational fear. Since the Dark One’s influence is terrible and will continue to increase by virtue of his corruption luring human beings to choose Evil, the answer to whether or not he could completely break free or will only ever be able to whisper through the cracks doesn’t change the need to defeat him and close up the Bore.  But we don’t actually have any proof of the Dark One being able to enlarge the Bore on his own, or any information on what, exactly, he would need to do to break the Wheel and destroy the Pattern. As I pointed out when talking about Shaidar Haran, even during the Age of Legends the Dark One needed human beings to do his bidding and enact his desires on Earth. He was and is dependent on people choosing to enact evil on his behalf. We have seen the various methods he uses to tempt humanity towards these choices, primarily with promises of power or by instilling fear and despair. The Forsaken are obvious examples of the former, while Ingtar is a perfect example of the latter. The Dark One didn’t even make the Shadowspawn—a revelation which shocked me when I first read that it was Aginor who created Trollocs and Myrddraal. So even if Shaidar Haran is some kind of vessel for the Dark One, he needed a human being to make it for him, and he is clearly limited within that vessel, or else we’d have seen the Pattern destroyed already. Even when it comes to the Dark One’s power over death, his reach is limited. He appears to receive or possess the souls of those sworn to him upon their deaths, but in order to resurrect them he must be supplied by a human body, made within the Pattern in the usual way.  So while we certainly don’t know everything about how the Dark One works, we have no direct evidence that he is able to destroy the Pattern on his own, only the knowledge that this is what he desires to do, and that the Bore is a hole humanity drilled into whatever prison keeps him locked up (or away, or beyond, or whatever) that allows him to affect and interact with the world in a limited way, but one that is far greater than what he can otherwise achieve. And of course, the Dark One is not a “he” in actuality. The narrative uses “he” because in our culture, as in Rand’s, maleness is considered a neutral default. And because the Dark One is sentient, we interpret him as a person. But he, or rather it, is not a person. It is more like a force or a concept—corruption and destruction with a mind and a (very limited) sense of agency. It thinks, but it is not a person, and this is most certainly a factor when it comes to the idea of what it can or can’t do. Taking all this into account, we then turn to the fact that the Dark One has consistently forbid anyone from trying to kill Rand. Ba’alzamon was trying to recruit him to the Dark from the beginning, and although there was a time when various Forsaken were attempting to go after him, we don’t have any reason to believe the Dark One ordered it and that they weren’t just acting on their own accord, either because they wanted Rand dead or because they assumed the Dark One would want that. Then the order not to kill Rand, and to “let the Lord of Chaos rule,” was given. At first, I assumed that this command had something to do with too many of the Dark One’s followers being killed off by Rand, and that the Dark One decided to take a more indirect approach to bringing about Rand’s downfall. However, once it was revealed that the Forsaken (at least those not killed by balefire) can be reincarnated, it really seemed like the Dark One would be better served by just throwing everything he can at Rand, as quickly and as completely as possible. If the Dark One is guaranteed to win the Last Battle unless Rand is there to fight him, then really there is no resource not worth losing in the pursuit to make that happen. All the Dark One would be doing by waiting is giving Rand time to shore up his strength, his knowledge, and his forces. That is, unless the Dark One was aware of how much Rand was falling apart. The Dark One knew that the taint would be affecting Rand’s sanity from the very beginning, and may not have been able to anticipate Rand’s ability to cleanse saidin. Even if he was aware of such a possibility, the effects of the taint Rand has already experienced were not erased by the cleansing. Plus, the Dark One has sent his followers to mess with Rand, to erode his confidence and his trust in others, to spread chaos and destruction across the lands and make sure the blame is laid at the feet of the Dragon. He has undermined Rand again and again, both in the eyes of the world and in Rand’s own estimation of himself. Lest we forget, Galina may have been appointed to be Rand’s jailor by Elaida, but she was Black Ajah, and the effects of Rand’s time being beaten and locked in the box by her have played a big part in eroding what trust he had in Aes Sedai and in shattering his sense of peace and self confidence. Still, he forbids anyone from killing Rand. He punishes Semirhage for attempting to kill him, even though Rand was not killed and the loss of his hand helped further drive him towards his attempts at being “hard” and not caring about himself or his own fate. For some reason, the Dark One needs Rand alive. In chapter 50 of The Gathering Storm, Rand sits upon Dragonmount, the grave of his former self and a mark of the world’s understanding of the Dragon as a dangerous failure, and considers whether the world is even worth living in. He finds himself thinking that the cycle of death and rebirth is nothing more than a punishment, a way that humanity is forced to relive the same mistakes over and over again. He even considers that he might not want the Pattern to continue, and that none of existence actually matters at all. As I was reading it, I kept thinking that some of these sentiments don’t really sound like Rand. There are plenty that do, of course, particularly the thoughts about how he found himself unable to hold on to hope after Moiraine’s death, how every death from hers onward “rubbed his soul raw.” It’s easy to see how Rand came to a point of despair and surrender, given everything he has suffered. He is clearly, and understandably, exhausted by everything he has been through. In contrast, however, the following passage seems to come out of nowhere: “What if he is right?” Rand bellowed. “What if it’s better for this all to end? What if the Light was a lie all along, and this is all just a punishment? We live again and again, growing feeble, dying, trapped forever. We are to be tortured for all time!” Never before this moment have we seen Rand call the Light a lie and the existence of the Pattern a punishment on mankind. True, he has seen his own existence as punishment more or less since he accepted that he was the Dragon Reborn, but he has never extended that opinion to include other people. More importantly, he references a “he,” meaning that this theory on the cyclical nature of the Wheel and reincarnation didn’t originate with Rand, but someone else. That someone else seems to be Dark One itself, though it’s possible Rand is thinking of Elan Morin/Ishamael at this moment, given everything he said to Rand when he was presenting himself as the Dark One, in the guise of Ba’alzamon. And given the sorts of things Ishamael said to Lews Therin before Lews Therin’s death. It’s even possible that the touch of the “True Power” is further affecting Rand’s viewpoint of the Light and Creation, bringing either Moridin’s dislike for life or the Dark One’s own anti-Creation sentiments directly into Rand’s consciousness. (I mean, the “True Power” makes you insane and turns your body into fire, so it could probably do this, too.) In any case, all of this brings us back to Verin’s point about how the Dark One is actually fighting, and the fact that in this moment, Rand considers destroying the Pattern himself. Lanfear believed that the Choedan Kal were powerful enough to allow a user to kill the Dark One and perhaps even the Creator himself, so it is not a stretch to believe that Rand might be able to harness enough power to destroy the Pattern outright, or perhaps to damage it so severely that it unravels, even just using one half of the pair. Which is what the Dark One’s ultimate goal is. The Dark One isn’t trying to win the Last Battle, he is trying to end it, as he is trying to end everything. What Rand almost did is much closer to him winning even than the armies of the Light being decimated and the world falling into an Age where the Shadow rules and the Forsaken run the world. As I have pointed out before, the Forsaken believe that this is what they will get once the Dark One “wins,” but I am confident that they are wrong, and that the Dark One will get rid of everything, leaving only nothingness. Given all that, I firmly believe that this is the true climax between the Dragon and the Dark One. The Last Battle will still come, of course, and Rand will still have to go to Shayol Ghul and find a way to seal the Dark One’s prison, but this is the moment where Rand is poised to surrender, to the Dark One, to despair, to the threat of being unmade.  I believe that the Dark One cannot unmake the Pattern himself, even with the Bore open and the seals dissolved. He needs someone inside the Pattern to do it for him, and his main play was to drive Rand to do exactly that. And he nearly succeeded. But he did not succeed, and somehow, Rand has found his own way back to hope and to purpose. Now the Dark One will have to throw his forces into the Last Battle, and no doubt there will be a confrontation at Shayol Ghul with the Dark One in which Rand is tempted again to give in to despair, or perhaps promised something he wants (his lovers’ safety, peace for the Two Rivers, etc) if he gives in to the Dark One’s will and serves his ends. But it’s hard to imagine Rand faltering at that stage, not after he has confronted this moment of despair and made a choice to change his own way of thinking. It’s a beautiful moment, really, and I love that at the end of the day, Rand’s confrontation is purely with himself. They say that the first step to changing is recognizing that you have a problem, but really, the first step is wanting to change. This has been Rand’s difficulty more than anything else, really. As long as he believed that being hard and cutting off his emotions and separating himself from everything that gave him joy and made life worth living (and worth protecting) was the right thing to do, no amount of love from Min or support from the Aiel or deference from the world could stop his descent into madness and destruction. Because Rand believed that it was right. Cadsuane’s plan didn’t go as she hoped it would, but I don’t think one can deny that it was the right decision, maybe the only decision, that could have saved Rand. And indeed, the “mistake” of Tam letting it slip that Cadsuane was involved in his appearance and Rand’s subsequent breakdown is probably exactly what was needed. Rand needed to remember laughter and tears. He needed to feel his pain as well as feel joy again. The experience with Tam did both. Light, Rand thought, feeling a sudden urge to enfold Tam in a hug. Familiarity and memories flooded back into his mind. Tam delivering brandy to the Winespring Inn for Bel Tine. The pleasure Tam took in his pipe. His patience and his kindness. First, Rand felt relief, and love, and remembered safety. He notes in chapter 47 that these feelings are at odds with the hard man he has become, but he isn’t successful at pushing them away; he actually doesn’t even try very hard, for all that he stops himself from telling Tam to keep calling Rand “son.” Then the mention of Cadsuane brings about Rand’s breakdown, brings out the paranoia and insanity to the point where Rand uses the One Power against his father, even prepares to kill him. Here he experiences a true low, lower even than the experience of being forced to strangle Min. As Rand himself notes in chapter 49: He had nearly killed his father. He hadn’t been forced to by Semirhage, or by Lews Therin’s influence. No excuses. No argument. He, Rand al’Thor, had tried to kill his own father. He’d drawn in the Power, made the weaves and nearly released them. Rand has loathed himself for some time, has considered himself something terrible because of his identity as the Dragon, but that consideration has always been about “what” he is, about his ta’veren powers and the way people want to control him and the way he believes he must kill in order to fulfill his destiny. However, he wasn’t being the Dragon Reborn in that moment with Tam. Except for his ability to draw so much of saidin, he could have been anybody, any ordinary person caught in a homicidal rage. The comparison of that moment to the incident with Min and Semirhage is a perfect illustration of the difference. With what happened to Min, Rand does blame himself, telling himself that if he was stronger he would have kept Min away and kept her safe, and that choosing to allow her near and to love her was selfish. He blames his identity as the Dragon for the reason she is in harm’s way—which is true, strictly speaking—and is angry that he wasn’t smart enough or strong enough to avoid the situation. Rand hates what he is and self-flagellates over his own weaknesses, but he still knows he didn’t want to hurt Min. He did everything he could to save her, after all, including something that should have been impossible. And he did save her. With Tam, however, Rand can see his own madness at play. He was not driven to it; he merely responded to a mention of Cadsuane by going all the way to eleven, and becoming absolutely homicidal. He only narrowly avoided executing the act for reasons that seem insubstantial and fleeting. He could so easily be walking the streets Ebou Dar as a man guilty of patricide. And he knows it. Because of Tam’s visit, because of Cadsuane’s plan, Rand is forced to confront the truth of his choices. Rand’s rage was gone, replaced by loathing. He’d wanted to make himself hard. He’d needed to be hard. But this was where hardness had brought him. And honestly, I don’t think anyone could have explained where his desire to become hard would lead him in a way he could have understood. I think he had to experience it. This is something I intend to talk more about in an essay next week, so I’ll get back to my point, which is that Cadsuane’s plan worked, and worked well, though I am sure she didn’t anticipate things going the way they did. This really feels right for the character to me: Cadsuane is very smart and very experienced in dealing with people, but she’s also an Aes Sedai, with all the self-importance and lack of empathy that can bring. Since she came to work with Rand her POV sections have been full of internal complaints about how stubborn Rand is, how she really needs him to just listen and get it so they can move on to saving the world. She doesn’t understand what Rand needs—except she also does. She knows he needs to remember who he was, and she realizes that only the man who raised that good, kind, stubborn boy could remind Rand of that. It’s not just the horror of what he almost did that drives Rand’s realizations in chapter 50. I think it’s also the memory of who he used to be. He might not even be conscious of it, but it is there in his mind all the same. As far as the actual moment of revelation goes, I will say that I don’t think the chapter is particularly well written. It hits the theme that has been built over the course of the series, and addresses the justifiable anger Rand feels towards his situation, but the actual moment is clumsily written, in my opinion, and lacks the complexity and subtlety that I think Jordan would have executed it with. It’s odd that when Rand begins to consider that love makes life worth living, the thought seems to come out of nowhere. He just suddenly remembers past lives and the loves he had in them, and remembers love and peace and joy and hope. Just like that, because Lews Therin suggested that people are reincarnated in order to have a second chance. The two thoughts are barely connected (although I did like the moment of consideration that if Lews/Rand is reincarnated, then Ilyena could be as well) and neither seem to have anything to do with Rand, specifically. He doesn’t think about the loves he has in his current life; we don’t see any specific moments of joy or hope that he remembers that he still has in his life now. All the despair and pain Rand suffers within the story is very personal, from being locked in the box, to his never-healing wounds, to having to adjust to the idea of being a king and a general, responsible for saving lives and ordering deaths, to being viewed by the world as a monster because of abilities and an identity he did not choose, to losing people he cares about and believing that his own death is inevitable. I wanted something very personal in the revelation as well. After all, the catalyst for the confrontation is personal. Rand might have considered that his ability to stay his hand from killing Tam was getting a do-over, since Lews Therin was too insane to realize what he was doing to Ilyena. He might have taken the thought that Ilyena might be reincarnated further, thinking about how there is love in every lifetime, and that he himself has that love in spades. He might have realized that Tam loves him, and came to help him, and that Cadsuane’s involvement doesn’t take away from his father’s love. The idea that Rand might realize there is comfort and hope in the idea of rebirth and second chances is certainly sound, as well as appropriate for the way his universe functions. However, this thought also skirts too close to the idea of duty again—of Rand carrying a burden that was placed on his shoulders before he was born, that may have been designed to always be on his shoulders. I want to understand why that thought suddenly inspires hope and relief when moments earlier it seemed to only give Rand grief and the sensation of being trapped. Unfortunately, I really do feel like this chapter missed the mark. It is still effective because of how it has been built up to, but I felt more like I was reading a summary of a chapter than an actual climactic finale. That being said, I do really like the reference in the title to the “veins of gold” that Elayne and Aviendha and Min saw when they bonded Rand, which proved to them that he loved them. Elayne simply stared at him, felt him in her head. The pain of wounds and hurts he really had forgotten. The tension and disbelief; the wonder. His emotions were too rigid, though, like a knot of hardened pine sap, almost stone. Yet laced through them, golden veins pulsed and glowed whenever he looked at Min, or Aviendha. Or her. He did love her. He loved all three of them. And that made her want to laugh with joy. Other women might find doubts, but she would always know the truth of his love. I like the subtlety of putting the reference in the title without specifically invoking it within the narration. As it stands, however, it is the only reference to anyone Rand loves or any feelings of joy he has about his own life, and that’s just not enough to carry the moment. It was interesting to see Rand’s experience of camping with the Tinkers outside Ebou Dar, and his reaction to seeing the relative peace and prosperity of those living under Seanchan rule. Because the Seanchan are conquerors and because of their practice of slavery, especially when it comes to channelers, it feels incongruous, wrong even, that the Seanchan-controlled lands are stable and calm. Rand witnesses a land where there is order, and enough food to go around, and where Tinkers feel safe to exist without being molested, and people show concern for a man who collapses from apparent illness. It’s an important moment for Rand because it shows him that the Seanchan are people. They are not the Dark, nor are they a monolith where one bad actor or cruel person is indicative of the society as a whole. The fact that Seanchan society is monstrous in many ways is not important in this particular context, because Rand doesn’t need to make a moral judgment about how they run their lands or organize their citizenry. He just has to understand that nothing is black and white when it comes to human beings. He has to understand that he has been reducing this concept of “his enemies” to mindless Shadowspawn or poisonous traitors lurking in the dark waiting to stab him. He thinks of every questioned order or refusal to submit as an act of war, even of treason, but in reality, they are just choices made by human beings with their own agency and their own desires. They may make the wrong choices, even deeply immoral choices, but that is not about Rand. It is not a reflection of him and what he is or isn’t owed by the word. It is only a reflection of the person making the choice. If Rand had destroyed the Seanchan, many innocents would have died. Even if he avoided too much collateral damage to those whose lands were conquered—which he almost certainly would not have—there are many people in the Seanchan ranks who have little or no power to affect society, or choose where they settle, or prevent how channelers are treated. This doesn’t mean they have no agency or bear no responsibility, but it does remind Rand that what he is considering is tantamount to genocide. He isn’t destroying a Forsaken who has set themselves up to rule using Compulsion and lies. He isn’t blasting a horde of Shadowspawn off the earth before they can overrun a peaceful kingdom—or after they have. He is considering killing thousands of human beings because he believes that is what they deserve. But when he sees them as people, especially those on the bridge who stop and express concern for him and try to help him, Rand can’t bring himself to attack. They have been humanized in his eyes, and he will never be able to think of them the same way again, no matter how much he fears being attacked by Seanchan on one side and the Shadow on the other. No matter how much Tuon/Fortuona defies him, or disappoints him. This, too, contributes to his ultimate redemption on Dragonmount. I would have liked to see it included a bit more in the actual moment of realization. Rand might have considered the fact that the Seanchan culture provides good to some people as a reminder that there is always the potential for improvement, that no person or way of life is so dark that it needs to be destroyed. He might have looked at the experience of the Tinkers and found hope that the darker aspects of Seanchan culture might be ameliorated and changed, or that the order and care shown for (most) citizens proves that the Seanchan leadership cares about its subjects and offers Rand a way towards a more successful negotiation. It could have reminded him that the world has balance, good as well as bad, while he has only been focusing on the bad. The building blocks are there. I just really wish they’d been executed more effectively. In the epilogue with Egwene we see her recognize that something important has happened over Dragonmount, even if she doesn’t know what, exactly, it is. Egwene has good instincts with these sorts of things, and it feels very symbolically relevant that she is bearing witness to Rand’s moment of revelation so close after her own. I also really loved the way she was having the hole in the wall of the Hall filled in with a window; it is a way of both remembering and moving forward, of memorializing the Tower’s failures and homaging its strength. Egwene is very good at understanding balance in this way, and I am very curious to see if Rand’s newfound understanding leads him to have a similar perspective. The image Egwene sees of the light on Dragonmount is very reminiscent of the vision Min saw over Rand’s head, of Dragonmount dark save for a single pinprick of light. I think it is fair to say that that vision has been fulfilled. It is also fair to say, especially given that it is quoted at the end of the epilogue, that the passage in the Seanchan Prophecies of the Dragon that (For)Tuon(a) remembered has also been fulfilled. the blind man shall stand/ upon his own grave. /There he shall see again,/and weep for what has been wrought. I predicted that the grave was Dragonmount, as it marks the place Lews Therin died, and Rand is described at the end of chapter 50 as opening his eyes “for the first time in a very long while,” which seems to fit the description of a blind man seeing again. True, he laughs instead of weeping, but I think he has remembered both now, as Cadsuane and the Wise Ones hoped he would. Finally, in regards to the voice of Lews Therin, which Rand knows he will never hear as a separate voice ever again, we are left with an unclear answer as to exactly what Lews Therin’s presence in Rand’s head was, whether a hallucination or bleed-through from the past or something else. I don’t think we are meant to have an exact answer, but for me, I think Lews Therin was a persona that Rand’s unconscious, taint-corrupted mind put on the knowledge he had in his mind from another life. Rand was at odds with himself, and so this manifested as being at odds with his previous self, the one responsible for the taint and for some of the PTSD that Rand carried via his memories of the past. Lews Therin was Rand, is Rand, and it is only how Rand interpreted his own thoughts and memories that was the madness. And with that, we conclude our read of The Gathering Storm. I’ll have an essay for you next week, and then we will take a brief hiatus before we start Towers of Midnight. In which, I assume, Mat will lead the rescue of Moiraine from the Tower of Ghenjei, Perrin will figure out wolf dreams, and Lan will not be left to die at the Gap. Plus some other stuff![end-mark] The post Reading The Wheel of Time: The Dragon Confronts Despair and Discovers Hope in <i>The Gathering Storm</i> (Part 29) appeared first on Reactor.