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Reading The Wheel of Time: Mat, Perrin, and Faile Contemplate Marriage and Duty in The Gathering Storm (Part 14)
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Reading The Wheel of Time: Mat, Perrin, and Faile Contemplate Marriage and Duty in The Gathering Storm (Part 14)
Sylas analyzes some introspective, transitional chapters this week.
By Sylas K Barrett
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Published on January 27, 2026
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Mat and the Band, along with their entourage of Aes Sedai and captured sul’dam, make their way down an ancient and broken road, one that must have been built before the Breaking, as Vanin tries to pin down their position on one of Master Roidelle’s maps. Mat complains about women to Talmanes, riding beside him, using a dice game as an increasingly intense and winding metaphor for women’s behavior. Talmanes responds blandly, and occasionally teasingly.
When Mat had first realized what his marriage to Tuon meant, he’d laughed, but it had been the laughter of incredulous pain. And men called him lucky. Well why couldn’t his luck have helped him avoid this fate! Bloody Prince of the Ravens? What did that mean?
Mat tries to turn his attention back to the needs of his men, considering how they will make it out of Altara safely and whether or not the Seanchan will send an army to pursue them. But this only leads him back to worrying about Tuon, and he finds himself asking Talmanes if he made the right decision, letting her go. Talmanes points out that Mat did promise to do just that, and there would have been trouble if he refused. He also tells Mat that he is being “downright husbandly,” and suggests Mat is mooning after his new wife.
When Vanin returns from scouting ahead, he is able to report their exact location and that there is a village a little way ahead. This report catches the attention of the Aes Sedai. Led by Joline, they begin to question Vanin about the village and how far they are from Caemlyn. The Aes Sedai are unsatisfied with the slow pace of the Band. Mat refuses to leave them, but tells the Aes Sedai they are more than welcome to go ahead. However, as discussion of what the sisters would need to complete the journey continues, Mat is frustrated and curt with the sisters’ desires for multiple mounts, food and money, and soldiers to accompany them. The resources he offers in return will not allow the Aes Sedai to travel much faster than the band already is, so they decline his offer.
Mat is both curt and rude during this conversation, and he notices the Aes Sedai, Teslyn in particular, looking disappointed in him. When they are gone, Talmanes remarks that Mat’s behavior was odd, and points out that what the Aes Sedai asked for would be worth giving, to be rid of them. Mat responds that he won’t be pushed around, and if Joline wants something from him she can ask politely. Talmanes, a little struck, observes that Mat really does miss Tuon, and that the worry has him on edge.
They discuss their poor supplies, and how difficult it is to find anything to eat even in the villages, these days; the village up ahead might not have enough extra to want to sell to the Band, no matter how much coin they are offered. Mat begins to form a plan to take himself and Talmanes into the village to enjoy themselves at a tavern, and resupply in the process—without paying at all, if his luck is with him.
If Egwene or Nynaeve had been there, they’d have boxed his ears and told him he was going to do no such thing. Tuon probably would have looked at him curiously and then said something that made him feel his shame right down into his boots.
Perrin awakens in the wolf dream to find himself hanging hundreds of feet in the air. Hopper flies past him and lands on the ground, urging him to jump down. Perrin is frightened, but after a moment convinces himself to imagine jumping down and finds him landing on his feet in the field below. He notices that the sky, usually changeable here in the Dream, is full of dark storm clouds and lightning. Hopper tells him that the Last Hunt is coming.
Hopper suggests they run together, then teases Perrin for choosing to run as he is, on two legs. Perrin tries to explain his fear of losing control, of giving in to the wolf. Hopper doesn’t understand, even when Perrin suggests that he doesn’t want to hunt with Hopper. The wolf urges him, still, to run, and to forget these confused thoughts, but Perrin is insistent. He asks Hopper how to use the Dream, and how to control it.
Men, Hopper thought, Sending the smells of dismissiveness and anger. Control. Always control.“I want you to teach me,” Perrin said, turning back to the wolf. “I want to master this place. Will you show me how?”
When Hopper continues to be uncooperative, Perrin declares that he will find other wolves to teach him. This prompts Hopper to question why he would look for wolves, if he doesn’t want to run. Perrin tries leaping great distances and succeeds, and yet somehow Hopper is always there in front of him—not leaping, but transferring from one place to another. Feeling other wolves, or something like other wolves, in the distance, Perrin pushes himself farther, while Hopper warns him that what he is doing is dangerous. He throws Perrin out of the Dream, instructing him to return when he isn’t “determined to poke [his] snout into a fireasp’s den.”
In the waking world, Faile is waiting for Perrin to settle down into a deeper sleep; unfortunately, he is quite restless. She reflects how good it has been to be back together, though she has noticed a sadness about him that wasn’t there before her kidnapping.
He had grown haunted while they were apart. She could understand that. She had a few ghosts of her own. One could not expect everything to remain the same, and she could tell that he still loved her—loved her fiercely. That was enough, and so she didn’t worry on it further.
Perrin wakes suddenly, pulling her closer into his arms, and declares abruptly that he didn’t sleep with Berelain. She assures him that she believes him, but Perrin worries when he smells jealousy on her. She explains to him, not for the first time, that a husband needs to know his wife is jealous so that he will know she cares for him.
Attempting to get Perrin to go back to sleep, Faile closes her eyes and thinks about Malden, and how it was there that she truly learned what it means to be a lady. There she was needed more desperately than she ever had before, and there was no room for games, or mistakes.
Being a noblewoman meant going first. It meant being beaten so others were not. It meant sacrificing, risking death, to protect those who depended upon you.
Perrin tells her that he doesn’t care what she had to do to survive. He tries to forgive her for potentially having had to sleep with her captors, and Faile, annoyed, tells him off for assuming she couldn’t take care of herself. Eventually Perrin drifts off, muttering about Rand’s hand and hunting. Once he starts snoring, Faile slips away.
Joined by Arrela and Lacile, and later by Alliandre, Faile travels into the wood, where they meet Bain and Chiad. Both women are gai’shain to Gaul now after he killed the Shaido they were gai’shain to before. They give Faile a bundle, inside which they each find an item belonging to an Aiel who protected them while they were captives.
“Four people are dead,” Faile said, mouth suddenly dry. She spoke formally, for that was the best way to keep the emotion from her voice. “They protected us, even cared for us. Though they were the enemy, we mourn them. Remember, though, that they were Aiel. For an Aiel, there are far worse ends than death in combat.”
But it is not so easy for Faile and Lacile. Lacile killed Jhoradin, a man she cared for, maybe loved. Faile killed Kinhuin, who was a friend, though she isn’t sure whether or not she distracted Rolan intentionally, so that Perrin could kill him. Faile knows there is nothing else they could have done, and now she understands a lesson her father once tried to teach her, about how you sometimes have to kill people you like simply because they are on the wrong side of the battlefield. But that only makes the situation more tragic.
They burn the items one by one. They discuss the honor these Brotherless and the one Maiden showed, and how they owe the dead toh that can never be repaid, but can be remembered. Each of them speaks about something beautiful or valuable about the person who died, and then they return to camp.
Perrin has awakened to find Faile gone. He is thinking over Hopper’s words to him in the dream, over his own determination to ride to the Last Battle and the decisions he has to make to get there.
Sometimes when I think about Mat I imagine everyone who knows him singing that song from the beginning of The Sound of Music. You know, the one the nuns sing about how Maria is fun but also a disaster and they call her a flibbertijibbet and a clown?
Yeah. That’s kind of how everyone feels about Mat, I think.
As annoying as he is in this chapter (shout out to the long-suffering Talmanes), I suppose I can’t blame Mat for being thrown off by his rather sudden marriage. After all, he didn’t know what he was starting when he accidentally performed his half of the marriage ceremony, and that left him in a position where he had no agency over his own fate. Even with his foreknowledge of what that fate would be, the passivity of his position—waiting for the axe to fall, so to speak—must have grated on Mat.
In this section, Mat brings up the fact that he doesn’t like fighting, that he never chooses to fight unless he has to. I imagine this doesn’t ring as truth to Talmanes, or anyone else Mat has said it to, because from the outside it does look like Mat is seeking these things out. We the readers have been inside Mat’s head and seen the way the Pattern has pushed him into positions to do what needs to be done, but it won’t necessarily look like his hand is being forced by anyone or anything other than his own desires.
Rand isn’t the only one who is more trapped by the Pattern than the average man. All three ta’veren are agents of the Wheel, and as much as they affect the weave around them, they are also beholden to the weave, which created them (or at least this power within them) for a specific purpose. Mat doesn’t look at things from the same cosmic perspective that Rand has taken, but when you really dig down into it, his complaints are very similar to Rand’s. He is aware that his own desires are not what controls the situations in which he finds himself, and that he is employing skills that aren’t even his through normal means. He is an agent of fate, both catalyst and prisoner of the weave, and I can’t blame him for itching under that strain.
Of course, Mat also has a strong moral streak; for all he keeps thinking that he is going to leave the next Aes Sedai or captured woman “weeping in her bonds,” we all know that’s just talk. Mat is a good person, and doesn’t turn his back on the right thing to do, even when he wishes he could take the easier and safer course. From Mat’s perspective, I think this also feels like his hand being forced—but in reality, he is making a choice based on his own moral compass and his strong sense of compassion for other people. Mat is a very kind person, when it comes right down to it—he just forgets this sometimes. Other people can forget it, too, since he also has a bit of a selfish streak, and because he is impulsive and mischievous.
It’s also clear that Mat is focusing on little things and little worries, like whether or not being a husband means he can’t go out drinking or gambling anymore (plenty of married men in this world do both, I am quite confident, even in the Two Rivers) because focusing on the big worries, like the fact that he may end up having duties and responsibilities to the Seanchan Empire, seems like too much to face right now. We even see it directly in the text, in the moment when Mat suddenly remembers that he is a nobleman now, then immediately tells himself not to think about it.
Talmanes is clearly aware of what’s going on with Mat and is content to humor him, for the most part, and occasionally tease him about it. But when Mat is ruder and more hostile towards the Aes Sedai than usual, Talmanes realizes that Mat is also genuinely concerned about Tuon, worried enough that it has exacerbated his usual rough tongue and animosity towards the Aes Sedai into something, as Talmanes puts it “outright rude” and “intentionally insulting.”
To be honest, I didn’t see Mat’s response to the Aes Sedai as being as rude or insulting as the Aes Sedai and Talmanes saw it to be. Mat is always rude to the Aes Sedai. And really, the Aes Sedai’s demands for so much in a time of limited resources, after Mat and his men rescued them and helped them escape, did seem rather unreasonable to me. Sure, Mat was rude, and it would have made him look better to have the discussion in a polite, measured manner. But the Aes Sedai were being rude first! And they think they should just get things from Mat, horses and men and resources, just because they’re Aes Sedai. I’m honestly kind of on Mat’s side here. Though I don’t think being rude to the Aes Sedai was a smart idea.
There’s not much more to say about chapter 20 really, since it’s a traveling chapter and not much happens. I’m curious about Mat’s plan to get supplies without paying, and I find myself wondering how he will manage it without taking advantage of a village that might not have much to spare.
I also noticed that Mat has picked up a little of Tuon’s tendency to look for signs and portents, despite his best efforts. This plays into the things I was talking about in last week’s post, the way a new culture and new beliefs can seem silly at first, but might come to make sense to us in time. Mat knows Tuon is smart and capable, and it is perhaps not so easy to dismiss her beliefs as a foolish, knowing that.
Also, his momentary reflection that he hasn’t seen sunlight in as long as he has seen Tuon and the impulse to connect the two was impossibly sweet.
Meanwhile, we have Perrin and Faile, who are much farther along in their relationship and doing a very different version of getting to know (or rather, re-getting to know) each other after their time apart.
I really respected Faile’s perspective in chapter 21. She is a very wise person, and her observations that it is good for people to change struck me as particularly important, especially since she and Perrin are the most established long-term relationship amongst our young heroes.
I am not a therapist or a relationship counselor, but I’ve always felt that one of the reasons relationships, especially long ones like marriages, eventually fall apart is because it can be difficult to understand and remember that people change. We will be very different people five years after our marriage started, never mind ten, or twenty, or thirty. Both people in the relationship will grow and change and evolve, and if we aren’t paying attention, we might not notice how different our partner has become. Or perhaps we have grown and changed in different directions, or aren’t compatible the way we once were.
Faile’s awareness of the necessity of change, and her approval of it, will serve her well as a partner, I think. She’ll be able to weather the experiences she and Perrin go through in life, as she is weathering this time apart and the trauma they both went through while she was a captive. Expecting change, and knowing that it is a good and necessary part of life, will help her appreciate her husband as he evolves and grows, and help her navigate the changes he may suffer due to his fated condition as a ta’veren who is intimately connected to the Dragon Reborn.
I’m so curious to see if Perrin will ever tell Faile about being a wolf brother. I feel like he has to, eventually—it is too big a piece of himself to hide from someone he is so close to. And if he does eventually share this part of himself with her, I have a feeling that Faile might be useful in helping him navigate it. Not because she understands wolves or wolf brothers, but because she understands people.
I’m having one of those moments, as I do from time to time, where I can’t remember what I’ve already covered of a particular subject or theme in The Wheel of Time and what I’ve only thought about, so I apologize if we’re retreading some old ground. But Perrin’s conversation with Hopper and his thoughts at the end of the chapter have me thinking, again, about how he misunderstands his own capacity for anger and violence.
The violence of man is different from that of nature. Wolves don’t make war, or kill out of hatred. They kill when it is necessary, for food or to protect themselves or their pack. Men are the ones who make war, who crave dominance over others or strike out because of hatred, or covetousness, or a love of violence for violence’s sake. And yet Perrin has decided that the part of him that desire violence—the part that would cut off a man’s hand to get information to save Faile, the part that is filled with rage at the thought of her being hurt, or the thought of other innocents suffering—is the wolf part, not the man.
He goes into the Wolf Dream with the desire to learn how to collar the wolf side of himself, to put it on a leash and direct it. He also wants to control Tel’aran’rhiod, to learn how to manipulate and use the Dream to his advantage. But Hopper is confused by these desires, either not understanding them at all (Perrin’s fear of his own impulses) or identifying what Perrin is talking about as a thing of men, not of wolves (when Perrin says he needs to learn how to control the Dream.)
It really feels like Perrin isn’t listening to Hopper at all in this scene, like he is talking at him, not to him, and is ignoring Hopper’s sendings in reply. And I’m curious how much of this is Perrin just being stuck in his own thoughts, and how much is an error of translation.
We are reminded periodically that the “words” we get from the wolves are translations Perrin is making out of the images and scents and feelings the wolves send each other in order to communicate. One assumes it works the same way in reverse, that Perrin’s words must be translated into image and feeling in order for the wolves to understand him. What would the words “I frighten myself when I lose control,” translate to, for Hopper. How would he understand what Perrin means? Is it even possible for a wolf to comprehend such an idea?
And on the other side, we have Perrin’s desire to be taught about the Dream World. Hopper is dismissive of the idea of controlling it, but his offer to run with Perrin might very well be an offer to show Perrin the Dream and how to navigate it. What could Perrin learn from the wolf simply by traversing Tel’aran’rhiod with him? What could Perrin learn about understanding himself, and the wolf side of himself, if he were willing to explore it, here in the Dream, with the wolf that gave his life to protect Perrin’s?
I have a lot of empathy for Perrin’s predicament. I, too, am someone who spent a lot of my life not trusting my own emotions. I felt like they needed to be controlled, and that control mostly meant suppression. It’s only recently that I’ve come to understand that suppressing your emotions, trying to make them small or put them in a box, actually makes you less able to handle them, less aware of when they are controlling you. Feeling and understanding your emotions is actually where it’s at.
But Perrin is terrified of this part of himself, is terrified of the emotions he associates with violence, like anger, fear, and selfishness. The more he tries to control them, to put them on a leash, the less understanding he has of his own nature. He may have thrown the axe away, and he may be aware of the need to make better choices, but I don’t think he understands, really, how to make those choices—how to let his emotions inform him without overwhelming him, how to mitigate his emotional overwhelm with good sense.
You know, all the things Faile appears to be very good at.
We see this throughout the series, but it’s particularly evident in the funeral scene, where Faile allows herself to feel the grief and regret and even guilt that she feels over the death of their Aiel protectors, and particularly over Rolan. She acknowledges her part in the deaths, and allows herself to feel regret while also acknowledging the fact that what happened really was unavoidable. She grieves, but she also lets go, and what’s more, she helps the other women do the same. She acknowledges their losses and their grief, never telling them not to feel (the way she forebears pointing out to Lacile that she would never have gone with Jhoradin even if things had been different is a particularly clear example of this) but also makes a point of reminding them of the Aiel cultural beliefs around death, and particularly death in combat.
This is why taking a moment to have the little ceremony is so important. There is a moment in the text in which we learn that Bain and Chiad told Faile that there was no dishonor in leaving the bodies behind, which is good because it means that the women don’t have to carry any cultural shame along with the toh they owe to their protectors. But funerals aren’t for the dead, who aren’t there anymore to appreciate them. Funerals are about the living. They are there to give an opportunity to mourn, to experience and even display emotion, to allow it freely in our bodies and our outward expressions. This is how we find closure and peace on the other side of those emotions, even if those emotions also stay with us for a long time, or even for the rest of our lives.
Faile is a good leader, even more so after her experience in Malden. She reflects in this section about the sacrifices required of a good leader, about how being a lady means going first, accepting suffering to spare others from that suffering. Reading it, I found myself wondering if Faile and Tuon would get along—not in every way, certainly, but in this way. Tuon might see in Faile someone who understands ruling the way she does, who is aware of, and capable of, making sacrifices for the good of her people and not seeing herself as above them, but rather as responsible for them.
It’s an interesting distinction to make, and one that Faile reflects on indirectly when she considers how she used to bully people to get her way. It’s also an interesting distinction for me to consider, given my personal dislike of the hierarchical nature of the Seanchan system. None of my other observations or objections to Seanchan culture are made relevant by this consideration, but if Tuon thinks of herself as being deserving of particular honors and respect because of the service she performs in her role as soon-to-be Empress, that does matter a lot, when it comes to understanding her morality as a person.
Next week we will be covering chapters 22 and 23 of The Gathering Storm. I can’t preview what is going to happen for you, however, because I haven’t read them yet! But I do know Semirhage is up to no good. Which probably goes without saying.
A final thought:
There is an exchange between Perrin and Hopper in the Dream, in which Hopper tells Perrin that they will hunt together in the Last Hunt unless “Shadowkiller falls to the storm,” in which case they will all sleep forever. I assume that Shadowkiller is Rand, as the storm is clearly the Dark One and his forces (aka the Shadow), and what Hopper is calling sleeping forever is some kind of non-existence, one that will occur if the Dark One wins and destroys creation. It’s interesting to me that the wolves have a concept of this, given how much I have mused upon the idea that the Forsaken think they’ll get to rule the world once the Dark One is in control, when I think it’s much more likely that the Dark One will destroy everyone and everything.
Souls exists outside of the world—they can be touched and controlled by the Dark One, and ostensibly by the Creator as well. They can be spun back into the Pattern, but does that mean that they can also exist somewhere outside the Pattern? If the Dark One was triumphant and did destroy the Pattern, would the souls of the world cease to exist? Or would the exist somewhere in a different state than life?
When Hopper uses the word “sleep” or rather, sends an image that Perrin interprets as “sleep,” does he mean non-existence or something else? And as a wolf existing in Tel’aran’rhiod, does he know something that is true? Or is this merely a belief, like a religion for wolves?
I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, but it is interesting to contemplate.
Have a great week friends, and I hope those who experienced a lot of snow these past few days are staying safe and warm.[end-mark]
The post Reading The Wheel of Time: Mat, Perrin, and Faile Contemplate Marriage and Duty in <i>The Gathering Storm</i> (Part 14) appeared first on Reactor.
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