What was Moiraine's plan if the dragon was a woman?

[king of nowhere]

Ok, rand is revealed as the dragon, moiraine brings him to the eye, rand asks what he's supposed to do, moiraine hands him a male sa'angreal. basically says, with this you'll be super strong, point it to the DO and shoot

 

but what if the dragon had turned out to be egwene? moiraine certainly does not have a female sa'angreal, or she would have used it in battle. so she would have told... take your puny untrained power, point it to the DO and shoot? what would moiraine have done with a female dragon?

[Chivalry]

Good question. They need to tighten up the writing for Season 2.

 

They need to assign a person to just think through how any changes might affect the logic of the story going forward. That job probably means more than just consulting as the resident book expert, although this person will have to be very familiar with the books.

[Raal Gurniss]

On 1/19/2022 at 4:32 PM, king of nowhere said:

Ok, rand is revealed as the dragon, moiraine brings him to the eye, rand asks what he's supposed to do, moiraine hands him a male sa'angreal. basically says, with this you'll be super strong, point it to the DO and shoot

 

but what if the dragon had turned out to be egwene? moiraine certainly does not have a female sa'angreal, or she would have used it in battle. so she would have told... take your puny untrained power, point it to the DO and shoot? what would moiraine have done with a female dragon?

Still the chance that Egwene or Nynaeve is the Dragon that Rand is just a distraction puppet.

 

Else why would the show even have brought it up?

 

Although the show would have ended episode one as the female Dragon  would have been all powerful from the start and immediately defeated the Dark One.

Edited January 25, 2022 by Raal Gurniss

[Guest Cranglevoid]

Moiraine would have been shielded, and Egwene, sensing her predicament, would've held her tight while letting out a heart-wrenching: "Nooooooooo!".

 

A bright, blinding light would emmanate from her, searing the DO to a crisp and sealing him away forever, for such is the power of humility, bravery, and strength.

 

But what is this? Oh no! While they were inside, the foul, corrupting power of male arrogance has swept through the land, turning half of its inhabitants into vile trollocs, and the other half into angelic, pure beings of light and hope.

 

The pure Teardrops of Tar-Valon must now rid the world of the pestulent Dragonfangs, who will stop at nothing to turn the world into a wasteland with their toxic masculinity and fart jokes that are totally not funny.

Edited January 25, 2022 by Cranglevoid

[WhiteVeils]

Linking with her. And she may have a female angreal.  But clearly she believes in the power of you'll have it if you need it.  On the other hand, I don't know if we need to know this.  It would have been nice, but I don't think I've seen many tv shows explain the backup plans as well as the main plan just to satisfy the need for filling every possible hole.

[ilovezam]

4 hours ago, Cranglevoid said:

Moiraine would have been shielded, and Egwene, sensing her predicament, would've held her tight while letting out a heart-wrenching: "Nooooooooo!".

 

A bright, blinding light would emmanate from her, searing the DO to a crisp and sealing him away forever, for such is the power of humility, bravery, and strength.

 

But what is this? Oh no! While they were inside, the foul, corrupting power of male arrogance has swept through the land, turning half of its inhabitants into vile trollocs, and the other half into angelic, pure beings of light and hope.

 

The pure Teardrops of Tar-Valon must now rid the world of the pestulent Dragonfangs, who will stop at nothing to turn the world into a wasteland with their toxic masculinity and fart jokes that are totally not funny.

You, good sir, have a way with words. ???

[ilovezam]

20 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

But clearly she believes in the power of you'll have it if you need it.

Then why bother getting a sa'angreal for Rand?

[WhiteVeils]

Because she couldn't teach him? Honestly the easiest explanation is that this sangreal works for men and women. Which, I know, if they said that world purists would scream. Which is why they didn't explain.  So <shrug> they wanted their pool of saidin. This was it.

Edited January 25, 2022 by WhiteVeils

[ilovezam]

6 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

Because she couldn't teach him?

I'm specifically talking about your "power of you'll have it if you need it". That doesn't sound like something she could teach anybody.

[king of nowhere]

1 hour ago, ilovezam said:

Then why bother getting a sa'angreal for Rand?

the simplest explanation there is that moiraine had access to a male sa'angreal. perhaps it was just another object in the storeroom and nobody else knew what it was. perhaps she could sneak it out with siuan complicity.

female sa'angreal, on the other hand, are very coveted by the aes sedai, and moiraine could not have snuck one out of the tower.

 

It's certainly not a matter of "bothering to get one". moiraine would have certainly gotten a female angreal for her if she could have gotten her hands on one.

[ilovezam]

6 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

the simplest explanation there is that moiraine had access to a male sa'angreal. perhaps it was just another object in the storeroom and nobody else knew what it was. perhaps she could sneak it out with siuan complicity.

female sa'angreal, on the other hand, are very coveted by the aes sedai, and moiraine could not have snuck one out of the tower.

 

It's certainly not a matter of "bothering to get one". moiraine would have certainly gotten a female angreal for her if she could have gotten her hands on one.

Yeah but then it's back to thinking that the plan would have been dead in the water if the Dragon Reborn was female - if it took a hundred-fold multiplier for Rand to do what he did, no amount of linking could have reasonably achieved that.

[ines]

that's a very good point... but I'm sure there should have been some kind of solution in that case. We never knew what was her plan until Rand asked her directly, we all know she is a very resourceful character. Of course the dragon reborn wasn't meant to be female, so I don't think the tv series writers really thought about it, but probably she would have some kind of female sa'angreal, and also maybe she would help her channeling? since she was so interested helping Egwene from the beginning, probably she didn't have any female sa'angreal? Does it make sense? maybe not, but I think it is very hard to find a proper answer because writers didn't try to give one to us...

[Skipp]

Remember that the original plan was only to get the DR to TV.  The entire situation at the Eye, in both the show and the book, was not planned for.  They were just throwing the DR/Ta'vern at the wall and hoping it would stick.

 

They certainly didn't voice concern that if the DR had been female and they sent her to the eye that the female half of the OP would also be tainted.

 

If I recall in AMoL

Spoiler

Egwene asks Rand to not break the seals and just try and Seal the DO again.  Rand repsonds that would corrupt the Male half of the power again.  Which echos nicely with Moiraine asking Rand to just Seal him away for another 3000 years in the show.

 

[SingleMort]

On 1/19/2022 at 4:32 PM, king of nowhere said:

Ok, rand is revealed as the dragon, moiraine brings him to the eye, rand asks what he's supposed to do, moiraine hands him a male sa'angreal. basically says, with this you'll be super strong, point it to the DO and shoot

 

but what if the dragon had turned out to be egwene? moiraine certainly does not have a female sa'angreal, or she would have used it in battle. so she would have told... take your puny untrained power, point it to the DO and shoot? what would moiraine have done with a female dragon?

Lol I don't think they thought that far ahead. I mean even worse what if Mat was the Dragon, they literally just left him behind, so they'd never even know for sure. In fact Moiraine never even came close to deducing who was the Dragon. If Rand hadn't told her she'd likely have never found out, which is the crux of the problem for the "who is the Dragon" mystery. They created a mystery that the audience couldn't follow along with and that the "detective" character never solves. If the writers wanted to follow through on this they needed to have Moiraine figure it out and convince Rand of the truth. Otherwise it's like if you have a Sherlock Holmes story where the antagonist spontaneously confesses their guilt because they've got bored of waiting for Sherlock to figure it out himself

Edited January 26, 2022 by SingleMort

[Andra]

8 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

the simplest explanation there is that moiraine had access to a male sa'angreal. perhaps it was just another object in the storeroom and nobody else knew what it was. perhaps she could sneak it out with siuan complicity.

female sa'angreal, on the other hand, are very coveted by the aes sedai, and moiraine could not have snuck one out of the tower.

 

It's certainly not a matter of "bothering to get one". moiraine would have certainly gotten a female angreal for her if she could have gotten her hands on one.

 

I would say that the simplest explanation is that in Rafeworld there's no such thing as male or female sa'angreals.  There really has been no clear messaging in the show that they use separate powers and would therefore also use different "amplifiers."

 

Even the explanations for why men can't safely channel don't actually say it's because they draw from a different Source.

 

So Moiraine brought something that either one could use, regardless of who it ended up being.

[WhiteVeils]

Or there are male and female and, potentially, both.  It's not breaking anything to say it's possible in this version of the wheel.

[Skipp]

11 minutes ago, Andra said:

 

I would say that the simplest explanation is that in Rafeworld there's no such thing as male or female sa'angreals.  There really has been no clear messaging in the show that they use separate powers and would therefore also use different "amplifiers."

 

Even the explanations for why men can't safely channel don't actually say it's because they draw from a different Source.

 

So Moiraine brought something that either one could use, regardless of who it ended up being.

Moiraine said that Male channelers poured all of their strength to make that sa'angreal.  That leads me to believe there is a difference.  But no, we don't have definitive proof yet.

[Andra]

3 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

Or there are male and female and, potentially, both.  It's not breaking anything to say it's possible in this version of the wheel.

If I remember correctly, there was speculation in the books that there could be items of Power that both men and women could use.  Though that might have only been referring to ter'angreal.

The Bowl of Winds for example, used both saidar and saidin.  And while the claim that it needed men channeling to work was invented by Nynaeve and Elayne, it's certainly possible that it would have worked better with them than it actually did without them.

 

But again, that was a ter'angreal.  Not an angreal or sa'angreal.

[Andra]

2 minutes ago, Skipp said:

Moiraine said that Male channelers poured all of their strength to make that sa'angreal.  That leads me to believe there is a difference.  But no, we don't have definitive proof yet.

True, there have been inklings that could be explained by them tapping two separate powers.  But there have also been inklings that they aren't.

[Skipp]

5 minutes ago, Andra said:

If I remember correctly, there was speculation in the books that there could be items of Power that both men and women could use.  Though that might have only been referring to ter'angreal.

The Bowl of Winds for example, used both saidar and saidin.  And while the claim that it needed men channeling to work was invented by Nynaeve and Elayne, it's certainly possible that it would have worked better with them than it actually did without them.

 

But again, that was a ter'angreal.  Not an angreal or sa'angreal.

This is an interesting topic.  If the bowl of Winds can't be used by men does that mean only women regulated the weather in the AoL?  Were there bowls that only men could use?  Possibly the bowls were designed to be used only in a circle which would then require women to be present.

 

That is slightly contrary to the idea that many bowls were suppose to be used in to control the weather on a wider basis and so shouldn't have needed such a large circle of channelers.

 

Did the girls just luck out and find a bowl that could be used by women?

Edited January 25, 2022 by Skipp

[VooDooNut]

3 minutes ago, Skipp said:

This is an interesting topic.  If the bowl of Winds can't be used by men does that mean only women regulated the weather in the AoL?  Were there bowls that only men could use?  Possibly the bowls were designed to be used only in a circle which would then require women to be present.

 

That is slightly contrary to the idea that many bowls were suppose to be used in to control the weather on a wider basis and so shouldn't have needed such a large circle of channelers.

 

Did the girls just luck out and find a bowl that could be used by women?

On my last read, the impression I got was that TBOTW used both Saidin and Saidar, but, at a minimum, required a circle of women to operate. It would have performed better and caused less after effects if both men and women had been in the circle.

[Andra]

Just now, Skipp said:

This is an interesting topic.  If the bowl of Winds can't be used by men does that mean only women regulated the weather in the AoL?  Were there bowls that only men could use?  Possibly the bowls were designed to be used only in a circle which would then require women to be present.

 

That is slightly contrary to the idea that many bowls were suppose to be used in to control the weather on a wider basis.

 

Did the girls just luck out and find a bowl that could be used by women?

I think it's more likely that the Bowl was originally designed to be *usable* by either just men or just women, but that it worked best when used by both in a circle.  Because it utilized both powers, but didn't seem to regulate the changes it caused as well as it should have.  Because it didn't have anyone to control half of what it was doing.

 

Also, while Elayne and Nynaeve believed they were making up the need for men to channel, it may have actually been true.  Since they found it by using "need" in TAR, and part of that need was to find something to convince Salidar to ally with Rand.  And needing his help to use it properly would definitely fit that.

[Spiritweaver1]

12 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

Linking with her. And she may have a female angreal.  But clearly she believes in the power of you'll have it if you need it.  On the other hand, I don't know if we need to know this.  It would have been nice, but I don't think I've seen many tv shows explain the backup plans as well as the main plan just to satisfy the need for filling every possible hole.

Are you a show ferret?  Moraine can't know whether any object is a male sa' angreal.  She can't touch or sense saidin.  It would just be a funny fat man  statue to her.   The show has done a terrible job explaining anything to do with the magic system.   I personally believe they aren't going to differentiate between saidin and saidar.  The exposition on the subject thus far makes me believe that.

[Spiritweaver1]

3 hours ago, Andra said:

 

I would say that the simplest explanation is that in Rafeworld there's no such thing as male or female sa'angreals.  There really has been no clear messaging in the show that they use separate powers and would therefore also use different "amplifiers."

 

Even the explanations for why men can't safely channel don't actually say it's because they draw from a different Source.

 

So Moiraine brought something that either one could use, regardless of who it ended up being.

I support this thesis 100 percent.  Thats how I sussed it out as mentioned above.   However if they don't they are going to have to do a better job than they have of explaining why the male half of the source is tainted and how it is gonna get fixed.    This story is not a police procedural. 

[ilovezam]

2 hours ago, Spiritweaver1 said:

Even the explanations for why men can't safely channel don't actually say it's because they draw from a different Source.

Yeah, it's weird because they want to talk about the differences between male and female channeling, but refuse to use the fact that the True Source is split into two halves, and then they also vaguely backtrack on that every time. Moiraine straight up suggests that she did not want to teach Rand to channel because he would go mad faster.