Did RJ play it too safe with Verin, and was her big reveal a wasted moment?

[Scarloc99]

So Verin has made her appearance in the TV show and it has got me thinking about her arc in the book, and I feel that RJ wasted a great moment there by being too secretive. 

In the TV show Verin has a sister, and my assumption is that we as the audience are going to see that Verin is clearly black Ajah far earlier, Possibly involving her killing her own sister. TO my mind, in order to get the influence and information she did amongst the darkfriends Verin had to do some very very very nasty things to innocent people to prove herself. We know that Aes Sedai do not automatically sit at the head of the darkfriend council, and we also know that the Forsaken (who verin has interacted with directly) don't just talk to anyone. 

But in the books the verin arc is much softer, we see hints of her using compulsion to make the tower Aes Sedai pledge to Rand far quicker, shortening there lives in the process but we dont see her do anything that fo rme would mark her out as a clear dark friend of high standing that she would have to be to have the names of every black ajah member and other darkfriends in society. 

And then we come to the big reveal, in some ways it is brilliantly done, but, told as it is in the backdrop of the reader having tension about Egwenes future and the confirmation and for some reveal that she is of the black, followed very quickly by her explaining the truth, it is all thrust upon the reader really quickly. Nothing is allowed to breathe or develop slowly. 

So should RJ have made her more obviously black, and given far clearer hints that she had the ability to do evil things to make the final reveal mean even more, and, should BS have seperated out her moment from the reader worrying if Egwene was about to be punished. The fact we get a POV from verin means we could have seen her doing more directly and it would not have broken the way RJ told the story. 

[wotfan4472]

If RJ had lived, Verin would have been given a longer arc to show all of that.

 

She is easily the equivalent of Snape if the story is done well enough, except her motivation is studying them.

[Samt]

3 hours ago, wotfan4472 said:

If RJ had lived, Verin would have been given a longer arc to show all of that.

 

She is easily the equivalent of Snape if the story is done well enough, except her motivation is studying them.

I actually think Verin is much better done than Snape.  Reading the HP books as they came out, I always assumed Snape was good (even after he kills Dumbledore).  For me, the reveal was that he actually isn't good.  He's just on the side of the good guys because he has a weird obsession with Lilly.  

 

I don't think that Verin needed a longer arc.  I didn't suspect her as Black Ajah, but it makes sense in retrospect.  

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

Verin was always suspicious, and because of that was always such an ambivalent character. It was a shame that she did not feature more, but I suppose it would become grating to have "ooo, I'm so ambiguous and secretive" rammed down our throats too much. 

 

Off the top of my head, there is where we meet her and she guesses that Rand is the DR, and Moraine wonders if she'll have to kill her (or such like). Then there is the ter'angreal for dreamwalking and her mysterious decision to not let Egwene see Corinne's notes on it, doubled down by the fact that it nearly kills Egwene in her Accepted test. She also keeps popping off without warning to turn up somewhere very important for the plot. Then she tells Perrin not to trust Aes Sedai or herself. She always seemed a little to knowing, which was probably better in small doses.

 

Definitely made me hungry to know what her deal was, without making me feel that she was an obstruction to the plot. The reveal did seem a little rushed, especially with the apparent complete misjudgment with Mat and his letter, but given the oaths, I suppose it was difficult to spin it out - if she had left a corpse in her rooms in Caemlyn for example, would that not have counted as letting people know? I suppose she could have been surprised in the act of something, but that could have eroded the reader's good will for her, and made her less ambiguous. 

 

" Oh. the oath rod is missing, I'll just kill myself then" seems more like a last minute realisation that the oath rod could have been used like that rather than an actual plot mechanic, and for me certainly detracted from the scene, and the fact that Egwene can dispose of the body without comment seems a little contrived when she is essentially under close arrest at the time.

 

For me she was a great character that really added depth to the idea that you did not know everything that was going on and the feeling like there were still so many possibilities of how things might turn out, without being willfully confusing or secretive. Like in the TDR where suspense is maintained by nearly never seeing anything from Rand's perspective, and when you do, he appears to be half hallucinating with a very tenuous grip on reality, so what he is doing or thinking is anyone's guess. And then when he is in Tear, is completely coherent again. 

[wotfan4472]

I think thought that Verin was better than Snape myself, even though I am coloured by the film one. I could not stand the book version in the few books I read.

 

He reminded me of too many awful teachers I knew and personally interacted with, and yes, they were worse than Umbridge.

[Sabio]

I never thought it was a big reveal since there were hints throughout the series Starting in Book 2) that Verin could be BA.  She reminded me a lot of Lanfear in that you got the feeling throughout the series that Verin was playing her own game and she wasn't concerned if some folks died because of it.