Talent for Seeing Ta'veren

[The Lost One]

Thanks!  That makes sense now.  You guys (Luckers and RAW) just know too much....that is a good thing. 

[Luckers]

No it's not. We're silly nerds. :)

 

Robert, that was my first impression too, but my problem is the way Siuan speaks about her ability.

 

I saw the boy at the Welcome, you know. It's one of my talents, seeing ta'veren.

 

The familiarity does not speak with Siuan connecting the glow and the sense of importance to a theoretical Talent she read of as an novice. It speaks of her having already known of the talent.

 

We know that there is a way for Aes Sedai to recreate the effects of ta'veren, though infinitely more limited. It may be that this is how Siuan learn't of her ability--or it may just be that in the past twenty years she encountered some weake ta'veren that the wheel spat out to achieve some end, but either way there is too much prior knowledge at work there.

 

 

[Seriodor]

There has to be more Ta'veren in modern WoT than Rand, Mat, and Perrin. Theres just to much coincedence for there not to be. Like maybe Domon, first he meets Rand, Mat, and Thom outsideof Shadar Logoth, then he meets the Egwene and Nynaeve at Falme. Then again at Salidar, then Mat again. Either all those peopel are minor Ta'veren or he is.

[Lune]

NS actually does sort of allude to the existence of other Ta'veren (ie the blacksmith and that other guy who died in a fire). The BA killed most of them.

[Seriodor]

Sorry I'm not familiar with those abbreviation, what does NS mean, and DA.

[Vambram]

NS is the abbreviation for the book, "New Spring" and I think you mistyped by asking about DA. Lune mentioned the BA which refers to the Black Ajah. :)

[Seriodor]

Thanks Vambram. I'll have to reread new spring, to find those.

[drovja]

I got the idea in NS that the lucky ones weren't necessarily ta'veren, but were potentially channelers.  Something about how men who channeled unconciously often seemed incredibly lucky or rose to prominance in a very short time.

[Luckers]

There has to be more Ta'veren in modern WoT than Rand, Mat, and Perrin. Theres just to much coincedence for there not to be. Like maybe Domon, first he meets Rand, Mat, and Thom outsideof Shadar Logoth, then he meets the Egwene and Nynaeve at Falme. Then again at Salidar, then Mat again. Either all those peopel are minor Ta'veren or he is.

 

As much as its against my argument, the coincidence of all three lads becoming ta'veren is not really coincidence... it wasn't a random gene that all three just happened to have, they became ta'veren at the need of the pattern.

[Seriodor]

I didnt mean it like that Luckers. I meant there is too much coincidence, in WoT, for them to be the only Ta'veren.

[RobertAlexWillis]

Luckers ... I agree that it is very likely that Siuan had seen a ta'veren before she met Rand (even if it was only once) and that her way of speaking of the Talent says that she was personally, as well as intellectually, familiar with it.

 

 

I'm not sure how that contradicts anything I said though .... ???

[Luckers]

Maybe I misunderstood you. I thought you were suggesting that upon seeing Rand, and feeling the sensation of the expectation of his importance that Logain described, she intellectually connected it with knowledge she had learnt from books about the nature of ta'veren and then assumed that she had the talent for seeing ta'veren.

 

If that was not the case, then i think we may be arguing the same thing. I suggest merely that ta'veren must occur with a 'relative' degree of frequency (meaning no more than MAYBE one a generation or so). I never meant to imply that Siuan had no previous intellectual familiarity with the concept of ta'veren and the Talent of seeing them.

 

[RobertAlexWillis]

Maybe I misunderstood you. I thought you were suggesting that upon seeing Rand, and feeling the sensation of the expectation of his importance that Logain described, she intellectually connected it with knowledge she had learnt from books about the nature of ta'veren and then assumed that she had the talent for seeing ta'veren.

 

No, no, I agree with your assertion that the way Siuan speaks of it as "one of her Talents" bespeaks previous personal familiarity.  She's almost certainly seen either a weak ta'veren before or an Aes Sedai mimicing it with the Power, probably the first.

 

I suggest merely that ta'veren must occur with a 'relative' degree of frequency (meaning no more than MAYBE one a generation or so).

 

I would actually argue that its probably even more frequent than that.  However, I doubt that people stay ta'veren for as long as Rand, Mat, Perrin, Hawkwing, Mabriam en Shareed, etc.  I would guess that the duration of ta'veren-hood for the famous examples is as remarkable as the strength of their ta'veren-ness.  The Pattern probably makes a large number of minute adjestments ("Large" in this case being relative to the assumption of once a generation ... I would guess as many as 10-15, for short periods of time.  Of course, 10-15 people is a very small proportion of the world's population.)

 

Additionally, as Amyrlin, Siuan would likely be in contact with influential people, her chances of meeting a ta'veren (even a very temporary one) go way up.

[Luckers]

I agree, i was just trying to phrase myself so people didn't jump on me and go "Oh, so everyone's a ta'veren now, eh? Go sit in the corner Luckers."

 

I don't like the corner. It's cold there, and that smelly guy keeps telling me I'm 'real puuurty'.

[RobertAlexWillis]

Its OK.  Nobody puts me in the corner.

 

In fact ... frowning is about all I have to do to get people to leave me alone completely ...

 

I wonder if that's bad ...

[RobertAlexWillis]

On topic though, I've wondered if someone like Dulain (the minor Murandian lord who Siuan thought could unify Murandy in 996 NE, referenced in TFoH ch 28) might be an example of a very short-duration ta'veren.  It would be one explanation for why Siuan felt he was important enough to make Gareth Bryne back off personally (another, of course, being the fact that she is ... ah ... strong willed, to put it politely).

 

And we should remember that ta'veren can have bad twistings of chance as well as good.  Dulain met an unlikely end at the end of an Andoran farmer's arrow.  Perhaps the correction that the Pattern needed a ta'veren for was to ensure that Murandy wouldn't unite.

 

That also may be why we don't see many of the ta'veren the Pattern throws out.  Its entirely possible that the Pattern uses ta'veren chance twisting to make corrections by removing people ... so they would be ta'veren, right up until they died ... possibly for no more than a few weeks, days, or even moments.

[Luckers]

I don't think ta'veren are a perfect machinism. I believe it more than possible that many die before achieving the nessasary results. After all, they are ruled by, at best, a system of 'fuzzy logic'. Reading into their success or failure may be a task in futility.

 

I do like the idea about Dulain though. It makes a lot of sense.

 

And, to be honest, no one really puts me in the corner. I scare the smelly guy, and i think they want him calm.

[The Lost One]

I thought of this over the weekend and I am just adding it as an additional possible way some know they can see ta'veren.

 

The "seeing ta'veren ability" could have shown up in some of their (Aes Sedai) tests to become accepted. 

 

Just a thought that I did not think of before. 

[Cadsuane]

Its OK.  Nobody puts me in the corner.

 

Does this mean we should call you Baby? ^_^

[Luckers]

I wouldn't if I were you, Caddy. He might spit the dummy.

 

 

Ba-bum chish!

[RobertAlexWillis]

That's it Luckers.

 

TO THE NAUGHTY STOOL!

 

Oh, and you can call me Baby anytime, Legs.  ;)

[Cadsuane]

 

;D  ;)

[TheRedSon]

OK, I won't disagree that there haven't been other ta'veren.  I'm just curious why we've never seen one named.  Even someone that was only ta'veren for a short time should have had a profound influence on world events.  At the very least the more recent ones would be remembered, and someone with the talent of seeing them should have mentioned it (or thought it in a POV).  

 

Now I'm curious whether ta'veren happen very frequently and people don't know about it because the talent for seeing it is rare and the duration of ta'verenness is usually very short (maybe a day or an hour).  Perhaps the pattern spins out minor ta'veren all the time to correct or influence events even on a small level...

 

So what exactly is the principle goal of ta'veren from the wheel's perspective?  It seems to me one of the major benefits of a ta'veren is the joining of threads together.  On a grand scale the very presence of one of the Two Rivers boys can cause an alliance between former enemies.  Their presence can also cause a wedding though.  Maybe the pattern creates ta'veren all the time to join two people it needs to wed or a group of wanderers it needs to form a new village.  In that case Dulain could have been ta'veren for the duration it took to unite certain elements in Murandy (either to ensure no further unification took place in Murady through Dulain's defeat or perhaps Dulain simply failed the Pattern) or the AS that sent the royal Andorans off on their quests could have briefly been ta'veren to join Tigraine and Janduin.  

 

"Match Maker" Yenta the (false) ta'veren.  I guess Tevia would be the real ta'veren in that story...

[Cadsuane]

I'm just curious why we've never seen one named.  Even someone that was only ta'veren for a short time should have had a profound influence on world events.

 

I don't think that is true. As you say later in your post, perhaps all they do as ta'veren is cause a wedding. That is a very sort of normal event to happen, so no one would think twice of it, or at least not enough to go "oh my goodness, that person must have been ta'veren!" I think it's quite possible there were other ta'veren that simply caused things to happen that were NOT immediately, obviously, tremendously important, and therefore noticeable in the way you seem to think all ta'veren-caused events must be. If they were always that, then people in Randland (not necessarily the reader) WOULD know about all of them. 

 

A butterfly flaps its wings, causing a breath of air to move and make a woman sneeze. The man sitting next to her at the bus stop says bless you, and starts a conversation he would not otherwise have started. They get married and give birth to... Abraham Lincoln. We wouldn't have any idea that the butterfly was important, even though it set start to an important chain of events. It's possible other ta'veren have had roles more like the butterfly than the ta'veren we hear about.

[TheRedSon]

I am aware that the second paragraph contradicts the first one...  You are bearing witness to my thought process.  Perhaps I should apologize. 

 

However, these minor ta'veren (if they exist) are probably never noticed.  In the first comment I was referring to more influential ta'veren.  It stands to reason that if there are ta'veren for the sole purpose of causing something as mundane as you and I to have a conversation on the internet and there are three absolutely world shaking ta'veren in our story and at least one other still widely known in the histories that there would also be medium ta'veren that would have been both ta'veren long enough to have been noticed and strong enough to have caused important events.  Those are the ones we've never seen mention of.  There ought to at least be a few in living memory of some AS at least.