Aes Sedai were Convicted Felons

[CrazyMike]

Why does everybody refer to the Aes Sedai as being the Women who were in charge before and during the Breaking,,, they were not,,, they were convicted felons sentenced to live in Bondage under the OAT RODS as punishment for their crimes ,,, they evolved into a structure for law and order after the breaking but before the Breaking they were women , and maybe also men,  who had been convicted of crimes and there punishment was to do penence under the yoke of the Oath Rods ,,, doing community service for life so to speak ...

[The Dragon Reborn]

No they were plain old normal Aes Sedai. The Aes Sedai during the AoL were not bound with the Oath Rod, only criminal Aes Sedai who did not want to be severed from the True Source were bound with the Oath Rod. However after the breaking, nobody trusted Aes Sedai anymore. Aes Sedai were blamed for the Breaking (As both Men and Women channelers were considered Aes Sedai). The only way post-Breaking Aes Sedai could gain any credibility was by using the 3 Oaths to gain people's trust again.

[Darth_Andrea]

No they were plain old normal Aes Sedai. The Aes Sedai during the AoL were not bound with the Oath Rod, only criminal Aes Sedai who did not want to be severed from the True Source were bound with the Oath Rod. However after the breaking, nobody trusted Aes Sedai anymore. Aes Sedai were blamed for the Breaking (As both Men and Women channelers were considered Aes Sedai). The only way post-Breaking Aes Sedai could gain any credibility was by using the 3 Oaths to gain people's trust again.

 

Thats not completly accurate, The Tower didn't instisute the use of the Oath Rod till after the war of the hundred years and the fall of Hawkwing's empire.

 

[glow=green,1,500]Darth_Andrea[/glow]

 

 

 

 

[TurboZ]

Why does everybody refer to the Aes Sedai as being the Women who were in charge before and during the Breaking,,, they were not,,, they were convicted felons sentenced to live in Bondage under the OAT RODS as punishment for their crimes ,,, they evolved into a structure for law and order after the breaking but before the Breaking they were women , and maybe also men,  who had been convicted of crimes and there punishment was to do penence under the yoke of the Oath Rods ,,, doing community service for life so to speak ...

 

Pics or it didn't happen.

[Ahaz Flagg]

Why does everybody refer to the Aes Sedai as being the Women who were in charge before and during the Breaking,,, they were not,,, they were convicted felons sentenced to live in Bondage under the OAT RODS as punishment for their crimes ,,, they evolved into a structure for law and order after the breaking but before the Breaking they were women , and maybe also men,  who had been convicted of crimes and there punishment was to do penence under the yoke of the Oath Rods ,,, doing community service for life so to speak ...

 

Where on earth did you come up with that?  Please provide where you read this, I think you are Crazy, *wink*.. pun intended!!

[Davian93]

Thats not completly accurate, The Tower didn't instisute the use of the Oath Rod till after the war of the hundred years and the fall of Hawkwing's empire.

 

I'm not 100% without looking it up, but I believe that the 3 Oaths were actually instituted during/right after the Trolloc Wars.

[The Dragon Reborn]

Thats not completly accurate, The Tower didn't instisute the use of the Oath Rod till after the war of the hundred years and the fall of Hawkwing's empire.

Out of curiosity, where are you getting that info? I checked on IdealSeek and all my RJ interviews and it's not mentioned anywhere that I could find?

Either way the core of what I said remains true: The Aes Sedai who set up the White Tower were not criminals.

[Darth_Andrea]

Off the top of my head I'm thinking it was when nyneave was taking her acepted test, it was explained there in one of her conversations before it began...I think but i'm sure it was stated in TGH.

 

 

[glow=Green,1,500]Darth_Andrea[/glow]

[Wayhey]

FY 500

Circa: Sometime between the end of the Trolloc Wars and the beginning of the War of the Hundred Years the Aes Sedai voluntarily require that every Accepted raised to full sisterhood take certain oaths using a ter'angreal known to make such oaths binding. [TGH-TP-282]

 

 

 

http://www.sevenspokes.com/chronology/3rd-fy.html

 

 

[The Dragon Reborn]

That would explain it then, I used "Oath Rod" as the words in my search in IdealSeek. Thanks! :)

 

[Ahaz Flagg]

Off the top of my head, so be gentle.  The three oaths were instuted at the end of the one hundred years war, it was because Bonwihn used Hawkwing as a puppet.  The oaths were made so people could trust the white tower.  LAUGhS, bloody fools if you ask me.

[Davian93]

The three oaths were instuted at the end of the one hundred years war, it was because Bonwihn used Hawkwing as a puppet.

 

Its a possibility.  Also a possilibity is that they were instituted as part of the agreement that removed Bonwhin from power.

[Luckers]

Mmm. And it also adds to why the Tower has dwindled so dramatically in the last thousand years only.

 

The issue with the question of when is that theres conflicting comments. The Glossaries speaking of the oaths installment as a reaction to the War of the Shadow, for instance. And there was another one that mentions them being assumed during the Trolloc Wars... by Siuan I believe, though at the moment i can't find it.

 

In the end i too believe that they were put in place during or near the end of the War of a Hundred Years.

[Angel of Death]

Off the top of my head, I'm going with end of/ during Trolloc Wars, because of the dreadlords.

[RobertAlexWillis]

There's nothing (that I'm aware of, anyway) that says they were all put in place at the same time.

 

For example, the Oath to "Never to use the One Power as a weapon except against Shadowspawn, or in the last extreme of defending your own life, that of your Warder, or that of another Sister." would be a very likely reaction to the War of the Power and the Breaking. 

 

The Oath "To make no weapon for one man to kill another." would likely have grown out of the Trolloc Wars. 

 

And the Oath "To speak no word that is not true." could easily have been a reaction to the political manipulations by Aes Sedai around the time of Hawkwing and the War of the Hundred Years.

 

Its entirely possible ... in my opinion likely ... that they developed over time, and possibly over thousands of years.  Thats not necessarily the order they came in, but some kind of gradual development like that is quite possible.

 

That would also explain the seemingly gradual decrease in Aes Sedai lifespan.  As more Oaths are added, the effect grows.

[BrainFireBob]

The Second Oath was adopted right after the War of Power.

 

They weren't all adapted at the same time. That's been re-stated on several occasions.

 

The third Oath- since it's the third swearing that marks your face and cuts your life in half- had to have been adopted right around the Hundred Years War. Whichever is the third. One of them- I suspect the lying oath- was adopted because of the Trolloc Wars and specifically the Black Ajah.

 

Don't think of them as a unit set. They are three distinct oaths.

[Tenshin_Xo]

What reason is there to think that it's only the third Oath that marks their faces?  Why can't it be a progressive effect?

[RobertAlexWillis]

What reason is there to think that it's only the third Oath that marks their faces?  Why can't it be a progressive effect?

 

It is a progressive effect.  BFB is (or at least, I think he is) referring one of to the quotes from RJ that says that the currently observed effect of "agelessness" is the result of swearing three Oaths.  He does not say that no observable effect would occur with just one, or two, only that the current effect is the result of three.

 

The life shortening effect is present with even one Oath, although it is probably not as pronounced.  We can infer this from Semirhage's POV in LoC ch 6, in which we read the following rumination:

 

And a delegation from the Hall of the Servants had offered her a choice that was no choice: to be bound never to know her pleasures again, and with that binding be able to see the end of life approach, or else to be severed, and cast out as Aes Sedai.

 

The important part is, of course, orangified.  I doubt anyone understands better than Semirhage the exact effect of a binder on the body, and she expected life-shortening effects with just one Oath.

 

Now, the "tightening" that causes the "ageless" look is almost certainly a side effect of the stress placed on the body by the binding.  That stress is cumulative with each Oath added ... so while one binding would shorten your life somewhat, it probably would not produce a visible effect.  Two would likely produce a sort of "lesser agelessness", and three produces the result we're familiar with in Aes Sedai.  It will be interesting to see how much adding a fourth Oath (which is happening now with the Hunters in the Tower) will add observably to the stress involved ... we haven't had much time to observe that.

[dyring]

One interesting things is that to produce the same effekt, the black ajah would haveto swear exaktely 3 oaths of theyr own. Now there´s something intereting, what may they swear?

 

//dyring

[Tyrell]

That has been worked out by the good guys and mentioned in a BA PoV too as I recall, possibly Galina? But we don't know what the oaths are, although one appears to involve not being able to betray current BA plots.