Faile: A Couple Thoughts

[Perrin 187]

Then again Mandragoran I really don't like Rand and his 3 women and their reletionship, if they were all aiel I could understand that, due to aiel cultures acceptence of polygamy. I just find the the whole love square unblieveable. And of course I could name many other reason why I don't like Elayne.

 

But I do like the other couples, Lan&Nynavae, Mat&Tuon, Perrin&faile...etc

[Perrin 187]

Saldean women I think are more likable then other women, like Altaran women. Who just want to dominate and control their husbands like Aes Sedai and warders. Even go so far as to kill them. We learn from Deira and Elyas, that Saldean women don't want to dominate their man because she doesn't want everyone to think that she married and loves a weakling, and thus have to lower herself and make it appear that she is his equal. But if the man is very strong then the women can become all she can be and be his equal. Perrin yelling at Berelain, made faile think, perrin considered her his equal.

 

But faile should know better, and educate perrin on Saldean customs. And perrin should have took a hint from Deira, but than again minutes earlier Lord Bashere was telling him to do the opposite,( treat a lady like a dove..etc).

[Serenla]

I can't stand Faile.  For me it's bad enough that she is still a teenager and thinks she knows better than everyone else about everything.  (Yes, this is common in the series and of many teenagers and twenty somethings too)  But Faile tops off this undesirable attitude with manipulating people.  I could forgive this behavior if it was only people like Alliandre and Rolan, she doesn't owe them anything.  But she doesn't stop at that, she manipulates Perrin and Loial to get her way.  When this is added to the fact that her own husband thinks that she "keeps close purse strings on the truth", she is the type of person that I avoid whenever possible. 

Also rather that accept that Perrin doesn't understand what she wants from him (the yell at me to prove you see me as an equal garbage), she gets mad at him.  Why not explain why she's so upset?  If she had never left Saldea and had no experience of other cultures, it would be understandable, but she has been to many places including the Two Rivers and has seen that other cultures have different ways for men and women to interact.  Expecting people to read your mind is unreasonable and annoying.

Faile is selfish.  She has been told time and again that Perrin is important to Rand and winning the Last Battle and rather than accept that and support Perrin in this she is constantly trying to get him to run away from this responsibility.  In Tear she begs him to run off with her, she has a manor house built in the Two Rivers and encourages him to stay there and tries to talk him into distrusting Rand and so on. 

She just has too many personality traits that irritate me for me to be able to stand her. 

[dholm]

It's not that easy abandoning your culture. Faile knows why Perrin doesn't act the way she thinks he should, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt her -- especially when she then sees him treat her rival exactly the way she wants to be treated. She knows she can't demand that Perrin accommodates her culture, though, so she doesn't ask him to. That doesn't stop her from getting angry at him when he doesn't. It's not something you can just turn off.

 

At least, that is what I choose to believe.

[Ziggdiezan]

it would be priceless if faile was like trying to do something bad to Rand and a wolf took her throught out. that would make my life

[Samuel Aybara]

Wow, quite a bit of discussion.

 

I wanted to add something that I realized a while ago today.

 

Everyone can admit that Perrin is obsessed with Faile. Heck, even I, as her biggest defender, will admit this. Everyone thinks that it's just that Perrin is like that.

 

I have a couple of alternate ideas:

 

1. Perrin enters this stage in "The Shadow Rising." The reason he is obsessed with her is that is was the only reason for him to stay alive in the books. He was willing to go have himself hanged in the Two Rivers by the Whitecloaks in order to protect his family and his people. However, when he got there, he discovered that they were already dead. At that point he was extremely emotionally unstable, perhaps even suicidal. However, Faile was there and she kept him from self-destructing. Perrin, at this point in the book, has nobody except her: His entire family is dead, his friends have grown away from him, and his is stuck in a position he doesn't want to be as Lord of Two Rivers. Faile is his "rock" (to quote Obama) and she's the only connection that he has to society.

 

2.(This is MUCH more important.)

 

 

Perrin is a wolfbrother and therefore is slowly degrading and changing into a wolf in his spirit. Faile is the ONLY thing that keeps him from going completely AWOL and becoming a wolf permanently. He realizes this and therefore he latches into this connection. She is the one thing that is holding him up from this alternate version of himself. Without her, he would be lost to the wolves' world and would never be able to help Rand in the last battle. He fully realizes this and therefore he knew that he had to become extremely attached to something in order to prevent this change.

 

Just a couple of extra ideas I copied from my Amazon post.

 

[Samuel Aybara]

Flagg: Please explain. That just sounded like a childish rant without backup. Why do you hate her and Perrin?

[Epic]

Faile was definetely considering doing the horizontal monster mash with Rolan.  When he rescues everyone from the about to collapse house in Malden, he pinches all their bottoms and Faile gets jealous that they were too.  I still think she's pretty cool though.

[Samuel Aybara]

I never really saw anything between them. It seemed like she was just employing her (somewhat) classic manipulation to get her out of her predicament.

[dholm]

She was willing to do it. That's clear from the story. Whether or not there was more between them than that, though... nah, I don't think so.

[Samuel Aybara]

Physically maybe. I really meant an emotional attachment.

[The Doctor]

i was kind of sad to see those 3 mera'din die

[Mandragoran]

Then again Mandragoran I really don't like Rand and his 3 women and their reletionship, if they were all aiel I could understand that, due to aiel cultures acceptence of polygamy. I just find the the whole love square unblieveable. And of course I could name many other reason why I don't like Elayne.

 

But I do like the other couples, Lan&Nynavae, Mat&Tuon, Perrin&faile...etc

Rand has Aiel parents, is the Aiel caracarn and the women he marries can choose to do so in accordance with his heritage. Aviendha is Aiel and Elayne adopts her as first-sister in an Aiel ceremony with the intent that they can marry Rand in the Aiel way. Min is treated as one of the Wise Ones so she's no stranger to their culture either. You don't have to be Aiel to embrace Aiel culture as long as you do it right, witness Lan and Nynaeve who married by Atha'an Miere rites and now live their married lives as the seafolk do.

 

This is off topic here though and I still hold that all the major relationships in the series have both negatives and positives, so if you wish to reply perhaps we can take it to another thread?

 

 

[Spirit1025]

I like Faile.

 

From a purely literary standpoint, she is a very deep and complex character, which makes her fascinating and likeable. She isn't perfect, she has character flaws, and she does stuff we don't like. That makes her more real. If she was 100% perfect and likeable and never did anything bad, she would be boring and I would not want to read about her at all. People just aren't like that in reality; we all have good and bad sides. It takes a good writer to make a character so believable and human. If you just put into your character only good things and they are never annoying or mean or sulky or anything that us real people are, then you have a very flat character that nobody cares about, instead of one that you are free to like or dislike and discuss.

 

Personally, I love Perrin's devotion to his wife. It's something we don't see too much in these days where marriage only has to last as long as it is convenient and entertaining and someone younger and skinnier doesn't come along. Sure, perhaps he takes it a bit too far on occasion. But I'd rather see someone go that direction than the opposite, and just throw that person away when their bad side comes out.

 

I see a bit of myself in Faile, with her stubbornness and independent personality. And even though it seems foreign to many of today's people, I can fully understand where she is coming from when she wants Perrin to be assertive and 'yell at her'. I come from a culture where the husband is expected to be the 'head of the household' and the spiritual leader in the marriage. Now, my husband is not expected to yell and throw things at me, or turn me over his knee and spank me (as Saldaeans seem to expect)--on the contrary, he is to be loving and considerate of me. But it shows that there is real-world precedence for this Saldaean belief. What is interesting is that the women expect and want to be dominated by their husbands, and yet they still want to have all the control and power in the relationship. That is where Faile's manipulativeness comes in. It's not something I like in her at all, I will admit. It was also sad that she even considered doing anything with Rolan; her devotion to Perrin is certainly not as strong as his towards her.

[Thor]

she failed when she was captured.  other times she was alright.

Who would have thought their were hundreds of thousands of aiel all the way in Ghealden whom didn't follow Jietoh. She had a good bodyguard agianst any of Masema's rabble. But outnumbered against aiel and caught off guard would result in a slaughter. So I don't take points away from her being captured. Most people who couldn't channel would have had the same fate.

 

no nothing wrong with being captured, but being captured changed her personality for the worse.

[Mandragoran]

no nothing wrong with being captured, but being captured changed her personality for the worse.

I don't see it that way exactly. It might have been a low-point for Faile, sure but she could well bounce back as a stronger character. She was desperate for freedom, being gai'shain and obeying Wise Ones like Therava out of a willingness to please and avoid angering them had a danger of becoming a habit. In that sense it's not unlike Egwene who feared accepting her captivity as damane. Moreover Faile knew Perrin would eventually try to rescue her against vastly superior forces and would probably get himself killed, she tried to spare him that.

 

 

[dholm]

It was also sad that she even considered doing anything with Rolan; her devotion to Perrin is certainly not as strong as his towards her.

 

It's entirely possible that her devotion to Perrin isn't as strong as his towards her, but it is by no means proven by the fact that she was willing to have sex with Rolan to escape her captivity slavery. I don't hold that decision against her.

[Hybrid]

As much as I dislike Faile (I think Serenla's post hit most of my reasons), I found myself liking her character more after her imprisonment.  The same is true of Egwene.  I think it's a great writing strategy, to put characters that might not be the most likeable into situations where they are thrown against people with worse personalities than they, where their character flaws (or at least the reasons that people don't like them) can be put to good use.  You find yourself rooting for them by default.

[Padraic_Seebrr]

Isn't that what Brandon Sanderson said? "A surefire way to make a strong plot is to put a strong character in a compromising position" or something like that.