After the Last Battle

[kurgen]

Hello everyone,

  I have been reading the WOT since it first came out 20 years ago, and is by far the best fantasy series I have ever read.  I have a theory on the aftermath of the last battle.

  I think that after the Last Battle, all those who can wield the OP will be burnt out.  It seems to me that Randland is entering the Renaissance period, where magic was lost in our world and science took over.  In the Big White Book, LTT was in had of a ring that was named after the person who discovered the OP, so at some point, the ability to channel must be lost.

  Anyway that is my theory, let me know what you think.

[MikeRiley]

We know the ability to channel will be lost eventually, but not how. Your guess would be as good as anybody else's. It's also possible both Saidin and Saidar will be tainted after the closing and will cause widespread madness. This would cause everybody who knows anything to die relatively fast and the loss of knowledge might in turn remove channelers all together over time. Those who touch the source would not know what they're doing and would be labeled magicians/wizards/witches and be killed if they don't kill themselves first.

 

It's also equally possible that there will be no change to the channeler status after the series ends. The ability to channel might be erased or simply removed in the same manner wolfbrothers were in some future age. Nicola's foretelling suggests this if we look at it one way. She says (and I'm sort of paraphrasing, don't have the exact quote offhand) "The great battle done, but the world not done with battles. Three on a boat and he who is dead yet lives. The guardians balance the servants and the world still divided by the return." If we take "the great battle" to mean the Last Battle, then the guardians and servants (black and white towers) should suggest channeling is still on the table, or else they'd just be simple depressed men and women.

[Mr Ares]

It seems to me that in our world, our actual world, the real world we happen to be living in, we didn't lose magic and have science take over. We didn't have magic to begin with. The AoL was a time of advanced technology and still had the OP, so the two are not incompatible, so Randland's industrial revolution can in no way be taken as an indicator that the Op will be lost in the immediate future - it might still happen, but this isn't an indicator of it. While we know the OP will be lost at some point, it will take more than all the channelers being burnt out to make it go away, and we don't know that that time is imminent. Also, when you say Randland is entering the Renaissance, if you mean in the sense that it is entering into our historical Renaissance (given that the series takes place in both our past and future), then thats not really supported by the evidence. Of course, if you meant Renaissance in the sense of their own Renaissance, unrelated to our historical one, then never mind.