Favourite Dark-Side Character

[The Desert Pea]

I had to go with Demandred myself, just because of how interesting he is and how little we've seen of him. He's the one who despises Rand/LTT the most, and yet he's the only Forsaken who hasn't screwed up in one way or another going after him. BS said Demandred was going to be the major player for the Shadow in aMoL and that his reveal won't disappoint.

 

Basically, Demandred is a hate fueled badass who's been saving up all his rage until the very end. He wants nothing more than to kill Rand with his own hands, but he's been smart enough to wait until the time is right and he can seize his opportunity. The Dark One is obviously pleased with him, as is Moridin. I wouldn't be surprised if he was able to channel a little of the True Power as well.

[alligator]

Semirhage. Terrifying, and her 'personality quirks' ( ) could imo have made for a pretty interesting character. Unfortunately she met a very.... unfitting end. Meh.

 

Graendal seems pretty interesting as well. I like Lanfear for her absolute insanity. Taim's pretty unlikable too.

[MauricXe]

 

It was the humiliation of being treated like a child that did Semi in. Of course, Cadsuane should have thought of a much better method to completely humiliate a woman, but RJ doesn't like explicit rape scenes in WoT.

That would have made the scene a lot more interesting than it already was.

 

 

HAHAHAHAHAHA who would do the raping?

[aball]

"With the Choedan Kal"

[Guest Emu on the Loose]

Mierin, FTW!

 

I find her extremely compelling as a character. It's hard to explain why without a wall of text, but here are some of the key points:

 

1. When they were young, Mierin and Lews grew into the One Power together, and explored its possibilities together. They would become the most powerful people alive, and they were just beginning to realize it. Can you imagine what that must have been like for them?

 

2. Mierin wanted equality for the sexes. That's how she got on the road to drilling the Bore in the first place. She resented being created as an inferior being simply because of her sex.

 

3. Mierin resented the brutal fatalism of the Wheel of Time. I would too, if I were a character in the WoT universe. She wanted to control her own destiny. The way she expressed that was to spurn the Dark One and the Creator. She was the only one with the courage and the ambition to see beyond a life subservient to the Wheel. Honestly, I'm surprised more WoT fans haven't picked up on this. She's really a very sympathetic character, whether or not RJ meant for her to be.

 

4. Mierin had the supreme misfortune to be written into a Robert Jordan novel. Her ambitions are essentially impossible. The Creator and the Dark One are unshakable. The Wheel of Time will always turn. The most powerful channelers will always be males. (And none of that "but women are more agile" nonsense, since RJ stated outright that Rand could have defeated Lanfear if he had wanted to). Imagine how depressing that must be for somebody who wants to create her own destiny and live free of the gods.

 

5. Mierin genuinely loved Lews Therin, and he didn't have the wisdom to love her back. He didn't even truly understand her; he thought she was only interested in his power and prestige. Because of his ignorance, her life was totally ruined and the Age of Legends was doomed.

 

6. Mierin committed a terrible evil without intending it: She drilled the Bore. Even then, despite her incredible unpopularity that ensued, she didn't declare for the Shadow. It took many years, and the marriage of Lews Therin and Ilyena to finally push her over the edge. Imagine, living in a universe where your ambitions are doomed to be impossible, where the one person worthy of your love has rejected you, and where your efforts to bring equality to the sexes instead produces a Bore that invites supreme evil into the world. Even after all that, she didn't go over to the Shadow, and although RJ said she had been ripe for the plucking, her actions tell a different story. It looks to me that she was broken, and only went to the Shadow after that.

 

7. In that spirit, I like that Mierin got away from RJ. He wrote her to be an evil character, and accidentally ended up creating a noble and admirable one instead.

 

8. As a Forsaken, she would not submit to Ishamael. She wasn't even serious about her commitment to the Dark One itself. She was aware of the pettiness and narrow vision of the other Forsaken, and tried to be above it, even though she fell short at the docks.

 

9. She never committed the atrocities in which the other Forsaken engaged with such pleasure. Notwithstanding her characterization as one of the worser Shadow governors during the Age of Legends (a characterization which could well be untrue or out-of-context), in the Third Age she conspicuously avoided helping the Shadow and using its most powerful instruments, and has instead made many efforts to help Rand discover his destiny.

 

10. She was dominant in the first half of the series as the main villain who was both powerful but also personal. Ishamael was depicted as supreme evil, but Mierin was up close with Rand on many occasions, and may have been evil but was not comically so. Mierin was relatable in a way that Ishy wasn't, and for a while I honestly suspected she might succeed where he had failed. Actually, she may yet.

 

Which brings me to...

 

11. She still has an interesting role to play, which is no longer true of most of the Shadow characters in the story, who are either dead or disgraced.

[Lord D]

Emu, Mierin/Lanfear is completely power-hungry. She wants to replace both the DO and Creator and become God-Empress of the World. I really don't think I can sympathise with someone with such egomanical ambitions.

[sfgiantsfanmike]

Mierin, FTW!

 

I find her extremely compelling as a character. It's hard to explain why without a wall of text, but here are some of the key points:

 

...

 

Great post. I didn't think that deeply about her but, when you play the tapes, she does seem even more awesome than she was before hand. Granted, she is selfish, power hungry and several other negative things most likely... but there was a reason she became even more so and went over to the shadow. I sympathize with her on many levels and this just puts it in a rational way.

[Guest Emu on the Loose]

Emu, Mierin/Lanfear is completely power-hungry. She wants to replace both the DO and Creator and become God-Empress of the World. I really don't think I can sympathise with someone with such egomanical ambitions.

I think most fans agree with your interpretation. I think even Jordan himself felt the way you do. But, me, I see it differently. Hear me out, if you wish...

 

I don't buy that whole “ambition is evil” and “power corrupts” stuff. If I had a nickel for every time a storyteller decided that their villain's motivation would be “power,” I'd be rich. It's a trope that's been done to death, especially since so few storytellers have bothered to delve in a meaningful way into the whys and wherefores of a character's desire for power. (Case in point is WoT itself: Each of the Forsaken, except Ishamael and Lanfear, had a one-dimensional motivation for seeking power, and of course it's a given that they all sought power.) It's as if we're all expected to believe, without explanation, that any character who craves power is evil or misguided. For as popular as that belief is, it's not actually true.

 

Some people are just born for power—they're smart, driven, and capable—and for them the question is not whether they should have power at all, but how they can use it wisely. Power isn't a bad thing. It's the way we use it that has positive or negative effects. We don't really know what the world under Mierin Eronaile would have looked like. We can infer that RJ believed it would have been a gruesome world, but we can also consider his story for ourselves and draw our own conclusions.

 

(Aside: This is why Charn felt so guilty and humiliated when he saw what happened at the Sharom. He had failed to help Mierin succeed. Perhaps he could not have prevented what happened, since nobody knew what that hidden power source really was, but he was somebody who understood the importance of lending perspective and wisdom to powerful people—for that was his purpose in life. When the Bore was created, he understood that she had failed, and that, by extension, so had he.)

 

Anyhow, my point is that being “power-hungry” is not inherently a bad thing. Power is the ability to effect change. That's all, nothing more. If I brush my teeth to avoid cavities, I'm power-hungry to preserve my dental health. Does that make me evil? Of course it doesn't. We were never told exactly what Mierin wanted, other than personal glory, self-determination, Lews Therin, and equality between the sexes, and none of those ambitions paints the portrait of an evil person.

 

Also, it doesn't really matter if she's evil or not. My reason for liking her as a character is not that she's good or evil, but that I admire her ambition, her strength of will, and her vision. I do think it's plausible that, after going over to the Dark, Mierin lost her perspective and went rotten. Lots of people implode under the weight of the world, even great people. I don't care to make any excuses for her failures of character, and she has plenty of them.

 

But her being good or evil was never my point, and it doesn't change my view that she's a sympathetic character who has (or had) noble intentions that I broadly agree with. Nor does it change the fact that she has suffered through the same primal struggles and hardships of life that most people, if they cared to look, could easily relate to.

 

Every day, people are told that there are things in this world they can't have, and shouldn't try to pursue. Mierin saw a world where women were below men, and she flipped the bird on that society, then set about finding a power source to wipe that injustice out. It is her profound misfortune that that was the True Power.

 

Every day, people are told that they're not worthy to decide who they are and how they can live their lives. Mierin was faced with a world where few people were worthy of her. She sifted through the chaff and found the best of them, Lews Therin, and pursued him. It is her profound misfortune that he spurned her.

 

These are some of the miseries that Mierin was fated to endure, through no fault other than being who she was, and I sympathize with her.

 

Mierin is a classic rebel type, in the mold of Prometheus or Milton's Lucifer. RJ never addressed the issue, he only wrote the story. It's up to the reader to acknowledge that defying god is not necessarily a bad thing, because no god yet conceived has created a perfect world. Would Mierin have helped to create a better world, had she gained control of it? We can only imagine.

 

I'm aware that some people write Mierin off as a “crazy bitch.” I think that says more about those people's analytical powers than it does about the character Mierin, because she's not all that messed up compared to the story's other characters, or even compared to real people in real life. She's just able to put her weaknesses on display more prominently by virtue of being powerful and by being a captain for the enemy team.

[nolirion]

"With the Choedan Kal"

I am not sure I understand you , somehow you want the huge statue to animated themselves and come to Rand (they say Hi ,Rand say thanks for helping in the cleansing ) and .... Hum ... Do things to Semi?

[Treemaster]

Oops -- my favorite by far is Asmodean, so I voted "other" before reading the first post, and seeing that he'd been deliberately excluded. Oh well. His turn to the dark side to seek immortality for musical reasons resonates strongly with me. If he's excluded, it's a much tougher choice, but I think I would go either Demandred or Taim.

[capuga]

5. Mierin genuinely loved Lews Therin, and he didn't have the wisdom to love her back. He didn't even truly understand her; he thought she was only interested in his power and prestige. Because of his ignorance, her life was totally ruined and the Age of Legends was doomed.

 

Or maybe he did really understand her and she was a wee bit power hungry. I'm sure she loved him also but that doesn't mean that his power wasn't very important. Would she have loved him as a farmer? Notice she doesn't ask Rand to run away and live on a farm and have a family with her. She wants him to challenge the Creator and the Dark One and rule the world with her. The fact that she wants to do it together with her love doesn't make it any more admirable of a goal. Doing it for love does not excuse your actions.

 

7. In that spirit, I like that Mierin got away from RJ. He wrote her to be an evil character, and accidentally ended up creating a noble and admirable one instead.

 

Noble and admirable? Really? Despite not being as needlessly cruel as the other Forsaken, she still has little regard for human life and kills whoever displeases her without compunction. She maybe more noble than the other Forsaken, but that still just makes her an evil, very nasty woman.

 

 

I also voted for Lanfear and find her to be a very interesting character. She works very well as a villianous. But she is neither a good person nor admirable from a Light-sided POV.

[chinnma]

I deffinately picked Fain. I mean this guy is so evil, we don't even know what to call him any more! He's tortured fades, stolen fists of trollocs and driven them through the ways, he is filled with an evil that is so evil it destroyed the Taint, was willing to destroy the entire Two Rivers just to draw Rand out in the open, and many other atrocities that rival those of the forsaken without the benefit of being hundreds of years old. And don't even get me started on how awesome his maddness is...

[Sleeper]

5. Mierin genuinely loved Lews Therin, and he didn't have the wisdom to love her back. He didn't even truly understand her; he thought she was only interested in his power and prestige. Because of his ignorance, her life was totally ruined and the Age of Legends was doomed.

 

Or maybe he did really understand her and she was a wee bit power hungry. I'm sure she loved him also but that doesn't mean that his power wasn't very important. Would she have loved him as a farmer? Notice she doesn't ask Rand to run away and live on a farm and have a family with her. She wants him to challenge the Creator and the Dark One and rule the world with her. The fact that she wants to do it together with her love doesn't make it any more admirable of a goal. Doing it for love does not excuse your actions.

 

7. In that spirit, I like that Mierin got away from RJ. He wrote her to be an evil character, and accidentally ended up creating a noble and admirable one instead.

 

Noble and admirable? Really? Despite not being as needlessly cruel as the other Forsaken, she still has little regard for human life and kills whoever displeases her without compunction. She maybe more noble than the other Forsaken, but that still just makes her an evil, very nasty woman.

 

 

I also voted for Lanfear and find her to be a very interesting character. She works very well as a villianous. But she is neither a good person nor admirable from a Light-sided POV.

Yep, Grayson makes some good points. I just read the TGH a little while ago, and I clearly remember Lanfear constantly trying to get Rand to blow the Horn of Valere because it would bring him "glory". Sounds pretty power-hungry to me.

[Pygmalion79]

2. Mierin wanted equality for the sexes. That's how she got on the road to drilling the Bore in the first place. She resented being created as an inferior being simply because of her sex.

 

First, I agree that Lanfear is possibly the best villain. She is, with Moridin, the most interesting. But. . .The Age of Legends wasn't an age of inequality, and Mierin didn't desire access to the True Power so that men and women could be equal, but because she thought that if their power were the same, rather than complementary, humanity could be more powerful. I do not recall reading anything that says that she desired equality of the sexes.

 

Anyhow, my point is that being “power-hungry” is not inherently a bad thing.

 

If someone desires power for the sake of something further, something which is itself good, then that desire wouldn't be bad. But if someone desires power for the sake of power, then yes, that is vicious. Someone who desires power for its own sake simply wishes to control others, which isn't a noble motive. The same goes for ambition. Those who want to do great things because they are important aren't thereby bad people; but in those who want to do great things so that others will consider them great, or for some other egoistic motive, ambition is a bad motive. But there is never any indication given that Mierin ever desired power for the sake of anything other than power itself.

 

And you really doubt that "power corrupts"?

[Suttree]

She sifted through the chaff and found the best of them, Lews Therin, and pursued him. It is her profound misfortune that he spurned her.

 

These are some of the miseries that Mierin was fated to endure, through no fault other than being who she was, and I sympathize with her.

 

First off she wasn't the best of the best. Mierin never earned a third name, that sets her a step down from the greatest of that age.

 

Second it was not misfortune that LTT spurned her. It is clearly shown that LTT turned away from her because he knew her true character. She loved power more than anything and the prestige of being his lover more than LTT himself.

[GYLD]

Mierin saw a world where women were below men, and she flipped the bird on that society, then set about finding a power source to wipe that injustice out. It is her profound misfortune that that was the True Power.

 

I don't think that's how it happened. By all indications the reason behind drilling the bore was the limitations in having to use both halves of the One Power to reach its full potential.

 

Has it ever been mentioned that Mierin resented Saidar for being weaker than Saidin? She was likely the fourth or fifth most powerful channeler in the entire world at the time and it seemed that was enough to satisfy even her.

[Sleeper]

Mierin saw a world where women were below men, and she flipped the bird on that society, then set about finding a power source to wipe that injustice out. It is her profound misfortune that that was the True Power.

 

I don't think that's how it happened. By all indications the reason behind drilling the bore was the limitations in having to use both halves of the One Power to reach its full potential.

 

Has it ever been mentioned that Mierin resented Saidar for being weaker than Saidin? She was likely the fourth or fifth most powerful channeler in the entire world at the time and it seemed that was enough to satisfy even her.

And furthermore, Saidar is not weaker than Saidin, so that invalidates that argument. The reason Mierin drilled the Bore was because the TP could be accessed equally by men and women, which would nullify the problems that men and women had understanding Saidar and Saidin, respectively and allow them to supposedly work even greater miracles than before.

[hankscorpio]

Right now, have to go with Taim, because as of right now he seems to be just about the only bad guy that hasn't been a huge failure or suffered a quick death. Plus there's just some mystery about him. While we've pretty much accepted at this point that he's a bad guy, we still don't know exactly what he's up to.

 

Runners up would be Ishamael/Moridin and Slayer, though they really haven't done nearly enough with Slayer as I would have liked.

[nolirion]

Mierin saw a world where women were below men, and she flipped the bird on that society, then set about finding a power source to wipe that injustice out. It is her profound misfortune that that was the True Power.

 

I don't think that's how it happened. By all indications the reason behind drilling the bore was the limitations in having to use both halves of the One Power to reach its full potential.

 

Has it ever been mentioned that Mierin resented Saidar for being weaker than Saidin? She was likely the fourth or fifth most powerful channeler in the entire world at the time and it seemed that was enough to satisfy even her.

And furthermore, Saidar is not weaker than Saidin, so that invalidates that argument. The reason Mierin drilled the Bore was because the TP could be accessed equally by men and women, which would nullify the problems that men and women had understanding Saidar and Saidin, respectively and allow them to supposedly work even greater miracles than before.

When I see how Ltt was slapped on the face when he requested (not demand ) the help of women in is bold strike I seriously doubt women where below men in the Aol.

As far are we know they where little misogyny in the Aol .

 

On an another side I don't get the point of telling the action of Mierin contradict what Robert Jordan say about her , don't he wrote the book ? I think if I created a character and make it evolve in a book I would have the good idea about it .

 

And an another side the "strength " of a men is superior to one woman that is truth yet no man can make a circle , only women can do that , and the capacity to circle is in the long run way more useful then strength alone .

 

Lanfear is more of a "pandora box" interpretation to me , well curiosity replaced by lust for power.

[Lupy]

I pick Sammael. Until Moridin pulled the rug out from under him he was doing a good job at killing Rand. I like him for being around for a little while and then fighting Rand as well. Better than Mornin, who has never fought anyone.

[Guest Emu on the Loose]

Or maybe he did really understand her and she was a wee bit power hungry.

I know there's no one "correct" way to read the story, but my own reading of the story is that Lews and Mierin were very similar. It goes all the way back to the prologue in TEotW. LTT's point of view therein suggests that he had once thought he could match the Creator. He had been the most powerful person alive, and had greatly shaped world events. Indeed, he probably saved the world from being totally destroyed by the Dark One.

 

But he also went crazy, killed his family, and broke the world. When Ishamael healed him, and LTT realized what he had done, it broke his spirit. He spurned his old way of thinking. For the rest of the series, whenever LTT appeared in Rand's thoughts, he had the tone of a broken man. From the scene in TSR where Mierin appeared and Rand was first able to remember his previous life with her, LTT's reaction was one of disgust at her ambition. That remained consistent throughout.

 

My reading of the story is that LTT's disgust was directed more at himself and his own failures. His reaction to Mierin strikes me as a classic case of projection. I think it tells us more about him than her. Perhaps his disgust predates even his own descent into madness after the Dark One's counterstroke. Perhaps this is why he left Mierin in the first place. Perhaps she was too much like him for his own comfort. That's a common reason, in real life, that relationships break up, because when two partners have the same personality trait but one (or both) of the partners doesn't like that trait, it puts a lot of strain on their relationship.

 

Mierin certainly is power-hungry, and not the "wee bit" that you mentioned. She is extremely power-hungry. So was LTT. You don't get to be the leader of the world if you don't have ambition. He understood that much about her. The part about her I think he didn't understand is how she was able to live with herself with that much ambition. I think he settled on an interpretation that he knew wasn't true: that "Ambition is all there is to you." I think he settled on that interpretation so that he could avoid dealing with his own inner doubts about himself by vilifying Mierin.

 

Like I said, that's just my own reading, and I'm sure plenty of people will agree, or will even laugh that someone would care enough about the series to analyze it so closely. Oh well. For whatever it's worth to you, my view is that, if there's one thing RJ did particularly well in this series, it is that he has illustrated just how flawed the Dragon is. I think his relationship with Mierin is a part of that. Her philosophical gravitas, her honesty despite her affiliation with the Father of Lies, and her comfort with being a great person, each highlight a corresponding weakness in LTT. As Rand, the Dragon struggled to accept his power and his greatness. He struggled to find the will to live. Mierin made it look easy by comparison. I think he spurned her because she made him doubt himself, because she was able to thrive within her greatness and he wasn't.

 

I'm sure she loved him also but that doesn't mean that his power wasn't very important. Would she have loved him as a farmer? Notice she doesn't ask Rand to run away and live on a farm and have a family with her. She wants him to challenge the Creator and the Dark One and rule the world with her.

You're quite right, and your point illustrates my own. Consider that the reasons for which one person loves another are highly interrelated. Given the kind of person Mierin is, it only makes sense that she would be more likely to fall in love with a great leader than with a small-town farmer. Rand may have started out as a farmer, but now he's an Aes Sedai and is once again preparing to be a great leader of the world. She was right about him, in the AoL and in the Third Age.

 

It's not insincere to love a person because of what they do with their lives. It's not that Mierin wouldn't have loved Rand if he had decided to stay a farmer. It's that Rand wouldn't have decided to stay a farmer. As he has been confronted with an increasing awareness of his destiny throughout the series, he has made the (right) choice each and every time to assume more power, to become more involved, to be a leader. That's just who he is. And, by RJ's WoT philosophy, it's who he has to be. Remember the portal stone visions in TGH, when he saw all those other possible lives? Remember how he lost to the Shadow in all of them?

 

Noble and admirable? Really? Despite not being as needlessly cruel as the other Forsaken, she still has little regard for human life and kills whoever displeases her without compunction. She maybe more noble than the other Forsaken, but that still just makes her an evil, very nasty woman.

I would disagree with you that she is so evil and nasty. She's ruthless. She's emotionally imbalanced. She's aggressive. But those aren't evil traits, to me, and there aren't many instances in the series of her doing things that I would consider genuinely evil, like torturing kittens for pleasure or burning down libraries to impoverish a nation. We know what the legends say about her from the Age of Legends, and we know what the LTT in Rand's head thought of her, but her actual deeds in the books have not been particularly evil at all. Her rampage at the docks was temporary insanity, not premeditated slaughter.

 

However, I don't want to distract from my main point. Like I said earlier, it doesn't really matter to me if Mierin is "good" or "evil." Even if Mierin were totally evil, I would still admire her ambitions, and I would still sympathize with her plight. There's a scene in the Star Trek episode "Space Seed" where Kirk and his crew are speaking admiringly about Khan's legacy. Spock is astonished: Why would his shipmates admire a brutal dictator like Khan? Kirk's answer: "We can be against him and admire him all at the same time."

 

And he was right. The human mind is big enough to discern the many different threads within a person, and mature enough (in some people) to admire a person without necessarily admiring every quality about them. There's plenty about Mierin I don't admire. Her jealousy. Her pettiness. Her feeling of entitlement to Rand. But despite those things I admire her anyway, because I think her overall ambition of greatness in defiance of the gods is a noble one. I don't want to tread into politics on this forum, but let me just say really briefly that her ambitions have a strongly humanistic bent. People like her make it possible for us to feel good about humanity as a whole, because people like her remind the rest of us that there is a future and it can be ours to shape.

 

But she is neither a good person nor admirable from a Light-sided POV.

That's a good qualifier. From the point of view of the Light, it would be hard to justify that Mierin is a "good person," since, after all, she is a Forsaken. That's actually another reason I like her: She isn't as simple as "Light" or "Shadow." She's both, really. Or neither. She rejects the whole thing. She works for the Shadow because the Shadow empowers her, not because she gives a hoot about the Dark One.

 

---

The Age of Legends wasn't an age of inequality, and Mierin didn't desire access to the True Power so that men and women could be equal, but because she thought that if their power were the same, rather than complementary, humanity could be more powerful. I do not recall reading anything that says that she desired equality of the sexes.

You're right in that the point was never hit over our heads so explicitly. Nowhere do the books say that Mierin wanted equality of the sexes. However, there has been a strong undercurrent of sexism in the series, converging on the insinuation that humanity is at its best when men and women work together, with men leading. Again, people will read the series differently and form their own opinions, but my view is that RJ was fairly parochial in his views about the sexes.

 

Now, just because Mierin is never explicitly stated to desire equality between the sexes doesn't mean that we can't analyze her actions. She wanted, as you said, to create a more powerful humanity. She wanted to increase her own power as well. She, herself, focused this desire on bypassing the limitations of the segregated One Power. Given that we know that the strongest and most agile male channelers are more effective than the strongest and most agile female ones, it stands to reason, without much of a leap, that Mierin resented being limited purely because of her sex. It's an understandable resentment. The rationale for her feminist motives were selfish rather than egalitarian, but, nevertheless, equality of the sexes was a prerequisite to the fulfillment of her ambitions. She may not have desired it for its own sake (or she may have; we don't know), but she did desire it.

 

If someone desires power for the sake of something further, something which is itself good, then that desire wouldn't be bad. But if someone desires power for the sake of power, then yes, that is vicious.

Thank you for that comment. You've given me an excellent opportunity to clarify something that I didn't do a good job of explaining earlier.

 

There is no such a thing as "power for the sake of power." It's another one of those tropes in storytelling which has been done to death. Villains always want "power for the sake of power." It's a trope that's been repeated so many times that I commonly see people talk about it as though it were the truth. But such a thing does not actually exist, nor could it.

 

Every action which a person undertakes to gain power deliberately, comes with some purpose in mind. Power is the ability to effect change. The closest we can get to "power for the sake of power" is "power for the sake of keeping one's options open." Similarly, the closest we can get to the character flaw implied by "power for the sake of power" is "power beyond what one knows to do with."

 

When a storyteller declares that a villain wants power for the sake of power, what they are actually doing is taking an unliterary shortcut. They're saying, "Here is an evil character. I'm not going to tell you why they're evil. Just trust me on it." Power is always for the sake of something further, as you put it, and never for its own sake. A character who is depicted as desiring power for its own sake is a character that isn't being illustrated sincerely.

 

But RJ didn't actually fall short in this regard. Some WoT fans say that Mierin wants power for the sake of power because that's what LTT believed, and because "power for the sake of power" is a common trope of villainy in our culture. But she never wanted power for the sake of power. She didn't even want power for the sake of keeping her options open. We have always known that Mierin's ambitions were far more specific. She wanted to overthrow the Dark One and the Creator and let humanity pursue its own destiny, with herself at the head.

 

We don't know what her political policies would have been, nor her style as a leader. But we do know that she desired power for a very specific and in my view a very reasonable purpose: self-determination. Mierin was somebody who chafed at the thought of being controlled. Do you really begrudge her for wanting to live free of the rule of the Creator and the Dark One?

 

And you really doubt that "power corrupts"?

I don't just doubt it. I know it's false. Power only corrupts in special, narrow circumstances. The vast majority of the time, power amplifies existing character traits. It doesn't change them. I could not put it better than some of our figures from history:

 

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power."

~ Abraham Lincoln

 

"Power does not corrupt men; but fools, if they get into a position of power, corrupt it."

~ George Bernard Shaw

 

The idea that power corrupts is another one of those cultural tropes that has been repeated so many times that people take it for the truth without really thinking about it. In reality, power seldom has a corrupting effect. All it does is show us who we really are. If power shows us a monster, that person was already a monster.

 

Look at it another way. Rand is now the most powerful person alive, maybe the most powerful person to ever live. He almost destroyed the world. Yet, in the moment of his greatest power, what did he do? He decided to let the world exist. I think we can agree, he made the right decision despite embracing "absolute power" in that very moment.

 

His power level had no bearing on his longstanding internal struggle. It just put the world at greater risk than would have been the case if Rand had been some non-channeling farmer with no more power than a good pitchfork.

 

---

First off she wasn't the best of the best. Mierin never earned a third name, that sets her a step down from the greatest of that age.

We don't know how young she was when she drilled the Bore. It could be that she hadn't had the time, yet, to earn it. It could be that the earning of a third name was politicized somehow, and not fully merit-based.

 

But, even without a third name, she had a prestigious career, was one of the most powerful channelers alive, and was brilliant enough to make history by detecting the Dark One's power and conceiving of a way to reach it. Had that not been the Dark One himself, she would have gotten her third name. Her discovery would have fundamentally changed the nature of channeling.

 

Incidentally, she did get a third name: Lanfear. Different team, but same goal.

 

---

On an another side I don't get the point of telling the action of Mierin contradict what Robert Jordan say about her , don't he wrote the book ? I think if I created a character and make it evolve in a book I would have the good idea about it .

It's important to acknowledge the intentions of the author of a story. RJ's intentions can help guide our own thoughts. However, once a story is told its ideas belong to the world. We draw our own interpretations. We bring our own point of view to the story and therefore we experience a slightly different story. We must be true to ourselves and interpret a story according to our own principles.

 

Besides, RJ was always deliberately vague about this stuff. I think he wanted us to decide for ourselves what to think of his story, even if sometimes his writing fell short of that ideal and tried to force us to think a certain way.

[Sleeper]

 

You're right in that the point was never hit over our heads so explicitly. Nowhere do the books say that Mierin wanted equality of the sexes. However, there has been a strong undercurrent of sexism in the series, converging on the insinuation that humanity is at its best when men and women work together, with men leading. Again, people will read the series differently and form their own opinions, but my view is that RJ was fairly parochial in his views about the sexes.

 

Now, just because Mierin is never explicitly stated to desire equality between the sexes doesn't mean that we can't analyze her actions. She wanted, as you said, to create a more powerful humanity. She wanted to increase her own power as well. She, herself, focused this desire on bypassing the limitations of the segregated One Power. Given that we know that the strongest and most agile male channelers are more effective than the strongest and most agile female ones, it stands to reason, without much of a leap, that Mierin resented being limited purely because of her sex. It's an understandable resentment. The rationale for her feminist motives were selfish rather than egalitarian, but, nevertheless, equality of the sexes was a prerequisite to the fulfillment of her ambitions. She may not have desired it for its own sake (or she may have; we don't know), but she did desire it.

Wait, what? If there's any undercurrent of sexism in WoT, it's against men. If you haven't forgotten, the single most powerful institution in the world at this time is the White Tower, a place inhabited solely by women, who are so powerful that kings and queens kneel before them. Not to forget how many references have been made to men being wool-headed something-or-others . Now if you're talking about the idea that maybe RJ wrote women in such a powerful and authoritative position to send an anti-feminist message, I find that idea intriguing and possibly worth further exploration, but I'm by no means convinced that that's the answer either.

 

Additionally, as mentioned before, saidar and saidin are equal. Robert Jordan made that specifically clear, I know because I just read the passage explaining it in TFoH.

 

I'm not trying to start an argument, just presenting my point of view.

[capuga]

Emu - I have to say that I admire your passion on the character and how well you have articulated your points of view. I find many of them to be thought provoking. However, I still greatly disagree with a lot of your POV. Lanfear to me is very, very evil. Does she enjoy torturing like Semirhage? No, but she is still willing to kill without alsolutely any remorse. That alone makes her evil in my eyes without any further explanation needed.

 

You believe that she got together with LTT/Rand because she saw that they would be great and therefore were someone she could be with because she saw herself in them and felt they had common ground (at least that's how I'm reading your POV, sorry if that isn't correct). I still contend that it is that power itself that drew her. She would not have been happy living with Rand on a farm. Because its the power more than the man that she loves.

 

And I agree that ambition itself is not a bad thing. But look what she wants to do with that power. Does she want to be the best she can be to better mankind? To gain the best things in life she can? No, she wants to rule the world. She wants to be a god. Does she even think that her ruling the world would be the best thing for the world (that would at least be a rationalization that I could understand)? No, she just wants that ultimate power for herself. That is ambition with evil intentions.

 

There is a lot about Lanfear to be impressed about. She is very impressive. She also has many admirable characteristics. But I maintain that she is not a noble or admirable human being.

[Suttree]

Incidentally, she did get a third name: Lanfear. Different team, but same goal.

 

She chose that name. Quite a difference between earning the third name in the AoL and giving yourself a nickname. The funny thing is she even got that wrong. We have seen Moghedien to be the strongest forsaken in Tel'aran'rhiod.

 

In addition to the LTT pov in which her true nature was shown we also have this:

 

Ishara: Did Mierin drill the Bore out of curiosity, or out of some malevolent desire?

Maria: Mierin was kind of greedy. I don’t think it was a malevolent intent, but it wasn’t all pure and nice.

 

this:

 

RJ's blog 4 October 2005 "ONE MORE TIME"

 

- Lanfear climbed onto the wagon to get the angreal. Rand was occupying her to the extent that she couldn’t afford to just use flows of Air to bring it to her. And Lanfear being Lanfear, there was a touch of the dramatic in it. She was always a drama queen.

 

this:

 

As an aside, for those who think that Lanfear was in some way twisted against her will by being involved in drilling the Bore---I have heard the theory advanced---of all those involved in the project, she was the only major figure to go over to the Shadow. She was ripe for the Shadow's plucking long before the Bore was drilled.

 

& this:

Letter to Carolyn Fusinato from RJ - 1 February 1994

 

 

Lanfear holding back and doing good for Rand's sake? Ha! She was psychically fixed on possessing a man who never loved her. Even with that, her desire for Rand was as much a desire for power as for him. To be the one to deliver the Dragon Reborn to the service of the Shadow; that would set her above the other Forsaken. And learning that the access ter'angreal for the two huge sa'angreal were still in existence....Sure, she wanted his love--not least because it had been denied her; Lanfear was a woman who claimed a right to anything she wanted--wanted his devotion, but even more than his body, Lanfear wanted power, the power possibly to replace the Dark One, even to replace the Creator. For Rand's sake? Not a chance.

 

Pretty clear cut I would say.

[Ashandarei]

Emu - I have to say that I admire your passion on the character and how well you have articulated your points of view. I find many of them to be thought provoking.¹ However, I still greatly disagree with a lot of your POV. Lanfear to me is very, very evil. Does she enjoy torturing like Semirhage? No, but she is still willing to kill without alsolutely any remorse. That alone makes her evil in my eyes without any further explanation needed.

 

You believe that she got together with LTT/Rand because she saw that they would be great and therefore were someone she could be with because she saw herself in them and felt they had common ground (at least that's how I'm reading your POV, sorry if that isn't correct). I still contend that it is that power itself that drew her. She would not have been happy living with Rand on a farm. Because its the power more than the man that she loves.

 

And I agree that ambition itself is not a bad thing. But look what she wants to do with that power. Does she want to be the best she can be to better mankind? To gain the best things in life she can? No, she wants to rule the world. She wants to be a god.² Does she even think that her ruling the world would be the best thing for the world (that would at least be a rationalization that I could understand)? No, she just wants that ultimate power for herself. That is ambition with evil intentions.³

 

There is a lot about Lanfear to be impressed about. She is very impressive. She also has many admirable characteristics. But I maintain that she is not a noble or admirable human being.

 

¹ I second that. Never seen someone argue for a character in WoT with such drive or in such depth.

 

² I think what Emu is saying is that there's nothing wrong with wanting to rule the world or be a god even if you don't have overtly benevolent plans like helping humanity. It's like wanting to be the President or Prime Minister in today's world. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be that even if you don't qualify the statement with "because I want to further the good of mankind." While it's true that the type of ruler in the 3rd Age would be more of a King/Queen and not democratically elected, it still isn't anything evil to want to be the King or Queen of a nation.

 

³She never states that as ruler she wants to enslave people or torture them etc, although admittedly being a Forsaken she does have precedent for such actions. So basically what Emu's saying, and what I agree with, is that wanting to rule a nation, or the world in this case, isn't evil, that's just ambition, pure and simple.

 

Finally, I think we all know RJ's thoughts on the character from the quotes Suttree provided, but that doesn't necessarily set things in stone. That's why it's a story, so we can each take our own meanings from it and relate to it in our own ways. While RJ may state characters as having black and white personalities, the beauty of the story is that it leaves gray areas which may look darker to some readers and lighter to others.