Why Rand never joined with Lanfear?

[Duskfire]

She basically kills people without an ounce of remorse. And not just at the docks either. There was that bearded darkfriend she just casually killed because she had to leave and couldnt be bothered with him anymore. She is basically self-deluded and psychotic, with no regard for other human life. She may not have the world scaling death and destruction that some of the other Forsaken may have had, but that doesnt make her any less bad.

[Terez]

She is like the Twilight vampires, physically alluring in order to attract her prey. She's a man-eater.

[Finnssss22]

Extreme narcissism at it's worst, incapable of loving anyone but themselves.

She doesn't love LTT, she just thinks she does because it's one of the few things she can't have.

LTT knew this and by default, so does Rand.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

but i heard she smells like freshly baked cookies. and rand could be smarter.

[Kestrel]

She basically kills people without an ounce of remorse. And not just at the docks either. There was that bearded darkfriend she just casually killed because she had to leave and couldnt be bothered with him anymore. She is basically self-deluded and psychotic, with no regard for other human life. She may not have the world scaling death and destruction that some of the other Forsaken may have had, but that doesnt make her any less bad.

Meirin doesn't really want Rand or Rand/LTT. She wants to be plugged into the power he can/does/will wield. She finds power as addicting as crack cocaine.

 

If Meirin can't wield his political influence and power directly, she wants to control how that power is used. She wants to take advantage of it for her own pleasure, steer it towards her own whims, and demand the adulation of the masses for doing so. She reminds me of certain powerful wives of prominent politicians.

 

Meirin is 1/2 Snow White's evil stepmother and 1/2 Queen Jezebel from the Bible. Loving her would be like loving a female version of Charles Manson. The best Rand could hope for at the Last Battle is that Meirin is so traumatized from her mindtrap that she will work to Rand's advantage in her efforts to escape the trap.

 

Hopefully for Rand this will result in her self-destruction, because the power-addiction compelling Jezebel/Manson types means they will revert to their true nature as soon as they are free to do so. And in Meirin's case it means acting with a complete lack of empathy or remorse.

[Randommer]

Moiraine's warning aside. Think about Rand, he was like what 18 years old when he met Lanfear, the hottest and most powerful woman alive. And even if shes done some things wrong, she went to a lot of lengths to help Rand out for a while. Even if he wasn't tempted to join her I'm surprised he never slept with her at least

 

I don't buy that he just loved Egwene and then later Elayne sooo much that it would deter him you know. He never really had a good reason for it or showed it much

 

Well she never actually straight out offered. And if he slept with her then said "I'm still not helping you" she would have torn him to shreds before he could pull his small clothes back on...

 

That is true, but it still always really surprised me that she never hoodwinked him into bed somehow. I mean once she revealed that she was Lanfear the jig was up, but as Selene? Rand totally would have gone for it. There's even this scene where he's watching her go up to her room thinking how he might go with her if she asked...but she never did. It just didn't fit with Lanfear's character, considering how crazy obsessed she was with sinking her claws into him after that, invading his dreams etc.

[Guest Emu on the Loose]

What exactly suggest that she's a decent person?

 

Fair question. Long answer. Short version: She got screwed by the universe. It'd be impossible to get into this stuff properly without violating the board rules on political and religious discussion, but I will do my best. The basic idea is that she was set up to become a scourge to society long before she ever did. It's one of those cases of “an individual is right and the world is wrong.”

 

This post is going to be heavy on the philosophy, so feel free not to read it if you're not interested. I won't take offense! I'll even give you the summary right here: I wouldn't try and persuade you that Mierin is a decent person by your standards, because “decency” is in the eye of the beholder rather than a physical trait, and we are operating on different premises. However, by my standards Mierin has made mostly honest, ethical, and consistent choices over the course of her life, and has demonstrated a strong humanistic impulse. That constitutes decency in my book.

 

Now...

 

I'll begin by elaborating on my idea of “decency.” I deliberately did not use the word “good”; I picked “decent” instead because it is more specific and, I think, more accurate. Decent descends from an etymological root meaning “honor.” Honor to me is demonstrated when an individual identifies and adheres to a comprehensive set of guiding principles, so that their actions in life are neither arbitrary nor inconsistent. Both good and bad people can be honorable, and if you're willing to concede that Mierin does have a personal code of honor then our disagreement becomes much easier to resolve.

 

However, I wasn't just playing semantics. To me, “decency” does imply a measure of goodness in addition to honor. The goodness at issue is mostly contained in the doctrine of humanism, which places the advancement of humanity in the hands of humanity itself rather than outside powers. I know this is controversial stuff, so I won't get into it except on a superficial level. It's easy for us in the real world to reject gods that either do not exist or are discernible only by religious faith. Imagine how much harder it is to reject gods that are demonstrably real and can even talk to you. Mierin took that stance anyway. I'll revisit that stance later to talk about some of the other things it says about her, but it definitely establishes her humanistic bona fides. That, in turn, establishes her “measure of good” in addition to an underlying code of honor.

 

(It also establishes why characters like Moridin are not decent at all by my reckoning. His nihilistic philosophy is incompatible with humanism.)

 

Other people of course will have different ideas about what constitutes decency. I didn't mention compassion yet, and compassion strikes me as a quality that many people would attach to the state of decency. I think that's fair. Mierin is not a compassionate person—or if she is then we have not yet seen it in action meaningfully. I agree that that deficiency prevents her from being more decent. I suppose, therefore, I would have been clearer to say that she is mostly decent. I can think of another trait that Mierin lacks which might influence the measure of her decency: She does not seem to be very disciplined.

 

You could argue that to be “decent” one must possess all of the underlying elements of decency, and to miss any of them is to fail to be decent at all. I would subject such a claim to the argumentum ad absurdum, but you're welcome to press the case if you wish.

 

If you accept my argument that Mierin fits my standard of being (mostly) decent, then we have no further disagreement. But assuming you don't accept it, I'll move on...

 

The main argument coming from you and others that Mierin is not a decent person uses the premise that she has character flaws which exclude her from the status of decency. Of course, you are using your respective conceptions of “decency” rather than mine, which makes it irrelevant. However, even if I humor your version of the concept, I can show the underlying premise to be inadequate by addressing the flaws themselves. Is Mierin actually flawed in the way you and others are saying? The answer is, “Not really.”

 

Let's look at that...

 

She was not trapped by bad circumstances - she joined the Dark One on her own free will because of obsessive jealousy and desire for power.

 

History says that Mierin joined the Shadow for the most basic of reasons: love and hate. Apparently Lews Therin's wedding was the straw that drove her over the edge.

 

That's what history says, and I'll return to it, but in the meantime our own knowledge of the end of the Age of Legends adds some other variables to consider: Mierin suffered extreme social ostracizing because of her role in creating the Bore. It drove Beidomon to suicide, so it must have been very powerful. The world hated her, for a mistake that was not her intention.

 

I invite you to consider what a person should do in those circumstances. What do you do when the world hates you for unleashing a genuine evil that you didn't mean to cause? There isn't much you can do. You can go into hiding and live the rest of your life in obscurity, which we know Mierin didn't do. You can commit suicide, which we know she didn't do. You can surrender yourself to the world's justice, which she probably did not do (although we don't know for sure). You can try to earn the world's forgiveness, which we don't know if she tried to do—although if she did try she failed. Or you can reciprocate the hatred and turn your back on the world, which is what she eventually chose.

 

And yet, we know that Mierin did not choose to declare for the Shadow right away. For a long time she endured on the side of the Light, universally despised. Why? If she were as ripe for the Shadow's plucking as RJ said, why wasn't she up there with Ishamael and Graendal among the earliest declarants? What held her back?

 

Perhaps she hoped she could salvage her reputation. Perhaps she was genuinely repulsed by the evil she had unleashed. We can only speculate, because RJ never explored the question. The one thing we do know is that, if history's chronology is accurate, it was Lews Therin's wedding that pushed her over the edge.

 

That suggests the distinct possibility that Mierin held out on the side of the Light because she hoped she and Lews would get back together. If that is so, then, when he chose to marry someone else, it would have crushed her world.

 

That's the very spitting image of a tragic figure. It doesn't say anything about her personal decency. It says she was broken, kind of like Dr. Horrible at the end of Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog. Reviled by the world and spurned by the person she loved, what else was there for Mierin? Lews Therin's wedding probably caused her to suffer either an emotional breakdown, which we know she is capable of, or else caused her to reevaluate her priorities in life and consider embracing the Shadow to achieve her own ends.

 

Either way, she joined the Dark One of her own free will—a fact that isn't clear in-universe. We know it only because RJ confirmed it. But join she did. You say she did it for “obsessive jealousy” and a “desire for power.” Those are biased phrasings which beg the question that only an indecent person could have joined the Shadow. More neutrally, she joined the Shadow because there was nothing left for her with the Light. That's not an unreasonable course of action. What would you do if you were in her position?

 

And what did Mierin actually mean to do as one of the Shadowsworn? Even though RJ never answered that question either, we can infer the answer based on Mierin's actions after being released from her sleep in the Third Age. She went straight for Rand, and wasted no time in urging him on to glory and then tempting him with the offer of ruling the world.

 

That's probably why she originally went over to the Shadow: She wanted all the things she had wanted in the first place—namely Lews Therin and personal achievement—and finally saw fit to use the Shadow's power to get what she wanted. It's not so different from your accusations of “obsessive jealousy” and the “desire for power,” but it is correctly neutral and does not assign any unsubstantiated character judgments. When we talk about her going over to the Shadow, we're not really talking about an evil evolution in her convictions. We're talking about power and willpower pitted against extraordinary adversity. I think Mierin made the best choices she could, considering her circumstances—just as Rand made the best choice he could in rejecting Mierin's offer.

 

None of this is to say that Mierin doesn't have character flaws. She has several, which contribute to her tragic aura, and I'll get to those momentarily. For the moment I just want to point out that the likely motive for her declaration for the Shadow is not the comic book caricature you have made it out to be, but a heart-wrenching act of desperation. Decent people are sometimes driven to outrageous choices, for lack of anything better.

 

I expect that, in her pride and considerable power, Mierin thought she could maintain her service to the Shadow without actually devoting herself to the Dark One. Apparently she succeeded at least as far as TFoH. She was never loyal to the other Forsaken, was transparently phony in her allegiance to the Dark One, and avoided developing the saa in her eyes which suggests she did not use the True Power—either by choice or because the Dark One did not offer it to her. Based upon these facts it is unlikely that her declaration for the Shadow was ever motivated by genuine devotion to the Shadow. Contrast that with the other Forsaken.

 

(As Cyndane, the picture of Mierin's allegiance becomes more muddled. Was her prayer to the Dark One in WH sincere, or was it a matter of convenience, or even a ploy? What is the reality of her state at the end of ToM? We don't know enough yet to say much about Cyndane.)

 

Now, as to her character flaws, jealousy is the foremost among them and rage is a close second. Almost every verified act of violence she has committed has been the result of jealousy or jealous rage. I wouldn't defend the act of skinning somebody for delivering bad news. I wouldn't defend the slow torture of somebody for sleeping with one's own would-be partner. Those actions are not the behavior of a decent person, and whenever Mierin acts out of jealousy or temper, she betrays whatever decency she does have.

 

Is that betrayal situational or characteristic? Is Mierin indecent only when she's in a rage, or is she inherently indecent in a way that comes out in her occasional rages? That depends on her mental state. I'm not somebody to blame a person for crimes they commit when they're out of their mind. And, to me, Mierin's pattern of behavior regarding the jealousy is a clear-cut case of a disturbed mind. Look at how badly she defeated herself by going into a rage at the docks, seemingly destroying all that she had worked for. Self-destructive behavior in an ambitious person is not consistent. It's a sign that Mierin is psychologically unwell. There's a plausible justification for that possibility: She is probably traumatized by what happened to her in the Age of Legends. She unleashed supreme evil, had the world turn against her, and lost the one person who she perceived as her lifeline and worthy equal. Given that people can be traumatized from so much as a car wreck, it's easy to imagine that Mierin is suffering from a mental disorder.

 

When we look at her outside of her jealous fits, we see a completely different person. The undercurrent of jealousy is always there, but is it a mental health problem or a willful application of principle? To me it's not even a close call: She's sick in the head, and the jealousy fixation is not representative of her overall character, which is generally lucid and functional.

 

She has other flaws. In their disbelief that anybody could think that Lanfear (of all people!) might actually be a decent person, I've seen fans in this thread and elsewhere repeat facts that are not in dispute. I'm content to agree without argument that Mierin is overly selfish and that she has a streak of cruelty.

 

But those kinds of flaws don't tell us much about her decency. Selfishness is not the crass flaw we make it out to be. Selfishness is healthy. The ego cannot function without it. Unselfish people become pushovers or even victims. Selfishness can be thoughtless at times, which is when the qualifier “overly” applies. I do think that Mierin has a lot to learn about relating to other people. But she isn't indecent for it. She is ignorant.

 

And cruelty...well...it's not a popular thing to say, but we all have a touch of that in us. It is a testament to our animal heritage. Mierin took rational pleasure in the thought of Asmodean's unpleasant dreams of her. Is that because she is a sadist? No, it's because she thought he was scum and took pleasure in seeing him squirm. If I ever got to see a certain former vice president put on trial for crimes against humanity, I'd probably take a little cruel delight in it too, despite my nobler intentions. I am hard-pressed to think of a single instance of Mierin being cruel without a good reason, let alone being cruel for cruelty's own sake (which is called sadism). At worst, she is petty in her rivalries.

 

As I write this, Mierin reminds me a little bit of Perrin, who is flawed in almost the exactly the opposite way: protective to the point of mental instability, and something of a marshmallow when it comes to being self-assertive. That's why I loved reading Perrin's evolution in ToM. I'd love to read something similar about Mierin in AMoL, but I doubt RJ ever had it in him to want such a thing. (And I'll be very happy if I turn out to be wrong about that.) Despite his fancy talk about cosmic balance, RJ was always someone who picked sides. It was almost inconceivable to him that his Shadow characters could be decent people, and I doubt he would have smiled upon the conjecture I am offering right here.

 

She committed countless atrocities in the War of Power - you may say the history has been warped and the Guide is unreliable, but you don't get to be a top Forsaken for as long as she did without committing plenty of atrocities. There's a reason why her name is still used to scare little kids.

 

We invoke the name “Santa Claus” to delight little kids. That proves Santa is real? Of course not! But that's effectively what you're arguing, and it's a case of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

 

History and myth often become inseparable to all but the most studious and fortunate historians. Mierin created the Bore. That alone makes her an easy target for “villain” status in the minds of future generations. But she went over to the Shadow too, and became one of the most powerful Forsaken. Icing on the cake! Supervillain Lanfear.

 

But we don't actually know whether the other stories about her true, nor does the existence of these stories prove anything. Having drilled the Bore and gone over to the Shadow, there is a perfectly plausible reason why false stories might be tacked on to her reputation.

 

The medieval Christians called the Roman Emperor Julian “Julian the Apostate” and ascribed all kinds of wicked stories to him. They did the same thing with Emperor Galerius. They did so because it was in their interest to do so: those particular emperors rejected Christianity, and successfully persecuted it. Somebody in the thread mentioned Jezebel; she's another good example of a generally decent person who was smeared with a falsely odious reputation. Humanity's penchant for exaggerating reputations and making up tales is legendary, and effortlessly provoked.

 

In other words, we don't know that Mierin committed any of the atrocities you believe she did. Indeed, your own wording is an exaggeration of what even the BWB says. Here, in the mere act of paraphrasing the BWB, you are demonstrating humanity's incredible proclivity for hypoerbole. The original wording is “She was involved in many atrocities, perhaps more than most of the Forsaken...”

 

You said “committed”; the BWB said “involved in.” You said “countless”; the BWB said “many.” And you said nothing when the BWB said “perhaps.” See what I mean? You rephrased the text to suit your position without even thinking about it. What do you suppose the centuries of people living in Randland would have done to her story?

 

As to what her specific atrocities might have been, here is everything the BWB has to say on the matter:

 

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/wheeloftime/Chapter%206.htm

 

It's pretty flimsy—hearsay, really. No impartial judge or jury would convict anyone on the basis of such evidence.

 

That's the problem. Unlike Semirhage or Rahvin or Graendal or Moridin, we have very few instances of Mierin being wantonly evil. The worst incidents are all way back in the Age of Legends, and those accounts are not reliable. Her worst behavior in the Third Age was in the midst of a bout of temporary insanity. Outside of that episode, the only people she has verifiably killed in the Third Age were all Darkfriends. And we have it from her own mouth that she doesn't utilize the nastiest of the Shadow's tools.

 

You know that old saying from the 1990s, “Where's the beef?” Well, if Mierin is so despicable, she's done a very good job of hiding it. Where's the proof? Where are the tortured rats, the human footstools?

 

You make a point that sounds good when you say that one doesn't get to be a top Forsaken for long without committing lots of atrocities, but it's a point that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. What about Admiral Yamamoto in World War II, or General Rommel under the Nazis? What about General Lee of the Confederacy? Heck, what about Galad? These were generally decent people, yet high in the service of corrupt or dissolute institutions, and they committed a lot of deeds in the service of those institutions. How do you reconcile that?

 

Perhaps—indeed, presumably—Mierin was competent enough to be able to maintain her service to the Shadow without growing decadent or depraved. There is plenty of room for it to be plausible without requiring that she committed many if any of the atrocities she is blamed for. In the absence of strong evidence either way, the allegation of atrocious character flaws is a scratch.

 

And if she's not megalomaniac with all of her "I am the best female channeller ever, the most beautiful woman ever, the best in TAR, I can beat the Dark One and the Creator and rule the world forever, only the most powerful man in the world is good enough for me" attitude, I don't who is.

 

I don't think she ever actually said she was the most beautiful woman ever, although you can correct me if I am mistaken. And it's apparently a fact that she is as capable as a female channeler can be. So, I disregard those two elements of your criticism.

 

She did claim T'A'R for herself, which was conceited of her. But arrogance does not rise to the level of megalomania. Also, the most powerful channeler alive (sans a handful of males) probably has some ground to stand on when it comes to making grandiose boasts and audacious claims. I don't think this undermines her decency, although it doesn't help bolster her integrity.

 

Her attitude about Lews Therin is entirely warranted. Competent, strong-willed people do not settle for inferior partners (unless they intend for their “partners” to be subordinates), because it is self-demeaning. I would go so far as to say that her exclusive desire for Lews Therin is a testament to her good character. The greatest people want a partnership of equals when it comes to choosing a mate.

 

Now, her desire to overthrow the Dark One and challenge the Creator is fascinating. Fans have claimed that it's deluded to desire to do such a thing. You didn't actually use the word “deluded,” but others have. It's well and good to make claims, but where's the evidence?

 

The great lesson of humanity is that you don't know for sure until you try. There was Rand in ToM, ready and willing to destroy the whole world: the fullest expression of the Dark One's power. If you can destroy the world, you can supplant the Dark One—just as Mierin said. And Rand and Nynaeve cleansed the Taint back in WH, matching the Creator's own power to mend cosmic injuries—something Lews Therin back in the Breaking had come to believe was hubris and folly. He was wrong.

 

I also want to point out that Mierin used different words for the Dark One and the Creator. She spoke of “supplanting” the Dark One, but only of “challenging” the Creator. That tells you something about the way Mierin thinks, and, for that, it tells you she is neither deluded nor megalomaniacal. It tells you she knows exactly what she is talking about. Her words were prophetic, given what Rand went on to do later in the series. He used the Choedan Kal to do what the Creator had not done, challenging the Creator's dominion by changing the nature of the world with human power. He then used the Choedan Kal again, this time to repeat Lews Therin's self-destruction, and destroy the world for good measure. He would have supplanted the Dark One in so doing, if not for stopping himself at the last moment. He still may supplant the Dark One, if the prophecies are true that he is yet to break the world.

 

All those fans who say Mierin's ambition is impossible are speaking out of their tail ends. Tell me that Mierin was wrong, when the story itself proves she was right. Megalomania requires that an individual's abilities be well beneath their desires. That isn't the case with Mierin. She is exceptional; the same desires would be delusional in most people, but not in this one.

 

I hope you can laugh together with me at my getting so deep into the analysis of a fictional character. Hey, the alternative is going outside to whack weeds. =)

 

Getting back to my original point, I said that I could discredit the general criticism of Mierin as a decent person on the basis of her perceived flaws, by looking at the flaws themselves. Now I have largely done so, and I think you can see that her so-called flaws are not as clear-cut as people make them out to be. And if she isn't flawed the way people claim, then it discredits the argument that she isn't decent because of her flaws.

 

Mierin's real character flaws are not the kind of flaws that alienate me from the character. They do make me sympathize with her, even pity her, but they don't change her underlying motives of achievement and self-determination. With respect to those fans who believe otherwise, the desire for power is not in itself a bad thing, nor is the desire to supplant established authority. Mierin wanted to rule the world; that's an extravagant but legitimate variation on the desire to rule one's own world. Activism from the bottom up is one way to bring about major change, but so is leadership from the top down. People gravitate toward one or the other based on their personality. Both are valid. I will say that most people aren't ethically worthy to rule the entire world, and maybe Mierin is among them. I don't know either way, and I am disappointed that RJ gave no indication that he intended to explore the question. (Do you detect a theme here?)

 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

While I believe Terez has shown well enough that Lanfear is canonically not a good person (to put it mildly), I would probably enjoy reading a fanfic containing an alternate character interpretation

 

I like that point of view. WoT is RJ's story after all, and if he says Mierin is evil then we have to accept that to an extent, but authors are not infallible and I think Mierin is one of the many things that RJ got wrong in his own work. I too would like to see an alternate interpretation of the character.

 

Incidentally, the only thing Terez showed with those posts is that Mierin joined the Shadow of her own free will and was not in any way pressed into service, and that RJ didn't much care for her motives. It tells us less than you might think about Mierin's actual quality of character.

 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Meirin doesn't really want Rand or Rand/LTT. She wants to be plugged into the power he can/does/will wield. She finds power as addicting as crack cocaine.

 

That's the kind of caricature that cheapens the whole series. To the extent it is potentially accurate, it speaks to RJ's weakness as a writer, but I prefer to think your words are well off the mark. I think our culture has been spoonfed the meme that “desiring power is bad” so many times that folks just don't question it anymore. Maybe you should revisit your assumptions.

 

It's easy to say that the Forsaken all come off as one-dimensional. So do the Light-siders, for that matter. Perhaps this really is just a sign that RJ could have been a better writer, but what it does for fans of the series is it gives us a chance to interpret the characters and perceive their other dimensions ourselves. It's an opportunity to add to the story. I would like to think—although I don't know for sure—that RJ wanted us to read the story for ourselves, rather than abide by his own interpretation. He might not have agreed with our opinions, but I think he would have been gratified to see us create them.

[Suttree]

As to what her specific atrocities might have been, here is everything the BWB has to say on the matter:

 

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/wheeloftime/Chapter%206.htm

 

It's pretty flimsy—hearsay, really. No impartial judge or jury would convict anyone on the basis of such evidence.

 

 

Increasing the suicide rate of entire cities through sleep deprivation and night terrors, "as well as performing outright assassinations in Tel'aran'rhiod."

[Kestrel]

@Emu, you have a career ahead of you as a criminal defense attorney, if you want it. Your treatise sounds like a closing defense argument offered in a high-profile criminal case.

 

But I'm not buying it.

 

"Somebody in the thread mentioned Jezebel; she's another good example of a generally decent person who was smeared with a falsely odious reputation." That portrayal is only found in baseless 20th Century revisionist history accounts and in movies. There is no historical evidence, legitimate or otherwise, supporting Jezebel as being "generally decent". If you believe this is a defense of Meirin your argument fails.

 

"Megalomania requires that an individual's abilities be well beneath their desires. That isn't the case with Mierin..... Mierin wanted to rule the world" Are you suggesting she actually had the ability to do that, to succeed at the Game of Houses? I seriously doubt it. I've seen no evidence indicating she was capable of engaging in the kind of delicate diplomacy or alliance-building that is essential for a genuine leader. That's likely why she never advanced beyond the positions of field commander or territorial governor.

 

"I would go so far as to say that her exclusive desire for Lews Therin is a testament to her good character." This of course goes completely against what the BWB says: "Lews Therin broke off the relationship some years before the drilling of the Bore, partly because she loved her association with the great Lews Therin more than she loved the man, and partly because she saw him as a path to power for herself." Nothing in that statement even hints at her genuinely loving LTT for himself, nor about wanting to be his loyal wife and helpmate, aiding him in being the benevolent leader when he was first among the Servants, when he wore the Ring of Tamyrlin and sat in the High Seat. No, there's nothing benevolent about a woman who studies the object of her desire "as a dedicated hunter might study the life and habits of her prey," and to his credit LTT looked past her allure and saw her for what she was.

 

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. I'm sorry to say that your arguments, however smoothly crafted, still fail at the core.

 

But I do thank you for providing a web-link to the BWB. I was sure it was posted on the web somewhere.

[Mats Spare Hat]

Yeeaah, you think it'd hold up to blame your personal atrocities on account that somebody dumped you?

 

I turned evil & wreaked havoc on the world, drove people insane, orchestrated kidnapping & conspiracy plots...but it's totally not my fault, omg like you dumped me, what was I supposed to do...It's so your fault I made my own decisions.

 

Responsibility, what's that? Ugh! *flips hair

[Guest Emu on the Loose]

Increasing the suicide rate of entire cities through sleep deprivation and night terrors, "as well as performing outright assassinations in Tel'aran'rhiod."

 

You're saying "BWB sez _____." That's not the point. The point is that it's an imperfect authority. Also, you missed the part in Lanfear's entry that said "credited with." Not only are the accusations potentially false regardless of the BWB's claims to their truth, but even the BWB checks itself to the possibility. You can't make a case on hearsay.

 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Yeeaah, you think it'd hold up to blame your personal atrocities on account that somebody dumped you?

 

I turned evil & wreaked havoc on the world, drove people insane, orchestrated kidnapping & conspiracy plots...but it's totally not my fault, omg like you dumped me, what was I supposed to do...It's so your fault I made my own decisions.

 

Responsibility, what's that? Ugh! *flips hair

 

That is the same logical mistake that others have made with regard to the question of whether Mierin actually committed any atrocities, and what the underlying circumstances may have been. Look at the events going on right now in Libya. Both sides are committing what I would call atrocities, but both sides also have a reason for doing so, and the atrocities are probably unavoidable given the incompatibility and untenability of the core demands of each side. The ethical gravity of the atrocities comes down to whether you agree with each side's reason for pressing the civil war. It's the old question of: What do you do when the situation is unacceptable but the only ways to change it are also unacceptable? It's a dilemma; there's no pure way out of it.

 

In Mierin's case, assuming she ever committed any of these supposed atrocities, you'd have to look at the context of why she did it. Your very cavalier dismissal of her motivation preempts you from the opportunity to conduct such an analysis.

 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

@Emu, you have a career ahead of you as a criminal defense attorney, if you want it. Your treatise sounds like a closing defense argument offered in a high-profile criminal case.

 

Well, thank you. I think. But defending criminals is not my passion. Like any good emu I'm in the industry of making mischief. I am only too happy when I come across a bunch of people who share the same ill-considered belief. I presume you're familiar with Kohlberg's stages of moral development. Mierin is a villain character who has been declared both by many in-universe characters as well as by the book author to be a bad egg. In-universe sources like the BWB back this up.

 

I am fully aware that a majority of WoT readers will look at that and experience a "conventional" reaction, taking the claims at their word and giving no further analytical consideration to the matter. These people will not be interested in revisiting their views of the character, nor am I interested in trying to change a mind that doesn't want to be changed. I'm only interested in sharing my interpretation of the character with those people who are honestly interested in considering alternative interpretations, or those people who just take a particular interest in Mierin Eronaile, like I do. I'm sure there are a few such people, and if they are lucky enough to see this thread then I'm hopeful they will enjoy reading my thoughts just as I enjoyed writing them.

 

I know that it's a lot to ask, on the basis of anything I have written, to view Mierin as a sympathetic character. But I also know that, to anyone who really wants to give it a hard look, what I have written makes it much harder to continue to buy into her villainous caricature.

 

That portrayal is only found in baseless 20th Century revisionist history accounts and in movies. There is no historical evidence, legitimate or otherwise, supporting Jezebel as being "generally decent". If you believe this is a defense of Meirin your argument fails.

 

Ah, we disagree then. I think the evidence is pretty clear that Jezebel got a bad wrap. I didn't even know that people were still interested in subscribing to the classical negative view of her. Alas, this isn't the place to debate it. But it's no matter. The point still stands if I remove that particular example.

 

Are you suggesting she actually had the ability to do that, to succeed at the Game of Houses? I seriously doubt it. I've seen no evidence indicating she was capable of engaging in the kind of delicate diplomacy or alliance-building that is essential for a genuine leader. That's likely why she never advanced beyond the positions of field commander or territorial governor.

 

Well, she did bring together an alliance of Forsaken after Ishamael bit it in TDR. If that's not a hard-earned feat of alliance-building, "I don't know what is." She was also the project leader of her Bore-drilling experiment back in the AoL.

 

As for her roles for the Shadow in the Age of Legends, the information is sparse and the accounts are unreliable...but I'm not aware of there being higher political ranks on the Shadow side than "territorial governor." Was there a Villain-in-Chief of some kind? Nae'blis, maybe? Was there a Nae'blis back then? Also, she apparently was never a military commander, thus rendering moot the question of why she didn't advance beyond the flag ranks into...whatever is above the flag ranks. (Chair of the joint chiefs, I guess.)

 

It's surprising, because the available information is so flimsy, but it actually does look like there's a pretty good case for Mierin as a capable leader. What's missing is not her feats of diplomacy or ranks of power, but, rather, her demonstration of caring about the wellbeing of the people under her. That much is totally missing from the equation, and sources like the BWB even suggest that she was poor at it.

 

Would she have been a good ruler of the world? Probably not after breaking and going over to the Shadow, at least not without rehabilitation or not by herself. (Lews Therin could probably have redeemed her compassionate qualities, but that's just speculation on my part.) Prior to that...who knows? I'm inclined to say "yes."

 

This of course goes completely against what the BWB says: "Lews Therin broke off the relationship some years before the drilling of the Bore, partly because she loved her association with the great Lews Therin more than she loved the man, and partly because she saw him as a path to power for herself." Nothing in that statement even hints at her genuinely loving LTT for himself, nor about wanting to be his loyal wife and helpmate, aiding him in being the benevolent leader when he was first among the Servants, when he wore the Ring of Tamyrlin and sat in the High Seat. No, there's nothing benevolent about a woman who studies the object of her desire "as a dedicated hunter might study the life and habits of her prey," and to his credit LTT looked past her allure and saw her for what she was.

 

BWB notwithstanding, her love of Lews Therin (and Rand) is pretty clear. Moments like her appearance before Rand early in TFoH are brutally honest. We even get it from Cyndane herself inside her own head in WH that she had loved him.

 

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. I'm sorry to say that your arguments, however smoothly crafted, still fail at the core.

 

I didn't know I'd failed! I thought I'd made a rather compelling case. Oh well. I still get an "A" for effort, right?

 

Seriously, it's all the same to me. If you found my post interesting, then that's all I wanted. I don't need for anyone to agree with me.

 

But I do thank you for providing a web-link to the BWB. I was sure it was posted on the web somewhere.

 

You're quite welcome! The books themselves are also available in partial form in the Google archive. I've found it to be much faster in general than whipping open the printed copies and doing a fingertip search. I really should break down and buy the e-books. Are those searchable? I don't actually own a Kindle or anything like that.

[bsmnt23]

Emu, to start I took the time to read (and to re-read in some cases to make sure I fully understood your point) your arguments. They are well thought out with strong philosophical foundations. Not to mention articulate. Despite this, you are wrong.

 

I have heard the theory postulated (and i guess it's been shot down now) that Miren could have been a decent girl before she discovered the new power scource and tapped it, thus breaking free the source of all true evil in the universe upon her unsuspecting world, and in so doing she could have been inadverdantly turned to the dark one against her will. If that has been debunked by RJ himself, then all we have to go by on Mierin's character is what we have seen in the series cannonicly. She declared for the dark one in the Hall of the Servents itself, and chose her name as a Forsaken (I dont know if anyone has ever asked what "Lanfear" means in the Old Tounge but the fact she chose it herself indicates she wanted some recognition that would set her apart and superior to the other, "lesser" forsaken. She was hungery for power, this is cannon and irrefutable.

 

Bear in mind that this is a world where the bad guys are very easy to spot. The bad guys worship the "Great Lord of the Dark", visit pain and torment on any opposition, introduce into the world armies of genetic abominations that activily eat people and who are captained by Fades who's sole pleasure in their twisted version of life is raping human women into suicidal insanity and very likely wake up in the morning with a fresh kitten to kick every day. The good/bad dichotemy is not dificult to spot here. These guys are worse than if the Hawks (the evil hocky team against which the Mighty Ducks triumphed) were coached by the Cobra-kai sensei, with equipment given to them from by Cobra. And she signed on without even asking for a signing bonus, saying that she was going to "show them how it was done". She's a bad egg. It happens sometimes.

 

Most of your arguments in favor of her "decency" are echos of the rationalizations of women who fall in love with serial killers in prison. The universe did not deal her a bad hand, she had everything anyone could have ever wanted, and she wanted more. That she "went evil for love" makes great fodder for maybe an '80s hair-ballad but is in no way a valid argument for her intrensic decency. And when you atribute a definiition to "decency" as haveing a sense of personal honor is only half correct; there is such thing as Right and Wrong and it is not dificult to tell them apart. If you do wrong even with good intentions, it is still wrong. This sentiment could be used to justify joining the Nazis knowing full well the extent of their atrocities and volentering your brand shiny new jack-boots for kitten-kicking duty. Wrong is wrong, and blaming your actions on anyone else for any reason, while currently fassionable for todays youth...and politions since the dawn of time...is for the weak.

 

Lews Therin shacked up with her back in the day for all the reasons young people shack up; they were young, she was beautiful, he was powerful. Lanfear is credited as the most beautiful woman of her Age, and LT, being a healthy red-blooded human male simply wanted to tap that. And like any other healthy red-blooded human male also got sick of her crap when it became apparent that she was bat&^$% crazy. (It is a truism that no matter how hot she is, someone, somewhere is sick of her shi7). Rand would never join with Lanfear because he, as he puts it so well in ToM was raised better this time around. He won't fall for it again.

[Terez]

You know, not every young man will jump into bed with the first hot woman to throw herself at him. Rand's upbringing in the Two Rivers would have discouraged it - he was very awkward about the idea of premarital sex, hence his embarrassing speech to Aviendha in TFOH.

 

Also, Lanfear=Daughter of the Night

[Mr Ares]

I'll begin by elaborating on my idea of “decency.” I deliberately did not use the word “good”; I picked “decent” instead because it is more specific and, I think, more accurate. Decent descends from an etymological root meaning “honor.” Honor to me is demonstrated when an individual identifies and adheres to a comprehensive set of guiding principles, so that their actions in life are neither arbitrary nor inconsistent. Both good and bad people can be honorable, and if you're willing to concede that Mierin does have a personal code of honor then our disagreement becomes much easier to resolve.

I'll begin with a dictionary definition: Decency: propriety of behaviour, respectability, what is accepted as being required by good taste or delicacy. I'm not sure how that applies to Lanfear. Yours would appear to be a rather unique definition of the words decent and decency. If you meant honour, you could have said such.

 

I expect that, in her pride and considerable power, Mierin thought she could maintain her service to the Shadow without actually devoting herself to the Dark One. Apparently she succeeded at least as far as TFoH. She was never loyal to the other Forsaken, was transparently phony in her allegiance to the Dark One, and avoided developing the saa in her eyes which suggests she did not use the True Power—either by choice or because the Dark One did not offer it to her. Based upon these facts it is unlikely that her declaration for the Shadow was ever motivated by genuine devotion to the Shadow. Contrast that with the other Forsaken.

It's not very different from the other Chosen, save Ishy/Moridin. None of them have saa, all of them (including Ishydin) are willing to backstab the others, and they all serve the Shadow for wholly selfish reasons. The only real difference is that she's the only one who suggests a plan of making herself a god in Shai'tan's place. So she thinks a bit bigger than the others, but is no less self-serving.

 

Her attitude about Lews Therin is entirely warranted. Competent, strong-willed people do not settle for inferior partners (unless they intend for their “partners” to be subordinates), because it is self-demeaning. I would go so far as to say that her exclusive desire for Lews Therin is a testament to her good character. The greatest people want a partnership of equals when it comes to choosing a mate.

So wanting to dominate a powerful man makes her desirous of a partnership of equals?

 

I also want to point out that Mierin used different words for the Dark One and the Creator. She spoke of “supplanting” the Dark One, but only of “challenging” the Creator. That tells you something about the way Mierin thinks, and, for that, it tells you she is neither deluded nor megalomaniacal.

So what does it tell us? That she wants to take the place of the god widely seen as evil, and be opposed to the one widely seen as good.

Her words were prophetic, given what Rand went on to do later in the series.

No they weren't. I fail to see how the Cleansing constitues challenging the Creator? The Creator didn't care enough to do something and expected people to fix it by themselves... and they did. Destroying the world wouldn't be supplanting Shai'tan, as Shai'tan would still be there, just as powerful as before. In exactly the same position as before. The story does not demonstrate that Lanfear's "delusions" were right, so it is quite easy to say that she was wrong.

 

This of course goes completely against what the BWB says: "Lews Therin broke off the relationship some years before the drilling of the Bore, partly because she loved her association with the great Lews Therin more than she loved the man, and partly because she saw him as a path to power for herself." Nothing in that statement even hints at her genuinely loving LTT for himself, nor about wanting to be his loyal wife and helpmate, aiding him in being the benevolent leader when he was first among the Servants, when he wore the Ring of Tamyrlin and sat in the High Seat. No, there's nothing benevolent about a woman who studies the object of her desire "as a dedicated hunter might study the life and habits of her prey," and to his credit LTT looked past her allure and saw her for what she was.

 

BWB notwithstanding, her love of Lews Therin (and Rand) is pretty clear. Moments like her appearance before Rand early in TFoH are brutally honest. We even get it from Cyndane herself inside her own head in WH that she had loved him.

We get it from Rand/LTT that she didn't, from Asmo that she meant to be the greater in their new partnership, from Moiraine (her future visions from Rhuidean) that she might have done it - no partnership of equals. Perhaps she just had an unusual definition of love.

[David Selig]

I certainly didn't expect such an in-depth response to my hastily written brief post. ;)

 

Excellent job defending a difficult cause, Emu on the Loose. But no matter how well you put your argument, I just can't in any way consider someone who skin people when she gets angry as "decent person". This act alone pushes her beyond the moral event horizon for me. That's even before we consider she was one of the key persons who in AoL helped the DO to almost destroy the world. There isn't a good enough justification for that which I can accept. "she got screwed by the universe" doesn't cut it for me, especially given that she received so many advantages since birth - incredible beauty and strength in the Power.

 

The Guide is not 100% canon, but a lot of the information in it about the Forsaken and the War of Power is confirmed in the main series, and I can't think of any major contradiction in this aspect off the top of my head. And what are the odds that Lanfear managed to maintain the favour of the DO, the ultimate evil incarnated, for years, without committing plenty of atrocities during a brutal war? Very slim, I'd say. We can split hairs whether Lanfear's war crimes were more horrendous compared to the other Forsaken, or less, but that matters little in the end. Whether she drove 10000 people to suicide or just 100, it's still a crime for which there's no excuse and proves for me she's a monster. The fear and borderline awe most of the other Forsaken treat Lanfear with certainly suggest that she had no problem with getting her hands dirty.

 

My impression of Lanfear had always been that she's a sociopath who cares only for herself and treat all the others except Lews/Rand with total lack of compassion and is ready to kill or torture on a whim. Not really a sadist, simply someone who always does what she wants and doesn't core who that might hurt. She thought joining the Shadow was the way to achieve her selfish goals of power and getting Lews Therin back, so she did it, and if she had to kill and commit mass atrocities to achieve it, so be it. Nothing matters to her getting what she desires. Just look at the way she casually kill the guy she was talking to before going to the Cleansing - he was a very minor nuisance, so she killed him without a second thought. Or the way she planted the jewellery to get Isendre in trouble (and Isendre would've been banished to die in the Waste, if not for Rand's intervention) - on a whim she condemned that woman to what amounted to a death sentence for no reason. The only person beside herself she shows any compassion and consideration for is Rand/Lews. And even that is in big part because he's a means to increasing her power. The books make this clear on a number of occasions:

 

TSR, Ch. 9

 

You were mine long before that pale-haired milksop stole you. Before she ever saw you. You loved me!”

 

“And you loved power!” For a moment he felt dazed. The words sounded true — he knew they were true — but where had they come from?

 

Selene — Lanfear — seemed as startled as he, but she recovered quickly. “You’ve learned much — you have done much I’d not have believed you could, unaided — but you are still fumbling your way through a maze in the dark, and your ignorance may kill you.

Lanfear didn't even deny it, she was just surprised Rand remembered it.

[AparnaVengakkad]

On the first question of why Rand never accepted Lanfear's help, i think it is easy to see why

 

1. He had heard that Lanfear is the most dangerous of forsaken.

2. She was too attractive. too seductive..

He was not self aware or self confident enough at the time to think that he could resist her strength or her seduction. And if he did give in to either the consequences for the people he care about could be devastating. After all what he knew about or had heard about Lanfear would make him scared of what she would do if she had the power over him. what if she used him to hurt his people and he was powerless against it?

Besides even at the time Rand was stubborn. He didn't like to be controlled by anybody. So he wouldn't have enjoyed the idea of giving in to seduction and being powerless in face of it. After all, he was not at the time very sure of his capabilities.

 

I should think he made a good decision at the time. with all the info he had in hand and considering all his doubts anyways.

 

Now that he has Lews Therin's memories and a strength of his own he may behave differently. I am not saying he would (or should) fall in love with her or choose her as a partner, but he may indeed try to help her and redeem her - bring her over to the light.

 

 

Emu,

 

I enjoyed reading your comments. And it made me look up the article in the link given. But i think you are not considering all of the details mentioned in the article.

 

Yes, it says that Meirin affected people's sleep and raised their suicidal tendencies. The word "credited" is not used in this case.

 

the people she governed had more than the usual horrors of the Shadow to face; they feared sleep itself. Suicide rates were extremely high in her territory, even considering the fact that suicide was endemic in all the conquered territories

 

well, it may not be all true (it is history after all), but it should be up there for some reason, right? No she didn't torture people, but she caused widespread depression. It may have been to promote the cause of Shadow, or it may have been for sadistic pleasure. The history is not clear on that i think. Not in the case of the territories she ruled anyways...

 

As for turning over to shadow because LTT married Ilyena, she may have been in love with LTT (though LTT seems to reject the fact) but that does not give her the right to expect him to love her or go berserk when she is rejected. Now, LTT could have probably helped her there instead of being insensitive to her needs (and we don't know whether that is really the case. he probably tried) but Rand says that at the time he was arrogant. Probably he was quick to judgment and didn't have the benefit that he has now (that of wisdom. that of having a different upbringing). May be that did have something to do with her going over to shadow. He could've been more compassionate. May be he would be now.

 

As an aside, i read in a previous post of yours that LTT feared lanfear's power and his own and the lure of that and that may be why he rejected her. but we do not know that. we do not know what drew LTT to Ilyena (may be it was the Voice;-)). Ileyna may have been good in one power, strong in character, and a compassionate one to boot. She may have been a more decent or more honourable character than Lanfear. or he may just have fallen in love with her for some or other reason.. he, i think had every right to give in to that.

 

I personally think that none of the Shadow characters are developed well enough. Insight into at least a few of them, like it gives in the Malazan series would've been nice. (don't take me wrong. I love WOT)

 

As for power for its own sake. well may be it is not wrong to want power for its own sake- it would give one freedom from being under anyone's thumb- but from what i understood when people or authors say the villian wants power for its own sake, they mostly mean that the villian wants control over other people. And that is bad.. to wish to cast the world in your cast is also bad because you do not know you are the best. Besides diversity is the best thing about life.

 

It is not clear Lanfear wanted power for either of those reasons but from her conversations it is easy for most people to assume that she did. After all, she does go berserk when people go against her will.. even if it is just one dark friend or one egwene it is still there isn't it?

 

It is not bad to want to rule the world to change the world. Many people want that. But i should think her own actions suggest that Lanfear couldn't have made a good ruler. She probably would have gone with someone as long as they are with her but would be vicious when that someone suggested a different path that she didn't like. That is not the aspect of a good leader or a ruler. A good leader should respect diversity. should be able to develop those under her, bring out the best in them. (i know that is probably utopian when you think in terms of nation and the world itself, but you do see good leaders in smaller situations. so they do exist). Among the WOT people probably Amys, Bair et al are good examples of that. Rand, as he is now, could be called a good leader.

 

Regarding your point about Rand and cleansing - i do not think it was challenging creator. Creator was not interested in doing anything with the world after he(she) created. he just created it (for his entertainment probably or whatever) and then left it to itself. He didn't create the bore and he didn't care about cleansing the taint. As far as he is concerned you could do whatever you wanted. I do not think that equates to the Christian theme of heaven and hell and God who controls or at least knows the destiny of people. So how would the cleansing be challenging the creator? You messed something up (at least as a race). so it is your job to clean it. I have given you free leave with a wheel which gives you second chances and a source of power which never goes empty. I think that is his idea so whatever you do is probably not challenging. From what i have seen he seems to have given ultimate freedom to the people ( er . i may probably be bringing my eastern upbringing and my own concept of the kalachakra to this discussion, but that is what i think. That is why i do not understand why people think that the wheel is a hegemony. except for the taveren factor of course..).

 

The supplanting dark one also seems far fetched. If Rand was able to destroy the wheel as he seemed to think (which is open to question, after all it is not clear what would've happened if he hadn't had his epiphany) he probably would've destroyed himself with it since the pattern is wheel's (he seemed to want that). Even if not we would still have a dark one. So he would be redundant. Or he probably could challenge dark one then. would he be willing to do that? There are so many questions there and to say that he would supplant dark one i think would be simplistic. (after all doing someone's job for them or meeting someone's wishes is in no way supplanting that person).

 

It would have been wonderful to see Meirin's life story or see her given flesh and ultimately coming over to light. It would have been nice to see all of the forsaken fleshed out in fact.

 

So emu, i don't know whether you took the time to read this too lengthy answer to your lengthy argument ;-)

 

But I hope you did ;-)

 

Aparna

[Suttree]

I'll begin by elaborating on my idea of “decency.” I deliberately did not use the word “good”; I Her attitude about Lews Therin is entirely warranted. Competent, strong-willed people do not settle for inferior partners (unless they intend for their “partners” to be subordinates), because it is self-demeaning. I would go so far as to say that her exclusive desire for Lews Therin is a testament to her good character. The greatest people want a partnership of equals when it comes to choosing a mate.

 

Want to also point out that they weren't equals. As in many things Lanfear was shooting higher for the sake of power. Unlike Ilyena and Lews Therin, Lanfear never earned a third name in the AoL. Think it is safe to assume character defects played a role in holding her back.

 

BWB notwithstanding, her love of Lews Therin (and Rand) is pretty clear.

 

You mean except in the books and RJ's statements to the contrary. You can't just ignore evidence when it doesn't fit your theory.

[Entreri]

Where does RJ say that Lanfear does not love LTT?

 

I am pretty sure Lanfear loves LTT, but she loves power more, as stated by LTT.

 

 

The most dangerous female Forsaken could be Grandael: She manipulated Sammael, her escape from Rand, near success against Perrin. Her knowledge of the human mind, only person LTT said is smarter than him...

During her meeting with Sammael, Lanfear and Rahvin...it is likely Grandael had an angreal ready.

[Guest Emu on the Loose]

This post is being split into parts because the system tells me it has more usages of blockquoting than is allowed for a single post. Hah!

 

Emu, to start I took the time to read (and to re-read in some cases to make sure I fully understood your point) your arguments. They are well thought out with strong philosophical foundations. Not to mention articulate. Despite this, you are wrong.

 

Tut tut! You mean you disagree with me. =)

 

I have heard the theory postulated (and i guess it's been shot down now) that Miren could have been a decent girl before she discovered the new power scource and tapped it, thus breaking free the source of all true evil in the universe upon her unsuspecting world, and in so doing she could have been inadverdantly turned to the dark one against her will. If that has been debunked by RJ himself, then all we have to go by on Mierin's character is what we have seen in the series cannonicly. She declared for the dark one in the Hall of the Servents itself, and chose her name as a Forsaken (I dont know if anyone has ever asked what "Lanfear" means in the Old Tounge but the fact she chose it herself indicates she wanted some recognition that would set her apart and superior to the other, "lesser" forsaken. She was hungery for power, this is cannon and irrefutable.

 

Much of what you mention occurred in the Age of Legends and is only canonically referenced, not objectively illustrated in the narrative. That's an important difference! Even so, the actions you're talking about concern only Mierin's defection to the Shadow--a fact which isn't in dispute. It doesn't really address her underlying character. Oh, sure, you can say it does, but why does anybody do evil? Is there no such thing as evil done for reasons other than evil? RJ himself debunked that simplistic idea with the story of Aridhol.

 

I'm also really surprised that people keep going on about the "hungry for power" part as a hallmark of being evil. That's just not true, and it doesn't matter how many one-dimensional fictional villains suggest otherwise. Wanting power is a sign of a healthy ego. Some people take issue with Mierin having wanted power "for power's sake," but that kind of phrasing is a straw man logical fallacy; there's no such thing as wanting power for power's sake, and to accept it as a character motive is indefensible.

 

Bear in mind that this is a world where the bad guys are very easy to spot. The bad guys worship the "Great Lord of the Dark", visit pain and torment on any opposition, introduce into the world armies of genetic abominations that activily eat people and who are captained by Fades who's sole pleasure in their twisted version of life is raping human women into suicidal insanity and very likely wake up in the morning with a fresh kitten to kick every day.

 

The blunt conspicuousness of evil in the WoT world is a big part of what makes Mierin such an exceptional Shadow character, because she performs very little evil onscreen. Mierin is written as a proud and arrogant aristocrat. That part of her character is very convincing. But then there's all this stuff about how evil she supposedly is, and it just doesn't stick.

 

The universe did not deal her a bad hand, she had everything anyone could have ever wanted, and she wanted more.

 

If I could ask you to go back and really ponder the ramifications of that sentence, I would consider it most thoughtful of you. First of all, your opening clause is unsubstantiated. Your second clause is judgmental in a way that cannot respectfully be defending when it comes to respecting human freedoms.

 

That she "went evil for love" makes great fodder for maybe an '80s hair-ballad but is in no way a valid argument for her intrensic decency. And when you atribute a definiition to "decency" as haveing a sense of personal honor is only half correct; there is such thing as Right and Wrong and it is not dificult to tell them apart. If you do wrong even with good intentions, it is still wrong. This sentiment could be used to justify joining the Nazis knowing full well the extent of their atrocities and volentering your brand shiny new jack-boots for kitten-kicking duty. Wrong is wrong, and blaming your actions on anyone else for any reason, while currently fassionable for todays youth...and politions since the dawn of time...is for the weak.

 

We were having such a good time until you compared my earlier argument to an apology for the Nazis. =(

 

You're not giving enough thought to the desperation that Mierin must have found herself in. I also dispute your authority to declare "there is such thing (sic) as Right and Wrong and it is not dificult (sic) to tell them apart.)" My defense of Mierin clearly implies you are mistaken in one way or another, and you can't make a good argument by making a disputed claim and then not supporting it.

 

Lanfear is credited as the most beautiful woman of her Age, and LT, being a healthy red-blooded human male simply wanted to tap that.

 

This comment is sexist, but, putting that aside, you are forgetting one of the most poignant lines in the whole series, from TFoH, where Rand is remembering, through LTT, what he and Mierin had done together when they were young. He wasn't remembering "tapping that." He was remembering learning the joys of the One Power. The evidence in the series suggests that both Mierin and LTT were ambitious, power-hungry people of unparalleled competence in the One Power and surely were a strong fit for each other.

 

And like any other healthy red-blooded human male also got sick of her crap when it became apparent that she was bat&^$% crazy. (It is a truism that no matter how hot she is, someone, somewhere is sick of her shi7).

 

That is even more sexist.

 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Decency: propriety of behaviour, respectability, what is accepted as being required by good taste or delicacy.

 

You are welcome to read some of the other definitions in the dictionary, or explore the etymology of the word like I did. Etymological foundations are a big part of overall linguistic comprehension.

 

The only real difference is that she's the only one who suggests a plan of making herself a god in Shai'tan's place. So she thinks a bit bigger than the others, but is no less self-serving.

 

If you accept the DO as the supreme source of evil in the world, like RJ wrote in TSR, then there is a big difference between serving the DO for status in his hierarchy and serving the DO as part of a plan to overthrow him. And if you don't accept the DO as the supreme source of evil, for RJ also wrote that people had some inherent evil in themselves even before the DO came along, then it's irresponsible and oversimplistic to conflate people's motives simply because of what team they're on.

 

I fail to see how the Cleansing constitues challenging the Creator? The Creator didn't care enough to do something and expected people to fix it by themselves... and they did.

 

The answer you seek is in LTT's thoughts in TEotW prologue.

 

Destroying the world wouldn't be supplanting Shai'tan, as Shai'tan would still be there, just as powerful as before.

 

Destroying the world as it presently exists is the DO's highest known goal. Rand almost pulled that off himself. DO = (almost) supplanted.

 

We get it from Rand/LTT that she didn't, from Asmo that she meant to be the greater in their new partnership, from Moiraine (her future visions from Rhuidean) that she might have done it - no partnership of equals. Perhaps she just had an unusual definition of love.

 

I flatly mistrust Asmodean's interpretation, and Moiraine's vision of the future was never well-explained nor clearly elaborated upon. The letter said only that Rand would be carried away by Lanfear and would return next as her devoted lover. "Devotion" can imply subservience, yes, but more often it implies nothing of the sort.

 

Ironically, despite the fact that you meant it rhetorically, I think you're on to something when you say that Mierin perhaps had an unusual definition of love. If we take "unusual" to mean "able to confuse most people's sense of what love is," then it's a distinct possibility! After all, Mierin clearly loved LTT and yet even now there are still fans who dispute it.

 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Excellent job defending a difficult cause, Emu on the Loose. But no matter how well you put your argument, I just can't in any way consider someone who skin people when she gets angry as "decent person". This act alone pushes her beyond the moral event horizon for me.

 

If you're coming at it from that direction, then of course we have no argument. We simply disagree on our starting premises. Your premise is that the action itself invalidates any claim to decency that Mierin might have. Mine is that it does not because there are extenuating circumstances. Unfortunately, board restriction prevent the kind of political and religious discussion that it would take to really hash out our disagreement.

 

I will say, however, that you should place more emphasis on the exceptionalness of behavior that occurs in a fit of rage. If you've ever been on the giving or receiving end of such a thing, or even a third party witness to it, then you know that the person doing the raging becomes briefly a different person. It's very hard to hold people responsible for their actions in a meaningful way when they are not actually, cognitively present during the episode of misconduct. Mierin's behavior at the docks was classic temporary insanity. She very clearly has psychological problems, because it isn't normal behavior and it isn't in line with how she behaves the rest of the time, except inasmuch as her temper nearly gets triggered on other occasions.

 

That's even before we consider she was one of the key persons who in AoL helped the DO to almost destroy the world. There isn't a good enough justification for that which I can accept. "she got screwed by the universe" doesn't cut it for me, especially given that she received so many advantages since birth - incredible beauty and strength in the Power.

 

If you want, I'll make another thread on that. It deserves its own, although I don't know if anybody would actually be interested in reading it. For now, I stand by my argument.

 

The Guide is not 100% canon, but a lot of the information in it about the Forsaken and the War of Power is confirmed in the main series, and I can't think of any major contradiction in this aspect off the top of my head.

 

I expect that if we got it from Brandon or Maria, they'd say what you just said, that the BWB is largely accurate, and that Mierin really was as unpleasant as she was made out to be. Indeed, I have begun in all my proceedings with the assumption that that point of view is correct. Mierin largely is an unpleasant character, and honestly did have a number of ugly character traits and mental problems.

 

Where I go from there is to suggest that a lot of this developed in response to frustrations brought about by the nature of WoT reality, the frustration of being rejected by LTT, and the fallout from her drilling of the Bore. I then go on to argue that her underlying ambitions, independent of her personal failings, are pretty noble, which contributes to her decency if not her pleasantness.

 

So, yes, she's a hard one to defend, but pretty easy if you're specific enough. At least that's how I see it. =)

 

And what are the odds that Lanfear managed to maintain the favour of the DO, the ultimate evil incarnated, for years, without committing plenty of atrocities during a brutal war? Very slim, I'd say. We can split hairs whether Lanfear's war crimes were more horrendous compared to the other Forsaken, or less, but that matters little in the end. Whether she drove 10000 people to suicide or just 100, it's still a crime for which there's no excuse and proves for me she's a monster.

 

If you can accept the ethical complexity of characters like Verin and Mordeth, who on the surface seem instantly good and bad (respectively), then it's not so hard to accept that Mierin's actions for the Shadow need to be interpreted contextually and not in and of themselves. Then again, you've suggested (if I understand correctly) that you come from the perspective that the action itself is what should be judged, without regard to context, and if so our underlying disagreement remains.

 

The fear and borderline awe most of the other Forsaken treat Lanfear with certainly suggest that she had no problem with getting her hands dirty.

 

That's a fair point, but let's remember that evil has ever reason to fear good as well as fellow evil. Mierin clearly has a low opinion of most people. There's ethical space aplenty for her to combine that elitism with a disdain for servants of the Shadow. So long as the question remains canonically unresolved, we can only speculate. It'd be a good question to ask Brandon: Given her own independent streak, what is Mierin's opinion of sincere devotees of the Shadow?

 

TSR, Ch. 9

 

You were mine long before that pale-haired milksop stole you. Before she ever saw you. You loved me!”

 

“And you loved power!” For a moment he felt dazed. The words sounded true — he knew they were true — but where had they come from?

 

Selene — Lanfear — seemed as startled as he, but she recovered quickly. “You’ve learned much — you have done much I’d not have believed you could, unaided — but you are still fumbling your way through a maze in the dark, and your ignorance may kill you.

Lanfear didn't even deny it, she was just surprised Rand remembered it.

 

Note that her love of power and her love of Lews were in no way necessarily exclusive. Indeed, they could very nicely fit together as a pair. To put it another way, I could use that same quote in making my own case.

 

Also, it's worth repeating that LTT's voice has been certifiably insane from TEotW to the moment it last appeared. We have not yet had a sane POV from LTT, and we've only had scarce insight into Rand's mind since his self-confrontation on Dragonmount.

[Guest Emu on the Loose]

And now, the exciting conclusion!

 

On the first question of why Rand never accepted Lanfear's help, i think it is easy to see why

 

Emu, I enjoyed reading your comments. And it made me look up the article in the link given.

 

I am glad! That's really the whole point. I could as easily keep all this to myself, but sharing it on a forum has the potential to get people thinking about the series we presumably all enjoy.

 

But i think you are not considering all of the details mentioned in the article.

 

Naturally! =P

 

Yes, it says that Meirin affected people's sleep and raised their suicidal tendencies. The word "credited" is not used in this case.

 

That's probably a semantic problem. My overall point was that the BWB is a historical document written by people and invoking sources all of which were clearly biased in their views. It isn't to say that any of the BWB's claims about Mierin are true or false, but, rather, that we can't trust the BWB as a dispassionate authority. Many of its statements are suspect, leaving open a large possibility that its characterization of Mierin is inaccurate and even unwarranted. The appearance of phrasing like "credited with" only proves my point.

 

If you look at our real world, and appreciate how badly most people grasp our own national history (assuming you are American, though I consider it a statement that would likely hold true anywhere), it isn't hard to imagine that history could easily have misrepresented the more notorious figures of yore. Mierin did create the Bore. That much is certain, because we have it canonically from Charn himself. Such a deed was cataclysmic enough to earn Mierin a lifetime of villainy even if she had never done another thing. I don't trust any account of Mierin that doesn't come from either from her own POV or from people who knew her personally and are evaluating her objectively. So far, we only have one instance of that in the whole series: Rand in the ToM epilogue. We also only have one instance of a direct Mierin POV. Thus we know very little about her, in contrast to all that other WoT characters and the BWB have claimed about her.

 

As for turning over to shadow because LTT married Ilyena, she may have been in love with LTT (though LTT seems to reject the fact) but that does not give her the right to expect him to love her or go berserk when she is rejected.

 

Quite true. That's one of Mierin's tragic qualities. Unfortunately, it's also a realistic quality that many people face in real life.

 

Now, LTT could have probably helped her there instead of being insensitive to her needs (and we don't know whether that is really the case. he probably tried) but Rand says that at the time he was arrogant. Probably he was quick to judgment and didn't have the benefit that he has now (that of wisdom. that of having a different upbringing). May be that did have something to do with her going over to shadow. He could've been more compassionate. May be he would be now.

 

Aye, it's all interesting speculation, and I wish we had gotten much more of a window into Mierin over the course of the series.

 

As an aside, i read in a previous post of yours that LTT feared lanfear's power and his own and the lure of that and that may be why he rejected her. but we do not know that.

 

I think what I said is that Lews Therin recognized that he and Mierin were quite similar in temperament and he, as a part of doubting himself, projected a lot of resentment onto Mierin. Mierin, for all her problems, has always been more mentally sound than Lews Therin, from the moment of the Counterstroke onward. That says something quite unflattering about LTT's mental state! =(

 

we do not know what drew LTT to Ilyena (may be it was the Voice;-)). Ileyna may have been good in one power, strong in character, and a compassionate one to boot. She may have been a more decent or more honourable character than Lanfear. or he may just have fallen in love with her for some or other reason.. he, i think had every right to give in to that.

 

LTT had every right to love whomever he wanted and be with whomever he wanted (assuming they wanted to be with him too). What I meant in my earlier comment was that, from a viewpoint of saving the world from great evil, LTT could have prevented enormous tragedy by making a relatively small sacrifice and being with Mierin.

 

I personally think that none of the Shadow characters are developed well enough. Insight into at least a few of them, like it gives in the Malazan series would've been nice.

 

Agreed.

 

As for power for its own sake. well may be it is not wrong to want power for its own sake- it would give one freedom from being under anyone's thumb- but from what i understood when people or authors say the villian wants power for its own sake, they mostly mean that the villian wants control over other people. And that is bad.

 

That's an interesting interpretation. I think you may be right. However, I also think that such a motive, when true, points to weakness in the author's skills, because, ultimately, "control over other people" is just a more specific case of "power for power's sake." There's still the question of what to use that control to do. The only difference is that, if you accept that people have a strong fundamental right to self-control, then "control over other people" needs to be justified to a higher degree than "power for power's sake." Nevertheless, it isn't impossible to construct such justifications, and we're still left with the case of a caricature when it comes to illustrating a villain's motives.

 

In the comic book world, villains are evil for evil's sake. They build nefarious towers of doom. They eat roasted orphans for dinner. But nobody ever explains the rationale for just evil, because none exists: It's a caricature. What would a "tower of doom" even do? Unfortunately, in the fantasy and sci-fi setting, the caricature gets passed off as serious, which does a disservice to the literary potential of the genre.

 

I would honestly like to know what Mierin would have done with the world if she had pushed the gods aside. That would tell me everything I need to know about whether she would fit my personal definition of "good" or "evil."

 

It is not clear Lanfear wanted power for either of those reasons but from her conversations it is easy for most people to assume that she did. After all, she does go berserk when people go against her will.. even if it is just one dark friend or one egwene it is still there isn't it? It is not bad to want to rule the world to change the world. Many people want that. But i should think her own actions suggest that Lanfear couldn't have made a good ruler.

 

There's an old saying: "Don't suffer fools." I think Mierin's disdainful conduct toward others can largely be explained by that concept. She goes out of her way to help the people she thinks deserve her help, and has no compunctions about pushing aside everybody else. In other words, she's a hardass. She doesn't have patience for people who get in her way. Many effective leaders, in politics and elsewhere, have that kind of mentality. Everybody wants to pass themselves off as a kind soul who wouldn't so much as hurt a flower, but that kind of existence isn't realistic for most of us, nor is it what most people desire. Part of developing a mature worldview requires acknowledging that good and evil rarely appear in their pure forms, and accepting that even hardasses can make the world a better place. All we can do is try to escape evil. We can't yet lay claim to what constitutes unfettered good. That makes it hard to judge people, as opposed to judging specific qualities within people (which is much easier).

 

I hold people to a high standard. When they fall short, I don't treat them cruelly like Mierin would, but I do tend to dismiss them like she would. Because of my aggressive style I have changed people's lives for the better, more often than for the worse. I have also encouraged people to think and communicate, which is always a positive. Unconditional kindness and respect carries a hidden cost: It helps the weak to become weaker. It helps bad ideas go unchallenged. You can disagree with Mierin's style, but her motives are valid. Consider what she did to Asmodean. Asmodean was an invaluable tutor for Rand, and may have helped him to survive in the ordeals that followed. Given that Rand is the key to the fate of the world, you can even see the benefit in her mistreatment of Asmodean.

 

Right now, the Tokyo Electric Power Company is sending technicians into the damaged nuclear power plant to contain radiation leakage, exposing them to radiation dosages that will increase their risk of disease and early death. That seems like a harsh thing to do, doesn't it? We don't even know if those workers are volunteering or being assigned. But the culture of honor among hazardous site workers makes it likely that many of them would volunteer, and, even if that weren't the case, they would have known upon taking their jobs that they might eventually end up risking themselves to mitigate an emergency. Somewhere, some power company executive is authorizing every risky operation being undertaken. Is that person evil? No, because there is a context to the action, and that context justifies everything. The alternative is massive uncontrolled radiation leaks, pandemonium, and the crash of the Japanese economy and potentially with it the economy of the world.

 

This is not really so different than what Mierin did to Asmodean, except that she didn't give him a choice and Asmodean was fool enough to think that by going over to the Shadow he might never be called upon to make such a sacrifice. Mierin is probably also cognizant of her own peril in serving the Shadow, which might help further explain her relentless attitude toward her Shadow counterparts.

 

Mierin's attitude toward servants of the Shadow may well be resentful to the point of contempt. The same goes for Aes Sedai. Rightly or wrongly, she probably thinks of them as inferior and expendable. If she mistreats or kills Darkfriends or Aes Sedai (deliberately, as opposed to acting in a fit of rage), I'd suggest that, even if isn't something we would condone, she has a strong justification for her actions because they serve a legitimate purpose. (Hence the whole Asmodean example.) There aren't many examples of Mierin being destructive or cruel without a good reason. There is at least one I can think of (her behavior toward the Darkfriend before going to the Cleansing), but that episode is riddled with many of the asterisks that muddle Mierin in the form of Cyndane. It's hard to say anything about her.

 

I'm inclined to see her shielding of Asmodean to press him into service as Rand's tutor as an constructive action with a human cost, a cost she justifies by his allegiance to the Shadow, demonstrating in her mind Asmodean's unworthiness. Real life is filled with those kinds of hard gains. Mierin would be a better person if she had more empathy for the human cost of her actions, that much is definite. But as to how that extra empathy might influence her actions...I'm not sure it would make much of a difference.

 

She probably would have gone with someone as long as they are with her but would be vicious when that someone suggested a different path that she didn't like. That is not the aspect of a good leader or a ruler. A good leader should respect diversity. should be able to develop those under her, bring out the best in them. (i know that is probably utopian when you think in terms of nation and the world itself, but you do see good leaders in smaller situations. so they do exist). Among the WOT people probably Amys, Bair et al are good examples of that. Rand, as he is now, could be called a good leader.

 

It's quite possible she would make a lousy ruler. We don't know either way. At this point in the series, she is so screwed up psychologically that I'd be opposed to it just on principle. She may be irredeemable by this point. We'll find out in AMoL. We had better! (I'm talking to you, Brandon!!)

 

Regarding your point about Rand and cleansing - i do not think it was challenging creator. Creator was not interested in doing anything with the world after he(she) created. he just created it (for his entertainment probably or whatever) and then left it to itself. He didn't create the bore and he didn't care about cleansing the taint. As far as he is concerned you could do whatever you wanted. I do not think that equates to the Christian theme of heaven and hell and God who controls or at least knows the destiny of people. So how would the cleansing be challenging the creator? You messed something up (at least as a race).

 

Lews Therin himself provided the original framing in TEotW prologue. He likened the sealing of the Bore to a folly because it attempted to correct a cosmic disaster--the drilling of the Bore. His actions triggered the Dark One's Counterstroke and nearly ruined the world. His view was that only the Creator could alter the nature of the world, and humans would always fall short in trying to recreate that power for themselves. Yet, that is exactly what happened with the cleansing of the Taint, this time with no disastrous consequences, no cosmic counterstroke. It was a challenge to the Creator--not to the Creator's authority (which is irrelevant since the Creator seems to have abdicated responsibility), but to the Creator's ability to shape the nature of the world.

 

It would have been wonderful to see Meirin's life story or see her given flesh and ultimately coming over to light. It would have been nice to see all of the forsaken fleshed out in fact.

 

I would love to see her story fleshed out, and ultimately resolve with her coming to the Light. Mierin has walked a much darker and lonelier path than Rand. It would be very easy to cast her as the unsung hero in AMoL without changing a single line of the series so far.

 

So emu, i don't know whether you took the time to read this too lengthy answer to your lengthy argument ;-)

 

But I hope you did ;-)

 

I read it and enjoyed it!

[Suttree]

Where I go from there is to suggest that a lot of this developed in response to frustrations brought about by the nature of WoT reality, the frustration of being rejected by LTT, and the fallout from her drilling of the Bore.

 

RJ TOR Questions of the Week, February 2005-July 2005

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.

 

 

Once again I would like to point out Lanfear never earned a third name. LTT and Lanfear were not equals nor is there any indication they were a good fit. In fact all the quotes and story line point to the contrary. Per RJ "Lanfear was a woman who claimed a right to anything she wanted" and yet we know they were not social equals based on the standards of the third age. She was aiming to advance her station in life through the prestige of being with LTT. This is made clear in this quote "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."

[Guest Emu on the Loose]

Once again I would like to point out Lanfear never earned a third name.

 

Ah, yes, you did mention that. Sorry! My reply got so big that I'm sure I missed other things I also wanted to address.

 

Mierin Eronaile never earned a third name (notwithstanding "Lanfear"), but she was also accomplished enough to be a researcher at the Collam Daan. To the extent we can trust the BWB, she was apparently respected by her colleagues.

 

Having gotten a taste of how personal politics worms its way into just about every social institution, I've come to appreciate that awards and accolades are not necessarily a good measure of a person. I've seen people win awards they did not deserve, and I've seen plenty of people who should have won awards go unrecognized. In the real world, right now, there are millions of people who deserve the public's affection and nary a single one of them are popularly known.

 

Mierin's research prowess and strength as an Aes Sedai speak more than any third name would. And, let's not forget, several of the Forsaken did have a third name before they went over to the Shadow. If having a third name is no defense against personal failings, then accusing a person of failings on the basis of not having a third name doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

[csarmi]

Maybe because he doesn't like evil psychopaths?

[stoneface]

Did Mierin love LTT, or did she love being associated with LTT? Lanfear maintained the former, and Rand countered with a good description of the latter. Lanfear may not even realize the difference, but violent jealosy is not surprising.

[Mr Ares]

Decency: propriety of behaviour, respectability, what is accepted as being required by good taste or delicacy.

 

You are welcome to read some of the other definitions in the dictionary, or explore the etymology of the word like I did. Etymological foundations are a big part of overall linguistic comprehension.

You are welcome t actually provide dictionary definitions, rather than just claiming they exist. I checked a couple of dictionaries, including my Concise Oxford, and it didn't give the definition you give. Also, uses of words change over time - it is not enough to show that a word might have meant something once, or come from a root that meant something, you have to show what it means now.

 

The only real difference is that she's the only one who suggests a plan of making herself a god in Shai'tan's place. So she thinks a bit bigger than the others, but is no less self-serving.

 

If you accept the DO as the supreme source of evil in the world, like RJ wrote in TSR, then there is a big difference between serving the DO for status in his hierarchy and serving the DO as part of a plan to overthrow him. And if you don't accept the DO as the supreme source of evil, for RJ also wrote that people had some inherent evil in themselves even before the DO came along, then it's irresponsible and oversimplistic to conflate people's motives simply because of what team they're on.

Which doesn't really address my point. She's self-serivng, she just thinks bigger than the others. There is no nobility or decency in her desire to overthrow Shai'tan.

 

I fail to see how the Cleansing constitues challenging the Creator? The Creator didn't care enough to do something and expected people to fix it by themselves... and they did.

The answer you seek is in LTT's thoughts in TEotW prologue.

No, it isn't.

 

Destroying the world wouldn't be supplanting Shai'tan, as Shai'tan would still be there, just as powerful as before.

Destroying the world as it presently exists is the DO's highest known goal. Rand almost pulled that off himself. DO = (almost) supplanted.

Alternatively, Shai'tan=(alomost) getting exactly what he wanted. How is that supplanted?

 

We get it from Rand/LTT that she didn't, from Asmo that she meant to be the greater in their new partnership, from Moiraine (her future visions from Rhuidean) that she might have done it - no partnership of equals. Perhaps she just had an unusual definition of love.

 

I flatly mistrust Asmodean's interpretation,

How very convenient.

 

Ironically, despite the fact that you meant it rhetorically, I think you're on to something when you say that Mierin perhaps had an unusual definition of love. If we take "unusual" to mean "able to confuse most people's sense of what love is," then it's a distinct possibility! After all, Mierin clearly loved LTT and yet even now there are still fans who dispute it.

The fact that most readers appear to think that Mierin didn't love LTT would indicate it is not as clear as you pretend.