Is Lan Overrated??

[Justanotherfacet]

@Finnssss Yeah i was thinking about that when i was wondering about Lan/Age problems...

 

But came to the conclusion that although healing will remove gaping wounds, the progressive degeneration of joints, and organs as well as of the brain would not be corrected since they aren't injury's as such. Plus my interpretation of healing in Randland is that they cant heal neurological problems or organ failure due to genetic or progressive degenerative causes. Thus aging is still a factor.

 

I'd love to be able to ask BS or someone about this... Hahaha I guess its professional curiosity =P

 

The Healing done in the Age of Legends and now by Nynaeve, pin points specific problems. Ie if you break a leg, they would Heal ONLY that break - everything else would remain untouched. The Healing done in present Randland time, "heals all". One of the boffins might be able to point to the exact quote where the old guy Asha'man was Healing Rand after his run in with Padan Fain. I think that might have been a tantalizing hint that the "simple, battle-field Healing" so maligned by the Forsaken (and Nynaeve) reaches down to a cellular level, which would of course include fixing the damage caused by the illness known as aging.

 

Now think about it - how many times has Lan been Healed over his 50 odd years? Obviously the aging process would start right back up again, but if the above theory is correct, then he would certainly not have aged to the same biological age as any 50 odd year old in our time.

 

 

Mmmm i'm going to have to courteously disagree with the delve/heal dodgey healing cures all including cellular damage theory - and not only because it would negate my entire idea =P

 

Firstly Lan is still aging... As in he is visibly looking older thus his skin cells reproduction is degenerating thus he's not being healed at a cellular level every time.

 

Secondly after Rands eyes are injured when his hand is blown off the Aes Sedai/ Nyn?? Quote? were worried about healing his eyes when they didn't know the problem in the fear that they would make it worse - Implying that for anything except gross anatomical damage healing requires specific knowledge to perform... What would Yellow Ajah be researching of not this? I've always wondered about this apparent inconstancy.

 

I might have the quote wrong though lol it was ages ago that i read it...

[Justanotherfacet]

Phew im going to bed i have an exam in like 9 hours.... =/

[solarz]

Plus these guys don't have the luxury of reconstructive surgery, nutritionists and doctors which keep our generation of people healthier than ever before, for longer. (Im talking about athletes btw, not fattys)

 

Aes Sedai healing heals but it doesn't stop you from aging nor does it turn back the clock.

 

No, but they have the Warder's Bond, which is 100x better. You're making a big assumption that's completely false. Nowhere in the book does it mention Lan being encumbered by his age.

 

As for armor vs weapons, remember that there are power-forged weapons, but no power-forged armor, for whatever reason. Power-forged swords cut open trolloc chainmail with ease.

[Finnssss22]

I keep seeing UFC references and they are pertinent to a point but ask yourself this...in an all out no rules street brawl, would anyone not take Royce Gracie, even at 45, over anyone else? I sure as hell wouldn't bet against him in that situation.

[Sid]

Lan kills blademasters, even at this age. If you read ACoS ch 12 'A Morning of Victory' it seems that he hasn't lost any steps due to age.

[Finnssss22]

Lan kills blademasters, even at this age. If you read ACoS ch 12 'A Morning of Victory' it seems that he hasn't lost any steps due to age.

 

 

Definitely. The speed with which he dispatches Toram Riatin in WH is nothing short of incredible. There is no greater testament to Lan's top ranking than that moment.

[capuga]

Lan kills blademasters, even at this age. If you read ACoS ch 12 'A Morning of Victory' it seems that he hasn't lost any steps due to age.

 

But I think the original poster's point was that this - Lan killing another blademaster who is much younger than him - really is illogical because the younger man should have a physical superiority due to Lan's age that more than makes up for the smaller difference in skill. In real life, a 50 year old man's reflexes, strength, agility, etc would have degraded to a point that a similarly skilled man like Toram Raitin (not sure of his age but I'm assuming he's in his physical prime) would likely beat him.

 

That said, I voted no because I'm willing to suspend disbelief on the aging issue because of the Warder bond. So I just accept the fact the Lan is the biggest badass around. Plus its possible that Lan is just so much better skill-wise that it makes up for the physical advantages the younger men should have.

[mbuehner]

I keep seeing UFC references and they are pertinent to a point but ask yourself this...in an all out no rules street brawl, would anyone not take Royce Gracie, even at 45, over anyone else? I sure as hell wouldn't bet against him in that situation.

 

Thats an interesting point considering Gracie tested positive for steroids. Baseball shows you how steroids can extend a persons 'prime' (and even resuscitate it) well into their 40s, its almost uncanny. Could this be argued to be similar to the warder bond?

 

Lets not forget just by the nature of the bond itself warders are faster and have more stamina than a normal person. It would make sense that the bond works to extend the length of a warders peak physical condition.

[A. Pseudonym]

Did i ever say Lan was no longer threatening? I explicitly stated that the man is a beast! BUT i think it would be naive and stupid to say that he couldn't train someone to be better than he ever was. OR to assume that there isn't another "Lan" walking around but 20 or 30 years younger. OR to assume that his aging, deteriorating body wont have an impact!

 

That's a fair point, but isn't the subject of our disagreement.

I don't think his body is affected adversely by age given that he is a Warder. Not within the scope of the series at least.

 

I think that this Kendo master is a lovely romantic example, but though i respect his skills, he'd be stomped by talented, trained, younger men. Reality check guys...

 

Within the context of his discipline, this is unlikely. It is extremely difficult to defeat someone who knows what you will do before you do it, because he's seen and done it all before, many times. And because of this he can use an economy of motion to defeat his opponent which handily excuses any physical infirmity he might possess.

 

I gave Mochida as an example of a vaguely relevant and similar real world counterpart to an effective aging swordsman. Lan is a Warder so he ages slower and is sort of superhuman.

In the context of his discipline, a swordsman who kills, he is the best.

 

Your point is that his age hampers this, but my point is that he can adapt himself to compensate for that through experience. Which is, in other words; training, knowledge, discipline.

 

You should take up Kendo or something for a few months. My old sensei was in in his late fifties, early sixties. A 3 Dan. He was short and stout, relatively inoffensive looking. But when you face off against him he suddenly becomes quick on his feet, he's never where your shinai is and his shinai is tapping your helmet or slashing your breastplate.

 

When you see kendo competitions in Japan (the best) you'll see the 2 guys staring at eachother for minutes at a time, barely moving, looking for that imperceptible oppurtunity that only they can see. And when it comes, the winning strike is sometimes too quick to see.

 

Experience counts for a lot. I tell you that from experience. Trust me. ;)

 

Now, I'd imagine that full-contact martial arts that don't involve weaponry would be more dependent on physical condition but in the case of certain disciplines where you are using your opponents strength and force against them in order to parry or deflect a blow... that it wouldn't. Precise application of a minimum of force at the correct place and time could theoreticaly overpower anything.

 

But that's beside the point....

 

btw i watched a Katana vs Chainmail doco once, the Katana is too light to penetrate the mail, which ripples and flexes and completely nullifys the attack - Not that that makes it useless, it just makes it a hell of a lot more difficult!

 

Again, this is where skill and experience would serve better than brute force.

And isn't relevant to whether Lan is old and infirm.

 

Edit: People in randland dont really use katanas do they? i got the impression they used a slightly heavier two handed sword - not broadsword - but heavier and longer all the same

 

From what I can remember, the swords sound like a katana blade on a european hilt and crossguard. At least the ones Rand uses, which were made by the old Aes Sedai.

 

There seem to be regional variations though. The Saldaeans for example have "serpentine" blades.

[SylvanFox]

Okay, this has nothing to do with swords, but I have seen older and younger people go at it before as we used to have a backyard fightclub. This mostly included people in their late teens and early twenties but there were one or two older guys in there as well.

 

One of our neighborhood's biggest champions was Dan, a former trucker in his mid-50's. I only remember him losing once. For the most part, he could whip the shit out of people less than half his age before they even knew what had happened to them. Why? Because he has been in many, many fist fights back in the day. Not that his opponents had never fought before, but Dan's years of experience made up for his age and his vision problems easily.

 

Also, Dan said that he could focus on fights in a way that younger people often can't. According to Dan, younger people don't focus on the fight, they focus on winning, which causes their attention to sometimes dip into the dreamworld as opposed to the situation at hand, whereas Dan could focus because he was "too old to be afraid to lose, and too old to lose my pride if I can't beat a man in the prime of his life."

 

Anyhoo, my point is, I can totally see Lan owning the youngsters. Youth isn't everything, any more than age isn't everything.

[JEW]

Lan kills blademasters, even at this age. If you read ACoS ch 12 'A Morning of Victory' it seems that he hasn't lost any steps due to age.

 

But I think the original poster's point was that this - Lan killing another blademaster who is much younger than him - really is illogical because the younger man should have a physical superiority due to Lan's age that more than makes up for the smaller difference in skill. In real life, a 50 year old man's reflexes, strength, agility, etc would have degraded to a point that a similarly skilled man like Toram Raitin (not sure of his age but I'm assuming he's in his physical prime) would likely beat him.

 

That said, I voted no because I'm willing to suspend disbelief on the aging issue because of the Warder bond. So I just accept the fact the Lan is the biggest badass around. Plus its possible that Lan is just so much better skill-wise that it makes up for the physical advantages the younger men should have.

[JEW]

You have to remember though, Lan is the king of Malkier, and a descendant of the most ass whooping group of people to ever live! and he hasn't had time to get old and slow because he has been to busy roaming the land with Moiraine and killing trollocs

[Thrasymachus]

The assumption I take issue with is that everybody at the "top of the heap" is going to have roughly the same level of skill. There's really two kinds of skill involved at that level. There's the technical knowledge of how to stand and move between stances, knowing the various slashing and stabbing attacks, blocks, feints and counterattacks from the various stances, and ability with the various kata that teach one how to chain together all those things in various situations. Then there's the knowledge about when to employ these various moves, when and how to alter the expected chain of progression in moves and stances in order to win. Galad's fight with Valda is a beautiful illustration of that. Training and rigorous practice can allow one to master the first kind of skill. Only experience in hard-core sparring (which is what I would consider any professional sport-fighting contest like boxing, kendo matches or UFC to be) or real-world experience killing people while they're trying to kill you can teach you the latter kind of skill, because that kind of knowledge is always situational. Lan was taught the first kind of skill as soon as he could walk and hold a practice sword, and practiced it every day, ever since. Others might possess the same degree of technical skill as Lan if they were extraordinarily talented in learning these moves. But nobody we know of in Randland has the same level of real-life experience both in sparring during warder training and in using his technical knowledge to kill people who are trying to kill him, trolloc or human. Lan beats everyone with a sword because his situational-awareness during combat is unparalleled. That kind of knowledge cannot be taught, it can only be learned.

 

As for his age being a factor, I'm going to come down on the side of the warder bond. True, Lan's showing some signs of aging in the gray at his temples, and he is 50 years old. But some people gray early in life. And other older warders we know of, Blaeric and Fen, for example, still show the strength and physical dexterity of men at least twenty years younger, even if they do look like old farts. For all we know, the warder bond doesn't slow the visible signs of aging that much, things like wrinkles and gray hair, but slows the internal features of aging greatly, such as muscle degeneration, decreased lung capacity, failing eyesight and memory loss. I think it's safe to say that despite Lan's gray hair, he has the same strength, physical endurance and dexterity now that he would have had at 27 if he had remained unbonded. Give him another 20 years, and his age might begin to be a factor. But then, that's another 20 years of combat experience, and further practice of his technical skills to help him stay on top.

[RyanL24]

My great big question is this... why does everybody think that Lan is the best? Because RJ said so? I like Teresa Patterson's view...

 

Whilst the information in the [bWB] guide is broadly canonical, the book is deliberately written with vague, biased or even downright false (or guessed) information in places, as Patterson felt this would reflect a key theme of the series (the mutability of knowledge across time and distance).

 

I haven't been the same since I read that quote. It really is a major theme in the series, and RJ seemed really into it. Nobody thinks he would answer a question with false information? It really gives him a free pass- I always thought at the end when we were all surprised by the ending, because RJ told us it wouldn't happen that way... he would laugh and say he must have gotten it wrong at that interview; after all Legend fades to myth and all of that...

 

 

(Besides Couture who managed to become Heavy Weight Champ at 47 but was then defeated by a man with very little skill but massive physical attributes)

 

And manoman, wasn't that boring to watch?

 

 

 

That kind of knowledge cannot be taught, it can only be learned.

 

WoW, now that's deep! I'm going to go meditate on that for a while...

[Elgee]

The last description I recall of Lan is that he has a few gray hairs, but no wrinkles. How many 55 year old men do you know who have only a FEW gray hairs, and NO wrinkles?

[Smittyphi]

Lan is 47. He was born in 953 NE and the current year is 1000 NE

[capuga]

My great big question is this... why does everybody think that Lan is the best? Because RJ said so?

 

Isn't that enough? It should be. But I also think that the books themselves are clearly intended to give the impression that Lan is the best of the best. The way his exercising is described, how he never loses any fight or sparring (other than to Ryen in New Spring when he was younger), how other people talk about him, how he is a one man army in the Blight, etc, etc. RJ's word is enough but I think the books should leave the same impression.

[bhskeeper11]

I must admit that I chuckled a little while reading this thread because it seems nearly everyone here thinks 50 is planning-the-funeral OLD. In randland, where we know the One Power plays a huge role in healing life-or-death wounds or illnesses, for a Warder that has been protected/saved by the One Power, 50 isn't really all that old. And, as someone pointed out, Lan is 47... ((Also, I guess I don't think of 50 being that old because my father, who is almost 56, runs marathons regularly and is in better physical condition than most 25 year olds I know...with his gray hair and all.))

 

I also think that there is an assumption among those who believe Lan to be overrated that all blademasters are the same. Just because you may have achieved that level doesn't mean that there aren't any other swordsmen better than you. In this case, I think Lan is the best of the best. And, at this point, his age is serving to help him because the experience he has outweighs whatever "cons" are associated with his aging. Maybe in 30 years, yeah, his age will outweigh the benefit of his experience, but for now it is working for him. For now, he's the best.

[Erunion]

This thread is really, really funny. While I do get where JustAnotherFacet is coming from, I'm guessing (this is an assumption, so it's probably wrong, but hey) that he doesn't have a lot of personal experience in the Martial Arts.

First off, let's split martial arts into three main categories (there are more, and tons of subcategories and whatnot, but for the purposes of this thread three is enough).

Firstly, you have 'Sport' Martial Arts. These art's are all about speed and precision. You want to place your hand/foot/elbow/whatever exactly where it needs to be, when you need it to be there. Do this, and you score 'points'. Here, age is a factor as you slow down and become less flexible (at least, most of us do). However, the loss of physical abilities is more than made up for by a gain in experience, the ability to read your opponent and precision of timing.

 

The second category are the 'Brawling' Martial Arts, like Boxing and the UFC. In these Martial Arts, fights can take a long, long time (as far as time is measured while fighting, anyhow). During these long, long fights, you are constantly getting pounded. While skill, precision timing and the like matter, in these Martial Arts physical ability is of paramount importance, and can often override pure skill. Age becomes a significant factor, and a fighter over forty is often considered over the hill, because their body simply can't take the extended pounding like the body of a man still in their prime.

 

The final Martial Arts that I'm going to use today are the 'Killer' Martial Arts. The point of these arts is, simply put, to incapacitate the opponent as rapidly as possible while remaining healthy. Into this category I lump Krav Maga and 90% of the weapon's arts (certainly Kendo, Kumdo and other sword arts. Fencing is 50% this, 50% sport). In these arts skill, speed, stamina and physical ability are all important, but precision, timing and situational awareness are everything. A Martial Artist using a 'Killer' martial art, will end fights as quickly as possible, often in seconds. Even in longer fights, like those between master swordsmen, often show a great economy of motion. Simply put, in these arts nothing is more important than experience (although once you get really old, you will no longer be able to do what you once could. Lan is not there yet, and he won't be for some years because of Healing/Warder Bond).

 

 

Source: Seven years experience in the Martial Arts, having trained a lot in sport MA's, some in brawling MA's and some in killer MA's.

I am young, fit, healthy and relatively skilled, but I tell you this now - I know many 40-60 year olds who I would never, ever, dare to mess with. In any of the three styles of art, not just in killer or sport arts.

Yes, physical ability is important, but not in a way where more = big advantage. Think of it as a curve that is approaching a horizontal asymptote - the difference between no physical ability and lots of physical ability is huge, but once you reach a certain point, you don't get a lot of advantage. When you are there, it is skill, experience and timing that will make the difference.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

i know men in their 70s who can still stomp little pischers (and i mean that in the nicest way possible ) real good. i don't expect anyone to believe that until he's silly enough to pick a fight with one of them, of course. there are some things you only learn by experience. . . but it's really not a great idea to underestimate how much of a whooping you can get from an ancient man of nearly 50 . . .

 

just wondering - has anyone pointed out that lan's "rating" is determined by the authors? kind of like, if the author says some character is the strongest channeler, then that's just how it is? cause it's fiction and they decide? not really a debatable point. . . well, clearly debatable, just not the kind of debate that makes much sense.

 

ah, skip it.

[Apple13]

I don't think Lan's overrated at all - he's a great blademaster because he's strong, capable, and has LOTS of experience. Plus he's a Warder too, so that would give him a lot of extra abilities that other men don't have. Just because he isn't 20-something like all the other main characters doesn't mean he can't fight.

[Didgya]

I'd say No, Lan's not overrated. Reason: good jeans (denim), raised by warriors, personality, Warders bond. The warders bond makes a huge difference as we see with Suian bonding Byrne (man I screwed those names up)and how he reflects on how he feels + its a fantasy, suspend your belief.

[anotherfingolfin]

In the context of the WoT universe, he is not overrated as a combatant/swordsman, but he is definitely overrated as a character.

[Suttree]

My great big question is this... why does everybody think that Lan is the best? Because RJ said so?

 

Yes

 

Nobody thinks he would answer a question with false information?

 

No

[francy]

No, I don't think Lan is overrated... And I agree with some of the others - Warder Bond! Thats enough for me...

 

If anyone is over rated, in my humble opinion, its Gawyn. He isn't taver'en, he can't channel, he isn't bonded (well, wasn't bonded) so there is really no excuse for his amazing meteoric rise to blademaster - better than anyone he encounters, best of the best, blah blah blah. I know - he was good before, when he is training with Galad at the White Tower, and when Matt knocks him on his backside, Matt notes he is good but not as good as Galad. He would have continued on with his training off screen. Still, when we encounter him in later books, he is suddenly the best of the best and its annoying... It doesn't ring true to me, not like Lan or Rand...

 

Sorry if I've irked the Gawyn lovers! But I would love to see a contest with Lan and Gawyn - and see Lan knock Gawyn on his rump!

 

LOL