Egwene the Dreamer

[vikingdriver]

Way back in book three when Egwene was risen to Accepted did anyone see some possible answers to memory of light as RJ walked us through the Ter'angreal with Egwene?

 

Egwene is a dreamer and as we've been told Dreamers have the foretelling (or sometimes) well anyway Egwene, in one of her trials fails Rand when he asks her to kill him. Remember he was trapped in a rubble heap. Later on we find that one of the Seanchen women will help to kill Rand. Each one of her trials while in the Ter'angreal have had some portence to what happens or what is brought to light later on down the road in subsequent books.

 

In her last trial there is some problem which arises from her having a similiar ter'angreal in near proximity to the Accepted's trial ter'angreal. We discover this after Alanna explains that it happened once before and caused a 100 or so Aes Sedai to not be able to channel for nearly a week because of severe headaches. when i first read through I did not connect the two until just recently on the second reading. the ter'angreal that is used to raise the Accepted places the Accepted in Tel'aran'Rhiod where whatever happens in there is final. Piece in the only two raisings that we have read about with what happens later on.

 

Take Nyneave for example, she had to let go of what she wanted with Lan in order to return and in book Eleven she has to let go of Lan so that he may return to the blight and wuite possible never see him again.

 

It's just a thought that was well organized until I sat down in front of this darn PC only to watch the trained thought process and the outline of what I wanted to say flutter away from me.

[Luckers]

I've seen this suggested before, that the accepted ter'angreal utilizes tel'aran'rhiod in constructing the artificial world. The fact that it draws on the unconcious in the construction, that some of what it shows can be linked with truth (for instance that Sharina Melloy was present in Ny's, or that Egwene was the Amyrlin in hers... but again, not exactly the same, indicating the influence of other worlds.) and the fact that it reacted to the dream ter'angreal adds to that.

[Guest cwestervelt]

Egwene is a dreamer and as we've been told Dreamers have the foretelling (or sometimes) well anyway Egwene, in one of her trials fails Rand when he asks her to kill him.

 

While a Dreamer can predict what might happen in the future, a Dreamer does not have the Foretelling. They are two seperate Talents. For one thing, Foretelling is much more valuable than Dreaming because Foretelling deal with definite events while Dreams deal with possible events.

 

Loial's book on Portal Stones.

From Stone to Stone run the lines of 'if,' between the worlds that might be.

I suspect Dreaming provides visions into the worlds reached by Portal Stone and that Foretelling provides a glimpse of the Pattern itself. If so, the two Talents aren't even remotely connected.

[imrathill]

anyway it was not dream thing.. it was her feared destiny, if u understand what i mean. the thing shows u what u fear, ant that was what she did fear most at the time

 

think about it, it was just after that she found out that rand was the dragon reborn..

[Luckers]

Thats not entirely true. It is a maleable reality that mends itself to the fears of the participants, but it also contains truths the participants had no way of knowing, for instance in Nynaeve's she speaks of an Aes Sedai named Sharin Melloy, whom RJ has confirmed as being the same Sharina that becomes a novice in LoC.

[imrathill]

i dont say it cant happend im saying its her fear not foretellings..

[vikingdriver]

Here's what came to mind that brought forth this theory that what we saw in the Accepted's Ter'angreal may be what comes to pass in MoL. egwene cannot do as Rand asks which was to kill him and so she leaves him laying there "The way back shall come but once." Ugh, why can I not remember that Seanchen Girl's name when I'm posting, well she, Egwene leaves and that girl comes into play and she does as Rand asks thus helping him to die.

 

It just seems that as I re-read the books, what was said and done in the Accepted's Ter'Angreal with Egwene and Nyneave, and some of what Suan went through has either come to a parallel pass or the end result has been introduced in subsequent books although not wuite the same as was seen during the Accepteds raising.

 

With the quote provided that referenced what Loial was saying or interpreting from his books, it can be veiwed as the outcomes remain the same but the way towards those outcomes may run parallel ifs.

[RobertAlexWillis]

Several of the possibilities seen in the ter'angreal are simply no longer possible. In the dream ter'angreal, Nynaeve had been married to Lan as King of Malkier and had several children, Sharina Melloy had been Aes Sedai for years, et cetera. Egwene and Rand had a daughter named Joiya, and had never left the Two Rivers. Egwene became Amyrlin after being raised Aes Sedai and joining an Ajah. Her Keeper was Beldeine, not Sheriam. There are too many differences to regard the ter'angreal experience as anything than a construct created for the purposes of testing the candidate, not as a prediction of the future. They have to be plausible in order to be a test, but they are not plausible in the sense that they could actually come to pass in Randland. They are not even internally consistent.

[Luckers]

Agreed. They seem to be some sort of constructed artificial relaity drawn from worlds that consist as closely with the internal fears of the participant. That they are fake... constructs of worlds that may have been, but obviously arn't, is true, but that they do contain some elemants of truth or truths that may have been is also true.

 

In the case of Egwene's though, the connection and resonance between the dream ter'angreal and the accepted rings seems to have taken the degree of reality to a new level. The danger to Egwene increased, but seemingly so did the reality of the visions. For the purpose of crossreference here are events as we know them.

 

1. Egwene became Amyrlin - True.

2. Egwene became Aes Sedai without holding the Oath Rod - True.

3. Beldiene as Egwene Keeper - Given the increasing instability of Sheriam, there is a high possibility of Egwene needing a new Keeper. Even greater is the chance of it being a Tower sister, given Egwene's desire to reunite the Tower.

4. The destruction of the Black Ajah - This also seems to be a likely event.

5. Rand being gentled in the Tower - Not true.

6. Egwene being capture by Elaida - True, though not in the same way.

7. Elaida overthrowing the Amyrlin, resulting in Egwene planning a war against her. True.

8. Elaida as a black sister - false.

 

 

So yes, conclusive links cannot be drawn, but the relative factuality allows for suggestive links such as the situation with Beldiene to be suggested.

[algspkr]

Beldiene as Egwene Keeper - Given the increasing instability of Sheriam, there is a high possibility of Egwene needing a new Keeper. Even greater is the chance of it being a Tower sister, given Egwene's desire to reunite the Tower.

I don't see Egwene selecting a Dragonsworn sister to be her Keeper, though I would not be surprised to see her replace Sheriam with a Green who remained loyal to the Tower.

[Luckers]

True enough. Though a woman who has bonded an Asha'man again goes a long way to building bridges, and in truth the keeper has very little real power anyway (excluding things like the blackmail that Alviarin used).

 

But you are probably right. it will likely only happen if Rand releases Beldiene, which i dont see happening.

[RobertAlexWillis]

While a few of the same things happened in one of Egwene's scenarios, they happened neither the same way, or for the same reasons. So, drawing a predictive conclusion based on that scenario is unlikely to be reliable.

 

Since the ter'angreal seems to draw on the mind of the one being tested, and also seems to be related to Tel'aran'rhiod, it is possible that Egwene's talent as a Dreamer allowed it to weave in some elements of future truth into her experience. It seems designed to make the experience as realistic as possible for the participant. But the truth woven through the overall purpose of testing Egwene's commitment to the Tower is sufficiently distorted as to bear no meaningful relation to reality, indeed, to even be deceptive by seeming close, but not being accurate. Sometimes the most dangerous inaccuracies are close to, but not actually, reality.

[Luckers]

I said suggestive, not conclusive. Obviously it can't be taken as solid proof of future events, yet the number of coincidences in end results does allow for the suggestion--we can concider the possible connections between Egwene and Beldiene, for instance, which never before would have occured to us. The same with the significance of Sharina.

[Guest cwestervelt]

Loial's book on Portal Stones.

From Stone to Stone run the lines of 'if,' between the worlds that might be.

 

I quoted that earlier, and am reposting it because, the more I think about it, the more relevant it appears to be.

 

You will know danger here. Some women have entered, and never come out. When the ter'angreal was allowed to grow quite, the - were - not - there. And they were never seen again.

The Great Hunt Chapter 23: The Testing

 

...She [Nynaeve] shivered again. "Was it real?"

 

"No one knows," Sheriam replied. "It seems real in memory, and some have come out bearing actual wounds of hurts taken inside. Others have been cut to the bone inside, and come back without a mark. It is all of it different every time for every woman who goes in. The ancients said there were many worlds. Perhaps this ter'angreal takes you to them. Yet if so, it does so under very stringent rules for something meant just to take you from one place to another...

The Great Hunt Chapter 23: The Testing

 

These passages tell us that the candidate for Accepted is infact taken somewhere else. They even provide a direct reference to the worlds connected by Portal Stone. Additionally, if the candidate for Accepted were not physically taken somewhere else there should be something left over later. What we know about the other worlds sort of fits with different experiences people have.

 

Something things to consider are why some people get hurt for real and some don't. Maybe, it has to do with the likelyhood of the world they were sent to. We've been told that less probable worlds are paler than ones than more likely ones. Maybe wounds are affected the same way. The more likely the possibility represented by the world, the more real the damage.

 

We've been told that all possible futures have these reflections. Those reflections could easily cover all of the possibilities, close to real and way off, that we saw during Nynaeve's and Egwene's testings, including knowing the names of people they hadn't yet met.

 

Rand's attempt to use the Portal Stone to go from Cairhien to Falme. The glimpses of lives we see are similar to what the Testing reveals. In some, Rand and Egwene never left the Two Rivers, in others they did.

 

Egwene, with tears in her eyes, plunged a dagger into his [Rand's] heart, and he thanked her as he died.

The Great Hunt Chapter 37: What Might Be.

 

His [Rand's] hand flopped out, fell just short of a dagger lying in the dust barebladed. "The dagger," he whispered. His hand made a painful journey back to his chest. "Here. In the heart. Kill me."

The Dragon Reborn Chapter 22: The Price of the Ring

 

Rand's and Egwene's experiences aren't quite the same, but they are similar. Unfortunately, we don't have a setting for Rand's vision of Egwene killing Rand. The thing is, they do fit with the idea of the Accepted testing and the Portal Stones taking you to the same world. In one "if" Egwene killed him, in the other she didn't. Considering Rand's begging her to plunge a dagger into his heart, it is conceivable that he would have smiled had she done so.

[RobertAlexWillis]

I could buy that.

[vikingdriver]

As Luckers pointed out in his listing there are so far only two items that have been either untrue or false and two other things that can go either way. I cannot remember who said it to Rand in Crossroads; but Beldeine was included in a blanket statement of his Aes Sedai. "They will each serve the Dragon Reborn in their own way." Perhaps she does serve him as the keeper. she can serve as the medium between the two towers.

 

The parallels between what Egwene went through when being raised and what has come to pass or has been suggested is just too close. She being raised to Amyrlin, never holding the Oath Rod, etc.

[RobertAlexWillis]

I think these similarities to both Egwene's Dreams and the Worlds that Might Be can be explained by the fact that the purpose of the ter'angreal is to create a realistic experience, probably drawing on both some aspect of either Tel'aran'rhiod or the parallel worlds as well as the subject's subconscious. It could then provide perfect variety completely tailored to best test the subject.

 

The variety of wounds suggest that neither Tel'aran'rhiod nor the parallel worlds offer perfectly similar experiences. I'm thinking particularly of Nyneave's thorns. Those were not placed all over her body as if she had been actually experiencing crashing through a thorn bush (per Tel'aran'rhiod) or even a muted version (small cuts all over, like a vague parallel world). They were instead, precisely placed, evidently as a result of Nynaeve's own desire to pay a price for her choice.

 

The Pattern is described as being woven of parallel worlds as its warp (and individual threads within each world), and Tel'aran'rhiod as its weft, crossing all the parallel worlds simultaneously. The best model I can think of for this ter'angreal is that it accesses Tel'aran'rhiod, and through the world of dreams, may have a sort of informational access to the parallel worlds. This would explain why Egwene's experience seems particularly close to what could actually happen, and related to other parallel possibilities that stuck out to Rand on his trip to Falme. Egwene's natural affinity for Tel'aran'rhiod, combined with the proximity of the dream ter'angreal ring, probably created an ideal "access" situation for the testing ter'angreal's "fuzzy logic", augmenting its ability to "find" parallel realities closest to the one we see, that provided a sufficiently difficult test, funneled through Egwene's subconscious knowledge of what would prove most difficult for her.

 

That got a little involved, but since elements of all three are present (Tel'aran'rhiod, parallel worlds, and the individual's hopes and fears), the ter'angreal must make some use of all three, in a particularly unique fashion.

[Anajon]

but if the test is in someway in Tel'aran'rhiod, why should people not know that they can channel?

 

We have seen that all the characters have been able to know and do so in Tel'aran'rhiod. Don't remember about the parallel worlds, but I think Rand could channel there too - couldn't he?

[RobertAlexWillis]

The test does not take place in Tel'aran'rhiod, or at least, not in the conventional (if Tel'aran'rhiod can be called conventional) sense. It is not a Dreaming experience. It is not a parallel world experience. It is not a purely internal mental experience. Instead, the ter'angreal seems to fraw on elements of all three to create a completely unique exeperience, tailored to the person, in which she (or possibly he) has to face her (or his) worst fears. Since it involves elements that seem to be drawn from all three sources (Tel'aran'rhiod, parallel worlds, and the subject's memories and fears) it doesn't fall into normal categories. It may be that Tel'aran'rhiod provides the "substance" for the test, but if that is so, it does so under strictly prescribed conditions determined by the ter'angreal. So it is not a "normal" Tel'aran'rhiod experience.

[Trib4l]

Actually I got the impression that they were transported elsewhere, or were at least pulled into the ter'angreal in some way. Especially from Sheriam's warning "there simply were not there".

 

The test for the shawl, at least what I understood from New Spring and Moiraine's experience is that everyone in the room is witness to that test.