How large would the apartments be? My apartment is 63 sqaure meters (678 square feet). I've got an average living room (which I guess would be "spacious" compared to an Accepted's room in the Tower). A good-sized bedroom, a bathroom, a small storeroom (that could be a dressing room), and a kitchen that could be transformed into a study. So my apartment feels like it should be about the same size as Moiraine's and Siuan's apartments ... just speculation, but it feels reasonable.

Well, the living rooms of the Aes Sedai seemed quite crowded with 3-4 people in there sitting around a table drinking tea. And when Egwene got her dream Ter'angreal in Verins study I hadn't the impression the room was bigger than 2x3m, big enough for a table, two chairs and a shelf.

I would say more of a 36-40 m² appartment.

Verin had her apartment in the library building, not in the Tower. It could be that those rooms are smaller and not intended to be apartments, but offices. Anyway, Verin's room:

One step into the room, she [Egwene] stopped and stared. Shelves lined the walls, except for one door that must lead to inneer rooms and except for where maps hung, often in layers, and what seemed to be charts of the night sky /../ Books and apapers and scrools covered nearly every flat surface, with all sorts of odd things interspersed among the piles, and sometimes on top of them. Strange shapes of glass or metal, spheres and tubes interlinked, and circles held inside circles, stood among bones and skulls of every shape and description. What appeared to be a stuffed brown owl, not much bigger than Egwene's hand, stood on what seemed to be a bleached white lizard's skull, but could not be, for the skull was longer than her arm and had crooked teeth as big as her fingers. Candlesticks had been stuck about in haphazard fashion, giving good light here and shadows there, although seeming in danger of setting fire to papers in some places. The owl blinekd at her, and she jumped.

If anything, it's described as cluttered and filled to bursting with stuff - that gives it the feeling of being "small". But there's a lot of stuff. There are lots of shelves, but also rooms for plenty of maps and charts, and there are actually piles of things strewn across the room. I doubt it's 3x4 meters. It probably isn't huge, but ... There's also a door leading to inner chambers. That could well be a sitting room, a living room, a dressing room ... and potentially anything else.

I know that it'd technically still be called a tower, but it's ugly. I've always imagined it being much taller than it's thick.

that is literature. it is described in text, you paint the image in your mind, in my mind it is actualy a very graceful peice of architecture that appears impossible because of a mix of ogier work and the one power. it looks massive yet delicate. we keep thinking of this in terms of real world architecture, and forget that it was built by extremely skilled stonemasons working with people who can do things that can only be described as magic. what we work toward is only finding out how much floor space is needed, and basing the size on the known height, a 600 foot building that is 400 feet in diameter could easily be beautiful, and you can adjust those values wherever you want, with the people who worked on it, it can be breathtaking. i think you just think of it as clunky because you aren't imagining a world without our towers like the empire state building, or the chrystler building. steel frame buildings in general. 600 feet is HUGE if you are not using steel i beams.

Yeah, I know it's huge ... it's jus that I've always imagined it as being several times as tall as it's wide - at least twice as tall as it's wide. I'm sure it could look elegant 180x120 meters, but ... not how I imagined it :P I've imagined it looking more like it'd be 250 meters tall, or something along those lines.

When they say the "upper half", they may not mean exactly half. Still, that could only add on a few more floors at most. I'd be interested in seeing the quote you're referencing, not because I don't believe you, but because I'm curious as to whether more of the Tower is set-up for apartments but only the "upper half" is in use due to depleted numbers.

It's in the guide, which I don't own, so I can't quote it directly ... it's referenced here, though: http://library.tarva...tle=White_Tower, and tarvalon.net's library is usually accurate.

And I know that something tall and round could still be called a Tower ... it just feels sort of wrong, to me :P

I really like the proportions here: http://images.wikia....4/Tar_Valon.jpg

Just for the fun of it, I did some calculations.

If the tower is 180 meters high (590 feet), and it's got 44 floors, that'd make each floor roughly 4 meters (13 feet), which is pretty high, but it'd include the thickness of the floors/ceilings as well.

So we've got 22 floors for ajah quarters, and all of them are the same size (New Spring, chapter 3). The Tower can house 3000 Aes Sedai. If each of those 22 floors holds 20 apartments per ajah, that's 140 apartments per floor. That's 3080 apartments in total. Which adds up very well.

When me and my friends tried figuring this out the first time, we assume that each apartment had windows (which was incorrect, I realised yesterday, since not all Aes Sedai have apartments with windows). The fact that apartments can be without windows makes it much easier to figure it out, and fit it all in a shorter building.

How large would the apartments be? My apartment is 63 sqaure meters (678 square feet). I've got an average living room (which I guess would be "spacious" compared to an Accepted's room in the Tower). A good-sized bedroom, a bathroom, a small storeroom (that could be a dressing room), and a kitchen that could be transformed into a study. So my apartment feels like it should be about the same size as Moiraine's and Siuan's apartments ... just speculation, but it feels reasonable.

So if we round down and say that each Aes Sedai apartment is 60 square meters (645 square feet), on average, with some larger and some smaller, that'd take 8400 square meters (90416 square feet) per floor. And then we have to thrown in space for corridors, stairways, common rooms ...

If the White Tower were 120 meters in diameter (393 feet), that'd give each floor an area of roughly 11300 square meters (121675 square feet). Which would mean that on each floor, there'd be 2900 square meters of space for other stuff. Meeting rooms, stairs, corridors (and there are probably a lot of those).

It'd fit. And it feels reasonable ...

But I hate that it looks like a refrigerator and not a real, tall Tower :P

I drew a very simple sketch of the proportions: http://img.photobuck...tornetshojd.jpg

I know that it'd technically still be called a tower, but it's ugly. I've always imagined it being much taller than it's thick.

This is a very interesting topic. I just discussed this with a few friends last weekend.

It's stated somewhere that the upper half of the Tower houses the Ajah quarters, and that each ajah has a pie shaped section. If Egwene fought the Seanchan at level 22, that leaves room for at most 44 floors, if she was at the bottom of the ajah quarters section.

The Aes Sedai apartments seem to be just that - apartments. Moiraine and Siuan were given very spacious rooms.

The apartments chosen for Siuan and her [Moiraine] were side by side a little off the main corridor, each containing a speacious bed-chamber, a large sitting room, a dressing room and a study, with fireplaces of carved marble ...

Those are a lot of large and spacious rooms. I doubt even less ranking Aes Sedai would be stuffed away in some novice-sized chambers; they've got apartments. At least of fair sizes, although I would assume some are more luxurious than others. But they should have to be, on average ... what? 600-700 square feet? That's a decent-sized two-room apartment by our modern standards.

And then, aside from those rooms, each ajah section would have to have meeting room, storerooms, etc, that probably takes up a lot of space.

I'm having trouble figuring out how to fit 3000 such rooms on 22 floors, with all additional space required, if those 22 floors make up 300 feet ... without getting some enormous block of a building. It's a tower. Look at the Philadelphia city hall ... how do you fit 3000 people in the upper half of that and still call it a tower? It'd be a big block. It's got to be taller than it's wide, a lot, to be called a tower. Even though it's a "thick tower".

We did some calculations (and it's too late for me to try and translate them into feet from meters and make sure I get everything right :P), but we reached the conclusion that, according for it to fit with our view of a tower and still be able to house all of those Aes Sedai, it'd have to be closer to 800 feet tall.

 

Almost a triple tie and no red or yellow :P I've done many Ajah tests (almost every time a different answer) and this was one of the best ones, I think.

Thank you. :)

Some time ago I decided to make a "which ajah do you belong to"-test. A thorough test. So, I thought I'd share it!

The Test.

Enjoy.

I've always liked Cadsuane. She's one of the few sensible Aes Sedai. I guess that she's a bully because, when you're an Aes Sedai, it seems that to get others (especially other Aes Sedai) to do things you either have to manipulate them or bully them. Since Cadsuane's the strongest Aes Sedai pre-Elayne, bullying probably came pretty naturally, since she's probably never taken orders from anyone in over 200 years. Not unwillingly, at least. And it seems that her bullying has been successful quite often. Therefore, she probably assumed that it would work on Rand as well, and in a way, it has.

Also, it was probably good for Rand to meet an Aes Sedai who wasn't, and isn't, terrified at the mere sight of him, like most others seem to have been.

I think it was because Elaida simply thought that Moiraine and Siuan could become very great Aes Sedai that could aid the Tower in the conflict she did know was coming. Therefore, she wanted to push them as hard as possible to make sure they became Aes Sedai.

I'd wager that she hates them because they chose Blue Ajah. I mean, Reds and Blues hate each other. Even if she didn't start hating them right away, 20 years of Ajah conflicts probably did the trick.

I agree that many major organizations rightfully consider their intentions to be good, since what "good" is depends on your perspective. When I say "good" I mean as in fair and trying to help people and make the world better, without oppressing any specific group of people, and without harming people. The Seanchan don't fit (oppressing channelers) and the same with Whitecloaks. The Aes Sedai, on the other hand, put little or no value at a person's origin and everyone gets an equal chance, and they do not seek to cause anyone harm. There are of course exceptions, but as a group the Aes Sedai strive to help people, in more or less direct ways.

Sure Aes Sedai have a level of self-importance that is borderline unhealthy, but really, given their task (preparing the world for TG), a little bit of ego is probably necessary.

It is not the Aes Sedai's task to p[repare the world for the last battle.  That is the sole reason, that and killing the DO that the dragon reborn was born.  The Aes Sedai just think that only they can even fight the shadow.  Thats why they have it in their heads that they must leash Rand and use him as a weapon.

 

They still try to prepare the world, don't they? The Reds get rid of men who can channel (probably something most people appreciate), the Yellow Heal people (probably appreciated), the Gray attempt to unite the nations. It's said explicitly in the books that they attempted to keep the alliances from the Aiel war active even when the war was over.

If they weren't so arrogant they'd probably be a whole lot more successful. But it doesn't change the fact that they're intentions are good.

They're quite a bit conceited and arrogant, yes. But much of what they do, they do for good reasons, don't they? Forbidding anyone but themselves from teaching the One Power probably saves lots of lives. We know that learning to channel can be dangerous, and it's not like they deny teaching it to those who wish to learn. Hunting down people who abuse it seems fair enough - who else would prevent a ruler from using the One Power to force his/her subjects into obedience? And who else would be capable of handling men who can channel?

They're too high and mighty, believing they're omniscient, basically. But as a whole, they all work for readying the world for Tarmon Gai'don, don't they? The organization definitely has some serious flaws, but I don't think they do more harm than good.

That said, I wouldn't want to be entangled in their politics and schemes and stuff. That's just nasty.