Timewaster's Guide Archive

First off, I really love Brandon's work and the last couple Wheel of Time books have been really great.  But there was one thing that really confused the heck out of me.

For several books now, we've seen Rand slowly losing his humanity and hardening his heart. His Warders can feel the emotional effect, but they can't hear his thoughts.  We, on the other hand, do have the occasional peek inside his head, and it's always related to the litany of women who have died because of him, a list that always begins with the same name: Moiraine Damodred Aes Sedai.  Cadsuane always says he'll have to regain the emotions he's suppressing in order to be an effective Dragon come the Last Battle, but she doesn't know why he's suppressing them in the first place.  But we do: it's because of the women, and particularly Moiraine.

But we've always known that Moiraine was still alive. Even before seeing Thom's letter, we knew Moiraine is alive because of Min's viewing.  It always felt to me like these two things, taken together, constitute a very clear piece of foreshadowing: the event that restored Rand's humanity would be the shock of meting Moiraine, alive and well, after she was rescued from the tower, which makes the very foundation of the wall he's been sealing all his emotions behind crumble.

Instead, Rand goes up to Dragonmount and does something completely unrelated, an entire book before Moiraine gets rescued, and ends up getting his humanity back that way... and I was just all "what the heck just happened?" To me that doesn't feel like it fits at all.

Any thoughts or alternative perspectives on this?