A Memory of Light

[IngtarWhoStoleChristmas]

If you have not read book 5 or later do not continue

Disclaimer!!!

The opinions below are not necessarily those of the author, merely pointing out another perspective

/Disclaimer


Lunatic rant

RJ has actually killed off at least a couple of mid-major characters (Ingtar, Mangin, Bornhald, Niall), and one who could easily be called major (Moraine)

About Moraine, there has been much forshadowing (mostly by Min) that she isn't really dead. At one point Min even questions if there is something wrong with her ability saying that the only viewing that had ever failed was where Rand would not win the last battle without the help of a woman who is "dead and gone". While some think this is a clear indication that she will be back that is not necessary for the story. Perhaps the last battle is one by The Dark One and the Wheel is broken. Remember this is called the "3rd age" by some. No one can really say which time around this 3rd/4th age is. Maybe this is the time it gets broken.

/lunatic rant

Please before calling me crazy, read the disclaimer above

[Publius]

If you have read Martin, then you know that Edard Stark was an EXTREMELY important character.  If you've read Erikson, then you know that Whiskyjack was perhaps the MOST important character up until the point he bites it.

First off I'm on page 167  of Gardens of the Moon, so please try and be vague if talking about Eriksons work.  No big deal I was thinking that Whiskeyjack was going to get knocked off.  Martin is ok.

I'm going to engage in a little word play and see if you'll agree with me or not.  I would say that an Important character and a major character are different.  In that a important character sets more of a foundation for other characters on how and why they act as they do.  A major character would be one that has the story line revolve around them. 

I'll try not to get to far off topic.  It's been a while since I've read a Game of Thrones, so correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't that story been told with Eddard Stark already dead?  He could have spoon fed us information about who he was and what he did through other family members.  Granted it wouldn't have been nearly as dramatic, but the story would've ended up right where it is now, wouldn't it?  Where as if Jon Snow were to have been eaten by his wolf on page 200, that would've changed a large part of the story.

One of the reasons why I like the WOT is that it's easy to suspend disbelief.  I find the world is believable, the characters are believable, and the magic system makes sense.  When I think about where this story started from and where it's heading, it just doesn't seem believable that everyone walks away alive. 

If it is one thing that I would place money on it's that Rand is either going to die, or he is going to become some higher power.  Perhaps he'll become the One Power.  Either way he won't be a part of the world in my opinion.  Think of it this way, Rand is already fulfilling prophecy, so he has become a religious figure.  Lets say he battles the Dark One  and wins, no one dies.  Then what?  According to prophecy his skin is going to rot, and he's already missing limbs, so basically he'll be an ugly cripple.  From there I only see two options.  Either he becomes a farmer which would be anticlimactic, or he'd become king of the world which would suck also.

 That's just why I think that some characters are going to die in the final book.

[Bookstore Guy]

i see what you are getting at, Publius.  You could easily make that distinction, but i dont think they are mutually exclusive.  After all, in Mistborn, Kelsier's impact on Vin is much more important than his own actions as a character.  Does that mean that he isn't a Major Character?  I think you'd agree with me by saying he sure the heck IS a major player.

You bring up a very interest point with the Eddard Stark character.  Could the story have been told with him already dead?  I dont see why not.  But you could say the same with Kelsier.  Or with, say, any other major character in most novels.  It doesnt mean the story will be better or worse, but you can do it.  Game of Thrones would have been a really crappy novel without Eddard (in my opinion).  A majority of the entire plot was centered around his character (including the very title of the novel).  Yes, his impact on other characters is probably the more important aspect of his character, but I think he is definitely a Major character.  Him dying in book 1, to me, would be like Lan in WoT biting the dust at the end of book 1.  Think of how much of a story impact that is.

As for Erikson, sorry for the spoiler.  You dont have to worry about it for a bit.  Book 1 is a bit of a rough climb, but you'll see what I mean by Major characters at the ends of books 2 and 3 (they run on concurrent timelines).   I have read very few books that have endings as powerful as those 2 novels.  You will love em (even if you feel shell-shocked after).

[smashingsilver]

The three primary characters of the story (Rand, Mat & Perrin) could not die up to this point because it has been prophesied that they are all essential to success at Tarmon Gaidon.  Thus, when Mat had the building fall on him at the end of book 7, it was obvious that he was not dead, even though we never heard from again until well into book 9.  We also know from RJ's comments that Mat will survive (and Tuon), because he was planning to write a spinoff book about them.  Perrin is also highly probable to survive and have some share of ruling Saldaea with Faile in the future.

Rand of course is the big mystery.  The vision of Logain walking over a puppet-faced Rand on his way to glory (see Egwene's dream in ACOS, Ch. 10) implies that Rand may fake his death and allow Logain to rule in his place.  Whether that is over the Ashaman or some portion of Rand's empire remains to be seen.  Also, it is possible this occurs earlier in the story of AMOL so that Rand is free to focus solely on Tarmon Gaidon, free of political maneuvering.  I think it is highly probably that Rand does die in some form during the end of AMoL; there is too much foreshadowing of his death to ignore it.  As to how that is finally resolved...any of the theories mentioned in this topic is possible.

Nynaeve & Lan are also likely to survive - Lan's upcoming run through the Borderlands, gathering the scattered Malkieri to his side, will likely help set up his post-Tarmon Gaidon future of ruling the rebuilt kingdom of Malkier.  Unfortunately, there aren't any prophecies that refer to this, so this is just speculation.  It is also possible that Lan & his Malkieri will die in the attempt to hold back the Shadow at Tarwin's Gap.  I just don't think it likely.

Elayne will at least survive until her babies are born, which will take several months (she is two months pregnant as of the end of KoD).  Since the books are currently covering approximately a month of time per volume, I'm guessing that these births won't happen until after the main part of the story is over (perhaps in an Epilogue of AMoL).  Aviendha is also supposed to have Rand's babies, but as far as we know she is not pregnant yet (or at the very least, even more recently than Elayne).  This is because Elayne & Aviendha's sister-bonding experience forbid anyone being pregnant - the Aiel wise women involved would have detected if this was the case and stopped the process immediately.  It's possible they did it behind the scenes since then...but then the same explanation for Elayne would apply here as well.  Min we have no idea about, although it is expected that she is one of the three women who mourns Rand's death in her own viewing of Rand from TEOTW.  Unless that is part of the trickery of Rand faking his death...

Egwene I am unsure about.  If there was ever a time for her to die, it would be when the Seanchan attack the White Tower.  It's quite possible Gawyn chooses wrong and picks the path in which he would try to kill her, but since she had her own dream about the Seanchan swordwoman helping to save her live...it's likely that any attempt to kill her during this attack would be unsuccessful.  I don't see how Gawyn would be caught in any other situation to kill her aside from the upcoming attack, where he would be forced to choose a side that may not be the same as Egwene's.  Egwene is also prophesied to bond Gawyn, which throws a wrench into her possible death.  I guess that could happen before the attack, but then it would be highly doubtful a warder would kill his own Aes Sedai.  Too much uncertainty on this one, but I would guess that Egwene indeed does survive and becomes Amyrlin over whatever Aes Sedai are remaining after Tarmon Gaidon.  Assuming the White Tower even survives....

That's all I've got for now - need time to think about the other 50 important secondary characters.

[Shaggy]

Wow. That was a lot. But good stuff all through.

Bookstore Guy—are you saying that we can't make comparisons between the books? 'Cause pretty much everyone is doing that. I'm just making a comparison–we're debating a point, and I'm using evidence (?) from other books of the same genre who back up my side. There's nothing wrong with that. (And frankly, I don't even remember what the original argument was).

Some people have to die. I stand by that statement. If all the good guys survive…it becomes a bit too much like a fairy tale. I don't think that will happen.

[Publius]

I think you'd agree with me by saying he sure the heck IS a major player.

For the one book, yes.  For the entire series as a whole, no.  The point that you made about Kelsier, about his story being told postmortem, I thought about that while I was writing my last post.  I'm torn on that one because he didn't just die.  He died doing something huge, but I suppose it could have been told in a different way.  So I suppose by my own definition of important/major characters Kelsier would be an important character.  So the major characters in Mistborn would be Vin Elend, and Sazed,  those three surviving to the end is detrimental to the overall storyline.  Everyone else is minor/important characters.

There are two reasons why I believe that RJ didn't kill any major characters up to this point.  Considering that he is building up to this huge epic last battle he needs a lot of characters, and if he starts killing them off he'd have to replace them.  When you kill off characters you run the risk of replacing them with less inspiring characters.  GRRM's series I think is a good example.  Storm of Swords was an unbelievably good book, but Feast of Crows came out, and I found that I had little interest in the new characters. That's one reason.

The second reason is the way that RJ has told this story.  Everyone is connected to one another, and we really don't know why.  Rand is connected to Mat, Perrin on one side, and Elayne, Avienda, Min on the other.  He's also connected to Egwene, Logain and Mazrim Taim.  Egwene is connected to Nyneave who's connected to Lan whose was connected to Moraine whose connected back to Rand.  Mat is connected to the Daughter of the Nine Moons whose connected to the Seanchan whose connected back to Rand.  And so on and so on.

I believe that all these characters will play an important part in the final battle.  What their part is we don't know until we read it.  I think that some characters are important because they will sacrifice themselves protecting Rand.  My only other guess whose going to die other than Rand is Perrin.  And that is me just reading into something that probably is nothing.  RJ said he was going to write another novel about Mat and Tuon, and I thought that was weird because I thought that Perrin and Faile would make an equally interesting outrigger novel  why not write that also?  Unless Perrin doesn't survive the final battle.  See, might be reading into nothing.

[Shaggy]

Also, you have to remember Perrin's relationship with the wolves. When they fight in the Last Hunt, I'm pretty sure all the wolves will willingly give up their lives to kill some real bad guys–Darkfriends, Trollocs, (especially) Fades (in one of the books, they say how a hundred wolves would give up their lives to kill one Fade), etc. (I don't say they would save good guys, because I think it has been shown that they are not aware of and find it hard to distinguish different humans (considering they call them 'two-legs).) But, since Perrin is sorta two-thirds human and one-third wolf, he has a little bit of both in him. So–he would (most likely) give up his life to kill someone bad enough (if he had already done some serious damage), and, since he understands the humans and is aware of their goals, he would not hesitate to give up his life for Rand's, or, say, Moiraine's. So I think it is very likely he will die, too.

[happyman]

Firstly, I didn't think about how tightly wound the WoT was as it relates to main characters dying when I made my initial comments, but I think the tight plotting actually supports my views that we don't actually know RJ's character-killing tendencies.

This series has been winding down to a predetermined conclusion for a very long time.  We don't know what this conclusion is, but it is going to involve everybody, both major and minor characters.  The most important characters have major roles to play.  From a literary perspective, we have to at least get them all to the last battle so the pattern's weave can be complete.  However, this means that all of the precursors to the last battle tell us nothing about the nature of the battle itself.  They are different parts of a single story, and what happens during the last battle will be different from everything that has gone before.  I would say that all bets are off for the last book.

These comments are going to be slightly tangential to the previous discussion.

Many people (I've seen it before) talk about restoring this or restoring that after the last battle:  bringing back the Age of Legends, bring back Malkieri, Perrin discovering the song, etc.  That's not surprising; it's a common fantasy trope.  However, it seems wildly out of whack with the Wheel of Time mythos.  What is going to come after the Last Battle will be different than what came before, probably wildly different.  The age of legends isn't coming back for another what, 5 ages? 6 ages?  I expect the last battle to be as cataclysmic as the breaking of the world or global thermonuclear war.  Malkieri isn't coming back because in all likelihood there won't be a place to bring it back.  The "song" doesn't really exist, if you read the story closely.

Sorry.  This is a bit of a peeve of mine.  However, I would be much more willing to be on things like "The One Power becomes inaccessible"  or "Wolfbrothers become the new nobility" than on any restoration of anything in human memory with the WoT.

[Bookstore Guy]

Shaggy - I think you are misunderstanding what I saying.  What I am saying is that using Brandon's personal work as evidence how RJ will end the WoT doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.   If you were comparing a Brandon Book to a Brandon book, then sure.  Or a RJ book to a RJ book, sure.  If two people's novels were written at the same relative time, and they had very striking similarities, then sure, comparisons are natural (Martin vs Erikson, Goodkind vs Jordan, Butcher vs Richardson vs all other Urban Fantasy).  But RJ and Brandon's story ideas are pretty different on the whole.  Like I said, I just think that using one author to prove how another author wrote his own novel's end seems a bit off in this case.

Publius - Yeah, we are totally walking in a very gray area.  I think we could each decide that Character A could be considered Major or 'just' important.  See, i'd argue that if a character makes a huge impact in 1 book and that impact affects how other main character majorly act, then to me thats a major character.  You are totally right about the dangers of killing off people though.  You better have an amazing replacement.  Good call there.

Happyman - I hope to heck that you are right.  I hope characters bite-it left and right at the end.  I dont think it likely, but I hope it happens.  Because up until now, I've never felt any character was in any danger (one of my main criticisms).  There has always been something that pulls them out of the fire.  Sure they get hurt here and there, but I've never expected any character to be in danger of dying up to this point.  Unless balefire is involved, it's hard to consider anyone dead or in danger of dying at all.  I do want to point out to you that I could argue that,  in say, Steven Erikson's series (13 total stories so far), you know from very early on that characters can and will die.  It gives his series a pattern.  I consider that series to be just  long story just like you consider WoT to be the same.  Therefore, I could argue that the lack of deaths that "stick" in WoT hints that the ending may very likely be the same.  But, I do see your point, and I hope you are right.  It would redeem the series for me.

[IngtarWhoStoleChristmas]

Happyman,

I think the notions about Perrin discovering the song and Lan bringing back the Malkiar (sp) are more born of specific forshadowing from the books. Either Min viewings, or Egwene/Perrin dreams have hinted at these things happening.

[Shaggy]

Happyman—I agree. But I do think that RJ will (has?) put his own spin on the ending of WoT that will make us all smile, nod our heads, and say that it was the perfect ending.

Bookstore guy—I don't really remember (it was a long time and many posts ago), but I think I was making a point about the genre when I used Kelsier/Mistborn as an example. Also, what you said to happyman seems very familiar to me. When I was much younger, my attempts at stories almost always failed miserably–I grew too attached to my characters, and thus did not want to kill (or even hurt) them. So the good guys won pretty much every fight and it got pretty boring after a while. Lol.

I think the song is going to turn out to exist–and to be something that only RJ would think of 

[Publius]

I understand why people doubt that RJ will kill any off his characters because he hasn't killed any yet assuming that Moraine is still alive.  Someone described RJ's writing style as being escapism which is a perfect description of it, but I don't see how you have a great battle without anyone dying.  The ending is what inspired RJ to write all these books.  How could an epic battle with no deaths inspire so many books?  I am fully prepared and willing to accept mass resurrections in the last chapter, I'll be ok with that as long as the battle is a battle and it feels real.

Shaggy made a good point about the wolves not being able to tell the "two legs" apart, and that got me thinking again.  What if in the heat of the battle Perins wolf senses take over and Rand has to kill Perin? 

I've already given two characters and the reason's why I think they'll die, Rand and Perin, I have one more.

It's been a longtime  since I've read this series, so if my reasons are wrong please correct me.  Warders go crazy when their Aes Sedai dies and that is why Lan was passed on to Nynaeve.  Cadsuene is worried that Rand is too serious, to firm, to uncompromising, I forget the term used in the book, but she's worried that Rand will snap under pressure if he doesn't learn to laugh.  Rand also has three warders in Avienda, Min, and Elayne that is a lot of warders.  I think one maybe even two of them die.  Avienda seems to me to be the best one to go "boots up" because she's a warrior who'll be in the thick of it.  If I had to pick between the other two it would probably be Min because Elayne is pregnant, and I think that is important to the ending.  Anyways after Avienda dies he snaps, maybe that's why he kills Perrin, and the remaining warders are needed to bring him back under control. 

Someone thought that the Prologue in tEotW was foreshadowing of Tarmon Gaiden.  I don't know, but I do know that their were a lot of dead bodies laying around there.
 

[Necroben]

Someone thought that the Prologue in tEotW was foreshadowing of Tarmon Gaiden.  I don't know, but I do know that their were a lot of dead bodies laying around there.

The prologue was basically a history.  Ishmael(?) met and spoke with Lews Therin in that scene, just before Lews Therin killed himself.

[Shaggy]

That's a good point, publius. I never really thought about it, but those who have Warders (mostly Aes Sedai) are sorta twice as vulnerable (although I wouldn't call Warders (Lan in particular) vulnerable).

I also agree on the point that at least one of Rand's Warders must die. If you think about it, having three spouses for 40+years of life would just be weird. Who do you sleep with at night? Do you have a schedule for who sleeps with who? A schedule for sex? Does everyone sleep together (this would be strange)? And the children–first of all, there'd be a LOT of them. Secondly, they won't technically be siblings–they'll be half-siblings–but they'll all live together. They'll all share the same Dad, but have one Mom and two aunt/type/people and…it's just too confusing. I think RJ will kill at least one, if only for peace of mind. I hope it's Min.

[Necroben]

I also agree on the point that at least one of Rand's Warders must die.

Rand doesn't have any Warders.  They bonded him as Warder.