This week in Reading The Wheel of Time, we are starting the eleventh book in the series, Knife of Dreams. Somehow it’s hard to believe I’ve already made it through ten books, plus New Spring. On the other hand, I started the series almost seven years ago, which means I’ve covered only about a book and a half a year. Even taking into account the occasional holiday or week off, that really shows how long and complex the series is, and how much there is to explore and analyze.
Speaking of density and complexity, as per usual, we’re not going to make it through the whole Prologue this week. In fact, I had so much to say about Galad that we’re actually only going to be covering the very first section of the Prologue. Next week we’ll move on to the man with the best name in The Wheel of Time, Rodel Ituralde, and to Suroth, whose section is full of Jordan’s favorite technique, dramatic irony, and will answer some questions I have about being a Seanchan Darkfriend.
But that’s getting ahead of myself. First, we recap.
The Prologue , “Embers Falling on Dry Grass” opens with Galad riding through an Amadician forest with three companions—Trom, who has been newly made Lord Captain after the death of several Lords Captain in the Seanchan attack, Dain Bornhald, and Jaret Byar. Galad tells his friends that they should turn back—his errand is his alone and they will have marks against them if they follow him—but they are all determined.
They arrive at a manor house where Eamon Valda is staying, and find both regular Children and Questioners in the courtyard, including Asunawa. But Galad only has eyes for one man, Valda himself. Valda upbraids Trom for not already being on his way to the meeting with the Seanchan, with whom the Children have made an alliance.
“An urgent matter, my Lord Captain Commander,” [Trom] said smoothly, making a very precise bow, neither a hair deeper nor higher than protocol demanded. “A Child of my command charges another of the Children with abusing a female relative of his, and claims the right of Trial Beneath the Light, which by law you must grant or deny.”
Asunawa remarks that this is a strange request and points out that Trial beneath the Light has not been invoked in nearly four hundred years. He urges Trom to give him the accused name so that Asunawa can deal with the matter, but Valda interrupts, reminding Asunawa that the request was directed to him and that the old law still stands. Valda believes that many of the old ways should be revived, and goes so far as to declare that if the accused refuses to meet the challenge, Valda will declare him guilty on the spot.
Galad steps forward and formally accuses Valda of unlawfully assaulting and murdering Morgase. Valda shows no surprise at the accusation, but Asunawa claims a Darkfriend plot to discredit the Children and wants to arrest Galad. He relents when the soldiers around them threaten to draw their swords, and Valda accepts the challenge, confidently announcing that it is either a lie or Galad being fooled by some Darkfriend plot. He references Elayne’s desire to become Aes Sedai, and suggests that the lie originates from “the witches.”
As the two men prepare to meet in combat, Byar quietly gives Galad tips on Valda’s fighting style. Galad warns Bornhald to keep an eye on Asunawa and the Questioners. He knows that he is facing a blademaster, but he is determined to slay Valda for what he did to Morgase, the woman Galad considers his mother, even if he has to sheathe the sword. The two exchange a ritualistic private word, in which Valda denies having killed Morgase but gleefully admits to the other charge, sparking fury in Galad. But Galad pictures a flame and feeds all his emotion into it until he is floating in emptiness.
They fight, and Valda keeps cutting Galad on his legs and arms, slowing him down and causing him to lose a lot of blood. Galad only lands one hit in return, and he realizes that his only hope of killing Valda is to do it quickly. He pretends to be more exhausted and weakened than he is, then finds an opening to swoop in and slice Valda across the ribcage.
He had thought he would feel satisfaction that his mother had been avenged, but all he felt was emptiness. Valda’s death was not enough. Nothing except Morgase Trakand alive again could be enough.
Suddenly he became aware of a rhythmic clapping and looked up to see the Children, each man slapping his own armored shoulder in approval. Every man. Except Asunawa and the Questioners. They were nowhere to be seen.
Byar immediately starts tending to Galad’s wounds, while Trom promises to write out Galad’s release from the Children; despite the fight being technically legal, some of the Lords Captains will certainly order Galad’s arrest for this. But Galad refuses to go, asking if Trom will write releases for every man who supported him, if he will release every one of the Children of the Light who do not wish to follow the Seanchan, and what will that do for those Children who have been captured and enslaved by the Seanchan.
Galad suggests that the Children should find someone, anyone, who will ally with them against the Seanchan, and that they make sure the Children of the Light ride in the Last Battle instead of wasting time hunting Aiel, as their Seanchan allies would have them do. He points out that, if the Children wish to fight in the Last Battle, they must do so along Aes Sedai, and after a moment, Byar mentions Precepts which state that one might fight alongside the serpent against the raven. One of the other men present declares that he will fight alongside the Aes Sedai or even the Asha’man if they fight the Seanchan, and Trom calls Galad “Lord Captain Commander.” Galad replies that it is a poor joke, but by the law, the winner of a Trial Beneath the Light receives his opponent’s rank and possessions. The men rally to follow Galad back to present his intentions to the rest of the Lords Captain.
Galad sighed. He hoped this nonsense would fade away before they reached the camp. Returning there was foolish enough without adding in a claim of that sort. Most likely they would be pulled down and thrown in chains if not beaten to death even without it. But he had to go. It was the right thing to do.
Starting Knife of Dreams feels a little bittersweet, because I know it was the last book Jordan finished himself. I also read recently that Jordan originally intended there to be only twelve books in the series, with Memory of Light coming right after Knife of Dreams, and I admit I am getting the feeling of an approaching end, even from the Prologue. There is something very grounded about it, like we are returning to a writing style and thematic focus that is more reminiscent of the first few books than the last few we’ve read. Ever since the revelation that Rand is the Dragon Reborn, characters have been considering that the Last Battle will come in their lifetimes, and could come at any time. But Galad’s comment about the Children having to fight alongside Aes Sedai in the Last Battle and the focus on turning the Children towards this goal gives a new sense of immediacy to the fact that Tarmon Gai’don is coming, and indeed, is probably very near at hand.
Even the title of the Prologue, “Embers Falling on Dry Grass,” evokes the sense of events speeding up. This isn’t a smoldering ember waiting to be brought to full life by the addition of fuel or a full breeze. This is the spark hitting highly flammable material. There is only a sliver of a moment between contact and ignition. Galad’s actions in the Prologue are only one example of this: We’ll see actions from Semirhage, from the Red Ajah, from Galina, and of course from Egwene, that also fit the description of the moment before dry tinder is set alight. In the meantime, Galad killing Eamon Valda and becoming the new Lord Captain Commander of the Children of the Light (a role that I believe will stick, despite his objections) is a huge change to the current order of the world, and I have no doubt that the effects of this change will be far-reaching.
Galad is one of my favorite, if not most favorite, tertiary character in The Wheel of Time. I love when authors play with the concept of the lawful good character, and what it means to be a person who is bent towards morality and goodness but who is also bent towards rule-following and believing that law and order, in the sense of the term “law and order,” is the correct way for things to be. Of course, the term “lawful good” is from D&D; the concept is intended to help players determine how their character might act in any given situation. Human nature, even in fiction, is more complicated that a three-by-three chart oriented around law vs. chaos and goodness vs. evil. However, in addition to being a helpful guide during tabletop role-play, I find that the concepts of the D&D alignment chart are also helpful in character analysis, especially when it comes to how someone’s alignment—their “orientation” if you will—plays into the themes of an epic fantasy story.
Terry Pratchett has one of the best explorations of a lawful good character in those books of his Discworld series centering around the City Watch of Ankh-Morpork. Carrot is a King Arthur/Aragorn/prophesied-king-type character, with all the trappings of a knightly paladin, but while he is Good in many ways, and often inspires other characters towards Goodness, Pratchett also illustrates the ways in which Carrot’s lawful bent can result in his being closed-minded, prejudiced, and unadaptable. Pratchett also shows (as he does with the rest of the members of the Watch) how Carrot’s focus on achieving goals, even if they are good and moral ones, can lead him to disregard law in the pursuit of justice—committing amorality in the service of some (ostensibly) greater morality.
Jordan is doing something slightly different, but also very interesting, with Galad. I’ve always loved the way he explained Galad’s perspective through Elayne’s analysis that Galad “will always do what is right, no matter who it hurts.” This statement can be read in a variety of ways: One way is to interpret “what is right” to mean in the moral sense, but another is that it means “what is lawful.” For Galad, at different times, it may be one or the other, and he doesn’t always see the difference.
For example, after promising Nynaeve that he would secure a boat for her in Samara, he holds to that promise even when it causes conflict between Masema and the Children of the Light. Many people end up being hurt in the fighting that follows, but Galad never wavers in his decision; once he has given his word, he does not break it. Giving one’s word, in the culture of most (perhaps all) of the nations of this world, is considered both a moral and a lawful obligation, after all, and Galad easily deems it a stronger obligation than the Whitecloaks’ rules about channelers.
It is very relevant that Galad’s challenge of Valda was made lawfully, but using a law that, while technically still on the books, hasn’t been in use for hundreds of years. One can’t help but wonder what he would have done if there had been no lawful path towards the vengeance he wanted. This vengeance is moral in nature, of course, and Galad must certainly feel that he has a duty to avenge Morgase’s unlawful treatment and death. However, the focus on the narrative is an emotional one, rather than one focused on the more lofty ideals of either law or morality. Galad struggles with his pain and anger, his love for Morgase and desire to see justice done for her because of his love for her. The focus is not on his sense of duty towards a mother or a queen, though one imagines he experiences that as well.
When Galad first joined the Children of the Light, I was mostly focused on the ways the flaws in his worldview fit with flaws in the Whitecloaks’. One of the reasons Galad was drawn to them was clearly because he had lost faith in the White Tower after the events of Siuan’s fall and the resulting division in the Tower, but it shows how black and white his thinking is that he would turn from the Aes Sedai—not to mention the attitudes of Andor—to their greatest (non-Shadow) enemy. Just because the one isn’t what you thought doesn’t mean the other is now inherently good, but Galad clearly sees things as either/or, all or nothing. Black and white thinking is also built into the structure of how the Children of the Light operate; anything that doesn’t fit their narrow world order and viewpoint of right and wrong is deemed “Dark,” and there is no room for differences in moral opinion, gray areas, or even the concept that one might be bad, but not sworn to the Shadow. This made Galad and the Whitecloaks feel like a good fit for each other, but not in a good way.
However, in the opening of Knife of Dreams, we see how the goodness in Galad may come to elevate the Children of the Light into something better than what they currently are. One of the first points he makes after defeating Valda is that the Children will have to fight alongside Aes Sedai if they are to going serve in the Last Battle, which introduces a gray area, or at least a sense of compromise, to the Children’s current ethos. Byar may quote Precepts about allying with the serpent to fight the raven, but this is not a compromise that the earlier leaders were open to. Galad, on the other hand, may have soured on the Aes Sedai after the events of Elaida’s coup, leading him to side with the Tower’s enemies, but he’s unlikely to see the Aes Sedai as evil when he was raised in the culture of Andor and has such personal family ties to the Tower. Even if he was considering such a belief, Valda’s treatment of Morgase would have had at least as strong an effect on him as the division among the Aes Sedai did.
Galad is never going to put his personal ambition before either his duty or his morality, which puts him leagues ahead of both the Lords Captain that we knew before him and most of the rest of the Children we’ve met—except maybe Bornhald Sr., whose personal sense of morality and duty to the Light restrained his hand against Perrin and turned him away from his orders and towards Falme at a critical moment. Pedron Niall wasn’t as bad as Valda, but he was a very ambitious man. He saw the signs of the coming of the Last Battle before most people, but he was most focused on expanding the power of the Children of the the Light and his own authority, rather than on the good of the world. Although I think he did genuinely believe that these things were necessary for the Light’s victory in Tarmon Gai’don, his personal ambition and belief in the Children’s superiority led him to that thought; it justified, in his mind, any number of morally questionable actions, including conquering nations and bringing them under the control and governance of the Children.
He’s a lot like Elaida this way; their downfalls are somewhat similar, thematically speaking (minus the corrupting influence of Mordeth). Both almost saw something very important about the coming of the Last Battle (Elaida’s Foretelling about the significance of the royal family of Andor, Niall’s interpretation that Tarmon Gai’don is near at hand) but both interpreted these realizations through the lens of their own narcissism, and made mistakes as a result.
Valda, of course, is neither lawful nor moral, in any sense of those words. Every move he has made is basically both morally abhorrent and against the code of the Whitecloaks. He’s probably the closest any character has gotten so far to behaving like a Darkfriend without actually being a Darkfriend. We could not have gotten rid of him too soon, and now we can see how many of the Children responded to Galad’s lawful goodness by supporting him in these unusual circumstances. Even Dain (whose anguish over his father’s death has resulted in his being overwhelmed, and led, by his emotions) and Byar (who was willing to illegally execute Egwene and Perrin even if it meant going behind his Captain’s back) aren’t comfortable with Valda’s attitude and choices. If we remember all the way back to The Great Hunt, Byar was also disturbed by the actions of the Questioners in a village in Almoth Plain, who hanged many people, including children, in their search for Darkfriends. Byar may not be as canny as Galad when it comes to recognizing what Asunawa and the others are capable of, but I doubt he’s forgotten the experience in that village either.
Bornhald Sr. considered Byar a good but overzealous soldier; it may be that having a good and moral commander again will help steer Byar back in a better direction. I have no doubt that Galad will be the official Lord Captain Commander of the Children very soon, even if there is some friction with the other Lords Captain first. I think Asunawa is going to continue to be a big problem for him, as well, but we will learn in Suroth’s section that Asunawa and the Questioners decided to stay with the Seanchan while the rest of the Whitecloaks “deserted,” so I say good riddance. The Questioners and the Seanchan deserve each other, really.
But to get back to my opening point, the Prologue feels very grounding in a way that Crossroads of Twilight, and even The Path of Daggers didn’t as much. Everything about Galad’s section reminded me of The Great Hunt. The inclusion of Byar and Bornhald Jr. harkened back to the events of that book, but even more than that, Galad reminded me a lot of Rand here. We see him facing off against a blademaster, an opponent who is more skilled and experienced than himself, just as Rand faced off with Turak in The Great Hunt. Galad considers that he may have to Sheathe the Sword in order to kill Valda, which is a move Lan taught to Rand and Rand used to defeat Ishamael. Galad also uses the Flame and the Void to keep from being overwhelmed by his emotions and to maintain focus and connection during the fight, something that we are accustomed to seeing Rand do. The sword forms are also used to describe the battle, something else that comes up occasionally in Rand’s POV but hasn’t been dwelt on in recent books.
Even the mention of Henre Haslin, who trained Galad along with Gareth Bryne, is a connection to Rand. It took me a bit to figure out if, and where, we’d encountered that name before, but I finally remembered that Henre is the man Rand brought in to teach the Asha’man swordplay.
Of course, the fact that Rand and Galad are half-brothers was also on my mind in this section, as it is something I don’t think we’d learned yet the last time we saw Galad. Tigraine was Galad’s mother, before she left Caemlyn to become a Maiden and eventually to give birth to Rand on the slopes of Dragonmount. I’m not sure how much older Galad is than Rand, but he probably would have to have been pretty young when his mother disappeared; I imagine he doesn’t remember her well, if at all. After all, he thinks of Morgase as his mother. But Rand knows the truth of his heritage now, so ostensibly he might tell Galad about it, one day.
Although he might not. Other than a desire to experience having a brother, there isn’t much reason for Rand to want anyone to know. It doesn’t matter where the Dragon Reborn comes from—he’s the Dragon Reborn. Rand considers Tam to be his father (he may be similarly attached to thinking of Kari as his mother, though he doesn’t remember her well), just as Galad considers Morgase his mother; he wouldn’t want to spend more time confirming that the people who raised him weren’t his biological parent than he has to. Also, Galad is Elayne’s half-brother, and that makes the whole thing feel rather incestuous, even if it is only via marriage and not by any blood connection (other than the one Rand has already worried over, which is that all the nobility is a little bit related). Nothing actually wrong with it, but I could see the connection making Rand a little uncomfortable.
But yeah, this section with Galad reminded me of Rand, and of the importance of swordsmanship in the larger narrative, especially the way it connects swordsmen to each other and to a lineage of blademasters. Spending this time with Galad felt very much like a return to the roots of the story. Now he has declared his intention to ally with anyone who will fight the Seanchan, which may lead to conflict with Rand, who intends to make peace with them—but on the other hand, the fact that the meeting with the Daughter of the Nine Moons is clearly a Forsaken trap may put paid to Rand’s plans in that regard. Even if he does manage a truce with the Seanchan, it would make sense for Galad and the Children following him to relent, if reluctantly, for the same reason Rand is relenting: The first and most important focus of everyone in the world must be uniting against the Shadow in time to fight Tarmon Gai’don. If the Whitecloaks can lay aside their prejudices to fight alongside Aes Sedai and Asha’man, they can do so for the Seanchan as well.
At least until the Last Battle is over, that is. But given how uncertain survival feels to everyone on the side of the Light, what lies on the other side of Tarmon Gai’don is a question to be looked at it when, and if, they come to it.
In the end, I think one of the reasons I find characters like Galad so appealing is that I, too, struggle with a desire for morality and justice but also find order and rules appealing. It can be difficult, sometimes, to remember that just because order feels reassuring, that doesn’t mean its moral, or even helpful. Morality, goodness, the “right thing” are not so easy to discern or define as rules and law, and the world exists—whether we like it or not—in shades of gray.
It’s one of the reasons I get very focused on the difference between Evil-big-E (as in, the Shadow and its allies) and evil-small-e, like Elaida, or Pedron Niall, or even the Seanchan. It’s the one hard line you can draw in this world, and not in our own: Even if you practice a religion that makes such a distinction, you can’t know and identify what’s in someone’s soul, but in the case of a fictional “devil” within a fantasy story, you can make that distinction.
However, that still leaves you with everyone else in the world, many of whom are terrible people, many of whom are good, and the majority of whom lie somewhere in the middle—but I note that those with the most rigid societal structures, the Whitecloaks and the Seanchan, tend to have the most amorality and cruelty on display.
As mentioned above, next week we’ll cover Ituralde and Suroth’s sections. See you then!
