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Excellent post Zeratul Send a noteboard - 22/12/2010 04:29:38 PM
I agree with pretty much everything. Just a few things to add:

Well that has absolutely nothing to do with the character. In no way, shape or form could the term spoiled be applied to her in any serious way. Sure she is accustomed to luxuries that few of the other characters are, but that hardly makes her spoiled, since it never affects her actions. This "spoiled" and slumming daughter of a queen has as her best friends, the daughters of a miner, an innkeeper, a farmer and a barbarian whose people killed most of her paternal kin. Most of whom benefit more from her friendship with them than the other way around. The most her royal upbringing does is skew her perspective slightly, as when she is unaware of the value of her clothing compared to ordinary people and worries about the cost of procuring replacement garments, or when, from Nynaeve's perspective, she is too liberal with her charity and tips. Not having any firm information on prices and costs and incomes in WoT, much less the customs of tipping, we have no idea whether Nynaeve's view of her profligacy or hers of Nynaeve's penury is more accurate. Beyond that, we see that not only is she willing to contribute to the daily-chores labor when traveling with her peasant companions, she is better at such tasks than the two women who grew up having to do these things for themselves. She does the sewing in tDR to alter their clothes when traveling with Egwene & Nynaeve, the former of whom notes her skill, and when she & Nynaeve are with the circus, her cooking draws dinner guests, while Nynaeve's drives away everyone but Elayne (note that despite being the closest to a gourmand among the characters, she nevertheless eats with Nynaeve, when Thom, Juilin and Luca flee to a tastier meal, despite knowing Nynaeve longer than Elayne has or being sexually attracted to her). Please tell me how, in any meaningful sense of the word, Elayne acts spoiled?

Well said. I've never understood why so many readers keep calling Elayne "spoiled". I actually think she's almost too far in the other direction to be believable as a character given her background. She has no problem cooking and sewing for her travelling companions (and is really good in those things), she instantly became a close friend with many commoners during the series (Min, Nynaeve, Egwene, Egeanin, Aviendha etc). She got along well with everyone in Luca's circus and they were disappointed to see her leave. When she arrived in the Tower, where seemingly half of the novices were noble born, she chose for her friends 3 commoners, one of which wasn't even in training to become an Aes Sedai. Those three were Andoran subjects (at least on paper in the case of Elayne and Nynaeve), yet not once she tried to pull rank on them and order them as the heir of their Queen.

She went from the pampered life in the palace to the harsh discipline and numerous chores in the Tower and her only complaint was that she didn't like cleaning dishes. Nothing about having to scrub floors and all the other tasks she had to do regularly for the first time in her life. Not once during her time away from Caemlyn she thought anything like "I wish I had maids serving me as I am used to".
This message last edited by Zeratul on 22/12/2010 at 04:31:04 PM
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