Which speaks more to the deplorable power and undue influence of the White Tower in that world, and a large part of my acceptance of the Children of the Light. And I did acknowledge this issue and the fact that it's part of the circumstances. However, I was expecting a lot more from the woman who came into Salidar looking to use the Aes Sedai to help Rand and the actual world, and was willing to lie to her superiors to get them to support him, and from the woman who insisted that she would not give her land to the Tower. While it may not be a particular sin of hers that she is just doing what their society considers normal, it is disappointing since she is the one person with the best chance to change all these problems. Condemning Elayne on this issue is like condemn George Washington & Thomas Jefferson for keeping slaves - they were not doing anything wrong, especially when set against the context of their time and place, but you wish they had been the sorts to do more against an institution both men plainly deplored.


I was not remotely talking about how it benefits ELAYNE, but how her unilateral decision will affect the people who live there and who will be handed over to the rule of the Sea Folk like chattel or furniture. Good land near a river tends to get populated, so it is pretty hard to imagine she can find an unpopulated stretch of land that meets Zaida's criteria. And while she can sit back in revel in the tax dollars, Andoran sailors and river-boatmen and longshoremen will lose out when trade starts shifting to the new Sea Folk port. Aringail, the second largest town in Andor, and according to the books, the core of her support, is going to be hurt the most by the diversion of trade to the Sea Folk enclave. So this is another potential way she is giving the shaft to her own loyalists. I never once complained that Elayne is making short-sighted or foolish moves that will hurt HER, rather the substance of my complaint was that she is doing things that ONLY benefit herself, at the cost of screwing over other people.

The fastest means of transport just got rendered obsolete. She is queen of a country where the two components of powered sea travel have been invented separately. The Academy of Cairhien has on its faculty a man who invented a paddle-wheel and another who invented a steam engine. Put the two together and having Sea Folk rakers stop along the Andoran coast now becomes much less important.

They have that anyway, with her on the throne of Cairhien. Either she will negotiate a trade union with herself (or screw the merchants of both countries in order to collect two sets of tariffs for crown revenues), in which case Andor gets steam-powered transport, making the Sea Folk deal irrelevant, and all the industrial potential of both academies flowing freely between the countries (hey, you know what works REALLY good in early factories? Water power! Which relies on land ALONG A RIVER of which Elayne has just handed over a mile to the Sea Folk to no real benefit! ). Exportable and importable goods is also something of a misnomer, as you appear to be subscribing to the old mercantilist fallacy that the one who exports goods for money wins a trade war over the one who pays in resources for finished goods. Trade is pretty much a neutral thing. It could help Andor, or reduce Andorans to pollution-blighted wage slaves in her factories. It could lead to foreigners raping Andor of her mineral resources with the connivance of the foreign nobles who could not care less about the country, but whom she has welcomed into the power structure. You can't just say "trade good" and end the argument.

This was a trifle next to all the ways she is screwing her own people over and doing the exact sort of thing Rand forbade his own followers.

So now all the people who live exactly where they are and have been living, have the privilege of paying taxes to her and having her all up in their business. Wheee. This is good for her, because it means more money & minions, but now people who have been surviving without a ruler (or any apparent inclination to move to a place where they could have one if they wished) have to suffer their lives to be ordered about by some stranger hundreds of miles away who knows nothing about them.

Rand saved Andor from one of the Forsaken. He liberated the nation from being a tool of the Dark One and prevented it from becoming an enemy he would have to destroy down the road. He did far more for Andor than Elayne does for the Two Rivers, and if he had no right to say who the next ruler should be, Elayne does not have the right to "give" the Two Rivers to Rand. The Two Rivers people CHOSE Perrin! They are not slaves, they are free human beings, and Andor has long forfeited any authority or claim to their loyalties by their inaction. The world is not a game of Medieval:Total War, where any territory not claimed by a particular monarch is free for the taking! They managed their own affairs, and more of the land than not exists without any crowned head telling the inhabitants what to do. They chose Perrin to be their leader for their reasons, and screw anyone who thinks she has the right to "ratify" that choice or justify it by naming someone else, someone who did NOT come to save them from the Trollocs, as their "real" owner and Perrin as his caretaker.

How is the one an alternative? Most despots are, in fact, skilled politicians! That's how they become, and stay, despots.

In what way are they remotely a questionable alliance? In fact, that was a brilliant AND a good move on her part. She has ties to a channeling organization, which gives her alternatives to the White and Black Tower, the former of which wields so much power because of their monopoly on the Power, which Elayne has just broken. What is more, because of the commercial implications of her agreement with the Kin, they now have financial incentives, which means they will soon outstrip the Tower in capabilities and general usefulness, even if they are not the scholars and theorists the best Aes Sedai might be. This is excellent for her, because it gives her someone to turn to for supernatural solutions to problems without having to go to the Tower begging, and it is a great deal for the Kin, because it frees them from the stultifying influence and restrictions of the Tower-inspired Rule. It is also a great deal for the world, because it frees up the Tower's monopoly on channeling by setting a precedent to allow other rulers to raise their own channeling groups. This will benefit the nations by giving them alternatives to the Tower monopoly, and it will benefit the world by giving the various groups of female channelers incentives to compete. If the Tower wants to maintain their reputation as the best channelers, they are now going to have to earn it, and meanwhile the underdog associations will be scrambling to try to beat or match the Tower to prove their own worthiness. Every major channeling discovery, innovation or rediscovery to come to the wetlander channelers has come from outside cultures, and women who have never sent foot in the Tower, or else invented or recovered by the most independent and self-taught and least-Tower-influenced initiates among the sisters. The only thing the pre-split Aes Sedai have discovered was the male-detecting weave, and that was almost certainly spurred on by the existence of an male channeling organization, and a male channeler terrorizing her faction. In other words, she suddenly had to worry about the existence of other channelers, and was inspired to create something new. If the channeling industry advances and develops at all in the Fourth Age, it will be due to Elayne's agreement with the Kin, more than any other single development among female channelers.

Why not taunt the Tower and force them to take action when they are their weakest, and can best be defied and break their power for good?

Actually, you could not be more wrong, since historically, what Elayne has done is EXACTLY the kind of thing that would bring the Tower down on her. The only reason she is likely to get away with it is playing on Egwene's culpability in the destruction being visited on Caemlyn. Egwene herself said that one of the reasons why the Tower had to be reunited was to prevent exactly what Elayne has done for coming to pass.

WHY WOULD YOU WANT THAT TO HAPPEN?!?! I can't believe people give ME shit for tolerating the Seanchan's practice of slavery, when people like you think a tyrannical monopoly on an area of activity is a GOOD thing! Do you know why there are lawsuits to break up monopolies in the real world? Do you understand the reason why we have things like "anti-trust legislation"? Because a monopoly benefits ONLY those who control it and NO ONE else. Not the governments, not the customers, no one, except for the people at the top who control the monopoly. Oh, duh. You and your Egwene fetish. Screw the whole world, as long as Egwene is the one on top, right?