How would using an a'dam have helped? It would not have contained Semirhage any better than the shield did. Shaidar Haran would just have removed it. Or Elza for that matter.
But the humiliation could have made her cave in earlier. More importantly, with so many Aes Sedai not needed to shield her, Elza might have been elsewhere, and thus her services would have been unavailable. And BS said SH cannot do some physical stuff like fitting the male a'dam on Rand. Hoe could he remove one from Semi?
Neither do I see torture having helped. It was strongly suggested that physical pain will work poorly on Semirhage. And even if she had broken that way, upon being released she would still have been after revenge. I doubt very much any technique would have worked so well that she would have stayed in the cell after SH visited.
Torture would have been useless. But as we've seen, the a'dam is also a tool for humiliation. That did work.
Executing her instantly would have worked ofcourse, but trying to extract information from her seems like a perfectly rational thing. What if she knows something that is the difference between victory and defeat is probably what Rand&Co thought and it is a reasonable thing to think. The wealth of information in both channeling knowledge and shadow secrets they could have potentially received from Semirhage is immense.
So really, I don't really see what it is that you call foolishness here? Trying to extract vital information from an enemy prisoner is foolishness? That makes no sense at all. Yes it turned out badly but thats looking at it in hindsight.
So really, I don't really see what it is that you call foolishness here? Trying to extract vital information from an enemy prisoner is foolishness? That makes no sense at all. Yes it turned out badly but thats looking at it in hindsight.
Two things:
1) Her knowledge was not why Rand kept her alive. He didn't let them try get that knowledge in the first place! He kept her alive because of his foolish belief that not harming her was a good deed.
2) Through LTT, Rand knows already that she had escaped once before. Not sharing that, not adding extra precaution because he knows that, is indeed foolish.
If it was written in the book that Semirhage was not rescued and Cadsuane was able to interrogate all the shadow secrets from her, and someone suggested that they should have just killed her instead, would you have agreed? I doubt it.
I would have, because with Moghedien's escape, RJ already established that knowledge from the Shadow can come at too high a price.
As for his survival, Rand was not about to die. Min and the rest of the world were. Rand would probably have outlived nearly everyone, albeit as a prisoner. I expect the DO would have wanted him to be there to witness it when he broke free afterall.
So? That was still a result of his foolishness.
Was Rand evil to channel the True Power?
- 12/01/2010 05:31:34 PM
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I think this argument is relatively akin to real world ones like
- 13/01/2010 01:15:01 AM
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But it's the essence of the Dark One.
- 13/01/2010 01:43:10 AM
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4. He just reached for a power he sensed. What did he know? If he did know ...
- 13/01/2010 06:32:30 AM
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