p***@gmail.com
2005-10-20 19:43:22 UTC
What exactly is/was Semirhage's endgame?
We have been discussing Semirhage and her encounter with Rand for the
last week, but I thought that it may be helpful to consolidate our
information about her and the encounter, that we then begin to
conjecture about why.
What we confidently know:
HERSELF:
·She is noted for her patience, as well as her unnerving, motherly
calm, and her grace. [Mesaana, LoC Prologue; actions with Cabriana]
·She made a man scream for every waking moments in 5 years. [LoC]
·She thinks to herself that immortality provides ample time for her
to become Nae'blis. [LoC, Threads]
·She is noted for double checking just in case, "taking care was
second nature to a her, taking each step in its exact turn." [LoC,
Threads Woven in the Pattern]
·"She had been a prisoner before, briefly, during the War of the
Shadow. She had escaped from high detention by frightening her jailors
to the point that they actually smuggled her to freedom" [KoD, 589].
·She has an alliance of sorts with Demandred and Mesaana to not turn
on each other until the other Chosen have fallen; they have worked
together before to bring down foes.
·She was considered to know more about the human body than any other
person of her age. [BwB]
·She has been seen in tel'aran'rhiod. Note that the Shadow's
strongest tel'aran'rhiod users/fighters are Moridin, Cyndane and
Moghedian.
·She sent the Trollocs to the Stone of Tear per the DO's orders to
challenge Sammael's forces. [LoC, Threads]
·She tortured an entire town; as well as Myrddraal about their shadow
traveling.
·Rand/LTT note that she had "always had courage."
·Semirhage tells Graendal "If a kitchen girl puts a knife in your
back, are you less dead than if you fall in a sha'je duel at Qal?"
·Aran'gar notes that Semirhage had sexual proclivities that did not
interest Aran'gar [a noted letch].
·Rand notes that because of her reputation as a torturer, it was easy
to forget that she was dangerous in other ways too.
SEANCHAN:
·Semirhage has spent about two years posing as the non-channeling
soe'feia, Anath. [WH, What a Veil Hides]
·She hates how the Seanchan do not meet her eyes.
·Tuon and Mat left 17 days before Suroth's PoV in Embers, which
places the PoV ~11 days after the Battle at Shadar Lagoth.
·She offers to Suroth the position of Empress after claiming to have
killed the Imperial Court. She may have destroyed their empire.
·She claims to have sent a boat sending word of Seanchan's civil
war.
·Suroth is a High Lady, the highest ranking Seanchan until Tuon
lowers the veil, or until Tuon returns.
SHADAR LAGOTH:
·She was defeated at Shadar Logoth somehow while Rand was cleansing
saidin by people following him.
·She knew Rand had at his disposal Callandor and the Choedan Kal.
ARRANGEMENTS:
·These arrangements were made coinciding with the Trolloc attack on
Rand, which occurs approximately 30+ days after the Battle at SL or
approximately 9+ days after the Forsaken social where Moridin again
outrightly orders not to harm Rand in "any way."
·She has had control of the sad bracelets a'dam for at least 3
months, though most likely more than 6 months as they received it
before Tuon arrived in Tanchico.
·Since Tuon's departure with Mat, her alias as Anath has been said
to be in seclusion, and we know she can travel.
·She had Bashere, Logain and Loial meet Suroth in Ebou Dar with only
mutes.
·She repeated their meeting circumstances during the second visit
with Bashere and Manfor.
·She dictated the terms of their encounter, and stipulated the
location, timing and number of each party.
·She had three days to arrange the conditions of this meeting for
herself.
·She knows none of Rand's party has seen Tuon before her
disappearance; she can be fairly certain that none of his party has
seen her since her disappearance, or they would not have met with
Suroth to arrange the meeting as they did.
·She brings 5 female a'dam and 6 male a'dam to cover the
variables of Rand's channeling party, but puts them in a plain wooden
box on the floor.
·She knows the agelessness of an Aes Sedai face from her encounter
with Cabriana Mecandes.
CAPTURE:
·There are little, if any trappings of Seanchan society in the
arrangement; only the "DotNM" and 6 sul'dam.
·She poses as the "High Lady" and brings the 6 sul'dam directly
from the Tarasin Palace through an woven inverted/reversed gateway.
·The sul'dam and damane say post capture that they thought they
were being given an honor from the High Lady.
·The Illusion of herself as Tuon must account for a 1 foot difference
in height, and she wears a veil in her wavy short black hair under her
disguise.
·Nynaeve tells Rand that someone is channeling inside the house, but
she cannot tell who or what; Cadsuane states that she will be able to
do something about it.
·"Tuon" appears and is ten paces from Rand when "abruptly"
her image flickers and reappears.
·The Illusion flickers again and her face is perceived to be in a
"fury", and she channels what may be among other things, a small
fireball.
·Rand defends himself not with the Power, but with his Scepter and
loses a hand and blacks out on the ground, he then sees black flecks.
·Semirhage is shielded and held by bonds of air, a knife embedded
above/in her collarbone, she appears calm.
·She has placed 11 a'dam in a plain wooden box, beside the door on
the floor inside of the manor house, but as far as we know, none of the
sul'dam with her were holding any a'dam.
·Falendre challenges her when they think she is Anath, only a
soe'feia, saying she "not even so'jihn."
·Many of the sul'dam she chose react violently when she names
herself Semirhage,
HER SPEECH:
·Her speech declares that Rand is insane.
·She provides examples implicating Rand with Lanfear, and cites that
madness was more Graendal's specialty.
·She ends her speech by saying that she understands the descent into
terminal madness can be... "abrupt."
PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER:
We have continually seen the Forsaken strategize patiently and
intelligently in their games involving each other and Rand, so given
the circumstances of Semirhage's encounter with Rand, we have some
reason to be cautious about the appearance of victory.
What perhaps is most peculiar about her strategy is its dependence on 3
details: her disguise, and her ability to surprise Rand's party to
overpower them, and shield them.
Why does she need Tuon at all?
We know from Suroth's perspective in Embers that this meeting was
scheduled *after* Tuon had disappeared, and it fits with both the
timeline, and her PoV, that Bashere arrived after the prologue.
Bashere, Loial and Logain arrive at Ebou Dar to arrange a truce, but
they go without knowing with whom the truce should be made; we learn in
KoD that Rand's party didn't really know about the DotNM, or who
she even was.
Perrin's truce for Malden with the Seanchan shows us that neither
Tuon nor Suroth have to be involved in negotiations over military
matters. Moreover, with Tuon absent, Suroth has the authority to
officiate a negotiation; even if the truce would not have been binding,
it still would have presented a sufficiently credible opportunity to
lure the Dragon Reborn to a meeting. So why the complications?
Semirhage has Suroth meet Rand's emissaries attended only with mutes,
deliberately, if perhaps subtly, creating an air of suspicion. While
she may not be as psychologically studied as Graendal, she has been
shown to skillfully manipulate people, as a questioner certainly, but
even with those with whom she is acquainted-for example, walking up
to Mesaana to make Mesaana look up at her in LoC; and too there is her
hobby of embroidery which also has been shown to be a cover [Verin and
Cadsuane].
By stipulating the conditions of the meeting, she had incredible
strategic control over the variables to prepare.
Atha'an Shadar ; her position as soe'feia, even for Tuon, does not
make other people lower their eyes to her, as seen by Falendre's
comment after their battle. She had the time and the opportunity to
bring or arrange 6 Atha'an Shadar with her, to bring with her 12
other channelers and disguise them however she wanted or to disguise
herself as one of her party and use a proxy.
Instead, she brings 6 loyal sul'dam from the Tarasin Palace just
prior to the actual rendezvous, and it is unclear whether those
sul'dam were aware of the plan to collar Rand's group; remember,
they did not know who they were meeting when they wail after he names
himself the Dragon Reborn, and none had extra a'dam on them. Also,
if some of the sul'dam were in the house before she showed herself to
Rand, then she had to be
Furthermore, she places the plain wooden box with their various a'dam
on the floor just inside the house. An inconvenient, and noticeable
place to put them. Anyone trying to get to them would have to bend
down to reach them, non-surreptitiously. Even how they were grouped in
the box prevents their sudden use. The surprise then is not in the
collaring but in the shielding, so the plan seems to be to shield them
and hold them, and then casually slip them around their necks.
Yet, did Semirhage believe that her 6 sul'dam and she would be able
to potentially shield 6 men [whom they would not know were holding the
source]? Though Rand did not bring 6 men, we know from the a'dam she
brought that she had thought through the potential group combinations.
While, we do not know who Semirhage battled at SL, we do know that she
is aware that Rand possesses with him Callandor or the Choedan Kal.
Callandor as both a power, and symbolic, object would be impressive for
a meeting of this stature with a foreign dignitary. Oddly, no one in
Rand's party that we see acknowledges/recognizes Semirhage from the
battle of SL-Rand had with him some 25 Aes Sedai, Warders, and
Asha'man including, Cadsuane, Nynaeve, Merise, Elza, Narishma, Min
and Alivia; 9 other people including Jenare, Ayako, Kajima are also
named, but we do not know if members from either Verin's or
Daigian's circles were there. We also do not know how much
information was shared among the Forsaken about their encounters at SL,
specifically Cyndane's battle with Alivia or Demandred's fight with
Damer's circle, so we do not know if she knew about Nynaeve's and
Cadsuane's *angreal collection. Nonetheless, Semirhage has to be
aware that she has a very high probability of being out/overpowered in
this meeting, and that his party cannot be taken for granted. After
all, as she remarks to Graendal, "If a kitchen girl puts a knife in
your back, are you less dead than if you fall in a sha'je duel at
Qal?"
Did she believe that Rand and his Asha'man would not be holding on to
saidin and that she could shield them that way? We do not know if 6
sul'dam and their damane would be a circle of 13 linked channelers if
she forced a circle and we have not seen sul'dam link beyond their
damane, so what did she have in mind to overcome Rand's delegation.
Admittedly, we do not know the strengths of her sul'dam.
We obviously cannot trust her statements to Rand in front of his
forces, and it is important to note that in several encounters from
Graendal's PoV [particularly with Sammael], Graendal never
notes/thinks to herself about Rand's psychological condition, and we
know that she has spied on him before. She thinks of him as Rand, as a
provincial buffoon, but uses the name LTT just to irritate Sammael.
Time and again we've seen the Forsaken use the appearance of their
knowledge to lie, and "reintegration" may be another example.
Her capture has placed her within Rand's main party, and she now
knows from this encounter many intimate particulars about Rand's
operation-his relationship with Min [the one who couldn't channel
there who was comforting him intimately], his closest allies. Elza and
her Warder are there. Jordan may have be foreshadowing or just placing
red herrings by telling us about her escape or Rand's belief that she
had really thought she could capture them all. Either way, her capture
just doesn't seem to add up, and I think her capture was a part of a
larger, more complex gambit.
Finally, one bit of pure speculation. We know that she sent the
Trollocs to Tear to interfere with Sammael. We do not know whether she
knew how Rand beat her Trollocs, however. When her forces in Tear were
killed in the Stone, Rand used an AoL weaving that LTT knew. Could the
attack at Algarin's house been a calculated attack not to kill him,
but to make him use LTT's weavings again in front of his allies? The
timing is suspiciously coincidental, and it reinforces her statements
that Rand has contact with LTT, which of course further proves that
Rand is insane. Just like his recognizing her. Another outright proof
that Rand has connections with LTT. Moreover, the more he draws from
LTT, perhaps the more damage to his psyche there may be. If she sent
the Trollocs to Algarin, it might have been to push him hard.
Rand has commented now in KoD how people don't do what he says, they
don't follow his orders but question him, evade him. To undermine
their confidence in his decision making faculties further estranges him
from his allies, leaving him more alone with the torturous thoughts of
a madman.
We have been discussing Semirhage and her encounter with Rand for the
last week, but I thought that it may be helpful to consolidate our
information about her and the encounter, that we then begin to
conjecture about why.
What we confidently know:
HERSELF:
·She is noted for her patience, as well as her unnerving, motherly
calm, and her grace. [Mesaana, LoC Prologue; actions with Cabriana]
·She made a man scream for every waking moments in 5 years. [LoC]
·She thinks to herself that immortality provides ample time for her
to become Nae'blis. [LoC, Threads]
·She is noted for double checking just in case, "taking care was
second nature to a her, taking each step in its exact turn." [LoC,
Threads Woven in the Pattern]
·"She had been a prisoner before, briefly, during the War of the
Shadow. She had escaped from high detention by frightening her jailors
to the point that they actually smuggled her to freedom" [KoD, 589].
·She has an alliance of sorts with Demandred and Mesaana to not turn
on each other until the other Chosen have fallen; they have worked
together before to bring down foes.
·She was considered to know more about the human body than any other
person of her age. [BwB]
·She has been seen in tel'aran'rhiod. Note that the Shadow's
strongest tel'aran'rhiod users/fighters are Moridin, Cyndane and
Moghedian.
·She sent the Trollocs to the Stone of Tear per the DO's orders to
challenge Sammael's forces. [LoC, Threads]
·She tortured an entire town; as well as Myrddraal about their shadow
traveling.
·Rand/LTT note that she had "always had courage."
·Semirhage tells Graendal "If a kitchen girl puts a knife in your
back, are you less dead than if you fall in a sha'je duel at Qal?"
·Aran'gar notes that Semirhage had sexual proclivities that did not
interest Aran'gar [a noted letch].
·Rand notes that because of her reputation as a torturer, it was easy
to forget that she was dangerous in other ways too.
SEANCHAN:
·Semirhage has spent about two years posing as the non-channeling
soe'feia, Anath. [WH, What a Veil Hides]
·She hates how the Seanchan do not meet her eyes.
·Tuon and Mat left 17 days before Suroth's PoV in Embers, which
places the PoV ~11 days after the Battle at Shadar Lagoth.
·She offers to Suroth the position of Empress after claiming to have
killed the Imperial Court. She may have destroyed their empire.
·She claims to have sent a boat sending word of Seanchan's civil
war.
·Suroth is a High Lady, the highest ranking Seanchan until Tuon
lowers the veil, or until Tuon returns.
SHADAR LAGOTH:
·She was defeated at Shadar Logoth somehow while Rand was cleansing
saidin by people following him.
·She knew Rand had at his disposal Callandor and the Choedan Kal.
ARRANGEMENTS:
·These arrangements were made coinciding with the Trolloc attack on
Rand, which occurs approximately 30+ days after the Battle at SL or
approximately 9+ days after the Forsaken social where Moridin again
outrightly orders not to harm Rand in "any way."
·She has had control of the sad bracelets a'dam for at least 3
months, though most likely more than 6 months as they received it
before Tuon arrived in Tanchico.
·Since Tuon's departure with Mat, her alias as Anath has been said
to be in seclusion, and we know she can travel.
·She had Bashere, Logain and Loial meet Suroth in Ebou Dar with only
mutes.
·She repeated their meeting circumstances during the second visit
with Bashere and Manfor.
·She dictated the terms of their encounter, and stipulated the
location, timing and number of each party.
·She had three days to arrange the conditions of this meeting for
herself.
·She knows none of Rand's party has seen Tuon before her
disappearance; she can be fairly certain that none of his party has
seen her since her disappearance, or they would not have met with
Suroth to arrange the meeting as they did.
·She brings 5 female a'dam and 6 male a'dam to cover the
variables of Rand's channeling party, but puts them in a plain wooden
box on the floor.
·She knows the agelessness of an Aes Sedai face from her encounter
with Cabriana Mecandes.
CAPTURE:
·There are little, if any trappings of Seanchan society in the
arrangement; only the "DotNM" and 6 sul'dam.
·She poses as the "High Lady" and brings the 6 sul'dam directly
from the Tarasin Palace through an woven inverted/reversed gateway.
·The sul'dam and damane say post capture that they thought they
were being given an honor from the High Lady.
·The Illusion of herself as Tuon must account for a 1 foot difference
in height, and she wears a veil in her wavy short black hair under her
disguise.
·Nynaeve tells Rand that someone is channeling inside the house, but
she cannot tell who or what; Cadsuane states that she will be able to
do something about it.
·"Tuon" appears and is ten paces from Rand when "abruptly"
her image flickers and reappears.
·The Illusion flickers again and her face is perceived to be in a
"fury", and she channels what may be among other things, a small
fireball.
·Rand defends himself not with the Power, but with his Scepter and
loses a hand and blacks out on the ground, he then sees black flecks.
·Semirhage is shielded and held by bonds of air, a knife embedded
above/in her collarbone, she appears calm.
·She has placed 11 a'dam in a plain wooden box, beside the door on
the floor inside of the manor house, but as far as we know, none of the
sul'dam with her were holding any a'dam.
·Falendre challenges her when they think she is Anath, only a
soe'feia, saying she "not even so'jihn."
·Many of the sul'dam she chose react violently when she names
herself Semirhage,
HER SPEECH:
·Her speech declares that Rand is insane.
·She provides examples implicating Rand with Lanfear, and cites that
madness was more Graendal's specialty.
·She ends her speech by saying that she understands the descent into
terminal madness can be... "abrupt."
PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER:
We have continually seen the Forsaken strategize patiently and
intelligently in their games involving each other and Rand, so given
the circumstances of Semirhage's encounter with Rand, we have some
reason to be cautious about the appearance of victory.
What perhaps is most peculiar about her strategy is its dependence on 3
details: her disguise, and her ability to surprise Rand's party to
overpower them, and shield them.
Why does she need Tuon at all?
We know from Suroth's perspective in Embers that this meeting was
scheduled *after* Tuon had disappeared, and it fits with both the
timeline, and her PoV, that Bashere arrived after the prologue.
Bashere, Loial and Logain arrive at Ebou Dar to arrange a truce, but
they go without knowing with whom the truce should be made; we learn in
KoD that Rand's party didn't really know about the DotNM, or who
she even was.
Perrin's truce for Malden with the Seanchan shows us that neither
Tuon nor Suroth have to be involved in negotiations over military
matters. Moreover, with Tuon absent, Suroth has the authority to
officiate a negotiation; even if the truce would not have been binding,
it still would have presented a sufficiently credible opportunity to
lure the Dragon Reborn to a meeting. So why the complications?
Semirhage has Suroth meet Rand's emissaries attended only with mutes,
deliberately, if perhaps subtly, creating an air of suspicion. While
she may not be as psychologically studied as Graendal, she has been
shown to skillfully manipulate people, as a questioner certainly, but
even with those with whom she is acquainted-for example, walking up
to Mesaana to make Mesaana look up at her in LoC; and too there is her
hobby of embroidery which also has been shown to be a cover [Verin and
Cadsuane].
By stipulating the conditions of the meeting, she had incredible
strategic control over the variables to prepare.
From her comment about the Seanchan not meeting her eyes to Suroth in
Embers, we can reasonably infer she has been meeting with SeanchanAtha'an Shadar ; her position as soe'feia, even for Tuon, does not
make other people lower their eyes to her, as seen by Falendre's
comment after their battle. She had the time and the opportunity to
bring or arrange 6 Atha'an Shadar with her, to bring with her 12
other channelers and disguise them however she wanted or to disguise
herself as one of her party and use a proxy.
Instead, she brings 6 loyal sul'dam from the Tarasin Palace just
prior to the actual rendezvous, and it is unclear whether those
sul'dam were aware of the plan to collar Rand's group; remember,
they did not know who they were meeting when they wail after he names
himself the Dragon Reborn, and none had extra a'dam on them. Also,
if some of the sul'dam were in the house before she showed herself to
Rand, then she had to be
Furthermore, she places the plain wooden box with their various a'dam
on the floor just inside the house. An inconvenient, and noticeable
place to put them. Anyone trying to get to them would have to bend
down to reach them, non-surreptitiously. Even how they were grouped in
the box prevents their sudden use. The surprise then is not in the
collaring but in the shielding, so the plan seems to be to shield them
and hold them, and then casually slip them around their necks.
Yet, did Semirhage believe that her 6 sul'dam and she would be able
to potentially shield 6 men [whom they would not know were holding the
source]? Though Rand did not bring 6 men, we know from the a'dam she
brought that she had thought through the potential group combinations.
While, we do not know who Semirhage battled at SL, we do know that she
is aware that Rand possesses with him Callandor or the Choedan Kal.
Callandor as both a power, and symbolic, object would be impressive for
a meeting of this stature with a foreign dignitary. Oddly, no one in
Rand's party that we see acknowledges/recognizes Semirhage from the
battle of SL-Rand had with him some 25 Aes Sedai, Warders, and
Asha'man including, Cadsuane, Nynaeve, Merise, Elza, Narishma, Min
and Alivia; 9 other people including Jenare, Ayako, Kajima are also
named, but we do not know if members from either Verin's or
Daigian's circles were there. We also do not know how much
information was shared among the Forsaken about their encounters at SL,
specifically Cyndane's battle with Alivia or Demandred's fight with
Damer's circle, so we do not know if she knew about Nynaeve's and
Cadsuane's *angreal collection. Nonetheless, Semirhage has to be
aware that she has a very high probability of being out/overpowered in
this meeting, and that his party cannot be taken for granted. After
all, as she remarks to Graendal, "If a kitchen girl puts a knife in
your back, are you less dead than if you fall in a sha'je duel at
Qal?"
Did she believe that Rand and his Asha'man would not be holding on to
saidin and that she could shield them that way? We do not know if 6
sul'dam and their damane would be a circle of 13 linked channelers if
she forced a circle and we have not seen sul'dam link beyond their
damane, so what did she have in mind to overcome Rand's delegation.
Admittedly, we do not know the strengths of her sul'dam.
We obviously cannot trust her statements to Rand in front of his
forces, and it is important to note that in several encounters from
Graendal's PoV [particularly with Sammael], Graendal never
notes/thinks to herself about Rand's psychological condition, and we
know that she has spied on him before. She thinks of him as Rand, as a
provincial buffoon, but uses the name LTT just to irritate Sammael.
Time and again we've seen the Forsaken use the appearance of their
knowledge to lie, and "reintegration" may be another example.
Her capture has placed her within Rand's main party, and she now
knows from this encounter many intimate particulars about Rand's
operation-his relationship with Min [the one who couldn't channel
there who was comforting him intimately], his closest allies. Elza and
her Warder are there. Jordan may have be foreshadowing or just placing
red herrings by telling us about her escape or Rand's belief that she
had really thought she could capture them all. Either way, her capture
just doesn't seem to add up, and I think her capture was a part of a
larger, more complex gambit.
Finally, one bit of pure speculation. We know that she sent the
Trollocs to Tear to interfere with Sammael. We do not know whether she
knew how Rand beat her Trollocs, however. When her forces in Tear were
killed in the Stone, Rand used an AoL weaving that LTT knew. Could the
attack at Algarin's house been a calculated attack not to kill him,
but to make him use LTT's weavings again in front of his allies? The
timing is suspiciously coincidental, and it reinforces her statements
that Rand has contact with LTT, which of course further proves that
Rand is insane. Just like his recognizing her. Another outright proof
that Rand has connections with LTT. Moreover, the more he draws from
LTT, perhaps the more damage to his psyche there may be. If she sent
the Trollocs to Algarin, it might have been to push him hard.
Rand has commented now in KoD how people don't do what he says, they
don't follow his orders but question him, evade him. To undermine
their confidence in his decision making faculties further estranges him
from his allies, leaving him more alone with the torturous thoughts of
a madman.