One thing that’s very clear about Faile’s first meeting with Perrin is that she thinks she’s So Cool.
And she’s is, tbf, pretty dang cool. She’s Hunter, despite being younger and more female than anyone imagines Hunters to be (she even makes a joke about like “maybe they didn’t notice me at the ceremony. It was crowded”). She’s more competent than some of her colleagues and she has cool ideas about where the Horn might be. And she can do a cool knife trick that impresses even the sailors around her.
But then Perrin is like “You have the same name as my horse” and that totally shatters her So Cool façade for like a minute and she very nearly lets him get the last word.
Idk. I think reading Faile as someone who thinks she’s So Cool is definitely a way to get a deeper understanding of her character.
(If it needs to be said, this post is not an invitation to character bash. I like Faile and that’s not welcome)
You’re so right bestie.
To be totally accurate, while per the Companion Faile is born in NE 981 and the series starts in 998 NE, so she’s 17 at series beginning, we don’t meet her till 999 NE. So she might have met Perrin at 18.
There’s also a line about how Faile is the same age as Ewin, which would make her like… 16… but RJ specifically retconned that. I also remember her saying she’s technically too young to get married in Saldea without parental permission, although I can’t find the quote, but that might be pre-retcon or Saldea’s marriage w/out parental permission age might be 19, or something.
If you want to cover for RJ, you can headcanon that the Borderlands also do a variation of the ‘milk name’ vs ‘official name’ thing that Seanchan do, and count birthdays from the official name. (I’m obsessed with the post saying that Lan means ‘prized/beloved’ in the Old Tongue, so it is probably his milk name, and that means Lan’s parents weren’t around to give him a non-milk-name and no one else felt comfortable doing it.) So perhaps when Faile was counting Ewin as her age, she was thinking in terms of her post-milk-name years, the way Tuon says it’s 5 months to her 14th ‘true-name’ day. Then when she sees Mat’s reaction she adds her 6 years of ‘birth name’ existence.
One of my favorite Faile things is that by Saldean standards she’s sheltered but because the Borderlands is a war culture she’s extremely good with knives and espionage which is objectively funny because while she can handle complicated political theory but godforbid she has to navigate interpersonal relationships as just like- a person. It’s the same thing I love about Elayne and Tuon. They’re trained and super competent at Playing The Game but they’re so unfamiliar with actually making friends that they lack the skills to communicate with their partners. And the boys who should have experience in communication as village boys and Mat especially as both the son of a horse trader and a gambler but their trauma and belief that Women Are Mysterious and Complicated they also can’t communicate with their girls. Each solves this conundrum differently with Rand just sorta failing sideways with Elayne and Avienda and Min carrying the emotional load of communication. Perrin relies on his sense of smell which does Not work and eventually after severe trauma the two actually sit down and communicate like healthy adults. And Mat…. Well Mat and Tuon can’t do anything like a normal couple so instead of talking things out they have elaborate competitions where they treat eachother like political or war enemies. And we love that for them.
I would like to add that even from completely objective standpoint Faile is good at most things she claims she is. She knows how to navigate politics, how to talk with people, how to be a spy, how to play coy and plot (if Galina was normal AS Faile's plan 100% would work), and among all Ta'veren boys parties she's one of the most ruthless people, capable of doing what Perrin doesn't have the stomach to do. And she does NOT resent him for that, she loves him for that.
