like a sun to the world below

With that in mind I find it hilarious how the show has updated Lanfear's manipulation attempt, not to appeal to Rand but the audience, and what that says about the way what is attractive in women has shifted in the twenty odd years since TGH came out.

But this is also Mat

Who does Rand think of as a role model? Nynaeve.

Who does Rand think of when he needs a grounding focus? Nynaeve.

Who is the one person who isn't one of his wives that he allows to heal him? Nynaeve.

Who does Rand trust unquestioningly to have his best interests in mind even in the midst of his mental anguish and trauma from other channelers? Nynaeve.

Who does Rand immediately think of inviting to help him *do the impossible*? No, not one or more of his wives, but NYNAEVE.

But beyond that, Jordan describes women who are short and tall, beautiful and ugly, square faced, round faced, fox faced, sharp faced, women who are grey haired and wrinkly, women who are middle aged, women with sagging breasts and leathery faces from sun exposure.

And the key thing is that no one body type or trait is confined to one group. There are women with a variety of body types and ages and looks on every side of every conflict, good or evil or in between.

And maybe even more importantly, Jordan makes a very deliberate point of under-minding the idea that appearance decides worth as a person. When characters let their biases and prejudices dictate how they view someone, they are almost always undercut or proven wrong, like with Lars the Mistress of the kitchens, who in the same chapter as Nynaeve goes off (internally) on a fatpohbic rant about her, also demonstrates that she is one of the most soundly good and principles characters, a fact that reoccurs in basically her every appearance. Meanwhile Galad's intense physical beauty and supposed moral uprightness are often deconstructed and held in contrast with the monstrous effects of his actions (such as starting a war over a promise).

And the show is doing its best to preserve some culture and visual differences between the nations of Randland. For example, all of the actors who were cast for speaking roles from Ghealdan (especially Logain and the king of Ghealdan) were from Spain and had Spanish-accented English when they spoke. It seems as if they're trying to do something similar with Andor, where all actors who are playing characters from Andor are British (Maigan, Elayne). We're ignoring the Two Rivers folks in this, because they aren't really from Andor, are they.

I’ll go first: In spite of having the White Tower divided into Seven Official Ajahs RJ did not assign them the Seven Visual Colours that make up White Light. 

Red, Blue, Green, Yellow: all fine and good, red and blue being diametrically opposed even if these groups mission statements aren’t the clearest that’s fine, that’s not the point of this. 

Brown: Fine, if you really don’t want to have orange because orange doesn’t meet the ‘dark academia’ vibes keep brown (why the brown ajah didn’t have an exploratory devision that could have used orange idk and again not important.

Grey: I am chewing Robert - grey for your politics division? Grey? Purple Purple is the colour most associated with royalty, make them purple. The Grey Ajah should have been the logic and philosophy ajah, between and apart from good an evil not the White! 

This way pure white is left solely for the Amyrlin Seat - since she is the tower and the tower is her, “of all Ajahs and none.“ And novices wear a similar (obviously more uniform and less nice version) of all white as in the books 

Egg in her less nice whites against Eladia in her excessive fabrics both technically in the colour of the Amyrlin they both but forward to be?

Egg haven’t never chosen an ajah before she is raised to the Seat, being apart from and beyond the political struggles the black ajah had taken advantage of? A true - perhaps the first True Amyrlin?

Egg taken on the Seanchan attack technically in her novice dress But visually the Amyrlin atop the White Tower??? 

It would have been so NEAT ROBERT. It would have been so simple.  

One thing that didn't really become clear to me until this read through of WoT is how that, The Trakands aren't just influenced by Arthurian and Chivlaric Romance tropes, each is an outright deconstruction of a different Arthurian trope- with one exception.

Morgase is obviously the classical High Queen: a beautiful widow who is regale, wise, and most of all untouchable. She is surrounded by loyal advisors and generals who give their all to her, for no more then the sake of their honor and her majesty, but she is treated more as object then person, a living avatar of the land or nation itself. Morgase's arc in a lot of ways about showing how cruel a way this is to treat person: she is lonely, always knowing that she is surrounded by people who wont see the woman beneath the Crown, who revere her more as a symbol of the realm then they do a person. Her romance with Tallanvor also emphasizes this point as they have a very classic Courtly Love setup: a noble knight who worships her chastely from afar, struggling always to prove to his Queen his adoration. In the end the proof of that adoration comes in the form of him learning to see her as a person and a woman first, not for duty's sake or the crown she gave up.

Galad in a similar vein, is the archetypal Paragon: an unbending font of pure moral rightness, whose rightness is made physical manifest through an almost otherworldly beauty, and abilities that border, if not outright cross the line into, supernatural. He always is aware of the right thing to do, and never hesitates or struggles to do it, upholding virtues to such a degree that he exposes the flaws of other characters by his simple presence. Jordan takes this idea though and explores what it means to be always right and good in a world where (like our own) morality is complex and nuanced, informed by culture and circumstance, and far far from a simple binary of 'right' and 'wrong'. Galad tries to force his way into Supergirls plots because he views it as 'right' to protect Elayne regardless of what she wants, and says that plainly to her face rather then softening the way he puts it, thus ensuring that he and Gawyn are shut out of Black Ajah hunt and denying him a chance to actually protect her. And why does he refuse to soften his words? Because that would be lying and thus wrong. Later, Galad starts a war to keep a promise because always keeping your word is the right thing, and thinks nothing of the suffering he unleashes. When the White Tower fails to live up to his standards, the obvious right thing is to join a more 'virtuous' group in the Whitecloaks whose disciple, principles, and unbending codes he finds more 'good' then all the scheming and plotting of the White Tower, but Galad fails to realize both that the Children are just as flawed and corrupt as the White Tower (if not more so) and the long term consequences of his actions, in providing a lever on his mother and Andor via his joining. Galad's actions are always 'right' in that they adhere rigidly to his internal virtues and codes of what is right, and yet repeatedly, maybe constantly, these choices are made without consideration for the consequences of his actions, and result in a great deal of suffering and pain where they might have instead resulted in saving innocents or preventing harm.

Gawyn is, like his name sake Gawain, the imperfect Knight, always struggling to live up to his duties and responsibility, always falling just short of the examples of more virtuous characters, but always trying his best. More human, more accessible then his fellows, but still always working to live up to the codes of honor and responsibility which govern his life to the best of his ability. Again Jordan, and later Sanderson, deconstruct this idea: they show Gawyn as frequently making the wrong choice not because he isn't doing his best, but because flawed information and his own biases warp his perception of events. His anger at Siuan for involving Elayne in her plots leads him to support the coup in the Tower despite knowing that the Supergirls are firmly partisans of Siuan's, his biases against Rand- both the belief that Rand is responsible for the murder of his mother something based on nothing more then rumor, and his own classism and prejudice- lead to him not standing up against the Aes Sedai or trying to intervene in Rand's captivity, and of course his many preconceptions and biases about Egwene lead to many of the core conflicts in their relationship, from his refusal to submit to her authority to his struggle to recognize her agency and trust in her ability.

But most interesting is Elayne, because while her mother and brothers are largely deconstructions of Arthurian archetypes, Elayne on the other hand lives in defiance of her own archetype from the very beginning. Following the logic she should be the demure maiden: the soft spoken and noble Princess of court, who serves as the cause or source of the quests of Knights, whose beauty and virtue inspire others to grand acts or else confer onto them incredible Power, who waits patiently at the castle of her father or husband while her hero battles on her behalf. Elayne is none of these things, and in many ways she lives in defiance of these beliefs. She leaps at the chance to have adventures of her own, to go out and experience the world first hand: not shying away from the hardships of adventure, or from the glories of it. She pursues magical power for herself unafraid of the dangers or risks, like a Morgana-esque figure but instead of wielding for her own ends, she wields it always in defense of her country, her loved ones, or the world. When she seeks aid it is most often from her friends, and she goes to them first with her troubles and problems. When she finally does gain a champion Knight (Warder) it is neither noble Lord nor a man, rather it THE Robin Hood type, archer and rebel, forest woman and free spirit, Birgitte. More over, when she inherits her crown she pointedly does NOT rely on her lover to gain her throne as her role might dictate, instead she fights a bitter civil war, tooth and nail, to prove her right to her throne on her own merits.

like, as early as book 2 he’s resigning himself to this trope. he decides that he’s going to Suffer In Silence, you know, he even tries to die for the girl he loves (and the first seanchan invasion but egwene’s a big part of it) at falme, he starts withdrawing from other people in book 3 and taking up the burden of the dragon reborn “because i must and there’s no one else who can,” and at every turn the narrative is showing that this isn’t possible. he tries to die heroically in falme and survives against all odds because the pattern isn’t done with the dragon reborn. he tries to kill ishamael three times before it takes, expecting the fight against darkness to be Over each time. by book 4 he’s becoming self-aware of his own trauma responses and they horrify him?? he can’t understand why he’s becoming angry and violent and struggling with lashing out. he still spouts off this whole speech to lanfear about how he was born to destroy the darkness in ostensible total acceptance of his destined role. he expects things to be simple in ways that they would be in another narrative. he tries to quash his entire identity to be the prophesied warrior of light, which includes ignoring his own trauma, because he can’t have trauma if he’s not a person, and we see how this does not work. he goes from dissociating sometimes to dissociating constantly, his Selfless Desire To Die mutates into a seesaw between fear of death and increasing suicidality. which is extremely, viscerally human. repressing his pain and never talking about it alienates most of the people in his life including people he’s trying to reach out to because they can’t understand what’s going through his head. he becomes cold and furious and difficult to be around despite his best intentions. he’s killed the boy who was rand al’thor but that doesn’t turn him into a fabled hero it just turns him into a miserable person he doesn’t recognize.

show watchers seeing josha as rand and then later finding out that in the books rand has 3 girlfriends and every woman he meets falls in love with him:

exactly! he is The Ideal Man:

One of the central characters of the narrative in which case you must include a LENGTHY disclaimer on the various, possibly numerous in universe and out controversies that surround that character, to nip discourse in the bud.

One of the Problematic Good Guys, i.e the characters who are not explicitly heroes, or even protagonists, and who are definitely morally questionable at best, but whose problematicness makes them extremely memorable, and whose importance to the books makes them indispensable. For this one you better have a whole ass essay ready to defend your love of them, or be prepared to be roasted at the stake.

One of the villains, with the same result, but the added layer of having to insist it has nothing to do with being attracted to them, weather you are or are not, so you can maintain a scrap of respectability

One of the hundreds of secondary characters who may or may not have vanished half way through the series and who also may or may not have reappeared late in the series, the best case scenario here is a knowing nod of understanding, the worst case a devastating 'that person? why?', this one is the highest risk, highest reward

One of the thousands of extremely minor characters who none the less Jordan managed to imbue with just enough personality and depth that if you're paying attention it's crystal clear they've got their whole own thing going on. (This is the category into which I sort the likes of Emarin, Perival, Talaan, Lars, Sashelle and the like- characters who get no PoV but who by their sheer presence and implied backstories I would read whole ass novels about). This one is the safest, because the response is almost always going to be 'wait who?'