#avirand

Min, as befits a Seer who has learned time and time again that her viewings can not be changed, has resigned herself in an almost fatalistic fashion to all of them, and to loving Rand no less. Min knows that she, and two others, will love him, and she accepts its inevitability the same way she accepts Colavere's death, or Logain's glory, or the shattering of the White Tower. What is, is, and there is no sense or point in struggling against it. What concerns her a great deal more is what she doesn't know- she doesn't know if Rand will love her in return, she doesn't know the identity of the other two women who will love him, and she doesn't know if he will fall in love with one or both of the others but not her. Add to that Min's own insecurities about how she stands out and doesn't fit what her society deems 'proper', between her crossdressing, and her offputting manners, and it makes perfect sense that she's worried about making Rand love her. She doesn't mind sharing him- she hates the idea of being in love with a man who doesn't love her in return, of being stuck like 'Elmindreda' of the stories, sighing and pining endlessly for a man instead of being able to act, to take control of her own fate. 

So she takes control: she learns to flirt from Leane, works hard at making herself desirable, and also indispensable: with her visions, her advice, even just her emotional support to Rand when he otherwise has no one else. The irony is that whenever Rand thinks of Min prior to her return to his side in LoC, it's about how much he liked her earthy honesty and lack of wiles: how she was earnest and made him feel at ease, and didn't 'spin his head like a top'- and that's still what he loves about her after they get together: the fact that she isn't fooled by his front, that she sees him clearly and refuses to be driven away the way so many others are so easily. The point is that Min never had to change, and in the ways that matter she didn't- she only thought she did because of her own fatalism.

Contrast that with Aviendha, who, after learning about being destined to fall in love with Rand, does everything in her power to prevent that outcome- because she is a warrior, a soldier, who has never yet met a problem that could not be killed, endured, or retreated from. Aviendha values nothing so much as her honor and her word- she has promised to keep Rand safe for Elayne and what greater act of dishonor could there be in that situation then not just failing in that promise, but despoiling (and she does view it that way) said man herself? So she is awful to him in the hopes of poisoning the well of affection or at least keeping him far enough away that she is never tempted. Aviendha hurls contempt and anger at him, berates him, does everything short of trying to stab him in an effort to make him hate her, and it doesn't work. Despite all her efforts to keep her thorny wall up, they are literally made for each other and can not help but be drawn together time and again. Despite all her efforts to insist, to him and herself, that she hates him, she can not hide entirely that the opposite is true: that she likes him, sees his strength and courage and resilience, and is a little in awe of his generous kindness. 

This is why she vacillates wildly between wanting desperately to get away from him in The Fires of Heaven, to not wanting to leave his side: they are two planets caught in each other's gravity, with about as much chance of escaping each other. When she resorts to the last recourse of a soldier- retreat- and runs headlong into a blizzard that would surely kill her, Rand follows to try and save her life and she can deny the truth that she loves him no longer, nor can she resist taking him, even knowing that to redress that balance, she will one day have to offer her life to Elayne (as she attempts to do in LoC)- though fate still has other plans in store.

But in many ways the apex of this, the relationship that really shows Jordan's deconstruction of this trope, is Mat and Tuon. Before they ever lay eyes on each other, each is given a prophecy that they will marry the other: not that they'll love each other, not that they will be able to trust each other, not even that that will like each other: just that they will marry. And their strange courtship is a result of this knowledge, as each attempts to suss out the other, to try and understand them without ever overplaying their own hand. Each believes that the moment they admit their prophecy they will destroy any chance of real connection or understanding.

To Tuon, if Mat learns he is destined to wed her he gains something she can not abide: power over her, leverage that could be used to subvert her own plans and visions- because nothing matters more to Tuon than control, especially over herself. So she keeps her 'fortune' secret and tries to figure out: What will it mean to be married to Mat? Will he be a pretty trophy? A liability? A threat to her Empire? Will she have to kill him once she gets her heirs?

To Mat, if Tuon learns of his prophecy, she gains the power to take away his freedom, to snare and collar him and bind him to her, because that's how Mat deep down views marriage: as a binding cord, a loss of freedom, and nothing matters to Mat more than freedom. So he keeps his *Finn gained knowledge secret and tries to figure out: What will it mean to be collared by Tuon? Will she she treat him as a pretty and plaything the way Tylin did? Will she try to use him against Rand and the Westlands? Will she make him a slave and sent him to be beaten anytime he disobeys her? Will he have no choice but to fight her one day, this woman he is going to swear to spend his life with? Will he have to kill her the way he did Melindhra, and carry that guilt of mariticide on top of all else?

So the two stay in their strange limbo, because as long as they don't admit it out loud to the other, they can pretend they are still two people forced together by happenstance, and (each thinks) they can continue to try and understand and figure out the other, to find out where this inevitability of their marriage will really leave them, and if there can be even the faintest possibility of love in such circumstances. And that limbo- that protracted refusal to act as if they are under fate's direction- is what allows them to build a genuine bond of trust and respect for each other, and to start seeing the other person with the clarity that love requires. All this, so that when Tuon finally does play her hand, and reveal the truth....it's obvious they've long since fallen in love with each other (even though Tuon won't admit that to herself), and come to trust each other (even though Mat won't admit that to himself).