I legit cared about Bela as I read these books. As a former horsey kid, she really stood out and I know others feel the same because this fandom has so much affection for our bestest girl Bela. I cared about her to the point where I googled what happened to her before I finished the books, and I was not happy. Thankfully, they fixed that fuck up. I still get sad when named horses die in these damned books.

I quote from the WoT Companion:

"She was thought to be dead, but unaccountably survived. In the first years of the Fourth Age she gave birth to a strong colt and a splendid filly and retired to green pastures in the Two Rivers"

My head canon is that some Aes Sedai looking for wounded on the battlefield found her, pulled the arrow out and Healed her. Then took her back to the camp of the Forces of the Light, where Tam recognizes her and brings her home. Oh and the sire of her offspring is obviously Mandarb.

I’ve finally learned what “the queue” is on Tumblr and am loading it up to post each sigil version individually while I’m away. Think of these as the "official" set.

Not much different about Elayne here since I was satisfied with her the first time around!

Her personal sigil is a golden lily on a blue field.

I’ve always wondered how nobles got personal sigils in Robert Jordan’s world. Like, what are the rules regarding them? They don’t seem to follow real world heraldic conventions, but then why would they? It’s interesting how sigils and banners play a role in WoT, but Jordan never went full on heraldry nerd.

The blazon for Elayne’s sigil would be “Azure, a lily or”.

I really feel like I didn't do Thom justice, but I've learned my lesson in starting a painting without a clear idea of guidelines for their outfit. I was just too fixated on "gleeman's cloak" and didn't bother to read much else!

I've changed the shape of his cloak a little in this version, and I really wish I spent more time on it overall and done an accurate version of what he actually wore. Maybe when I get better and more confident, I'll give him a makeover. The original Thom version got a lot more love than I expected, so thank you all. It made me feel like I didn't screw it up as much as I thought!

I loved painting Morgase in an Elizabethan frill, but it wasn't book accurate, and I couldn't make it work with the Andorran stole described in EotW.

So here, we have the stole as described, and I used the Andor chapter icon for the heraldic lion, deciding to have them face in opposite directions on each strip because I thought it looked balanced, and the positioning of the lions was never described, I don't think? Other than that they're rampant?

She has a slightly different facial expression too.

Morgase's personal sigil is three golden keys. It didn't say how those keys were arranged, so I took the liberty of crossing them and making the middle key double sided. Interesting that in real world heraldry, two crossed keys is the emblem of the Vatican.

Galad is one of those guys who does actually have an official sigil, but again, there's just about no in world mythology about how the sigils of nobles work, and they don't follow real world heraldic rules (but why should they?)

This version of the portrait has the white belt, because I like it much better than a plain brown leather belt. The white leather on the TV Whitecloaks looked pretty slick, even if they are a bunch of assholes. One thing I do like about the Whitecloaks is how in the books they're basically dressed like Templar knights. I love painting armour and stuff like that. So maybe I need to paint more Whitecloaks.

Back to sigils. Galad's father Taringail had the sigil of a double sided golden battle axe. His mother, Tigraine, had the sigil of a woman's hand gripping a thorny white rose. And that's not even mentioning their house sigils and colours. So how do we get Galad's winged silver sword point down from that? Did anyone ask RJ if there was a system for bestowing sigils? I'd be so curious!