#whitecloaks

Indulge me for a moment. I think I can make a case for this.

Galad is a guy whose lived most of his life being a good son to his step mother and following all the rules, so he’s primed for rebellion against that life and just needs a change of circumstances and a little freedom to facilitate that rebellion.

He gets to go to the White Tower with his half brother and sister, two kids who sound like they’ve been muck ups their whole lives, and finally, he’s off Morgase’s apron strings, and doing the right thing doesn't seem like so much fun anymore.

At the White Tower, Galad isn’t there to fuck spiders. No, he’s there to try fucking Egwene. He hits on Egwene as soon as he meets her. Like, literally on their first meeting. She’s just hanging out with Elayne, and Galad thinks it’s cool to hit on his little sister’s friends while mogging his bro Gawyn. Wtf dude.

Later, and arguably, he shows interest in Nynaeve too, since later Elayne has a thought wondering if Galad was still interested in everyone’s favourite walking Braid Tugger™. Did something happen off camera? I think we see a bit of attempted flirtation from him when Nynaeve turfs G&G out of her room in the Accepted’s quarters, because he’s trying to turn the charm on her after he hits on Egwene again, right in front of Nynaeve. Also infront of his little sister again. Fkn shameless.

I bet if Tinder existed in Tar Valon, Galad would be the guy swiping right on all the girls to see who he matches with, and then copy/pasting “sup” to every one of them to find out who has low enough self esteem to reply to his lazy text. A looksmaxxing is fuckboi is still a fuckboi, Galad.

Then, after the girls are gone from the Tower in The Shadow Rising, we hear from Gawyn that Galad is heartsick Egwene is gone (she left him on read when he texted her “wyd” actually), and that he’s not coming to Warder training as often.

“...the last time he bothered to come to the yard.” (TSR, Chapter 17, Deceptions) Gawyn tells Min, so we know Galad is slacking off which is not doing the right thing at all.

THEN Galad goes and hits on Min, offering to take her to a dance and smiling at her, and we all know that when Galad smiles, it has this CHA +100 effect. Min’s impression is that he’s unaware of what he’s doing, but I disagree with her. He’s tried that smile on Nynaeve, who withstood it because she is Nynaeve™, and I bet he’s been trying that smile on plenty of girls at the White Tower because it gets him further than “sup”.

And THEN we learn the reason Galad is slacking off training and allegedly ‘heartsick’.

He’s not. He’s drunk. Gawyn thinks that Galad doesn't even get smashed on his birthday, but I think Gawyn doesn't know shit about what Galad's really been getting up to.

Sure, Gawyn knows his brother has been going out into Tar Valon and drinking in taverns with Whitecloaks. WHITECLOAKS! But I’m going to assume our friend Dain Bornhald is there, and we all know he drinks like a high school English teacher on the weekends. So I bet he’s there just frat boying it up with Galad, and being a bad influence while Galad is ditching Warder school.

Valda, that predator epic level asshole, is there too and he’s busy grooming Galad to join his cult by giving him personally autographed propaganda and making him feel like a Special Boy, all while under the influence of alcohol, which Valda probably bought for him and got the bartender to serve doubles, but told Galad they were singles, so Galad gets white girl wasted.

And that’s how this all ends, like many average university experiences, with Galad joining a cult and running away from home.

It was always Padan Fain.

The actual logistics of the Whitecloak attack on Falme, from the military tactics to the geo politics of it all are so perfectly on point that it's like something Jordan would have written himself.

In the books the Whitecloaks are on Tomon Head for unrelated reasons to the Seanchan (ones that would be hard to establish properly in a tv format where we don't have the time to follow Bornhold Sr for six odd scenes), so the show runners shifted it so that they are explicitly answering a call for aid from a foreign throne. The Whitecloaks are a autonomous military body beholden to no nation that operates with pseudo-legality in most places that are not under their influence, and the idea of expanding that influence to another nation is far to tempting to resist, especially when no other power is answering the Falme's call for aid, including the White Tower, who are the Whitecloak's primary rival. On principles it seems like they are stepping up to help a victimized nation that the 'witches' have abandoned, or even orchestrated the fall of.

And then on a practical level, the actual tactics they employ are fiendishly clever. Using incense burners to create a fog to hide their approach and blunt the effectiveness of the enemy channelers (who need to be able to see something to target their weaves). This also makes sense on a world building level- the Whitecloaks probably have a dozen tactics in their back pockets to deal with an outright war against the Aes Sedai if it ever breaks out. Then once the Whitecloaks close up to the walls, they send in their cavalry first, to overwhelm enemy defenses before they can get the gates shut, then send in the infantry to secure and pacify the remaining resistance not taken out by the shock charge. At this point the Seanchan have to focus their fighting to the streets of Falme, and the best way to do that is to gather their damane on the nearby tower and rain down artillery fire in an attempt to break the Whitecloaks into retreat- a brutal strategy likely to result in the deaths of their own troops and civilians, but necessary if they are going to have any hope of holding the city.

And then is where things get INSANE. See, conventional medieval military wisdom dictates that in a situation where the gates are breached already siege engines have no use. Their too clumsy, taking to much time to aim and fire to be much use in a melee brawl like this. Siege engines are useful for breaking fortifications, toppling walls, etc, so if used offensively almost always come out first. That means that no one is expecting them to roll out of that fog and hurl stones at the damane's position. In one strike Bornhold Senior decapitates the enemy's primary advantage over him and tilts the battle in his favor. (And even if the damane had managed to counter the strike, they would be weakened significantly, having to focus on blocking further attacks and counter attacking the siege engines- not easy with the fog- instead of keeping the fighting in the streets under control).

This might be one of those things that only I care about, but good employment of medieval military tactics combined with magical fantasy elements always makes me go

This was a really solid episode and if it hadn't been for 3x04 I would have said it were my favorite. There were a lot of things I was enthusiastic about.

The best scene was the confrontation between Rand and Egwene, followed by Sammael attacking, and then the golden part, something all of us book fans have been waiting for, Rand trying to revive a dead girl and failing, and his madness you're already seeing glimpses of. I was bawling my eyes out and kept saying 'no, no' when they mentioned Alsera. Wow. Again such a strong performance by Josha.

The Two Rivers storyline had beautiful scenes between Faile and Perrin and I was relieved that we finally got an alliance between the Whitecloaks and Ordeith/Padan Fain (it isn't really established what he calls himself yet). The big battle is coming up and I'm really excited for it. The only thing I didn't like was the healing of Alanna by Bode and Eldrin: I get they've a lot of potential but surely they aren't trained in healing a dying woman.

In Tanchico I adored the Compulsion scene, amazing. I liked seeing Liandrin's past, the Black Ajah shenanigans, Nynaeve getting drunk with Min (I would never have expected that). Ceara actually sung and I guess I could imagine Elayne doing that in public. Her accent as a Taraboner was terrific!

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!

and honestly, I really respect that about the current trajectory of the whitecloaks. Like, you have a huge standing army with a rigid military hierarchy that claims it staves off evil and so therefore all of its atrocities are justified. And a lot of people would go the direction of having the whitecloaks as a necessary evil, fanatics who do some good but also are horrible people. but instead rj writes it so that everywhere they go theyre useless. They hurt everyone in their attempts at rooting out evil, they cause further fighting, they focus on things like hunting aes sedai where there are none and are useless against the seanchan and the dragonsworn atrocities that they could actually fix. and idk its just nice to be like no, the kind of power structure that supports atrocities, rigid morality, torture, and opens no room for compromise is exactly the kind of structure that is prone to corruption, uselessness, and infighting.

the whitecloaks do jack shit