Wot reading notes

In the Westlands these pressures have led to a problem we never really had in real world feudalism: more land then there are aristocrats to govern it. One of the problems with feudalism in our history was that there was always more aristocrats than there was land to be divided up for them to govern. That’s one of the reasons primogeniture succession (where the eldest inherits either all or the vast majority of the titles) became necessary. A lord dividing their titles among their prospective children (especially equally as it was usually in gavelkind succession) was a recipe for either diluting a dynasty’s power, or ensuring civil war. This lead to a paradox: it was good, and often necessary for a monarch or a noble to have a secure line of succession, i.e lots of children to be prospective heirs. But those further down the chain abruptly become liabilities to the dynasty once the eldest was old enough to marry, and begin producing heirs of their own.

The way Europe dealt with this problem in the real world was through numerous institutions and traditions that developed largely as a dumping ground for children who did not stand to inherit anything, or could not marry into wealth. Monasteries, universities, military academies, mercenary companies, and the priesthood all provided ways for noble children who otherwise stood to inherit nothing or very little to maintain a decent standard of living and their place in society. 

But there is an almost complete absence of such institutions in the Westlands. There are individual scholars (who depend on noble patronage- serving as advisors, librarians, or tutors in exchange for financial support), but no universities or academies (not even as an idea) until Rand founds one in Lord of Chaos.  While the Aes Sedai certainly have a great many noble daughters among their number, their ability to be a safety net for those lower down the totem pole of succession is sharply limited by the fact that you need to be a be able to channel to join, and there is no way to guarantee the second or third daughter will be able to do that. The Whitecloaks might also include a fair number of second or third noble children among their ranks- but they’re limited to just Amadacia, Tarabon, and a few other southern countries in their scope, and there are no similar institutions elsewhere in the Westlands.

The absence of those kind of institutions makes sense when you consider that the excess of land to aristocrats means that even second or third children can easily be provided with estates to govern if they so wish- and in fact it better serves their House and country if they do take on estates rather than running off to make their own way in the world. 

The case study here is Moiraine’s father: Dairesin Damodred. Despite being in the ideal position to become a career scholar, as one of four brothers in a royal house, Dairesin instead had to split his time between his estates and his scholarly pursuits, and came under considerable scorn from his brothers for doing so, as well as for making a love match with his second marriage instead of a political one. Now that could just be Laman and the others being assholes, but we also know that Dairesin was managing at least enough land to set some aside for Moiraine, (his youngest daughter) because she is still collecting income from it during New Spring.

This is also why it’s possible for Gawyn to have lands granted to him by Morgase (likely from either her personal holdings or holdings reserved to the High Seat of the House) without risking diluting her power or Elayne’s inheritance.  Most noble houses probably command enough land that they can afford to set some aside for second or even third children without too much worry. The quality and relative development of that land might vary wildly and the work of those second or third children is likely cut out for them when it comes to actually organizing and running the estate, but the land is there for any aristocrat who has need of it to keep their place in peerage society.

Autonomy, Vassalage, and the Pre-Industrial Nation State 

The politics of Western Andor are intrinsically linked to this population decline and its effects on society. 

One of the reasons feudalism was ubiquitous in medieval and renaissance Europe was because before the advent of the steam engine it was actually a very effective way to organize a large state.  When you have to get everywhere (and transport everything) by horse and do almost everything by hand, logistical realities restrain a government’s power tightly- generally to no father then can be reached in a few days, or at best, a few weeks, from the center of control.

This is something that comes up quite a bit in the books- how far a ‘writ runs’ i.e how far leaders can project power beyond their center of control is a major factor in judging how strong a nation is. For city states like Mayene or Far Madding this isn’t a big deal. They don’t need large swathes of land in order to sustain their government and power since they can depend on trade for food stability, and so only need their writ to expand a few days’ ride out from their city. 

Large Kingdoms are different and the writs of their rulers are a major factor in keeping their nations together and prosperous. Morgase’s writ runs very far compared to her peers: much farther then Tylin’s (whose influence we are told you could leave with no more than a fast horse and half a day to get from Ebou Dar). But it seems to be stretched thin once you reach Whitebridge and non-existent just a little ways past it. Meanwhile one of the signs of Hardan’s fall (discussed above) was that its king’s writ couldn’t even control his own capital. It’s no coincidence that (also in The Great Hunt) Cairhien displays the exact same problem, with Galladrian unable to keep check on his own capital or wrangle his nobles in any meaningful way.

For a monarch these limitations matter, because once you leave the sphere of lands over which they are personally capable of commanding, things like collecting taxes, equipping armies, securing roads and borders, enforcing the law (i.e all of the basic functions of government) begin presenting huge logistical challenges. Even just getting the right orders to the right people can prove monstrously difficult. Rulers can employ vast bureaucracies and appointed governorships to do most of the work and in real life several Empires did exactly that (most notably Rome and China) but these systems are precarious, expensive, and incredibly difficult to keep from being corrupted (as China and Rome’s various frequent civil wars, uprisings, and collapses demonstrate quite handily).

This is where vassals come in. Instead of having to micromanage all the territory beneath their rule and arrange, pay for, and ensure the integrity of independent judicial courts, tax collectors, bureaucrats, local guards, etc a monarch could simply outsource that to a local noble family. Said families are usually more trusted and understand the needs of their people better than a king or queen who might go their entire lives without setting foot in that village or town. The nobles pay taxes, enforce the crown’s laws, and oversee the defense from things like bandits, in exchange for protection from foreign invasion and membership into the monarch’s state.  This relationship- called vassalage- is the foundation of the feudal system.

Tying the stability of the state to the interpersonal relationships of these families seems like, at best, a quaint notion to us now, but before industrialization made communication easier it was very effective, allowing kingdoms to expand to incredible size, become more interconnected and gain a higher standard of living than would otherwise be possible. It also meant that a monarch needed only to acquire the vassalage of a local noble (or install one loyal to them) in order to add new swaths of land to their realms.

But what happens when you struggle to have enough aristocrats to manage the land? When whole swathes of a kingdom can go without a noble house managing to arise or entrench itself in the area? In our history this would have been an open invitation for a foreign invasion: poorly managed lands or lands not managed at all right on the border are prime targets for powers seeking to expand. 

But in Jordan’s world this isn’t really the case. And this is because taking land is easy, but governing it without the necessary nobility or some other system to administer the area is a useless exercise. Nations still try- Arad Doman and Tarabon have been squabbling over Almoth Plain and Tear and Illian over the Plains of Maredo for centuries- but most seem to realize it’s fruitless to conquer empty wilderness that’s barely settled to begin with. 

That creates pockets within these kingdoms–de facto independent regions who are largely autonomous even when lines on a map put them in this nation or that, where only the thinnest ties of trade, culture, or power actually seem to hold them.

Which brings us to neatly the Two Rivers.

The Two Rivers, Lordship and the House of Aybara

The Two Rivers is extremely weird.

Because it is the hometown of Our Heroes it’s incredibly easy to forget or even not realize just how strange the Two Rivers is on a macro world building scale. Since it’s Normal To Our Heroes and in many ways conforms to our biases and expectations of what Normal in a medieval society should look we have a tendency to view it as the baseline and everything else in relation to it- much like The Emond’s Field Five do in the story itself. 

And yet if you sit with it for any length of time just how strange the Two Rivers is starts to really settle in. It’s the source of two major exports- tobacco and wool- that have name recognition across the continent and the ‘Two Rivers tobac’ in particular is a luxury item sold for high prices in foreign markets. Yet not only does that wealth not make it back to the Two Rivers at all most of those who smoke Two Rivers tobac (including Gareth Bryne chief general of the nation that produces it) would struggle to find the Two Rivers on a map.  There is no real government or authority beyond local village elders, and yet the community is generally speaking harmonious, peaceful, and idyllic: there's been no murders in living memory, and the worst crimes that anyone can seem to imagine are petty theft and cheating in trade deals. And maybe strangest of all, despite being at the border of three nations and a major economic contributor to a third, the Two Rivers has only the vaguest notion of kings or nations at all, most not even realizing they are part of a nation, or owe fealty to a Queen.

This is not a criticism of the Two Rivers as written. All this makes sense if you take into account Jordan’s world building, and how each of these factors plays into the others. Farmers in the Two Rivers could just plant endless rows of tobacco and sell it as a cash crop to bring massive wealth into the region, except most are not aware that their tobacco is that valuable and in fact Rand tells us early into Eye of the World that “few farmers in the Two Rivers could make do without both wool and tabac to sell when the merchants came.” (Eye of the World, Chapter 5: Winternight. Emphasis mine.) This means that the merchants from Baerlon are drastically shorting the Two Rivers farmers when they come to buy tobacco, then re-sell it for a large profit likely to other traders who can transport it yet farther- something possible only because the Two Rivers is so geographically isolated from the rest of the world. 

Since that wealth isn’t flowing into the Two Rivers most people can not afford to trade for their food and the area has to be food stable in order to survive, which in turn limits the amount of tobacco they can plant and helps create scarcity, as farmers keep diversified crop fields (Rand and Tam for example are growing peas stalks, cabbages and beets alongside tobacco and raising sheep). Ironically this is also a part of why Two Rivers tabac is so valuable- the limited supply and high demand turn it from just ‘valuable commodity’ into a ‘status symbol’, and one that is frequently found being smoked by great captains and high councilors as a result- likely making a very high profit for the traders and incentivizing them to stay tight lipped about their sources to avoid both being cut out of the trade or the Two Rivers learning the worth of the product. 

This precarious state of affairs regarding the tabac that can persist only because of how remote and isolated the Two Rivers is is. That isolation and remoteness also buffers the Two Rivers from many of the troubles of the world. Even though it would normally be very attractive for Ghealdan, Saldea, or Arad Doman to move into the area, the combination of the geographic barriers and administrative troubles make it untenable. Ghealdan is the biggest threat here: if they really wanted to they could just cut a road through the Forest of Shadows, bridge the White River and probably take a large swath of land including the Two Rivers without much of a fight. But they would never be able to hold on to it. Without local nobility to vassalize or install, it would be a logistical nightmare for the reasons described earlier. They simply do not have the administrative capacity to pull it off.

Meanwhile Andor’s throne is more concerned with Baerlon and the northern parts of the region, as Morgase herself freely admits-

(The Fires of Heaven, Chapter 19: Memories- Emphasis mine.)

The wool and especially tabac are valuable, but the mineral trade is absolutely critical to Andor’s stability. That ‘modicum of control’ is reflected by the fact that Morgase (and her predecessors) made the unusual choice to appoint a governor in Baerlon, to oversee those mining and smelting operations. The fact that was necessary- that there was no nobility anywhere in the West who could be depended upon to manage this resource on which the Andoran state absolutely depends, is again a reflection of how even in more prosperous countries the falling population is taking its toll.

Also consider that several characters pretend to be (Rahvin) or are mistaken for (Rand and Mat) nobility out of Western Andor and no one thinks to challenge or question this. That shows just how disconnected the West is from the rest of Andor. We only know of one genuine prominent Western noble- Danine Candraed- whose position is apparently so precarious that she feels the need to sit out and dither through not one but two succession crises, when her support might otherwise be leveraged to great benefit.

So: no one is coming from outside Andor for the Two Rivers and no is coming from inside Andor for the Two Rivers. The area produces enough food that it need not depend on trade to feed and even grow its populace fairly regularly, its social tensions while present (especially in terms of xenophobia and conservative norms) are managed well by village elders, and the same barriers that keep Arad Doman and Saldaea out also serve to keep bandits and other threats distant. 

In short, the Two Rivers exists in an insulated bubble of stability in a sea of turmoil- without need for governments, lords, taxes, etc in order prosper. 

So why then, is the entire Two Rivers so ready to get on board with Lord Perrin Goldeneyes, the House of Aybara, and the whole feudal system when they’ve been doing perfectly well without and have a (fairly justified) pretty negative view of the practice over all? Well, the answer to that lays in two different bits of wisdom, from two very different men-

(The Dragon Reborn, Prologue: Fortress of the Light. Emphasis mine.)

(Lord of Chaos, Chapter 46: Beyond the Gate. Emphasis mine)

These two quotes represent two radically different ways to understand what's happening in the Two Rivers based on if you subscribe to a more cynical world view (like Niall does) or a more idealistic one (like Bashere does). It’s no mistake they come at either end of the ‘Perrin becomes Lord of the Two Rivers’ arc- the first right at the beginning when Niall decides to send soldiers into the Two Rivers, the second after the matter is settled and a united Two Rivers has elevated Perrin to become their new Lord, and Perrin is being forced to reckon with that fact.

Both quotes amount to the same principle idea: in times of chaos and uncertainty someone must step forward and do what either no one else can or will in order to protect the broader community.  Niall’s cynicism on the matter reflects his broader loss of faith in the Light and the ideals the Children are meant to uphold- which itself is a reflection of the broader hypocrisy and corruption of the Children. For Niall the matter is simple: people are willing to hand over power to others in times of crisis, and can thereafter be kept in bonds by simple inertia. The Children have long since mastered the art of exploiting this with a well practiced playbook of inventing crisis, playing on people’s fears and insecurities, and turning communities against each other to keep them weak.

 Niall’s ambitions to unite the Westlands and spread the influence of the Children of the Light are just the scaled up version of those same tactics. It is driven by simple pragmatism, not out of sincere belief in any sort of higher ideal. This scene is dedicated to showing that: Niall can’t imagine a world beyond his entrenched views. He’s ‘already worked out’ how the Last Battle will go: Trollocs spilling out of the Blight with maybe some Dreadlords tossed into the mix. He dosen’t think the Forsaken will escape, the Dark One will touch the world, or that the Dragon will be reborn, which conveniently are all facts that would conflict with his ambitions. Those ambitions are also what he is willing to engage in treason and blasphemy against his own code to see fulfilled by ensuring Rand lives long enough (and is a terrible enough threat) that the nations will be desperate for Niall to take charge. The world is simple to Niall: there is power, there are those who have it, and those who are those subject to it- nothing more or less.

For Bashere however the matter is more complex. At the root of every noble house, he insists, is a ‘commoner that showed uncommon courage’ and did either what was necessary or what no one else could do in a time of crisis, then entrusted that duty to their descendants. Leadership and nobility are not things that can be engineered or manipulated into existence as far as Bashere is concerned- rather they arise from the confluence of chance, competence, and character. He is not starry eyed or even romantic about it, and he even takes a swipe at the idea of ‘divine right to rule’ (popular in our world, scorned in its various sporadic appearances in Randland). Rather his argument is that nobility is not a right but a duty, handed down from a Lord (or Lady) to their heirs and descendants. He never goes as far as to say it is always the failure to uphold that duty that brings down a noble house- just as with people noble Houses can die out for all sorts of reasons- but rather that nobility as a whole is about upholding an ideal, striving for something more. It’s when people lose faith and belief in a noble that they become no different from anyone else.

When Perrin arrives in the Two Rivers, the people are faced with many problems their extant systems can not handle. The most immediate is the Trolloc raids for which the Two Rivers have no defense and (importantly) which the factors that had previously insulated them from world troubles have instead left them uniquely vulnerable. They are too isolated to call for aid and lacking in any sort of region-wide power structure that can organize a defense.  This is Niall’s so-called ‘lion in the street’ and The Whitecloaks, under Dain, attempt to step into this vacuum only to find their usual tactics are ineffective. That’s because those tactics are all about dividing a community and engineering a crisis, not about dealing with an ongoing one and providing a sense of stability. Like Niall, the Whitelcoaks are cynically interested in asserting control, not in genuinely protecting the community they have occupied. As a result despite a newfound unity the Two Rivers resists Whitecloaks’ efforts to entrench and take over.

Enter Perrin who shows Bashere’s ‘uncommon courage’ by rescuing the Whitecloak prisoners, waging a counter guerilla war against the Trollocs, and organizing a common defense against both the Shadow  and the Whitecloaks. In doing these things he becomes the rallying point of the new unity. Perrin’s perception of himself as a ‘simple blacksmith’ often hides or leads to him downplaying his own heroics: he views the things he does as simple ‘good sense’ and frequently can’t understand why others haven’t done them already, which is revealing in a lot of ways. Perrin not only takes his own bravery and intellect for granted, he assumes they are universal: that everyone in the Two Rivers is as capable as he is. He can’t comprehend why someone would want to follow or to trade personal freedom in exchange for the certainty that comes with fealty to a lord or lady, especially not a people as fiercely independent and stubborn as those of the Two Rivers.

But from the perspective of the Two Rivers folk, the trade isn’t just easy at this point, it’s necessary. Their isolation and detachment from the affairs of the world has been broken and the system that Perrin still holds so much faith in (councils of village elders and a handful of local leaders) has proved largely unable to deal with the world, while the Whitecloak occupation has made clear that they have the choice of adopting a new system on their own terms, or having one enforced on them on the terms of outsiders. The choice to elevate Perrin to their Lord is as much an assertion of their independence as their refusal to bend to the Whitecloaks.

But while that independence is a hard fought victory when we are zoomed in to the Two Rivers, when we zoom out to other points of view, the story is very different.

The Andoran State, rebellion, and the view of the Crown

Morgase (and later Elayne) catch a lot of flack for their harsh position on Two Rivers independence. Even fans who otherwise like Elayne often disavow her hard stance against the House of Aybara, or else claim it’s out of character. But not only is it in character, it’s a completely reasonable reaction to have.

Because it’s not just the Two River’s independence that’s at stake. Rebellion spreads, and a flagrant challenge to the authority of the Andoran crown can not be ignored. Morgase says it herself: “But rebellion unchecked even in a part of her realm she ruled only on a map could spread like wildfire to places that were hers in fact.” (The Fires of Heaven, Chapter 19: Memories). 

Andor is among the most stable countries that appears in the series, but that stability is still tenuous and it is not without bad actors and internal conflicts, and it has a surfeit of external enemies even before you take the Shadow into account.  Internally, nobles like Armilla Marne, Elenia Serand, and Naean Arawn are already causing trouble and looking for cracks to Trakand’s power, while externally the Whitecloaks spend most of Eye of the World trying to use people’s prejudices and fears to stir up a revolt against Morgase, ultimately resulting in bloody riots that then provides the pretense for Rahvin to sneak into the court and win Morgase’s favor- teeing up his takeover and the following the Succession War.

And then you have to take into account the fact that the Two Rivers justifies their independence with the legacy Manatherean, which consisted of a swath of land that is far more than just the Two Rivers or even Western Andor and included parts of Gheledan, Amadicia and Tarabon. Failure to take a hard stance against the House of Aybara would invite invasion from those similarly threatened territories, on top of running the risk of being off from the mineral trade, which as noted earlier is a key element of Andor’s economic stability.

This means that Elayne has two options: she can crush the rebellion with overwhelming force and bring the Two Rivers back into line, or she can try and vassalize Perrin and bring him into the fold of the Andoran peerage. Anything else would be courting disaster: even a negotiated settlement would be seen as a concession to an upstart, and encourage more challenges to her authority, especially since she is a new Queen who took power on shaky grounds and in the shadow of Rahvin’s near ruination of Andor. That means that there is simply no route to the Two River’s independence that doesn't involve strife. Even if Perrin could win a war against Elayne it would belong, bloody, and costly. 

This conflict is indicative of Jordan’s two core strengths as a writer. First is his ability to explore varied PoVs in meaningful ways, directing our sympathy to two different protagonists with mutually exclusive end goals. Second is modeling the nuances and complexities of real world politics in ways that feel genuine: frustrating and messy, yet complex and genuine at the same time. 

Perrin and Elayne are both characters whom we have been invited to care about very deeply: protagonists and heroes who we have watched struggle and grow into very capable leaders. Yet because the political reality and world they inhabit is has so much depth they are placed into conflict with each other. That’s an uncomfortable place for the audience to: our urge is human is to simplify and flatten, to boil it down to someone being in the right and in the wrong, but that discomfort is also the point. The world is complicated and nothing is ever straight forward as it seems could be the subtitle to the whole series.

The trap of simplifying the world is one Sanderson falls into frequently, but to his credit the resolution to this particular conflict is passable. While he does give Elayne a more hostile characterization in the actual scene than I think is fair (given she has well established ‘business is business’ attitude when it comes to affairs of state and no personal beef with Perrin) he also treats both her concerns and Perrin’s as valid, and recognizes the impossibility of fully reconciling them. The compromise they reach is essentially vassalization with limited autonomy, and a marriage alliance to seal the deal. The Two Rivers days of going their own way and living tax and law free are over, but  they will have a say in their own governance, and the noble house of their own culture and community. 

It’s what neither wants, but it’s the best that can be hoped for without shedding blood, and so a fair compromise. It also shows how far they both have come as leader and rulers, and serves as an excellent capstone to Perrin’s arc, because without accepting and embracing lordship, he never would have been able to get the settlement he does.

Conclusion: Escapism through realism

A lot of writing in the fantasy genre is ultimately power fantasy, and that’s not (to be clear) a bad thing. Escapism is baked into the DNA of the genre, all the way back to Tolkien who famously said “Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?”, and for a lot of people the there is a very appealing kind of escapism in watching some relatable everyman type tear through issues like tissue paper. 

But I think a lot of the reason feudalism in particular gets flattened and simplified in the genre  as a result is because engaging with it more seriously asks uncomfortable questions of the reader that weaken that power fantasy element. Regardless of which side you fall on in the ‘kings are awesome’ vs ‘kings suck’ debate, a deeper and more complex exploration of the strengths and weaknesses of the feudal system is going to annoy you, since it must by necessity reject both premises.

Perrin’s arc is a really good exploration of the ways in which Wheel of Time is in conversation with those sorts of power fantasy tropes. At a comfortable remove it seems like simple power fantasy: man returns to his home town to find it under siege from terrible enemies, and in the process of fending them off everyone realizes how awesome and kick ass he is and decides to elevate him as their leader. And yet (as many people have complained about) Perrin spends most of his arc resisting his en-lordifying, and pushing back on this responsibility being laid on him. This is another space of discomfort for the reader, since his protracted resistance calls on the reader to question why they want him to accept this kind of power and status.  

Statistically, most of the readership lives in a democracy and so why does it frustrate us so much that Perrin’s, well founded misgivings about becoming an aristocrat hold up under such intense pressure? Well because Perrin is capable. He proves it again and again throughout the story and within his world, he more then fit to the role he is being pressed into, so his resistance dosen’t read as principle, it reads as self-sabotage. At the root of Perrin’s refusal is a conflict between the responsibility he is being asked to take up and the vision of himself he holds onto. 

That conflict only works because Jordan’s world is built so well, the responsibility can have stakes and meaning. In many ways it all goes right back to that first except for The Great Hunt: kingdoms die, leaders fail, people fail.  Everything from the population decline, to its impacts on the stability of the feudal system, to the complex snarl of Andoran politics, deepens the world and as result depends the character’s relationship to it, and each other. We know Perrin’s dithering could have catastrophic consequences, because we trust in the word to reflect those consequences- and that makes his struggle to rise to his task more frustrating, and in the same stroke, his eventual accepting satisfying in a way it wouldn't be if this were a tissue paper world.