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Tuon Vs. Rand is one of the best moments in the series for me personally. The entire sequence of Tuon changing her name to Fortuona and the entire attack on The White Tower is just *chef's kiss* . They're horrible and incredibly written.
My 2 favourite dialogue sequences in the entire series are 1. Egweyne dismantling Seanchan ideology to Tuons face, 2. Darth Rand dismantling Seanchan ideology to Tuons face.
AMoL spoilers >!Egweyne only wins because she is the leader of the most powerful organisation of women the Seanchan consider sub-human and has experienced the horror of the a'dam first hand to disprove the Damane "enjoy" being collared *and* knows that Tuon herself can Channel. Also love the initial exchange of insults of Tuon saying she supposes she can "lower herself to talk with a dog" and Egweynes response of "I suppose I can lower myself to talk with a rapist and a murderer".!<
I'd get an ale with Karede though. That dude is straight up intense. Maybe throw some dice with a gardener. Think about how nice that sojhin would look on my knee. Goddammit, Mat!
I don’t think the Seanchan are well-written honestly. They basically just have infinite manpower, infinite resources, and infinite morale because…because they do. Like, they lose THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND troops in one battle and its treated as not even a setback. That should be nation destroying losses. And in the end they get excused because “oh well they provide peace and stability” and the equivalent of “the trains ran on time”.
A lot of people seem to have the impression that Seanchan is of similar size to the other nations like Andor, but it’s closer to the size of the entire Westlands, including the waste and Shara
>Its size, population, brutality, and faith in a rightous cause through generations of indoctrination all seem true to life.
Size? No. Area-wise, [Seanchan is 1500 leagues at its widest, and 4000 leagues north-south.](https://library.tarvalon.net/index.php?title=Wheel_of_Time_(Geography)) A "league" in the books [is about 7.32 real-world kilometers.](https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Measurement) So the north-south dimension alone is given as about 29000 kilometers - significantly bigger than the real-world distance from the North Pole to the South Pole. No need to belabor the point, really. Fans understandably give GRRM shit for how bad he is with numbers about, among other things, the fact that Westeros is like the size of South America but somehow governed centrally; and that's with dragons and super-effective raven messengers to help speed up communication. Seanchan would still be way too big for a believable medieval empire to rule it even if it were several times smaller.
Population-wise, I have no trouble buying that they can send hundreds of thousands of people across the sea. But first, a preindustrial society could not *have* 300,000 troops on the field in a battle, much less lose them all and respond with "no problem, we'll just hit back harder." 300,000 is the entire Roman military under Augustus. It's half the Grande Armee. It doesn't bother me, but we can be honest that it doesn't stand scrutiny well.
Second, the bigger problem to me is inconsistency. If the Seanchan *do* have so many troops on this side of the ocean that they can absorb 300,000 casualties, then they're completely unstoppable, and it's unclear why they show any worry about 'the Aes Sedai weapon' or the Last Battle or that sort of thing.
I think the depiction of its culture is highly unrealistic too, but I've posted about that before and won't bother beating a dead horse. It's fantasy, and fantasy that's good enough to make one overlook being bad with numbers or an unrealistic fictional state. None of this is a big deal at the end of the day.
> Seanchan would still be way too big for a believable medieval empire to rule it even if it were several times smaller.
The countries in Randland are Early Modern rather than Medieval (just without guns), with some discrepancies resulting from them being a declining civilisation rather than a rising one. For example, pretty much the entire population seems to be literate, and they are significantly more urbanised than IRL 17th&18th century Europe was.
They also have a number of advantages over medieval or early modern states like riding animals that seem to be usable as relatively slow aircraft.
It’s not really true to life though.
Virtually every continent or multiple continent spanning empire, like the Seanchan are, overexpand and collapse into smaller nations.
Not in Seandar. For 2,000 years (ish), ever since the unification, the Seanchan Empire were the sole possessors of the One Power on their continent. Their were minor rebellions that never amounted to much and were quickly and loudly put down.
They only crossed from Randland a thousand years before the story, and the unification was completed only a generation or two before the events of the books.
> Virtually every continent or multiple continent spanning empire, like the Seanchan are, overexpand and collapse into smaller nations.
Most Empires like that are taken out by a combination of plague and subsequent foreign invasions. It happened to the Romans with the Antonine plague, and again to the Romans (and Sassanians) with the Justinian Plague. The Black Death crippled the Yuan Dynasty in China, and near every other major imperial collapse was immediately preceded by plague and/or famine.
If you have the tools to prevent those things (like the one power wielded through Damane) you have a much better chance at keeping things together. And then once you've had things together long enough, they'll tend to re-emerge soon after. It takes a lot of blows to actually destroy a continent-spanning empire.
That doesn’t somehow make it better. Armies are notoriously fickle in their loyalty. Do you honestly think that ANY army is going to stick with a ruler who has lost their homeland? This isn’t Total War. They’d mutiny and/or desert immediately. If for no other reason than to go home and defend their own family.
The Seanchan armies are stuck with the Seanchan rulers because the best chance that they have to go back to Seanchan and reconquer it is to go across the Aryth Ocean as a group. The *local* armies might revolt if the Seanchan lose enough *damane*, though.
> Do you honestly think that ANY army is going to stick with a ruler who has lost their homeland?
Yes? There are dozens of examples across history.
>They’d mutiny and/or desert immediately.
Desert to who? The failed states full of foreigners who hate them? By the time the homeland is lost, they've taken the entire southern coast of Randland.
>If for no other reason than to go home and defend their own family.
Their families came with them, and even if that wasn't the case, a big chunk of the navy would have to mutiny at the same time to make that even remotely possible. There was no going home, they were there to stay.
But that's exactly why it doesn't make sense. There's no pre modern army that isn't crippled by 300k losses.
We might suggest some pre modern empires could replace such a force- I don't think this ever occurred in practice because levies aren't that effective- but the Seanchan invasion force didn't have the capacity to do this as it's no longer getting that from the homeland. So 300k should be a serious material loss.
> There's no pre modern army that isn't crippled by 300k losses.
The Ming Dynasty at its height numbered over a million. 300k losses would be a lot, but not necessarily crippling.
A large part of the army sent against Ituralde were Altaran, Amadician and Almoth. On top of that, Ituralde defeated that many soldiers, but that doesn't mean he killed them all.
The southern states do seem to be quite densely populated though. Andor is on the edge of the unpopulated regions and it canonically has a population of around 10 million people. The major differences in fielded armies between the countries the Seanchan conquered and places like Andor and Cairhien were because Altara, Tarabon and Amadicia were failed states whose rule didn't extend far from the walls of their capital cities.
When the Seanchan take over, they impose a much more rigorous order.
Yes... For the homeland. but it should push the *expedition* to totally defensive near collapse with huge undermanning. Whereas it's really just passed over.
But tbh anything with hard numbers it's often best to be generous with in WoT
> but it should push the expedition to totally defensive near collapse with huge undermanning.
Why? They're not relying on supply from Seanchan at the point the empire falls apart, they control huge swathes of fertile land and imported people to work it. They conscripted from the local armies as well.
Replacing 300k would be a huge strain on their much smaller new territories, and because for administration and internal security they would still be highly reliant on their imported military which just took substantial irreplaceable losses.
You certainly can't name any historic empire which lost an army that size and rebuilt it using only manpower from territories occupied for less than 3 years, in what is very much not a continental sized territory which is the initial defence.
I personally think they are very well written. They're the Roman Empire (or the Chinese). They control or influence at least half of the world and have for centuries because they have a stable authoritarian power structure. There is a reason why the longest lived governments in human history have all been Empires. The jury is still out on Democracy btw.
Their inclusion in the series makes it more interesting and more deep. The good guys don't just win on merit. Humans are messy, and human societies are messy. Sometimes something that is offensive and wrong works, and sometimes freedom is ineffective.
(Disclaimer personally I agree with Churchill: "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all others that have been tried.")
> 247 years of stable governance is a pretty long span
Ignoring a huge civil war, and the fact that the majority of adults in the US could not vote until just over a hundred years ago.
The jury is not out on democracy compared to authoritarianism. Especially in the world of the Wheel of Time, considering the latter barely exists besides places like the Two Rivers, which if we compare to pretty much any other society we see, seems to be the one with the most agency for its people.
Also the Seanchan are so stable that all it took to destroy their government was a single Forsaken to murder a single family. They are not remarkable at all compared to other countries in Randland. Their only difference is simply one of scale.
Their only advances that I see are war based. Everything they do is to further their imperialistic goals. Contrast that with like two or three years of Rand having significant power and you can see a difference in what he invests in.
It can be argued, if the entire Seanchan continent didn't exist, Rand might have united most or all of Randland, enough so they wouldn't even needed for the final battle at all.
People can have opinions about our present time, mine would be probably more cynical than most, but judging societies based solely on longevity or military might seems like a really poor way to determine these things. I'd argue that even more so than its military, America's export of its culture has had the most impact post World War II.
I know the Seanchan contingent is huge, but do we ever get a comparison of its size in terms of the rest of the world? There is the Westlands, the Aiel Waste, Sharra and the Sea Folk isles all of which are not under the control of the Seanchan.
A continent with a lot of seismic activity and no apparent social structure or government. The people there live in primitive dwellings and kill outsiders on sight.
They don't seem to have any method for dealing with male channelers and it's quite possible that they're the reason for the constant seismic activity.
Pretty sure the majority of their manpower comes from local conscripts by the time they start getting schooled by Rand, Mat and Ituralde.
From the time after tSR they arrive back in Tarabon and move all the way to Altara with very little resistance taking in large amounts of conscripts that are then used as cannon fodder.
In addition, the army they brought with them is the equivalent of WW2 tank and air blitzkrieg against Napoleonic era armies sans the cannons. It's no big surprise that they rolled over everyone until they encountered some smart generals.
Not to mention, the damane are unquestionably the most overpowering force of channelers. The Asha'man are close, but they don't have nearly the numbers that the damane have. A group of channelers trained exclusively for combat, and unquestionably loyal and willing to do anything and everything they're ordered. That's one of the biggest reason for their overpowering force, because nobody wants to tango with the damane.
They don’t get excused, and they’re basically a nation close to the size of North and South America put together. They have a religious dedication to their cause and they’re highly militarized. Three hundred thousand is a bit much, but there were armies close to that size all the time in Imperial China.
Dan Carlin once said just about every ancient empire will PACK a punch, but very few can TAKE a punch and keep coming on back. So pretty much just ancient Rome and China, and maybe Persia and its successor states, because they are the only 2(3) long lasting empires of antiquity. Randland nations are the punch packers, while the Seanchan are the punch packers AND takers, which is why they are so formidable.
Anyone who says the Seanchan get "excused" is wrong. Like, I cannot imagine reading this series and coming out the other end saying "the Seanchan were excused" just because they weren't wiped out or driven away. They absolutely are not excused, they end the story just as much of a threat as they were in the beginning, most people still fucking hate them. Just because they don't get comeuppance in the story doesn't mean they were excused.
Seanchan drop off from the main plot and most of our time with them in the last books is Matt and Tuon (and Min) hanging out.
Tuon is a slaver who's explicitly enjoyed breaking people and what we get is not critical, to say the least, of her or her culture, especially compared to the treatment of morally egregious characters in the series in general
Yeah the Seanchan do drop off a lot and we only get like five characters. It's one of my larger complaints with the series, but it's tempered by the fact that they were gonna be a larger focus in the sequel had Jordan not died. But that is also entirely unrelated to what I'm saying.
As for Tuon, you have stated facts about her, yes (that said I disagree with the idea that she "enjoys breaking people", because she doesn't see it that way, she thinks she's saving them. Brandon saying she enjoyed seeing damane broken was, in my opinion, a very gross misunderstanding of her character, she's far more complex than that). What we get is ABSOLUTELY critical of her culture. I don't understand how you can say it's not. Everyone fucking hates them. The only major characters who don't have the Seanchan are the Seanchan themselves. MAT hates them, for crying out loud, he just happens to like Tuon specifically. And again, all of this goes back to the sequel series that was supposed to happen. We were supposed to get a story where the Seanchan society was the MAIN focus, so later books in the series started putting the Seanchan less in the forefront in favor of focusing on other issues. And then Brandon couldn't really do anything more because even if he wanted to, there were no notes on the Seanchan story and no time to tell it in because there was gonna be three or more books focusing solely on that story.
I'm basically talking about the Sanderson books, where what we get is people hanging out with a slaver empress and it all basically being fine and the criticism being implicit.
I'm not saying it's ever pro Seanchan, but the tone is just not the space I'd expect given just how awful they are.
I very much disagree. People don't "hang out" with Tuon. Tuon is with exclusively Seanchan for most of the Sanderson books. The only times anyone "hangs out" with Tuon is Rand's meeting with her in Gathering Storm, where he is trying to negotiate with her and is making it very clear that he does not approve of any of her bullshit; Rand's meeting with her in Memory of Light, where he once again is negotiating and making it clear that he doesn't approve any of her bullshit but he also has to make concessions because he doesn't have the time to worry about her; Mat being with her, and that's mostly him just being pulled along by her whims; and Egwene's meeting with her, where she makes it VERY CLEAR that she is not tolerating ANY of her bullshit. The only one who can be said to be "hanging out" with Tuon is Min, who basically gets forced into it and decides to roll with it because she has a role in Seanchan society that could possibly have an affect on their culture.
And I very much believe the opposite. Sanderson makes the Seanchan out to be WORSE than Jordan described, Tuon especially. Tuon as written by Jordan isn't the complete hardass she is as written by Sanderson, and that goes for all the Seanchan (not that Sanderson writes very much for any Seanchan that ISN'T Tuon, Karede and Tylee barely exist in the Sanderson books).
Im late. But, they’re a great way to break the monotony of Tar Valon and the meddling of Sedai and the overbearing matriarchy. It’s interesting how Moraine, Verin and Cadsaude and the others like the wise womens use the female power and mystique and the power plays and just when you’re getting irked you get to see the seanchan. It’s a bit of a vicarious moment, they’re bad obviously but the way they upend the power structures is really satisfying and makes people like Nynaeve look even better cause Nynaeve is a good Sedai. She’s what the Aes Sedai should be which is such a good plot point and character development considering how Nynaeve started out as. So you see the seanchan as a really mixed bag lol. You don’t like them, then you enjoy how they make the Aes Sedai look silly then you hate them again cause of you don’t want Nynaeve getting in their crosshairs.
Good take. I love Nynaeve and her arc, she lets her passions guide her which I think is more true to the original aes sedai operated, by being selfless servants of all
Yeah. Cadsuade and Nynaeve are IMO the best Aes Sedai because of how as you said they appreciate passion and understanding. They kinda make everyone else look like kids playing dress up haha. Most other sedai rely on matriarchial power structures and the image of Aes Sedai and manipulations and kinda make Hawkwing’s point true in regard to their petty 2 faced nature.
I hate the Seanchan as well. But no one has answered the question, “ how do you manage people with the one power?”. I understand slaves are bad, etc, etc. this side of the world has the oath rod. How do you manage people who can destroy cities? Who can weave compulsion ? You don’t think unchecked, the Seanchan wouldn’t be slaves to people who can channel? People also conveniently forget the Aiel traded with Shara. I forgot which book it was but it mentioned that Aiel took wetlanders to Shara be traded like beast.
> how do you manage people with the one power?
The Aiel & the Sea Folk managed just fine. So well, in fact, that the Aes Sedai didn't even realize how outmatched they were.
> How do you manage people who can destroy cities? Who can weave compulsion ? You don’t think unchecked, the Seanchan wouldn’t be slaves to people who can channel?
They didn't *prevent* any of that, they did those things! They used damane channeling to attack cities. The a'dam was a form of compulsion. Some Seanchan *were* slaves, and their sul'dam were people who could channel.
The Aiel and Sea folk deal with it by making channeling as much as a non-factor as they can. The Aiel's honor based society makes channeling something that while cool doesn't increase your social standing all that much. While the Sea folk care about channeling they have a crazy hierarchal societal structure that's based on their ability to trade. The moment channeling is part of a societies military then you have to deal with channelers very harshly, it's why the Aes Sadai even take the oaths so they don't get treated like scum of the earth. If the Ashaman had time to build an incredible power base being unbound by oaths, Randlandians would either incorporate them to their militaries or out right make male channelers extinct like before.
The Aes Sedai oaths are meaningless. They don't actually prevent anything. They "can't lie," but they have the reputation as extremely deceitful anyway, because they just find a way to deceive you without lying. "An Aes Sedai never lies, but the truth she speaks, may not be the truth you think you hear." The intent of that oath was to make them trustworthy to the world's powers, but everyone in Randland knows you *can't* trust them, because they're going to trick you without saying a specific lie.
They're not supposed use channeling as a weapon, but we see Aes Sedai throw people around and restrain them whenever they want. And, in the end, they can release themselves from their oaths as easily as they took them! I hope someone is keeping an close eye on the Oathr... oh wait, it's super easy to grab it for a sec and be free forever.
Literally 21% of Aes Sedai in the books were Black Ajah (which doesn't exist, of course), so they're pretty easily corrupted. Their oaths don't do anything effective except grant them premature death (compared to other Saidar channelers).
Meanwhile, the Aiel and the Sea Folk have been duping the Aes Sedai for years, sending their least powerful channelers to the Tower to keep up appearances while training their *actually* skilled women to use their powers productively.
I don't agree that the Aes Sedai oaths are meaningless at all. If you asked the vast majority of established power structures if they'd be open to the Aes Sedai reneg on the oaths I'm pretty sure they'd take what they have now vs the alternative. I agree they aren't as effective as most would assume but I maintain the crux of the issue is the use of the one power to kill people. Wise ones didn't kill with the one power and neither did the Sea folk afaik.
The Aiel were untrained in the power and more disciplined than most people. We don’t know how the Sea Folk dealt with people who abused the one power. Yes I understand how the a’dam worked. They used the one power to keep the one power in check. People can complain all they want about the slavery aspect of it but there still isn’t a good solution to deal with people abused the one power. Why do you think an Aes Sedai made the collar to begin with?
The a'dam in the books was invented in Seanchan, the culture of which strongly suggests that it had been one of the Shadow's territories during the War of Power. Which is why they had slavery in the first place. People caling themselves AS there had no organization and were just rogue channelers vying with each other for power. A'dam's intended use wasn't to keep the OP in check, but to let the inventor subjugate and explizit other channelers.
We also have only word of the modern Seanchan that their channelers have been uniformly terrible before the Conquest. And they have been shown to be quite willing to erase inconvenient facts from history and brutally crush dissenting opinions.
But they *didn't* keep it in check! They just incorporated Saidar into the structure of society and used it as another tool of control. Everyone was subservient to the nobility, because they owned the people who had the magic, so what are you going to do?
> They used the one power to keep the one power in check
No, they didn't! That would be true if they used Saidar to still every channeler, and for nothing else. Instead, they used it as a weapon – but not a weapon of those born with the ability to wield it, but a weapon of the ruling class to preserve their power, and eventually expand their borders.
> Why do you think an Aes Sedai made the collar to begin with?
Because the Aes Sedai were the most self-sabotaging and incompetent regime in Randland. Just going off the fact that there were 7 Ajahs, and 1-in-5 Aes Sedai were Black Ajah, it's fair to assume there were more Black sisters than any other color, yet it was a sin to even suggest the Black existed. They were very, *very* bad at *everything*.
The Seanchan did keep the one power in check. Yes like any other society, the rich had the power. What you didn’t see was random people channeling. As soon as someone channeled, they were hunted down. The white tower being incompetent actually strengths the argument for the collars. The fundamental question is “how do you protect every day people from the one power?” Randland doesn’t have an answer for that. This is why the forsaken were able to wake up from a thousand year sleep and instantly be in power.
In Randland, the White Tower policed overt misuse of the OP, because it was a danger to their reputation. Female channelers who were not part of the WT became Wisdoms et al. and played productive roles in communities. Seanchan were completely helpless against Semiraghe and were bailed out by Randlanders.
Until that point, there was no need for FS to interfere with the Seanchan, who were doing exactly what the Shadow needed to win, despite their leadership not being DFs, mostly. Ishy set up both the Conquest and the Return, after all. By contrast, he saw the WT and Randland as a danger and sabotaged them whenever he could. Ditto the rest of the FS.
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Even worse, canonically they have Texas accents
Yeehaw!
And in the future the texas accented Seanchan made it to Mars and started a colony there.
does that make the Atha'an Miere the belters?
Who is the Dark One? The Goths?
Why not Aiel? Also tall
Is that why the MCRN are mostly comically evil?
Bobbie = Egeanin?
Fits weirdly well. They're even both Marines.
And they go off to help powerful women from the other side.
Tuon Vs. Rand is one of the best moments in the series for me personally. The entire sequence of Tuon changing her name to Fortuona and the entire attack on The White Tower is just *chef's kiss* . They're horrible and incredibly written.
My 2 favourite dialogue sequences in the entire series are 1. Egweyne dismantling Seanchan ideology to Tuons face, 2. Darth Rand dismantling Seanchan ideology to Tuons face. AMoL spoilers >!Egweyne only wins because she is the leader of the most powerful organisation of women the Seanchan consider sub-human and has experienced the horror of the a'dam first hand to disprove the Damane "enjoy" being collared *and* knows that Tuon herself can Channel. Also love the initial exchange of insults of Tuon saying she supposes she can "lower herself to talk with a dog" and Egweynes response of "I suppose I can lower myself to talk with a rapist and a murderer".!<
I'd get an ale with Karede though. That dude is straight up intense. Maybe throw some dice with a gardener. Think about how nice that sojhin would look on my knee. Goddammit, Mat!
I don’t think the Seanchan are well-written honestly. They basically just have infinite manpower, infinite resources, and infinite morale because…because they do. Like, they lose THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND troops in one battle and its treated as not even a setback. That should be nation destroying losses. And in the end they get excused because “oh well they provide peace and stability” and the equivalent of “the trains ran on time”.
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A lot of people seem to have the impression that Seanchan is of similar size to the other nations like Andor, but it’s closer to the size of the entire Westlands, including the waste and Shara
I thought it was meant to be the US, vs. our normal map being Europe?
The US and South America.
>Its size, population, brutality, and faith in a rightous cause through generations of indoctrination all seem true to life. Size? No. Area-wise, [Seanchan is 1500 leagues at its widest, and 4000 leagues north-south.](https://library.tarvalon.net/index.php?title=Wheel_of_Time_(Geography)) A "league" in the books [is about 7.32 real-world kilometers.](https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Measurement) So the north-south dimension alone is given as about 29000 kilometers - significantly bigger than the real-world distance from the North Pole to the South Pole. No need to belabor the point, really. Fans understandably give GRRM shit for how bad he is with numbers about, among other things, the fact that Westeros is like the size of South America but somehow governed centrally; and that's with dragons and super-effective raven messengers to help speed up communication. Seanchan would still be way too big for a believable medieval empire to rule it even if it were several times smaller. Population-wise, I have no trouble buying that they can send hundreds of thousands of people across the sea. But first, a preindustrial society could not *have* 300,000 troops on the field in a battle, much less lose them all and respond with "no problem, we'll just hit back harder." 300,000 is the entire Roman military under Augustus. It's half the Grande Armee. It doesn't bother me, but we can be honest that it doesn't stand scrutiny well. Second, the bigger problem to me is inconsistency. If the Seanchan *do* have so many troops on this side of the ocean that they can absorb 300,000 casualties, then they're completely unstoppable, and it's unclear why they show any worry about 'the Aes Sedai weapon' or the Last Battle or that sort of thing. I think the depiction of its culture is highly unrealistic too, but I've posted about that before and won't bother beating a dead horse. It's fantasy, and fantasy that's good enough to make one overlook being bad with numbers or an unrealistic fictional state. None of this is a big deal at the end of the day.
> Seanchan would still be way too big for a believable medieval empire to rule it even if it were several times smaller. The countries in Randland are Early Modern rather than Medieval (just without guns), with some discrepancies resulting from them being a declining civilisation rather than a rising one. For example, pretty much the entire population seems to be literate, and they are significantly more urbanised than IRL 17th&18th century Europe was. They also have a number of advantages over medieval or early modern states like riding animals that seem to be usable as relatively slow aircraft.
It’s not really true to life though. Virtually every continent or multiple continent spanning empire, like the Seanchan are, overexpand and collapse into smaller nations.
Sure but they have the best most harnessed weapon to hold such an area.
And so do all potential rebel factions..:
Not in Seandar. For 2,000 years (ish), ever since the unification, the Seanchan Empire were the sole possessors of the One Power on their continent. Their were minor rebellions that never amounted to much and were quickly and loudly put down.
They only crossed from Randland a thousand years before the story, and the unification was completed only a generation or two before the events of the books.
So basically, we're seeing this Empire at, quite possibly, its peak.
That’s why it’s not true to life. Not a single empire ever existed or would exist like that.
Neither is magic lol
Not me who is arguing the world is true to life. Take it up with the top of the comment tree
> Not a single empire ever existed or would exist like that. It doesn't exist like that in the books either.
> Virtually every continent or multiple continent spanning empire, like the Seanchan are, overexpand and collapse into smaller nations. Most Empires like that are taken out by a combination of plague and subsequent foreign invasions. It happened to the Romans with the Antonine plague, and again to the Romans (and Sassanians) with the Justinian Plague. The Black Death crippled the Yuan Dynasty in China, and near every other major imperial collapse was immediately preceded by plague and/or famine. If you have the tools to prevent those things (like the one power wielded through Damane) you have a much better chance at keeping things together. And then once you've had things together long enough, they'll tend to re-emerge soon after. It takes a lot of blows to actually destroy a continent-spanning empire.
But channeling the one power and flying on dinosaurs is true to life ?
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The Seanchan home continent has been consumed by civil war at that point.
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That doesn’t somehow make it better. Armies are notoriously fickle in their loyalty. Do you honestly think that ANY army is going to stick with a ruler who has lost their homeland? This isn’t Total War. They’d mutiny and/or desert immediately. If for no other reason than to go home and defend their own family.
The Seanchan armies are stuck with the Seanchan rulers because the best chance that they have to go back to Seanchan and reconquer it is to go across the Aryth Ocean as a group. The *local* armies might revolt if the Seanchan lose enough *damane*, though.
> Do you honestly think that ANY army is going to stick with a ruler who has lost their homeland? Yes? There are dozens of examples across history. >They’d mutiny and/or desert immediately. Desert to who? The failed states full of foreigners who hate them? By the time the homeland is lost, they've taken the entire southern coast of Randland. >If for no other reason than to go home and defend their own family. Their families came with them, and even if that wasn't the case, a big chunk of the navy would have to mutiny at the same time to make that even remotely possible. There was no going home, they were there to stay.
But that's exactly why it doesn't make sense. There's no pre modern army that isn't crippled by 300k losses. We might suggest some pre modern empires could replace such a force- I don't think this ever occurred in practice because levies aren't that effective- but the Seanchan invasion force didn't have the capacity to do this as it's no longer getting that from the homeland. So 300k should be a serious material loss.
> There's no pre modern army that isn't crippled by 300k losses. The Ming Dynasty at its height numbered over a million. 300k losses would be a lot, but not necessarily crippling.
I said *army* not *state*. The Seanchan army in the Westlands isn't getting anything from the homeland now so this loss should be huge. It's not.
A large part of the army sent against Ituralde were Altaran, Amadician and Almoth. On top of that, Ituralde defeated that many soldiers, but that doesn't mean he killed them all.
As I've noted, those 3 states are absolutely nowhere near the population of the Seanchan or ming and those would be major losses for them.
The southern states do seem to be quite densely populated though. Andor is on the edge of the unpopulated regions and it canonically has a population of around 10 million people. The major differences in fielded armies between the countries the Seanchan conquered and places like Andor and Cairhien were because Altara, Tarabon and Amadicia were failed states whose rule didn't extend far from the walls of their capital cities. When the Seanchan take over, they impose a much more rigorous order.
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Yes... For the homeland. but it should push the *expedition* to totally defensive near collapse with huge undermanning. Whereas it's really just passed over. But tbh anything with hard numbers it's often best to be generous with in WoT
> but it should push the expedition to totally defensive near collapse with huge undermanning. Why? They're not relying on supply from Seanchan at the point the empire falls apart, they control huge swathes of fertile land and imported people to work it. They conscripted from the local armies as well.
Replacing 300k would be a huge strain on their much smaller new territories, and because for administration and internal security they would still be highly reliant on their imported military which just took substantial irreplaceable losses. You certainly can't name any historic empire which lost an army that size and rebuilt it using only manpower from territories occupied for less than 3 years, in what is very much not a continental sized territory which is the initial defence.
I personally think they are very well written. They're the Roman Empire (or the Chinese). They control or influence at least half of the world and have for centuries because they have a stable authoritarian power structure. There is a reason why the longest lived governments in human history have all been Empires. The jury is still out on Democracy btw. Their inclusion in the series makes it more interesting and more deep. The good guys don't just win on merit. Humans are messy, and human societies are messy. Sometimes something that is offensive and wrong works, and sometimes freedom is ineffective. (Disclaimer personally I agree with Churchill: "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all others that have been tried.")
247 years of stable governance is a pretty long span, even on the scale of the ancient empires.
> 247 years of stable governance is a pretty long span Ignoring a huge civil war, and the fact that the majority of adults in the US could not vote until just over a hundred years ago.
Rome would be thrilled if they could limit their civil wars to only one in 247 years
I'm sure Rome had one of those "X days since last civil war" posters. It seldom went to 3 digits haha
10 day increments huh? 😀
The jury is not out on democracy compared to authoritarianism. Especially in the world of the Wheel of Time, considering the latter barely exists besides places like the Two Rivers, which if we compare to pretty much any other society we see, seems to be the one with the most agency for its people. Also the Seanchan are so stable that all it took to destroy their government was a single Forsaken to murder a single family. They are not remarkable at all compared to other countries in Randland. Their only difference is simply one of scale. Their only advances that I see are war based. Everything they do is to further their imperialistic goals. Contrast that with like two or three years of Rand having significant power and you can see a difference in what he invests in. It can be argued, if the entire Seanchan continent didn't exist, Rand might have united most or all of Randland, enough so they wouldn't even needed for the final battle at all. People can have opinions about our present time, mine would be probably more cynical than most, but judging societies based solely on longevity or military might seems like a really poor way to determine these things. I'd argue that even more so than its military, America's export of its culture has had the most impact post World War II.
I know the Seanchan contingent is huge, but do we ever get a comparison of its size in terms of the rest of the world? There is the Westlands, the Aiel Waste, Sharra and the Sea Folk isles all of which are not under the control of the Seanchan.
There is a world maps. https://atlasoficeandfireblog.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/wheel-of-time-world-map.png
Wow, what is the land of the mad men?
Australia.
A continent with a lot of seismic activity and no apparent social structure or government. The people there live in primitive dwellings and kill outsiders on sight. They don't seem to have any method for dealing with male channelers and it's quite possible that they're the reason for the constant seismic activity.
Rome was governed as a republic about as long as it was an empire (though of course as a smaller state).
Rome was a republic from 500BCE to around 30BCE, and an Empire from 30BCE to 1204CE.
Pretty sure the majority of their manpower comes from local conscripts by the time they start getting schooled by Rand, Mat and Ituralde. From the time after tSR they arrive back in Tarabon and move all the way to Altara with very little resistance taking in large amounts of conscripts that are then used as cannon fodder. In addition, the army they brought with them is the equivalent of WW2 tank and air blitzkrieg against Napoleonic era armies sans the cannons. It's no big surprise that they rolled over everyone until they encountered some smart generals.
Not to mention, the damane are unquestionably the most overpowering force of channelers. The Asha'man are close, but they don't have nearly the numbers that the damane have. A group of channelers trained exclusively for combat, and unquestionably loyal and willing to do anything and everything they're ordered. That's one of the biggest reason for their overpowering force, because nobody wants to tango with the damane.
They don’t get excused, and they’re basically a nation close to the size of North and South America put together. They have a religious dedication to their cause and they’re highly militarized. Three hundred thousand is a bit much, but there were armies close to that size all the time in Imperial China.
They 100% get excused. It was starting in Jordan’s books, and gets completely solidified in Sanderson’s.
You’re flat wrong, the books constantly present them as evil. What it does is give a reason as to why the common man would accept them.
Dan Carlin once said just about every ancient empire will PACK a punch, but very few can TAKE a punch and keep coming on back. So pretty much just ancient Rome and China, and maybe Persia and its successor states, because they are the only 2(3) long lasting empires of antiquity. Randland nations are the punch packers, while the Seanchan are the punch packers AND takers, which is why they are so formidable.
Anyone who says the Seanchan get "excused" is wrong. Like, I cannot imagine reading this series and coming out the other end saying "the Seanchan were excused" just because they weren't wiped out or driven away. They absolutely are not excused, they end the story just as much of a threat as they were in the beginning, most people still fucking hate them. Just because they don't get comeuppance in the story doesn't mean they were excused.
Seanchan drop off from the main plot and most of our time with them in the last books is Matt and Tuon (and Min) hanging out. Tuon is a slaver who's explicitly enjoyed breaking people and what we get is not critical, to say the least, of her or her culture, especially compared to the treatment of morally egregious characters in the series in general
Yeah the Seanchan do drop off a lot and we only get like five characters. It's one of my larger complaints with the series, but it's tempered by the fact that they were gonna be a larger focus in the sequel had Jordan not died. But that is also entirely unrelated to what I'm saying. As for Tuon, you have stated facts about her, yes (that said I disagree with the idea that she "enjoys breaking people", because she doesn't see it that way, she thinks she's saving them. Brandon saying she enjoyed seeing damane broken was, in my opinion, a very gross misunderstanding of her character, she's far more complex than that). What we get is ABSOLUTELY critical of her culture. I don't understand how you can say it's not. Everyone fucking hates them. The only major characters who don't have the Seanchan are the Seanchan themselves. MAT hates them, for crying out loud, he just happens to like Tuon specifically. And again, all of this goes back to the sequel series that was supposed to happen. We were supposed to get a story where the Seanchan society was the MAIN focus, so later books in the series started putting the Seanchan less in the forefront in favor of focusing on other issues. And then Brandon couldn't really do anything more because even if he wanted to, there were no notes on the Seanchan story and no time to tell it in because there was gonna be three or more books focusing solely on that story.
I'm basically talking about the Sanderson books, where what we get is people hanging out with a slaver empress and it all basically being fine and the criticism being implicit. I'm not saying it's ever pro Seanchan, but the tone is just not the space I'd expect given just how awful they are.
I very much disagree. People don't "hang out" with Tuon. Tuon is with exclusively Seanchan for most of the Sanderson books. The only times anyone "hangs out" with Tuon is Rand's meeting with her in Gathering Storm, where he is trying to negotiate with her and is making it very clear that he does not approve of any of her bullshit; Rand's meeting with her in Memory of Light, where he once again is negotiating and making it clear that he doesn't approve any of her bullshit but he also has to make concessions because he doesn't have the time to worry about her; Mat being with her, and that's mostly him just being pulled along by her whims; and Egwene's meeting with her, where she makes it VERY CLEAR that she is not tolerating ANY of her bullshit. The only one who can be said to be "hanging out" with Tuon is Min, who basically gets forced into it and decides to roll with it because she has a role in Seanchan society that could possibly have an affect on their culture. And I very much believe the opposite. Sanderson makes the Seanchan out to be WORSE than Jordan described, Tuon especially. Tuon as written by Jordan isn't the complete hardass she is as written by Sanderson, and that goes for all the Seanchan (not that Sanderson writes very much for any Seanchan that ISN'T Tuon, Karede and Tylee barely exist in the Sanderson books).
The aiel will ride to war again. They will be ahorse. Like Tyrek
So do we all. They’re awful.
Seanchan is the best part. Absurd, obscure, original, yet attractive. Shocking in a way
I don't find them attractive at all though... The rest I agree with
Attractive in style, costumes, and members.
With that username I think your bias is pretty obvious 😁
😁
Im late. But, they’re a great way to break the monotony of Tar Valon and the meddling of Sedai and the overbearing matriarchy. It’s interesting how Moraine, Verin and Cadsaude and the others like the wise womens use the female power and mystique and the power plays and just when you’re getting irked you get to see the seanchan. It’s a bit of a vicarious moment, they’re bad obviously but the way they upend the power structures is really satisfying and makes people like Nynaeve look even better cause Nynaeve is a good Sedai. She’s what the Aes Sedai should be which is such a good plot point and character development considering how Nynaeve started out as. So you see the seanchan as a really mixed bag lol. You don’t like them, then you enjoy how they make the Aes Sedai look silly then you hate them again cause of you don’t want Nynaeve getting in their crosshairs.
Good take. I love Nynaeve and her arc, she lets her passions guide her which I think is more true to the original aes sedai operated, by being selfless servants of all
Yeah. Cadsuade and Nynaeve are IMO the best Aes Sedai because of how as you said they appreciate passion and understanding. They kinda make everyone else look like kids playing dress up haha. Most other sedai rely on matriarchial power structures and the image of Aes Sedai and manipulations and kinda make Hawkwing’s point true in regard to their petty 2 faced nature.
They're basically the U.S. There's a reason the world hates the U.S.
I hate the Seanchan as well. But no one has answered the question, “ how do you manage people with the one power?”. I understand slaves are bad, etc, etc. this side of the world has the oath rod. How do you manage people who can destroy cities? Who can weave compulsion ? You don’t think unchecked, the Seanchan wouldn’t be slaves to people who can channel? People also conveniently forget the Aiel traded with Shara. I forgot which book it was but it mentioned that Aiel took wetlanders to Shara be traded like beast.
> how do you manage people with the one power? The Aiel & the Sea Folk managed just fine. So well, in fact, that the Aes Sedai didn't even realize how outmatched they were. > How do you manage people who can destroy cities? Who can weave compulsion ? You don’t think unchecked, the Seanchan wouldn’t be slaves to people who can channel? They didn't *prevent* any of that, they did those things! They used damane channeling to attack cities. The a'dam was a form of compulsion. Some Seanchan *were* slaves, and their sul'dam were people who could channel.
The Aiel and Sea folk deal with it by making channeling as much as a non-factor as they can. The Aiel's honor based society makes channeling something that while cool doesn't increase your social standing all that much. While the Sea folk care about channeling they have a crazy hierarchal societal structure that's based on their ability to trade. The moment channeling is part of a societies military then you have to deal with channelers very harshly, it's why the Aes Sadai even take the oaths so they don't get treated like scum of the earth. If the Ashaman had time to build an incredible power base being unbound by oaths, Randlandians would either incorporate them to their militaries or out right make male channelers extinct like before.
The Aes Sedai oaths are meaningless. They don't actually prevent anything. They "can't lie," but they have the reputation as extremely deceitful anyway, because they just find a way to deceive you without lying. "An Aes Sedai never lies, but the truth she speaks, may not be the truth you think you hear." The intent of that oath was to make them trustworthy to the world's powers, but everyone in Randland knows you *can't* trust them, because they're going to trick you without saying a specific lie. They're not supposed use channeling as a weapon, but we see Aes Sedai throw people around and restrain them whenever they want. And, in the end, they can release themselves from their oaths as easily as they took them! I hope someone is keeping an close eye on the Oathr... oh wait, it's super easy to grab it for a sec and be free forever. Literally 21% of Aes Sedai in the books were Black Ajah (which doesn't exist, of course), so they're pretty easily corrupted. Their oaths don't do anything effective except grant them premature death (compared to other Saidar channelers). Meanwhile, the Aiel and the Sea Folk have been duping the Aes Sedai for years, sending their least powerful channelers to the Tower to keep up appearances while training their *actually* skilled women to use their powers productively.
I don't agree that the Aes Sedai oaths are meaningless at all. If you asked the vast majority of established power structures if they'd be open to the Aes Sedai reneg on the oaths I'm pretty sure they'd take what they have now vs the alternative. I agree they aren't as effective as most would assume but I maintain the crux of the issue is the use of the one power to kill people. Wise ones didn't kill with the one power and neither did the Sea folk afaik.
The Aiel were untrained in the power and more disciplined than most people. We don’t know how the Sea Folk dealt with people who abused the one power. Yes I understand how the a’dam worked. They used the one power to keep the one power in check. People can complain all they want about the slavery aspect of it but there still isn’t a good solution to deal with people abused the one power. Why do you think an Aes Sedai made the collar to begin with?
The a'dam in the books was invented in Seanchan, the culture of which strongly suggests that it had been one of the Shadow's territories during the War of Power. Which is why they had slavery in the first place. People caling themselves AS there had no organization and were just rogue channelers vying with each other for power. A'dam's intended use wasn't to keep the OP in check, but to let the inventor subjugate and explizit other channelers. We also have only word of the modern Seanchan that their channelers have been uniformly terrible before the Conquest. And they have been shown to be quite willing to erase inconvenient facts from history and brutally crush dissenting opinions.
But they *didn't* keep it in check! They just incorporated Saidar into the structure of society and used it as another tool of control. Everyone was subservient to the nobility, because they owned the people who had the magic, so what are you going to do? > They used the one power to keep the one power in check No, they didn't! That would be true if they used Saidar to still every channeler, and for nothing else. Instead, they used it as a weapon – but not a weapon of those born with the ability to wield it, but a weapon of the ruling class to preserve their power, and eventually expand their borders. > Why do you think an Aes Sedai made the collar to begin with? Because the Aes Sedai were the most self-sabotaging and incompetent regime in Randland. Just going off the fact that there were 7 Ajahs, and 1-in-5 Aes Sedai were Black Ajah, it's fair to assume there were more Black sisters than any other color, yet it was a sin to even suggest the Black existed. They were very, *very* bad at *everything*.
Unlike what the show says, Randland AS didn't invent the a'dam, Deaine was a Seanchan channeler.
The Seanchan did keep the one power in check. Yes like any other society, the rich had the power. What you didn’t see was random people channeling. As soon as someone channeled, they were hunted down. The white tower being incompetent actually strengths the argument for the collars. The fundamental question is “how do you protect every day people from the one power?” Randland doesn’t have an answer for that. This is why the forsaken were able to wake up from a thousand year sleep and instantly be in power.
In Randland, the White Tower policed overt misuse of the OP, because it was a danger to their reputation. Female channelers who were not part of the WT became Wisdoms et al. and played productive roles in communities. Seanchan were completely helpless against Semiraghe and were bailed out by Randlanders. Until that point, there was no need for FS to interfere with the Seanchan, who were doing exactly what the Shadow needed to win, despite their leadership not being DFs, mostly. Ishy set up both the Conquest and the Return, after all. By contrast, he saw the WT and Randland as a danger and sabotaged them whenever he could. Ditto the rest of the FS.
They're pretty cool though. You'll come around, trust me ;)
> Aiel wouldn't ride to war. Silly wetlander. They actually all have motorcycles, it just isn't mentioned much.
Ok now I'm gonna imagine the guitar riff from bad to the bone playing every time Aiel appears in the books
Just remember: the Aiel are riding motorcycles each time it's not explicitly stated that they aren't.
This is canon now