I’m here to discuss everyone’s least favorite character in The Wheel of Time—Gawyn Trakand. While Gawyn is almost universally hated by fans, in many ways he is one of the most interesting, flawed characters that Robert Jordan brought to life in the pages of his epic tale. And in my current reread of The Wheel of Time, undertaken in anticipation of the upcoming Amazon TV series, something new about Gawyn occurred to me…I realized that this heavily disliked character (written as a parallel of the famous Sir Gawain of Arthurian legend) mirrors in many ways another iconic fantasy character that most people love and admire: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Éowyn.
[Spoilers for The Wheel of Time (and The Lord of the Rings, for that matter) below.]
It isn’t just the similarity in names, of course—both characters are born to nobility, but in positions where they will never rule. Éowyn is constrained to her role as a caregiver due to her gender in a patriarchal society. She is cold and unhappy and spends her days dreaming of the valor by steel that her male relatives earn as Riders of Rohan. Gawyn is destined to become the First Prince of the Sword for his sister, Elayne, who will one day become Queen of Andor, where the ruling line is matriarchal. Thus, both Gawyn and Éowyn are overshadowed by their relatives due to gender and the limits it places on their roles in society.
Both characters also desire people who embody the qualities and status that they themselves covet. When Éowyn meets Aragorn, she is drawn to him, even believes herself to be falling in love with him. Tolkien writes, “And she was now suddenly aware of him: tall heir of kings, wise with many winters, greycloaked, hiding a power that yet she felt.” Aragorn comes from a line of great kings and commands the power and respect from men that Éowyn herself can only wish for. When Aragorn prepares to ride for the Paths of the Dead, Éowyn asks if she might join him. When he tells her that she must stay behind, she answers: “I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.” When he asks what she fears, Éowyn answers that she fears a cage—“to stay behind bars until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.”
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Gawyn spends the majority of The Wheel of Time trying to decide where his allegiance truly lies. In the same way that Éowyn doesn’t want to be pinned down in her life and actions, Gawyn struggles to stay with one side before committing to Egwene al’Vere. During the splitting of the White Tower, Gawyn turns against the man who trained him, Hammar; although this results in Gawyn becoming a Blademaster and leader of the Younglings, an impromptu military band, his importance is short-lived. The Amyrlin that he dedicated himself to and has known since childhood sends him and the Younglings on a mission that is conveniently meant to kill them. And while Gawyn has fallen from being a prince to someone viewed as disposable, important events have been unfolding in the world around him, centered around a farmboy he once met. Eventually, Gawyn betrays the Younglings by leaving them behind, without saying a word to them, to go on a mission to save Egwene—thinking that in doing so, he can finally become the hero he aspires to be.
Gawyn first becomes infatuated with Egwene when she is training as a novice in the White Tower, with no rank. He struggles to see her as powerful and capable of making her own decisions, believing that she has been manipulated by Siuan Sanche and Rand al’Thor. Eventually, Egwene becomes the Amyrlin Seat and is one of the strongest Aes Sedai. Gawyn has trouble reconciling Egwene’s power and dominant role with how directionless and useless he feels in comparison. As Brandon Sanderson notes, “Perhaps Gawyn resisted Egwene’s demands because he wanted to lead, to be the one who accomplished her heroic acts. If he became her Warder, he would have to step aside and help her change the world.” Gawyn longs for greatness on his own terms but resigns himself to a supporting role, becoming Egwene’s Warder and husband. “I had to learn to surrender,” he tells Egwene.
In The Lord of the Rings, after Aragorn stops Éowyn from riding into battle, she does so anyway in secret, disguising herself as a man named Dernhelm and fighting in Théoden’s escort. Similarly, when the Last Battle arrives, Gawyn also finds that he cannot control his desire to take part in the fight that is raging all around him. Rather than stay by his wife’s side, Gawyn uses the Bloodknife ter’angreal to hide himself in order to win glory in his own right. He tries to convince himself that he is doing so for the greater good: “Once, perhaps, he would have done this for the pride of battle… That was not his heart now.” Gawyn goes on to think to himself that “he had the chance to change things, to really matter. He did it for Andor, for Egwene, for the world itself.” But his actions are undertaken under the cloak of secrecy, motivated by the desire to finally get the recognition he feels he truly deserves.
Both Éowyn and Gawyn engage in combat with characters that are second-in-command to the main evil power in their respective stories. Éowyn manages to kill the Witch-king of Angmar with the help of her friend and companion, Merry. She does so after her uncle, the King of Rohan, is mortally injured. She bravely challenges the Witch-king directly, facing him even with her shield splintered and arm broken—removing her helmet and revealing her true identity, she drives her sword through the Witch-king’s face after Merry uses his dagger from the Barrow-downs to slash the Nazgûl’s knee, distracting him in a crucial moment.
In contrast, Gawyn leaves behind his companions to track the Forsaken Demandred, who generals the Sharan forces in the Last Battle. The Bloodknife rings allow Gawyn to hide in the shadows. Instead of facing Demandred in battle head-on, Gawyn sneaks up behind him, attempting an assassination, which fails.
Though severely injured, Éowyn recovers and lives on past the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Her depression isn’t lifted by the feat of killing the Nazgûl and all of the renown she has earned through her courageous deeds. As she heals, however, she meets falls in love with Faramir and eventually realizes that she doesn’t need to be a warrior or queen to attain happiness, embracing a new role as a healer. Tolkien writes, “Then the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it.”
Gawyn doesn’t get the chance to change. He is mortally wounded in his confrontation with Demandred, and his actions cause not only his own death, but also factor in the death of the person he loves most. As Egwene’s Warder, Gawyn is given benefits that aid him in battle such as increased resistance to injury, fatigue, hunger, and thirst, along with the ability to sense Shadowspawn. The bond also allows the Aes Sedai and Warder to feel the other’s emotions. However, the bond is not without drawbacks. Should the Aes Sedai die, the Warder almost always dies shortly afterwards, as he will lose the will to live and often die pursuing vengeance. If the Warder dies, the Aes Sedai will feel the death through the bond, losing control of her emotions and entering a deep grief. As a Warder, Gawyn knows the effects that his potential death would have upon his wife and, as a result, on the other channelers she commands during The Last Battle. While the death of a Warder does not kill an Aes Sedai in the same way a Warder is impacted when the reverse happens, the resulting emotions would still be amplified more than usual and would likely impair Egwene’s judgement.
While Gawyn believes that he is doing his part to serve others, in actuality he fails to consider the results of his actions upon others. When he dies, the broken Warder bond causes Egwene to be consumed with rage. Her resulting recklessness is part of why she draws too much of the Power, killing not only Mazrim Taim and the Sharans, but also herself. Even if Gawyn had not died in battle, the Bloodknife rings would eventually have killed him, a fact he was aware of previously—he had been told that the users of the Bloodknives fight most ruthlessly because they are already guaranteed death by poison. Gawyn’s reckless actions and selfishness lead him to tragedy.
Both Éowyn and Gawyn are tragic characters, struggling to achieve the level of valor and recognition held by those closest to them, their family members and loved ones, impatiently waiting for their chance to prove themselves. Gawyn is a Blademaster and his short life is spent centered on conflict. However, we get a brief glimpse at one point in the narrative indicating that this isn’t what he truly wanted out of life. In Lord of Chaos, when Egwene and Gawyn steal moments together at an inn in Cairhien, he beckons her to run away with him: “We will both leave it all behind,” he says. “I have a small estate south of Whitebridge, with a vineyard and a village, so far into the country that the sun rises two days late. The world will hardly touch us there.”
Had Gawyn made different choices, he could have lived, like Éowyn, to see the peace after the final battle. Perhaps Gawyn would have also realized that the life of a warrior was never really right for him. Gawyn spent most of his short life trying to understand himself, but failed to ever grasp what his deeper values truly were, and where his priorities should lie. Had Gawyn gained enough insight to understand the cause of his motivations, he might have lived, and found contentment…
Both Gawyn and Éowyn grow up convinced that they will only find glory and fulfillment in combat and performing famously heroic deeds, while in reality their paths to happiness lay elsewhere. Éowyn is able to survive her confrontation with evil and grow to know her own heart. She finally achieves an inward peace with who she is, no longer needing or desiring outward glory. Gawyn doesn’t earn the same opportunity—he doesn’t live to see a world without war and become something other than a Blademaster. Rather than embracing true bravery and companionship in his moment of crisis like Éowyn, he exhibits only a stubborn recklessness, which leads to his death. This behavior, this essential flaw, is what leads so many readers and fans of The Wheel of Time to despise Gawyn, while Éowyn remains an admired figure in epic fantasy. It makes sense…and yet it’s still possible to find some sympathy for Gawyn, who couldn’t find himself or reach contentment, and though misguided, played out his part in the Pattern, woven as the Wheel wills.
Brittany is a journalist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She picked up her first Wheel of Time book at a book fair in elementary school and has been hooked on fantasy novels since.
Gawyn is a loser who couldn’t see past his own ego his entire life. His half brother, who joined the WoT version of the KKK, even he ended up being a better man and affecting positive change after he was exposed to more the world outside of palace living. But Gawyn was just a dandy and a turd, borderline a “bad guy” for the amount of trouble he was always causing. RJ did wrong by Egwene by pairing the two of them up and I think only did so because of the emotional arc of setting Egwene up to be a huge martyr
Eowyn wanted glory and honor, yeah, but wasn’t an idiot about it and showed up where she was actually needed/wanted and then at the end was able to put aside the warrior path and pick up a more constructive one.
Not knocking the WoT at all, I just dont think Gawyn deserves any sympathy when he’s been given all the chances, continues to make the wrong choices, and then not only feels no remorse but then goes around man-splaining why he is actually right and everyone else is wrong. Yeah, he’s a solid character but good god he is just the worst sometimes
I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees the parallel between Eowyn and Gawyn. Don’t forget that Eowyn too abandoned a responsibility, she was regent of Rohan, a kingdom under siege, when she elected instead to seek glory in battle. And Gawyn’s duel with Demondred wasn’t entirely futile, he did distract him at a key moment,as did Galad. The forces of the light might no have lasted long enough without them.
Eowyn was never subjected to conflicting loyalties Gawyn had to negotiate. Granted he was an idiot but I can see his problem. He has every reason to distrust Siuan Sanchez making siding with Elaida understandable. By the time he realizes it was a mistake he has the Younglings to consider, his mother is dead and the Dragon Reborn killed her. Of course that isn’t true. He should have headed for Andor the minute he heard Elayne had surfaced. Instead he heads for Tar Valon to rescue Egwene, who doesn’t need rescuing though perhaps it isn’t fair to blame Gawyn for not realizing this as the last time he saw his beloved, and not so long ago, she was a giggling girl playing kissing games with him.
Basically Gawyn is out of the loop for most of the story and misses Egwene’s character development as well as Elayne’s. Bad information makes for bad choices. Not that his longing for heroic fame doesn’t influence him too.
I’m not sure I can agree, although the article makes a strong argument. Gawyn’s greatest sin as a character is that he is just so dull.
We should really have more sympathy for Gawyn. He wants to be a person and a hero in his own right not just the appendage of a powerful woman. We have no problem sympathizing with Eowyn’s similar desire. Note Eowyn achieves her goal of personal fame and recognition before she decides they aren’t really what she wants after all. Gawyn tries to accept his role as Egwene’s shadow without such an achievement and finds he can’t quite.
To be fair Demondred is a threat to Egwene as well as the whole world and he’s already doomed himself by using the rings to save Eggy from the Sharans. He’s going to die on her anyway, maybe it’s understandable that he tries to go out with a bang. For that matter it’s not at all certain that Egwene wouldn’t have chosen to ‘be a hero’ and sacrificed her life to save the Pattern even with Gawyn at her side.
I’ve always loved the contrast between Gawyn and his brother. We are told early on that Galad “will always do the right thing no matter who it hurts,” by his younger, bratty siblings, and over the course of the series he does to great effect. Gawyn, on the other hand, will always do the wrong thing no matter how stupid it is. Even though I am an Elayne fan, I enjoy how often we see both her and Gawyn act without consideration for the consequences of their actions, despite how they view their brother.
I have difficulty seeing Gawyn the same way as everyone else seems to, and always have. Sometimes I think we look past the fact that we have far more information than he does.
We’re talking about a very young man who had a sword placed into his hand as a small boy, and was made to swear an oath to protect the small baby in front of him at any cost–and then had that message reinforced over and over again by his own mother that he was to protect that girl even when that girl didn’t want him to.
He was unequivocally taught that the only value that he could ever bring to society was in protecting that girl. It was his one and only task–the only thing in all of his life that could ever bring him validation in the eyes of his mother and his country.
Then that girl was taken away from him and hidden by a person his mother didn’t trust (Siuan). That woman was brought down by a person his mother DID trust, and whom he grew up with (Elaida). This same woman had also prophecied that Rand would cause great harm to Andor, and then there were all these rumors tha his mother was dead, possibly his sister as well, and Rand was sitting on the Lion’s throne.
That’s all the information he had until he runs into Egwene again…and Egwene doesn’t disabuse him of ANY of it, other than that his sister is alive. She won’t tell him anything, give him any information. She just asks that he trusts her, and does nothing.
It is a LONG time until that young man is given any information, and by that time his entire life as he had known it had been ripped away from him, and he could find no value in his own life by using the values he was raised with.
I have great sympathy for Gawyn and always have. I think very, very few people would have made better decisions that he did given his value system, upbringing, and the information he had when making those decisions.
Gawyn will always to the wrong thing.
So the correct parallel is not Eowyn.
It’s Turin.
@7 LOLOLOL :)
I have to admit I don’t really see it – yes, Eowyn and Gawyn are both characters who struggle against the bonds their society has placed on them, and attempt to escape them but…that’s a pretty significant number of characters in fiction.
I don’t actually hate Gawyn, I see him as a fairly tragic character who keeps making the wrong choices but also can’t see beyond his own tunnel vision (in part due to his background which Anthony brings up) and can’t really let go of his desire to ‘be the hero’. Ironically, Galad almost ends up being the more flexible of the two in the end…but as others have pointed out, attacking Demandred was not the wrong thing to do, necessarily (and I could also see Egwene sacrificing herself regardless, as she had a bit of a hero complex too!)
I do agree Eowyn does abandon a responsibility and perhaps has a too-narrow definition of heroism/leadership but she doesn’t really betray anybody. And I think the narrative, at least, doesn’t fault her for this – she is in the right place, at the right time.
Eowyn is motivated by despair, a mortal sin in Catholic theology. She disguises herself because she wants to die in battle like a warrior, not because she expects to make a difference. As it happens she does make a difference and helps win the battle but that’s luck or fate, not intent. In extenuation she has been spiritually poisoned by Wormtongue and is not completely responsible for her messed up mental state.
Gawyn is totally responsible for his mental state but he has had his entire life kicked out from under him and is operating in a confused and divided world with little sound information. Which of course makes him just like practically everybody else in Randland! He is motivated in part by his desire to be somebody in his own right, or ego if you prefer, but he also has sound reason to believe he can make a difference, that his advantages as a Warder together with the rings might just be enough to let him take Demondred. As it happens they’re not but his hope wasn’t irrational.
To quibble, there are no feelings that are in and of themselves mortal sin, although acting out of despair certainly can be (see: the various ways Denethor and Sauruman react to their own despair). Except for maybe something like hatred/wrath/lust that you are purposefully stoking in your heart. I suppose purposefully dwelling on despair and rejecting hope could be considered as such. But mortal sin must be grave matter, full intent, and full knowledge. Emotions generally don’t qualify for full intent. And there’s a lot of leeway in actual culpability when it comes to, as you say, Wormtongue’s poisonous influence, or other mental issues that we are beginning to understand better.
But, yes, Eowyn definitely did not have all the right reasons for doing what she did, which is also why she has her own revelations at the end.
I think I only give Gawyn partial credit for his “lack of knowledge.” He may have grown up around Elaida, but he should also know what a complete tool she is as well. And, as is made clear from almost the beginning, Elayne is not very fond of Elaida, and Gawyn would be certainly be aware of that opinion. He would have certainly been aware of where his sister’s loyalties lie, particularly after she came back from “disappearing” the first time, even if Elayne played her cards a little too close to her chest then was wise.
Then we have his willful ignorance about his mother’s death (more like “because the plot demanded it”). Seem like useful details such as Rand having taken over Caemlyn after his mother had disappeared and “Gabriel” had declared himself Andor’s first king. Or the word of his girlfriend, who was actually in the room when the news broke and plans were made to attack Caemlyn. That kind of idiocy is kind of hard to overlook.
Not the point of this post, but I must comment nonetheless:
The OP said: Merry uses his dagger from the Barrow-downs to slash the Nazgûl’s knee, distracting him in a crucial moment. Not merely a distraction, here. It is likely Éowyn’s sword would have been unable to pierce the Witch-king’s enchantment if Merry’s knife—with its own powerful enchantment of the Men of Westernesse—had not first pierced the Witch-king’s undead flesh. Not that her bravery would have been any less, just her effectiveness.
Perhaps it is my bias because Egwene is my favorite WoT (apropos of nothing, Eowyn is my favorite character in the LoTR movies) but I disagree with something that Brittany argued. Brittany stated that when Gawyn dies, “the broken Warder bond causes Egwene to be consumed with rage. Her resulting recklessness is part of why she draws too much of the Power, killing not only Mazrim Taim and the Sharans, but also herself.”
I do not find Gawyn’s death as a reason she draws to much power. I believe any rage or recklessness she suffered as a result of Gawyn’s death were muted by her bonding Leilwin Shipless (fka Egeanin). The reason Egwene drew too much of the Power was that Vora’s wand lacked the buffer that many angreal and sa’angreal have. Egwene knew this. IMO, she willingly drew too much power as it was the only way to defeat Taim and all of the Sharans. It was a sacrifice she made because she believed it was necessary to win the Last Battle. A sacrifice she believed was worthy of the archetypal Aes Sedai: the Servant of All.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
If Siuan had suggested the Supergirls take Gawyn and Galad with them, instead of deceiving the brothers about the location of their sister and liege lady. Or if Eggy instead of writing a farewell note had written to Gawyn, ‘I am going to Elayne. Come with me’ . Things would have worked out much differently.
I would like to point out something I have never seen someone else write before — Whatever his other motivations, Gawyn and Egwene are literally the only two people who have anything that resembles a normal romantic relationship in the WOT, except MAYBE Egeanin and Domon. To wit —
Rand’s girls just follow behind like lost puppies (What? No, Aviendha, I didn’t mean YOU, surely). Mat is fated to marry so he sleeps around every chance. Perrin tries to drive Faile away until he admits he loves her, then tries to leave her behind at every opportunity (and let’s not get started on the Saldean Miss Manners primer). Nynaeve and Lan happen almost entirely off-screen at the beginning. SPOILERS for TOWER and MEMORY: [ Thom and Moraine happen so off-screen most people didn’t know it was happening. Galad and Berelain happen at the drop of a hat. Siuan and Gareth? “I hate you!” shouting matches until she professes her deep true feelings. Practically cliche. ] So Gawyn and Egwene literally are the only ones who had proper dates before getting married, unless you count Elayne sneaking around with a half-crazed conqueror ordering hangings.
@13:
I’ve only read tAMoL the one time, but I thought the point of the weave Egwene killed herself with was to heal the cracks in reality that had formed from the excessive use of balefile.
@11:
Gawyn is never shown to have heard specific rumors regarding the timing, and even if he did, we see time and again how rumor confuses things, and Gawyn himself comments on that. As for Egwene…she gives him no real information, other than “it’s not true…you have to trust me. I’ll find proof for you, do nothing until I find proof.”
Which, you know, she never provides.
And why should who his sister’s loyalties lie with matter in the slightest? His mother held Siuan Sanche as an enemy, and that Elayne should be returned immediately. And she has told him in the past that when it comes to protecting Elayne, he will need to trust his own judgement over his headstrong sister. This from both his mother and his queen. So, yeah, Morgase’s opinion should trump Elayne’s in every single case as far as Gawyn is concerned, until such time as Elayne assumes the crown, and maybe after.
Eowyn would be more like Gawyn if, motivated by her love for Aragorn, she assassinated Theoden and elevated Grima Wormtongue in his place. I like the comparison of Gawyn to Turin – they each mean well, but they are blinded by stubbornness and pride, so that they doom those they love.
For me Gawyn looses because he is compared too closely with his brother Galad. For the first three books, Gawyn is the more likeable person, a middle brother a bit of underdog – not meant to rule like Elayne, not as handsome or good with the sword as his brother. His brother is described not as likeable, as too perfect, as too good. Afterwards, when we finally get into mindset of Elayne we realize that our opinion of brothers was shaded by her. That Galad was maybe painfully honest but he is better brother of the two, even though he sides with unlikable Whitecloaks, while Gawyn might have started as perfect prince Charming, he is consumed with doubt, male entitlement and jealousy of Rand, who seemingly became what he really wanted to be -the hero of the story. His entitlement and inability to accept that his role needs to be to support the woman he loves, leads him to wear poisonous blood knives and attempt a futile attack on Demandred which leads to his death and the death of woman he loves the most. As for Demandred, yes he needed to be killed, but as we saw Mat was able to deal with him on the field and to orchestrate his death with no major issues. and Mat who knew both Galad and Gawyn, never bothered to consider Gawyn, he went straight to Galad and then to Lan .
Gawyn causes harm to far too many people for me to like him. I did like him initially; he had a sense of humor and seemed like a fun character.
Yes, he has no reason to trust Siuan, and some of his decisions are understandable. The fact that both Galad and Elayne have such strong convictions and follow paths with seeming certainty probably didn’t help.
That said, while Gawyn is motivated largely by a desire to do good, he fails to carry it out. I have a hard time sympathizing with him much when he fought and killed former friends and teachers in the Tower, abandoned the Younglings, etc. I feel like he never really respects Egwene and her judgment, or keeps his oath to protect Elayne.
I don’t fault him for fighting Demandred, though I fault him for his suicidal choice before that (especially since he does not talk with Egwene, his wife and partner and an important commander for the forces of the Light. That was an utterly selfish and futile choice).
@16 But Morgase’s command/his oath never seems to weigh too heavily on him. It has been a while since I read the later books, but he never does join Elayne, does he? He chooses to stay with Egwene. If he thinks that his judgement really is better than that of Elayne, and is motivated by his oath, then why does he not join Elayne as her First-Sword?
And his sister’s loyalties are important because a. she is his sister and he should respect her, and b. he knows that she loved their mother! She will want justice/revenge for Morgase just as badly as Gawyn.
I liked Gawyn a lot right up until he killed Hammar and became head of the Younglings. After that he bacame a self centered jerk. But that said, his choice for a girlfriend/wife didn’t do him any favors. If there is any character in the saga that more relentlessly seeks their own advancement without giving thought to potential consequences to others, it’s Egwene. Their strengths and weaknesses did not complement one another. They were too similar.
Give Gawyn this much, he’s not quite so homicidal as Turin but I can definitely see a resemblance.
Picture this: Egwene agrees to run away with Gawyn to his country estate and they settle down to a quiet life away from the centers of power. Gawyn becomes, essentially… Tam Al’Thor.
I’ve never concerned myself with the Wheel of Time fandom–or basically any fandom–so hearing that he’s the most universally hated Wheel of Time character is news to me. I don’t recall him being particularly despicable. A bit of an iconoclast, a bit of a revolutionary, but not someone to actively hate like the Shaido Aiel, any of the Forsaken, or even Elaida Sedai.
I can very much see RJ setting up Gawyn’s arc (not including the Demandred fight, dunno if he’d planned that or if that was Brandon) as a commentary on what decisions good people make when they don’t have the same information as the heroes. The world is indeed messy that way and it’s clear from his perspective his mother was probably murdered and his sister kidnapped and Elaida is an authority figure his mother trusted. But RJ had to beat that same old The Sexes Just Can’t/Won’t Communicate horse to keep it going, in part, and we’ve seen that horse beaten in so many other aspects of the series far past plausibility already and we’re already sick of that, so that doesn’t help our goodwill towards Gawyn even if the lack of communication is less on his side than on the Supergirls’.
@7 Dr Thanatos
Lady Mormont speaks harshly. And truly.
Ouch, though. He’s just a kid, though no less of an idiot for that. I can see why he might make the decisions he does (though I still can’t like him any more for it). I spent most of the time he was onscreen, after the first couple of books, in SMH mode (head-desks make my head ache), the only character who disappointed/irritated me more consistently was Faile.
@23: Universally hated among the good(ish) guys. I doubt anyone’s comparing him to, say, Semirhage or Sevanna or Carridin and saying he’s worse. Well, not too many of us at least.
I have to place the blame squarely on both the trakand brothers and the supergirls.
having recently reread the relevant books, the dialogues between them is absolutely cringe-worthy. the broters have absolutely no concern for the supergirls, wanting to store them away someplace safe and having no regards for what the girls wanted. the supergirls never tried to explain anything to the brothers, in fact they were deliberately obtuse and antagonistic from the start.
so, gwyn ends up making all the wrong decisions because he lacked information. because the people who could give him those information, didn’t. because he showed he would not listen anyway, and would only try to interfere in the girls’ plans “to keep them safe”.
the blame goes squarely on both sides.
though egwene takes the extra cake there because once she becomes a dreamwalker she can contact him everywhere in the world, anything she wants, but she refuses to because she’s too much of a prude to risk having sex in her boyfriend’s dream.
the aiel wise ones also share the blame because when egwene was in cahirien they never updated her on world events, “because she was recuperating from her wounds and she was frail and must not be upset”. so egwene herself could not explain to gawin stuff she herself did not know.
seriously. the blame, like for everything else in the saga, can be squarely attributed to poor communication, to good people being too headstrong for communicating, good people trying to manipulate each other because they can’t sit down to talk like adults.
gawyn holds no blame for his death, otoh; he acted right. he used the bloodknives rings first to save egwene after the sharan attack, a condition of great necessity. then he tries to assassinate the enemy channeler who’s killing hundreds of soldiers every minute. a reasonable attempt, made by a guy who certainly had the skill and means to pull it off. that it didn’t work because demandred was even more skilled than he was is something more that gawyn would have no way of knowing. even had he known, considering the relative values of gawyn and demandred for the respective armies, it was still worth a try.
@13 Egwene was all but crippled by the sorrow Gawyn’s death caused. The solution (explained to her by another Aes Sedai) is to focus on another, more powerful emotion. She chooses rage because she can still fight while enraged. And that rage is one of the emotions magically exacerbated by the breaking of the Warder bond. Then, in her rage, she draws too much of the one power so that she can keep fighting. So I see your point, but in a very real sense, Gawyn is responsible for causing Egwene’s rage, resulting recklessness, and death.
Elaida taught Gawyn how to get everything wrong. (Of course she did it by accident, she wouldn’t voluntarily teach a man.)
Gawyn is the epitome of bruised white male ego. He isn’t capable of thinking of anything other than himself and get’s mad at the world for not recognizing how amazing he thinks he is. He got the exact ending he deserved.
Gawyn has activist disease. He feels that he must do something to affect events even when he doesn’t understand what he’s doing. Those entrusted with firearms are taught not to pull the trigger if they can’t identify their target. IN other words, don’t shoot, if you don’t know who you’re aiming at.
Gawyn could have used some of that advice. I find it difficult to excuse his acts based on ignorance. Surely for anyone who acts in ways so profound (life and death) the standard of responsibility must be that if you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t act.
In other words, don’t try to grab the wheel if you don’t know how to drive. A bit anachronistic for WOT, but still apropo.
The only excuse I can conceive for Gawyn is that the Aes Sedai have created a culture of secrecy. For those earlier commenters noting how none of the character communicate, how much of that is derived from this Aes Sedai culture? They keep everythign secret as a habit. Of course, infiltrated by the Black Ajai as they were, that’s probably a survival trait, but still. On the gripping hand, a bit less culture of secrecy and maybe they would have noticed that they were infiltrated.
So in a world of secrecy, nurtured by the Aes Sedai, your choices are to act in ignorance, or not to act, or only act as the Aes Sedai tell you.
None of those are very palatable, and hence there is a small, but poor excuse for Gawyn.
@16: Apropos of nothing, but I love the typo “balefile.” It sounds like a high level spell from a “Cubicles & Corporate” D&D-style parody game.
People hate Gawyn? The poor boy merely fulfills his role. I mean he’s Gawain, the Maiden’s Knight. In any other story he might be the hero, but in the stories he’s in he’s always doomed to fight too hard, to kill with recklessness, to fight with too much fury, and in so doing lead others to poor choices, even though his intentions are pure. It is a weighty doom to be laden with, and a different kind of tragedy than Arthur, or Lancelot (even if they go by the names Rand, and Galad, and are only partial incarnations).
Gawyn to me is one of the most normal people in the story. He’s not supernaturally beautiful of skilled like his brother, nor blessed (or cursed) by fate to be the inheritor of a mantle of power, or the gifts and detriments it comes with like his rival. He’s just a man, even if he is a prince. And in this world where every other person he meets has a destiny, he has no idea where he fits in (and in this he is not unlike Eowyn). Jordan’s stories have a major theme of people growing into themselves, and either finding peace with that, or not. I think Gawyn never did, but that this was his role, and why he was named after the Knight of the round table who, depending on the telling, lead Arthur away to fight Lancelot, and died dueling him, or died fighting Mordred upon his return, but either way was mourned as the best of Knights and warriors. Gawyn is the hero without guidance, and he grows into someone who lacks trust, and must go his own way, in this I think those comparing him to Turin are correct. But I see the similarity to Eowyn as well, though she did not bear the same doom as Gawyn, she was not reliving that tale. If you look at him as he begins the story, and where he ends it, he has been one of the most changed by the time he lives in, it has brutalized and disillusioned him (though he does not become as depraved as some depictions of his namesake) and he is a reflection of the heroes of the day, of what happens to fine and honorable princes in times like these. Especially when they lack the guidance our own heroes get. Galad is good but misguided, Rand is good but confused, Gawyn is good, but lost.
It is only his love and fidelity to Egwene that redeems him from the wrath he feels against those he sees as destroying his world, and in truth he is not wrong. Though they were not directly responsible, it is the coming of the Dragon, and this age that sets all this in motion, though it is not meant to harm him, it does so all the same. He is a tragic figure, and unlike Eowyn he does not make peace with or come to understand his heart before he meets his end.
@23 — About the same with me; about as close to “the fandom” as I’ve gotten is with my contributing on WoT-based posts on this site. Which is basically me commenting on something I found interesting and then trying to remember to check in a couple times over the next few days to see if whatever I said got involved in any conversation. So any “we all hate him!” stuff really goes over my head.
For me personally, I looked at Gawyn as a guy who was in an adversarial role for a good chunk of the season mainly due to, as said before in the comments, the overall insistence in the series that EVERYONE needs to be as secretive as possible at all times and no one needs to know anything about anything unless a secret cabal decides that a few drops of information can be spread.
Dude has a vow to protect his sister and falls for said sister’s new bestie. Those two (and Nynaeve) regularly disappear in ways that people in their position in the Tower simply don’t. No one tells him or Galad anything other than the WoT World version of a shrug and “whatever dude; now can you find someone else to bother…”, leading to him mistrusting Siuan and Galad joining the Children due to what was likely the combination of his own Sedai mistrust, as well as his personality and the actual tenets of the organization being compatible. So, when Elaida, the Aes Sedai he grew up knowing, does her coup, it didn’t exactly necessitate being a rocket scientist to figure out which side he’d be taking. And things snowball from there due to him reading the worst into “Mom is missing and presumed dead and that Dragon dude now seems to be ruling Andor”.
To me, he definitely had his share of “pride going before the fall”, but any villainy on his part was basically just a bit more collateral damage from the series’ love of playing the “poor communication kills” card whenever humanly possible. Which, in its own way, makes him and Egwene a perfect match, since it’s only a couple hundred pages between him siding with Elaida and barely letting Min, Siuan and Leane out of the Tower that Egwene essentially breaks Nyn’s confidence for a fairly long amount of time simply to keep her “sneaking into Dreamland without permission” secret from the Wise Women. Because it’s apparently a lot easier to utterly terrorize a friend than to casually let them know to not let anything slip to the Wise Women pertaining to their secret meetings.
Also recall that an important theme in WoT was historical cycles. People are fated to continually repeat history, or even be reincarnated to perform similar feats. The “Supergirls” are always complained about, but if Mat can quote Old Tongue because of his ancestors, why can’t the girls be reincarnated Aes Sedai who once saved the world? Their deep memories would wriggle to the surface just as it does for anyone else. And there’s more!
Why does Rand have three wives? Because each fall irrevocably in love with him from a single meeting. Some shade of Illeyana (sp) or other women normally associated with Rand’s shade? There was a story about an Aes Sedai (though many didn’t know the Aes Sedi part) who had to prove her love for a man (her Warder) that is nicely inverted by Nynaeve and Lan. But Aemon of Manethren died in terrible battle, and his wife felt it and called down enough Power to smite thousands of dark forces into oblivion and died doing it.
So are they all spun back out to do the same? Or was it just other narrative causalities Jordan planned out? Either way it does fit with the theme of WoT. Your Sanderson mileage may vary, and that’s understandable, but Jordan claimed that he would invent new bindings for Tor to release a single final volume. Sanderson only managed to tell it in 2500+ pages
I enjoyed reading this. Thank you.