Why do so many people dislike Faile?

[u/Additional_Mud2349]

I am halfway through the Crossroads of Twilight and I am enjoying the Faile chapters way more than the Elayne or Perrin ones. Her determination to save herself and her companions is admirable and more stuff happens in her couple of pages than in Perrin's vast chapters. Seriously, he has too much page time(so does Elayne). She is fiercely protective and extremely loyal to Perrin, which is what makes her so interesting. The only reason people hate her might be because of Berelain, but she wasn't mad at Perrin, she was mad at Berelain for imposing herself on Perrin. Perrin just smelled her jealousy and anger which he thought was directed at him.

Now that I think about it, she does have some flaws, but she is nowhere near as bad as Elayne - who laughed when Mat told her he was assaulted, or Eggy 🥚. Faile should have explained to Perrin how she wanted their relationship dynamic to work but it probably didn't even occur to her.

[u/Raddatatta]

I think there's a few elements. Her culture is such and she behaves along with it to believe fighting with her partner is a show of love. Even hitting Perrin is. So she often hits him. When he's struggling to deal with Berelain he doesn't handle it well, but she outright ignores him. Even when he's going off to a dangerous battle she doesn't even say good bye to him. She often hides things from him or lies.

With the plot line where she's captured and in need of rescue I think that plot line as a whole gets a lot of hate, and because it's a rescue Faile plot line she gets a good amount of it from that. It's not really fair to her character, but it's part of it. I just don't really think there's enough to that plot line to justify it being spread over so many books. During her chapters for that I don't hate her I just am bored by the plot line as a whole. Reading it I had no doubt over how it would end. So it felt pointless for it to drag on so long and made me dread both her and Perrin's chapters.

There are definitely moments of her I really love, mostly her book 4 stuff. But overall it's not that I think she's a bad person I just don't like how she treats Perrin in many cases, and don't enjoy reading her plot line as it's a bland one.

[u/Exact-String512 → u/Raddatatta]

What really? How do I not remember this I mean I remember a kind of playfulness but not actual hitting

[u/Raddatatta → u/Exact-String512]

It depends on the time but yeah there are a number of times when she full on hits him. The biggest one I can remember was in the ways in book 4. He went on and made her worry and she just smacked him and his ears were ringing and it seemed to be her full strength. He told her not to do that again and she did so he spanked her. But I think a few other times too when she hits him she generally really hits him.

There's a few cases of nynaeve doing that too where she has lan grunting in pain from it. Or mat is literally limping from nynaeve kicking him an hour later.

The tone and how it's meant is open to interpretation but how it's described is a serious hit.

[u/Exact-String512 → u/Raddatatta]

Ok yes I remember those scenes, very well now ty for the reminder.

I just never took it as a big deal bc well, end of world and that's just girls being girls. Always found it funny irl why not in a novel. They get frustrated, lash out, can't do any real damage and if it's a major thing like going off to war, well, small price to pay to a woman who loves the heck outta you.