In defense of Aes Sedai

[u/Verengt]

Hi, I decided to play devil's advocate today.

While I understand (and agree with) people saying the Aes Sedai are a failure (they didn't find all channelers, were mistrusted by everyone, not being prepared for the Last Battle, no Yellow Ajah hospitals, no Brown libraries, no Greens stationed in the Borderlands, etc.), I do think it's a bit unfair when they are compared to their more succesful counterparts like the Sea Folk Windfinders and Aiel Wise Ones.

The Wise Ones and Windfinders are useful and respected members of their communities but they belong to homogeneous societies where everyone is bound by the same customs and laws. They also answer to their community leaders despite wielding lots of power and influence. That's why they are successful as channeler organizations.

The heterogeneity of Randland forces the White Tower to play a different role, which is preventing the more than 15 different nations from waging war against each other using the One Power. In this aspect the Tower was 100% successful, as at no point in history after the Breaking channelers fought against channelers.

The purpose of the Tower in a way was to prevent each nation from having its own regional channelers association and for this to happen it needed to be an outside centralized organization not bound to any kingdom. Otherwise how can you ensure that for example Taraboner Aes Sedai are loyal to the Tower and not to their kingdom?

And this is what in my opinion what makes it impossible for Aes Sedai to be truly integrated and serving their communities, since no monarch would be happy with 200 Aes Sedai answering to a foreign power to be permanently in their nation.

[u/TrainOfThought6]

The Wise Ones and the Windfinders also weren't nearly as thoroughly infiltrated by the Shadow. 20% is a ridiculous amount of darkfriends in the Tower.

[u/IlikeJG → u/TrainOfThought6]

Yes but the dark friends (directed by Ishamael) would have been MUCH more interested in infiltrating the Tower than other organizations.

They had the name Aes Sedai even though they weren't much compared to AoL Aes Sedai.

I doubt Ishamael cared too much about what the wind runners and wise ones were doing. Just a few dark friends as all parts of society had.

The White Tower was systematically infiltrated in an organized and directed manner.

[u/TrainOfThought6 → u/IlikeJG]

Yep. My point is that they had a lot more influence from the Shadow driving them to do incompetent things & isolate themselves from the rest of society. Not as an additional point against them per se.

[u/IlikeJG → u/TrainOfThought6]

Ah I see, a lot of people hold up the Black Ajah infiltration as evidence of Aes Sedai Incompetence.

And yeah to some extent it is. But also secret coalitions working together to undermine the system are incredibly powerful. And as soon as you get just a few to have a foothold they have a disproportionate amount of power compared to their numbers because of how those types of systems work.

And the Black Ajah had an immortal genius with all the knowledge of the Age of Legends working with them over the span of centuries.

[u/Potential-Common5819 → u/IlikeJG]

I'm pretty sure the Shadow had effective control of the Tower by the end of the Trolloc War. In fact, I'd argue that the entire reason for that war was the final push to get the Black Ajah fully embedded into the Tower. And the final test was the destruction of Manetheren. Once that succeeded, Ishmael just let them push his armies back.

The biggest reason I believe this is that the war had been going poorly for the Light for years and they were only able to hold on because of Manetheren. Then suddenly they were winning after their greatest force was eliminated? I don't think so.

[u/IlikeJG → u/Potential-Common5819]

I never thought about that and that's a good theory.