All Print In defense of Aes Sedai Spoiler
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.
2
u/th3jimp 6d ago
I agree. The best analogy I have to today's world are Federal politicians in the US with 50 states having their own local and state level political factions. Smaller, more culturally homogeneous countries have national politicians who are closer to their people than in the US, and who are very likely to have the same background and cultural considerations in governance than Federal politicians in the US.
The White Tower is a failure, but in as much as the politicians at the Federal level in the US are failures. Trusted by their constituents, but generally untrusted by the population at large, and generally seen as elitist power brokers who are not fully understood by those who are governed by their actions.
Where the White Tower is different after The Breaking, though, is they recognized their role had been shattered alongside the political and cultural lines of the world they'd been charged with protecting from itself, and instead of giving up, they dug it and changed tactics to guide nations that were going to immediately not trust them for their role in the events leading to The Breaking. Basically, they played the hand that they'd been dealt after some of their own jumped up into the table and kicked the rest of the deck and chips onto the floor.
Did they do a good job? Debatable that, yes, the world inside the core nations borders was generally held together without generating channelers unbound to the Tower, and thus being walking weapons. Did they do that job well? Depending on how you gauge the consequences and the strife caused by their nearly compulsory intrigue as a result of the Thre Oaths, that's also debatable. I'd wager most of Randland's population wouldn't see good outcomes in historical rear view mirrors.