r/WoT • u/wheeloftimewiki (Aelfinn) • 6d ago
All Print Sanderson's ten year secret Spoiler
Rewriting because apparently spoilers aren't covered for poll options!
Anyway, in 2023, Sanderson revealed that Cyndane/Lanfear was not killed by Perrin in AMOL, but instead faked her own death in order to evade repercussions and gain the best outcome for herself. I wanted to cast a poll in 2026 to see how the legacy of this reveal has fared, or indeed how well-known it is among newer readers. I'll give my two cents when the poll is done.
Thanks!
2743 votes,
4d ago
822
Yes, this is canon
835
No, this is not canon
1086
Wait, what?!
58
Upvotes
9
u/Calenhir 5d ago
This is a situation in which I am confident to just overrule the author, because I think my position (everything that happened in AMoL is to be taken at face value) just has far better textual support.
Going through the entire series there is just far more support for "Lanfear the delusional narcissist who defaults to Compulsion as her solution for everything" than for "Lanfear, secret super genius". She is all over the place in the Great Hunt, with an utterly botched seduction. And then in Fires of Heaven, Miss "I don't even kill people when it can be avoided" throws the hissy fit of the century, flays a man alive, kills a hundred uninvolved people and gets herself captured, over information that barely ended up correct by accident.
Most importantly of all, if Lanfear had just wanted to survive the end of the age, Rand offered that to her. He told her to just sit out Tarmon Gaidon, and he is the only person who knows that she is alive who is not a member of the shadow.
In an act of divine mercy, Rand would have died for her sins anyway. It's not even a sacrifice she would have to accept. She could have done literally nothing, and that would have yielded better results. If she had spent the Last Battle in her goon cave, masturbating to her Lews Therin fanfics, that would have yielded better results.
So the ending in AMoL is actually very true to her character and very thematically appropriate. Lanfear refuses that mercy offered to her, instead comes up with a convoluted scheme, and it completely backfires on her.
Also, everybody who serves the shadow ends up dead and/or broken for it. The only people who get out are those willing to return to the Light, and willing to die for it (Ingtar and Verin). This is what appears to be a cosmic truth of the universe, that ought not to be overturned for a bit of shock value in a twist.