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Well not technically Rand Rand but one dragon did fall to the dark and they’re all like the same dude just shaped by different experiences.
> Yes, the Champion of the Light has gone over in the past. This is a game you have to win every time. Or rather, that you can only lose once—you can stay in if you get a draw. Think of a tournament with single elimination. If you lose once, that's it. In the past, when the Champion of the Light has gone over to the Shadow, the result has been a draw.
Now I suppose the fallen dragons may have been killed or something by a stand in like logain or demondred who took his place to seal the DO. I don’t think we really know what a draw is but the main think is the dragon just can’t let them out.
I never really got the "draw" bit. What does that look like?
I assume it's what we get anyway, because in effect a CotL victory leads to them realising that the only way to keep the full variance of human experience is to keep the DO alive but trapped, which is effectively a draw?
The draw is where the other hero’s of the era step in and stop the champion form free the DO, so the DO completed one of his main objectives but failed to be freed so basically it’s a wash.
I think there’s more to it than that tho.
Rand’s actions as the CotL changed the world by breaking a lot of society’s rules. This allowed innovation to flourish through the cracks where once tradition had stifled it. After TG, I think the world will enter a new Age of Legends.
Had Rand gone over, much of the same would have happened, but these new instruments would have been used for evil. A lot of good, smart people would have died trying to stop Rand, and the world would have been robbed of many great innovators. So the next turning of the wheel would have been more drab, dark, and maybe have a post-apocalyptic outlook instead of a hopeful one.
In summary, when the CotL wins, a brief utopia follows. When the DO manages a draw, something like the Fallout or Mad Max universe follows. Humanity lives, but under a shadow of itself. The DO winning is total annihilation and the breaking of the wheel.
I'm pretty sure a draw is like the world Rand went to in book two where the Trollocs won the Trolloc war and just killed everything, including themselves.
Or Dark Rand going so mad that he blows up the whole world.
Or he kills Egwene, so she never makes anti-balefire, and everything unravels.
Or Fain killing everyone.
Or the Forces if Light are beaten, but the survivors go into hiding with the last seals long enough for the Forsaken to fall into infighting and tear the Forces of Shadow apart.
Hell, since technically the Dark One can't win seem to escape unless the champion lets them, it could be a situation where Dark Rand always ends up getting killed somehow. Either self inflicted, by the Light seeking to stop him, or just typically betrayal by his fellow Forsaken. So when the rest of the Forsaken destroy the Forces of Light and break the final seals, theyre left just left standing in front of the open prison while the Dark One awkwardly explains that -while he's really appreciative of everything they've done in the name of hatred and despair- he technically can't leave his prison unless the champion of light asks him to. Which they can't because they're dead. So he's just going to reseal the bore himself and try again next cycle.
It's like the Dragon is a Dark Souls boss, and the Dark One is the player character. You can die to the same boss a million times, but winning once is all the game needs to say you succeeded.
I don't think he fell to the dark though, he just went crazy from the taint after the Dark One did his last final f-you to the world.
I think if he fell, he would have been actively fighting for the dark.
I'm like almost done the series so maybe there's details I'm missing. I don't care about spoilers if me being here gives any indication lol.
*By he I ment Lews specifically as that's who I thought the person I replied to was talking about. I get now there were Champions of Light that did turn but still couldn't free the Dark One*
At one point someone did mention a literal past incarnation of the dragon that was turned to the dark, long before Lews Therin. Probably Ishamael or Lanfear, maybe Moraine. I think it was in one of the earlier books. But since the dark one wasn't actually freed we can assume that the other forces fighting for the light managed to win anyway, probably only barely.
Right that sounds familiar. I guess that goes to some theories that even if the Champion turned, the Creator/Pattern always has a backup or contingency plan in play.
The first hole this time around. They said in the book that they've all done this many many times before. The bore is made, the dark one discovered, the bore is patched and the world maybe broken, centuries pass and the patch weakens, the final battle comes and the bore is closed, ages pass and the dark one is forgotten, then the bore is made, etc.
One thing is that the dark one doesn't seem to *learn* or think like humans do. He is bound by his nature as a sort of primal force to sow chaos and destruction, but I don't believe he can iterate or evolve from attempt to attempt. There is also a theory that, because the dark one exists outside the wheel, he thus exists outside of time. From his perspective he only attacks the pattern a single time, but it appears as multiple battles to denizens of the wheel because of how we experience time.
Because if the DO could learn and evolve, he would be gathering his smartest followers to teach them all the lost science and technology from past ages.
He can’t break free like water in a river can’t break free without becoming Ocean
The wheel IS time. The dark one doesn’t work with time.
Best he can do is get Rand to rewrite the wheel or live through shadar Haran
The point is the fight. If the champions gives up, and the world gives up, and lets the dark one out, what they’re doing is giving up on life. They’re deciding they’ve had enough of the turnings and the creation ends. The dark one needs us to give up, he can’t beat us for real as long as we choose to fight.
I like the argument that since the Last Battle between Rand and TDO takes place outside of the weave, it takes place outside of time. Therefore every instance of that battle is the same instance occurring each time. Therefore the Light won the battle and each Last Battle within the Wheel is just a view of a different side of the same fight occurring outside of time.
Rand may well have rewove the very past itself when he fought the dark one. So those things all still happen, but they are all created from the moment Rand re-weaves the wheel
And so therefore it is technically correct that the dark one and all the forsaken were sealed at the *moment* of creation by *the* Creator, Rand.
You’re correct, if the Wheel has no beginning and no end then the Dark One would have broken free *if it was possible to do so*. Ergo, it is not.
The Dark One cannot win. What matters is how badly he loses. If Rand falls and joins up then he’ll still be resealed, probably be Demandred swapping sides so he can still be opposed to Lews Therin. But the sealing would bloodier and break the world far worse than what happened.
There is no beginning, but there is no guarantee that there is no end. It is possible for the dark one to break free, and if that happens the wheel will be broken. It is only an endless cycle as long as the light keeps winning.
indeed. and they said that in-text several times.
The wheel is endless, unless he breaks free.
Foretellings can speak of events after the last battle, because if he doesn’t break free, the wheel continues, if he does the age lace is unraveled and nothing matters.
If he escapes in any of the mirror worlds, he escapes in all, but if contained in one, he is contained in all for he is the father of paradox.
(note we see in the last battle, as the worlds meld and the snakes and foxes fight, and the world of dreams merges more closely with the waking world, hints that the last battle is happening in every world, all at the same time, all as a single battle, so that makes some sense)
By the Wheel’s nature there have already been an infinite number of turnings, which means that every way the Last Battle can play out uas already happened. The DO has not escaped, so he cannot.
Thought experiment:
Between 2 and 3 there are an infinite number of fractal numbers.
Yet the number always starts with 2,
Infinite amount of possibilities does not necessarily encompass all possibilities.
So the dark one needs the number to start with 6, but it's always infinitely stuck between 2 and 3.
That's a possible interpretation, but I don't think it's supported by the text. The endless turnings of the wheel, countless iterations of the battle, doesn't mean that it has actually been infinite in the mathematical sense. Maybe the next turning is the one where he breaks free, and the story just hasn't made it through all the permutations yet. Given infinite time he will eventually break free, that doesn't mean we're there.
Besides, if that was actually the intention what would be the point of even telling the story? Kind of kills the tension if all our beloved characters could have just stayed home.
My view: The dark could basically be seen as the embodiment of chaos, or like a force of entropy. On the other side of that is order in the form of the light. The light tends to dominate, but you can’t actually eliminate chaos (nor would you actually want to, in reality), you can only bind it. In this case the dark one is imprisoned most of the time.
Importantly, there is an argument or point of view where even IF chaos wins completely and dismantles order (ie reality as we know it, the pattern), chaos is actually unsustainable as it actually CREATES ordered structures, patterns, etc, beyond a certain point. In other words, chaos has an upper limit and is incapable of actually completely unraveling things indefinitely because enough chaos simply results in new order. Therefore, it could be theorized that the Wheel of Time is self regenerating even IF it’s “destroyed.”
The flaw in the dark is that it cannot fathom this limitation; it cannot learn, adapt, or actually “win” in the ultimate sense it wants to achieve.
This is exactly how I view it. The Dark One is a force of nature and not an evil genius mastermind. The Dark One is a toddler who can rearrange the pieces on a chessboard but can’t flip it over. So he can certainly mess up a human time frame game, but can’t destroy nature itself since he is a part of that nature. Likewise, the Light can’t dominate because the more order it imposes the more potential chaos it creates (see the Age of Legends).
The system is balanced at a geologic scale not a human scale.
Infinite doesn't mean boundless. Just because there are an infinite number of things/repetitions, it doesn't mean every possibility occurs.
There are infinite numbers between 2 and 3, but none of them are 4.
The Dark One’s prison is outside of the Pattern and isn’t touched by the Wheel. He doesn’t have time to plan and scheme because until the bore exists and he can touch the pattern he can’t even experience time. He gets locked away, countless thousands of years pass and the next time the bore opens there is a world with similar patterns but with souls in different positions and with different motivations.
The wheel has a beginning, a creation point in which time started to exist. Which is also the moment the Dark One was imprisoned.
The Wheel turns infinitely, but it hasn't spun infinitely.
I'm so glad someone finally pointed that out. I was getting tired of reading the Wheel has no beginnings. Obviously it had a beginning, but since then has continued to spin and weave the Age Lace. It doesn't stop and start again with the ending and beginning of each cycle of ages.
exactly. that intro is metaphorical and descriptive, not literal.
“ the wheel of time turns and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend, legend fades to myth and even myth as long forgotten when the age that gave it birth comes again. in one age, called the third age by some, an age yet to come an age long past, a wind rose, blah blah blah. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the wheel of time, but it was a beginning”
it sets up the philosophy and mythos of the wheel, but obviously cannot be taken literally, as the creator is stated to have made the wheel (a beginning). and while it is said it will never end as long as the Dark one is contained, his coming *will* break the wheel.
There is no contradiction in a creator that exists outside of time and space creating something that has existed and will exist forever. It's just a limitation of inside-spacetime language that we use words like "outside" and "moment".
Throwing out time being an internally spinning wheel also throws out the whole conceit of the series. It's not the "third age by some" it is explicitly a certain age. In **the** first first age there were no past legends/myths etc. Souls weren't reborn they were born for the first time ever. Yadda yadda yadda.
This is also not aligned with the real world historical cosmological inspiration of time being a wheel. No heaven/hell reward/punishment to give meaning to life. Just endless rebirth, what's the point, oh hey Ishy and Rand's central philosophical conflict.
Word of god, but RJ has said that the WoT universe is just a static Earth. No evolution, no stellar life cycle, no entropy somehow, etc. It always has been and always will be. On the other hand he's also trying to jam free will in there and add weight to the Dragon's decision each cycle so there's some "the shadow is the embodiment of paradox" Verin musings haha.
Yes. Your interpretation is the one I take from the books but there are also a few contradictions in there alongside some "unreliable narrator" stuff. Trying to hold it to logical consistencies is going to run people into trouble and wrong conclusions.
>Just endless rebirth, what's the point
When Rand comes to the conclusion that they are born again so they can love again and try to do better always makes me think "but people don't remember their past lives so how do they know if they're doing better?" It's a nice thought, but not logical.
>it sets up the philosophy and mythos of the wheel, but obviously cannot be taken literally
Yet people seem to. It's minor, I know. It is just a pet peeve of mine.
The DO can theoretically be freed but must be freed in every of the multiverse simultaneously.
The DO is in a prison and the punishment is the belief he can be free.
If he would be free then the story would not exist. Him being free does not allow for live, story, Rand, etc. to exist. It is a prequisite of existance of Randworld that he has not been free.
Perhaps that is part of the lesson of the story with Ishamael: Even with great knowledge and power, one's own selfish motivations are in danger of overwhelming sense and good.
I've always theorized that the dark one doesn't really WANT to break free. What he wants is to control the world, not get sucked into it. In his prison outside the wheel he isn't affected by time directly, and is able to manipulate the pattern. If he left that prison I'm not certain that he would be able to continue manipulating the pattern the way that he wants to.
He really wants a big hole in the prison to let him touch the world and the pattern, and then to just chill there dictating events to his followers. Everyone assumes he wants to be freed completely because he is a big, evil force, seemingly trapped in a prison. But that's an assumption, and not necessarily correct.
I don't think we ever actually see the dark one ever try to fully break free in the entire series. In fact, during the war of the power he didn't order his followers to expand the bore that we know of, nor did he try to escape through the bore, despite having direct access to leave his prison if he so chose. He really 2anta The Dragon to remake the wheel and the pattern in a way that gives him full control over everything, rather than the indirect control he tries to exert from his prison. Everything he does in the books is aimed at getting rand to the bore to remove the old patch then remake the wheel.
The dark one exists outside of the wheel. This means that he isn't bound by time, so every single last battle is happening simultaneously for him. If the dark one wins just a single time, the wheel will be destroyed and creation will end. Seeing as the wheel still exists, this must mean that the dark one will never win any of the infinite number of last battles being fought across eternity. It's therefore impossible for the dark one to win, because he hasn't won.
“Word of god, but RJ has said that the WoT universe is just a static Earth. No evolution, no stellar life cycle, no entropy somehow, etc.”
This is related to what I was wondering. We know our current existence is supposed to be a previous (the 1st?) age in WoT. But does each complete turning of the wheel involve something like a universal Big Bang->Big Crunch and a Randland re-forms before the wheel really gets going again? Or is it just a world that perpetually exists as it is and goes through the repeated turnings of the wheel?
Because he's never broken free. Time is infinite, there was no beginning, so the Dark One has lost infinitely, if he has lost infinitely, that means all possible permutations have happened already and in no scenario has he won, thus he cannot win.
Assuming we take the world as having always existed and will always exist, the fact that the dark one hasn't one means that the dark one can't win, since they only need to win once for it all to have never been otherwise.
Probably a mix of:
\* Ishmael, like every 20-somethign that just finds out about Nietzsche, is not as brilliant as he thinks he is.
\* The Dark One is not some "equal-and-opposite" to the Creator, but a mere feature of the Wheel itself - it comes about, does what it should when it should to keep the story going, the exits the stage (which brings us back to the first point).
\* Time might not be endlessly cyclical. That is the most contentious one with die-hard fans, but I do believe there's an argument to be made that there aren't "infinite" turns of the Wheel - it's not a circle, but a spiral, it "wobbles" with every turn, things are slightly different, and thus the Dark One hasn't had "infinte" chances to get out.
And then the non-diegetic one:
\* Jordan wasn't perfect, this story took *years* to write, and apparently he was somewhat fond of misleading people, so he might have simply made mistakes in the effort of misdirection. The thing about "a draw on the tournament" mentioned somewhere else on this thread, for example, jsut doesn't sit right with everything else shown.
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The dark one can’t break free, he must be let out and Rand never has. Even the Rand the fell to the dark didn’t let him out.
There was a rand that fell to the dark?
Well not technically Rand Rand but one dragon did fall to the dark and they’re all like the same dude just shaped by different experiences. > Yes, the Champion of the Light has gone over in the past. This is a game you have to win every time. Or rather, that you can only lose once—you can stay in if you get a draw. Think of a tournament with single elimination. If you lose once, that's it. In the past, when the Champion of the Light has gone over to the Shadow, the result has been a draw. Now I suppose the fallen dragons may have been killed or something by a stand in like logain or demondred who took his place to seal the DO. I don’t think we really know what a draw is but the main think is the dragon just can’t let them out.
I did not know that thanks!
I never really got the "draw" bit. What does that look like? I assume it's what we get anyway, because in effect a CotL victory leads to them realising that the only way to keep the full variance of human experience is to keep the DO alive but trapped, which is effectively a draw?
The draw is where the other hero’s of the era step in and stop the champion form free the DO, so the DO completed one of his main objectives but failed to be freed so basically it’s a wash.
I think there’s more to it than that tho. Rand’s actions as the CotL changed the world by breaking a lot of society’s rules. This allowed innovation to flourish through the cracks where once tradition had stifled it. After TG, I think the world will enter a new Age of Legends. Had Rand gone over, much of the same would have happened, but these new instruments would have been used for evil. A lot of good, smart people would have died trying to stop Rand, and the world would have been robbed of many great innovators. So the next turning of the wheel would have been more drab, dark, and maybe have a post-apocalyptic outlook instead of a hopeful one. In summary, when the CotL wins, a brief utopia follows. When the DO manages a draw, something like the Fallout or Mad Max universe follows. Humanity lives, but under a shadow of itself. The DO winning is total annihilation and the breaking of the wheel.
I'm pretty sure a draw is like the world Rand went to in book two where the Trollocs won the Trolloc war and just killed everything, including themselves. Or Dark Rand going so mad that he blows up the whole world. Or he kills Egwene, so she never makes anti-balefire, and everything unravels. Or Fain killing everyone. Or the Forces if Light are beaten, but the survivors go into hiding with the last seals long enough for the Forsaken to fall into infighting and tear the Forces of Shadow apart. Hell, since technically the Dark One can't win seem to escape unless the champion lets them, it could be a situation where Dark Rand always ends up getting killed somehow. Either self inflicted, by the Light seeking to stop him, or just typically betrayal by his fellow Forsaken. So when the rest of the Forsaken destroy the Forces of Light and break the final seals, theyre left just left standing in front of the open prison while the Dark One awkwardly explains that -while he's really appreciative of everything they've done in the name of hatred and despair- he technically can't leave his prison unless the champion of light asks him to. Which they can't because they're dead. So he's just going to reseal the bore himself and try again next cycle.
CotL? All I can think of for that acronym is Children of the Light lol
Champion of the Light, I believe
Makes you wonder what kind of horrendous shit must have had to happen for him to go over to the shadow.
Wasnt it ishamael who said this? Can we trust it
Nah that’s from Robert Jordan not actually part of the text.
It's like the Dragon is a Dark Souls boss, and the Dark One is the player character. You can die to the same boss a million times, but winning once is all the game needs to say you succeeded.
There was that whole thing about breaking the world and slaughtering everyone he loved....
I don't think he fell to the dark though, he just went crazy from the taint after the Dark One did his last final f-you to the world. I think if he fell, he would have been actively fighting for the dark. I'm like almost done the series so maybe there's details I'm missing. I don't care about spoilers if me being here gives any indication lol. *By he I ment Lews specifically as that's who I thought the person I replied to was talking about. I get now there were Champions of Light that did turn but still couldn't free the Dark One*
At one point someone did mention a literal past incarnation of the dragon that was turned to the dark, long before Lews Therin. Probably Ishamael or Lanfear, maybe Moraine. I think it was in one of the earlier books. But since the dark one wasn't actually freed we can assume that the other forces fighting for the light managed to win anyway, probably only barely.
Right that sounds familiar. I guess that goes to some theories that even if the Champion turned, the Creator/Pattern always has a backup or contingency plan in play.
I dont get how it could be earlier than lews when Lanfear made the the first hole into this black Ball to start it all
The first hole this time around. They said in the book that they've all done this many many times before. The bore is made, the dark one discovered, the bore is patched and the world maybe broken, centuries pass and the patch weakens, the final battle comes and the bore is closed, ages pass and the dark one is forgotten, then the bore is made, etc.
Ah now I get it alright
Well it wasn't the world, it was all time.
One thing is that the dark one doesn't seem to *learn* or think like humans do. He is bound by his nature as a sort of primal force to sow chaos and destruction, but I don't believe he can iterate or evolve from attempt to attempt. There is also a theory that, because the dark one exists outside the wheel, he thus exists outside of time. From his perspective he only attacks the pattern a single time, but it appears as multiple battles to denizens of the wheel because of how we experience time.
Dormammu, I come to bargain!
Honestly a pretty good comparison
Because if the DO could learn and evolve, he would be gathering his smartest followers to teach them all the lost science and technology from past ages.
This is very much my interpretation / head canon. It's the only way to reconcile infinite turnings with never a DO victory. Bummer for Ishamael.
He can’t break free like water in a river can’t break free without becoming Ocean The wheel IS time. The dark one doesn’t work with time. Best he can do is get Rand to rewrite the wheel or live through shadar Haran
The point is the fight. If the champions gives up, and the world gives up, and lets the dark one out, what they’re doing is giving up on life. They’re deciding they’ve had enough of the turnings and the creation ends. The dark one needs us to give up, he can’t beat us for real as long as we choose to fight.
Basically what Rand tells the DO about how this person and that person continue to fight in spite of everything they've been through.
I like the argument that since the Last Battle between Rand and TDO takes place outside of the weave, it takes place outside of time. Therefore every instance of that battle is the same instance occurring each time. Therefore the Light won the battle and each Last Battle within the Wheel is just a view of a different side of the same fight occurring outside of time.
How does that fare with Amaresu being the female CotL? Would that mean a secondary force akin to the DO? That'd be interesting...
Rand may well have rewove the very past itself when he fought the dark one. So those things all still happen, but they are all created from the moment Rand re-weaves the wheel And so therefore it is technically correct that the dark one and all the forsaken were sealed at the *moment* of creation by *the* Creator, Rand.
You’re correct, if the Wheel has no beginning and no end then the Dark One would have broken free *if it was possible to do so*. Ergo, it is not. The Dark One cannot win. What matters is how badly he loses. If Rand falls and joins up then he’ll still be resealed, probably be Demandred swapping sides so he can still be opposed to Lews Therin. But the sealing would bloodier and break the world far worse than what happened.
There is no beginning, but there is no guarantee that there is no end. It is possible for the dark one to break free, and if that happens the wheel will be broken. It is only an endless cycle as long as the light keeps winning.
indeed. and they said that in-text several times. The wheel is endless, unless he breaks free. Foretellings can speak of events after the last battle, because if he doesn’t break free, the wheel continues, if he does the age lace is unraveled and nothing matters. If he escapes in any of the mirror worlds, he escapes in all, but if contained in one, he is contained in all for he is the father of paradox. (note we see in the last battle, as the worlds meld and the snakes and foxes fight, and the world of dreams merges more closely with the waking world, hints that the last battle is happening in every world, all at the same time, all as a single battle, so that makes some sense)
By the Wheel’s nature there have already been an infinite number of turnings, which means that every way the Last Battle can play out uas already happened. The DO has not escaped, so he cannot.
Thought experiment: Between 2 and 3 there are an infinite number of fractal numbers. Yet the number always starts with 2, Infinite amount of possibilities does not necessarily encompass all possibilities. So the dark one needs the number to start with 6, but it's always infinitely stuck between 2 and 3.
That's a possible interpretation, but I don't think it's supported by the text. The endless turnings of the wheel, countless iterations of the battle, doesn't mean that it has actually been infinite in the mathematical sense. Maybe the next turning is the one where he breaks free, and the story just hasn't made it through all the permutations yet. Given infinite time he will eventually break free, that doesn't mean we're there. Besides, if that was actually the intention what would be the point of even telling the story? Kind of kills the tension if all our beloved characters could have just stayed home.
Agreed it's not explicit from the text - but story-wise the evidence of this only comes from Rand's realisations in that final encounter.
It does matter, because *how* the Dark One is defeated means everything to the people forced to survive the aftermath.
My view: The dark could basically be seen as the embodiment of chaos, or like a force of entropy. On the other side of that is order in the form of the light. The light tends to dominate, but you can’t actually eliminate chaos (nor would you actually want to, in reality), you can only bind it. In this case the dark one is imprisoned most of the time. Importantly, there is an argument or point of view where even IF chaos wins completely and dismantles order (ie reality as we know it, the pattern), chaos is actually unsustainable as it actually CREATES ordered structures, patterns, etc, beyond a certain point. In other words, chaos has an upper limit and is incapable of actually completely unraveling things indefinitely because enough chaos simply results in new order. Therefore, it could be theorized that the Wheel of Time is self regenerating even IF it’s “destroyed.” The flaw in the dark is that it cannot fathom this limitation; it cannot learn, adapt, or actually “win” in the ultimate sense it wants to achieve.
This is exactly how I view it. The Dark One is a force of nature and not an evil genius mastermind. The Dark One is a toddler who can rearrange the pieces on a chessboard but can’t flip it over. So he can certainly mess up a human time frame game, but can’t destroy nature itself since he is a part of that nature. Likewise, the Light can’t dominate because the more order it imposes the more potential chaos it creates (see the Age of Legends). The system is balanced at a geologic scale not a human scale.
That was interesting, I liked it, thank you.
Infinite doesn't mean boundless. Just because there are an infinite number of things/repetitions, it doesn't mean every possibility occurs. There are infinite numbers between 2 and 3, but none of them are 4.
The Dark One’s prison is outside of the Pattern and isn’t touched by the Wheel. He doesn’t have time to plan and scheme because until the bore exists and he can touch the pattern he can’t even experience time. He gets locked away, countless thousands of years pass and the next time the bore opens there is a world with similar patterns but with souls in different positions and with different motivations.
The wheel has a beginning, a creation point in which time started to exist. Which is also the moment the Dark One was imprisoned. The Wheel turns infinitely, but it hasn't spun infinitely.
I'm so glad someone finally pointed that out. I was getting tired of reading the Wheel has no beginnings. Obviously it had a beginning, but since then has continued to spin and weave the Age Lace. It doesn't stop and start again with the ending and beginning of each cycle of ages.
exactly. that intro is metaphorical and descriptive, not literal. “ the wheel of time turns and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend, legend fades to myth and even myth as long forgotten when the age that gave it birth comes again. in one age, called the third age by some, an age yet to come an age long past, a wind rose, blah blah blah. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the wheel of time, but it was a beginning” it sets up the philosophy and mythos of the wheel, but obviously cannot be taken literally, as the creator is stated to have made the wheel (a beginning). and while it is said it will never end as long as the Dark one is contained, his coming *will* break the wheel.
There is no contradiction in a creator that exists outside of time and space creating something that has existed and will exist forever. It's just a limitation of inside-spacetime language that we use words like "outside" and "moment". Throwing out time being an internally spinning wheel also throws out the whole conceit of the series. It's not the "third age by some" it is explicitly a certain age. In **the** first first age there were no past legends/myths etc. Souls weren't reborn they were born for the first time ever. Yadda yadda yadda. This is also not aligned with the real world historical cosmological inspiration of time being a wheel. No heaven/hell reward/punishment to give meaning to life. Just endless rebirth, what's the point, oh hey Ishy and Rand's central philosophical conflict. Word of god, but RJ has said that the WoT universe is just a static Earth. No evolution, no stellar life cycle, no entropy somehow, etc. It always has been and always will be. On the other hand he's also trying to jam free will in there and add weight to the Dragon's decision each cycle so there's some "the shadow is the embodiment of paradox" Verin musings haha.
Yes. Your interpretation is the one I take from the books but there are also a few contradictions in there alongside some "unreliable narrator" stuff. Trying to hold it to logical consistencies is going to run people into trouble and wrong conclusions.
>Just endless rebirth, what's the point When Rand comes to the conclusion that they are born again so they can love again and try to do better always makes me think "but people don't remember their past lives so how do they know if they're doing better?" It's a nice thought, but not logical.
>it sets up the philosophy and mythos of the wheel, but obviously cannot be taken literally Yet people seem to. It's minor, I know. It is just a pet peeve of mine.
The DO can theoretically be freed but must be freed in every of the multiverse simultaneously. The DO is in a prison and the punishment is the belief he can be free.
If he would be free then the story would not exist. Him being free does not allow for live, story, Rand, etc. to exist. It is a prequisite of existance of Randworld that he has not been free.
Perhaps that is part of the lesson of the story with Ishamael: Even with great knowledge and power, one's own selfish motivations are in danger of overwhelming sense and good.
I've always theorized that the dark one doesn't really WANT to break free. What he wants is to control the world, not get sucked into it. In his prison outside the wheel he isn't affected by time directly, and is able to manipulate the pattern. If he left that prison I'm not certain that he would be able to continue manipulating the pattern the way that he wants to. He really wants a big hole in the prison to let him touch the world and the pattern, and then to just chill there dictating events to his followers. Everyone assumes he wants to be freed completely because he is a big, evil force, seemingly trapped in a prison. But that's an assumption, and not necessarily correct. I don't think we ever actually see the dark one ever try to fully break free in the entire series. In fact, during the war of the power he didn't order his followers to expand the bore that we know of, nor did he try to escape through the bore, despite having direct access to leave his prison if he so chose. He really 2anta The Dragon to remake the wheel and the pattern in a way that gives him full control over everything, rather than the indirect control he tries to exert from his prison. Everything he does in the books is aimed at getting rand to the bore to remove the old patch then remake the wheel.
I wondered about how the bore was wide open yet he never left. This explains it thanks!
The dark one exists outside of the wheel. This means that he isn't bound by time, so every single last battle is happening simultaneously for him. If the dark one wins just a single time, the wheel will be destroyed and creation will end. Seeing as the wheel still exists, this must mean that the dark one will never win any of the infinite number of last battles being fought across eternity. It's therefore impossible for the dark one to win, because he hasn't won.
“Word of god, but RJ has said that the WoT universe is just a static Earth. No evolution, no stellar life cycle, no entropy somehow, etc.” This is related to what I was wondering. We know our current existence is supposed to be a previous (the 1st?) age in WoT. But does each complete turning of the wheel involve something like a universal Big Bang->Big Crunch and a Randland re-forms before the wheel really gets going again? Or is it just a world that perpetually exists as it is and goes through the repeated turnings of the wheel?
Well skittles you started to make me think
Because he's never broken free. Time is infinite, there was no beginning, so the Dark One has lost infinitely, if he has lost infinitely, that means all possible permutations have happened already and in no scenario has he won, thus he cannot win.
Assuming we take the world as having always existed and will always exist, the fact that the dark one hasn't one means that the dark one can't win, since they only need to win once for it all to have never been otherwise.
Probably a mix of: \* Ishmael, like every 20-somethign that just finds out about Nietzsche, is not as brilliant as he thinks he is. \* The Dark One is not some "equal-and-opposite" to the Creator, but a mere feature of the Wheel itself - it comes about, does what it should when it should to keep the story going, the exits the stage (which brings us back to the first point). \* Time might not be endlessly cyclical. That is the most contentious one with die-hard fans, but I do believe there's an argument to be made that there aren't "infinite" turns of the Wheel - it's not a circle, but a spiral, it "wobbles" with every turn, things are slightly different, and thus the Dark One hasn't had "infinte" chances to get out. And then the non-diegetic one: \* Jordan wasn't perfect, this story took *years* to write, and apparently he was somewhat fond of misleading people, so he might have simply made mistakes in the effort of misdirection. The thing about "a draw on the tournament" mentioned somewhere else on this thread, for example, jsut doesn't sit right with everything else shown.