By LindaThis post is part of a series on the Costume of The Wheel of Time world. A previous post was on embroidered
Tairen Mazes and included a panel from one of Mat’s sleeves.
Now I’ve turned to embroidering samples from Rand’s coats in materials and colours consistent with what would have been available in Jordan’s world.
Moiraine had several coats made for Rand in Shienar including this one:
After a moment, he chose the black coat, to suit his mood. Silver herons stood on the high collar, and silver rapids ran down his sleeves, water battered to froth against jagged rocks.
- The Great Hunt, On the Scent
The heron (shown right, click to enlarge) is in thick silver thread sewn down (couched) onto black silk fabric with fine thread. Such thread consists of thin strips of silver wrapped around a core of silk (these days usually all synthetic). It is not drawn in and out of the fabric because it would damage the fabric and strip the silver from the thread. There would have been one heron on each side of the standing collar.
I sewed two designs for the sleeve panel. In the first (shown left, click to enlarge) the water was two strands of silver couched onto the black silk with fine silver thread. The water contours would continue around the bottom of the sleeve, encircling the cuff. Two strands of thick silver thread outlined the rocks and then one strand of silver thread in seeding stitch gave them texture.
Rand's coats are usually embroidered in metallic rather than in coloured silk threads. Such metalwork embroidery was common on the coats of nobility in Europe and even more so in China. Gold was the usual metal used, and in fact Rand has many more coats embroidered with gold than with silver.
In the second sleeve panel I emphasised the water frothing over the rocks. A detail is shown right; the fall of water is actually longer, but this is the limit of my scanner.
The curling pattern of the churned water is a traditional Chinese goldwork pattern, appropriate since the heron and the waterfall (and the dragon!) are motifs in Oriental embroidery. At the base of the sleeve the water pattern would continue around the cuff. The water was sewn in two strands of fine silver thread couched down with a strand of grey thread.
The rocks were couched with two strands of thick silver twist thread and filled in with two strand of thin silver thread.
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The ritual in Egwene’s raising ceremony in the Tower differed from that described in Salidar, in part because the Hall had already voted to raise her, and in part due to the Seanchan attack the night before, and the impending purging of Darkfriends and reunification with the rebels.
In Salidar, Egwene was draped in the stole by the oldest two Sitters and then the three sponsors kissed the new Amyrlin’s ring before the Sitters did so in order of decreasing Age. In The Gathering Storm only Saerin draped the stole on Egwene, and Egwene’s sponsors were Sitters, and queued in rank with the other Sitters. She wasn’t announced to the Tower either and gave no blessings, but then the night before had been rough. Nor did Egwene announce her Keeper publicly.
While The Gathering Storm is mostly consistent with previous books, I hit a few snags while updating this essay.
The Tower layout was one: the bottom half of the Tower was distinctly described in The World of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time as reserved for communal functions and the Ajahs as housed in the upper levels in pie-shaped wedges, by which I understood that each storey has all seven Ajahs present – which seems fairer and more in tune with the original spirit of unification when the Tower was designed –and not adjacent whole floors for one Ajah as described in The Gathering Storm. The White are on the 3rd and the Yellow were on the 6th (and therefore also in the bottom half of the Tower, which is supposed to be a communal area) and the Brown on the 21st and 22nd levels in The Gathering Storm. When the Browns on the 21st level are swapped with the novices in the east wing, it is described as half the Browns moving (The Gathering Storm, When Iron Melts) so they are only on the 21st and 22nd floors, and not in one seventh of the Tower vertically.
Also the Tower levels are linked by ramps in previous books far more often than stairs. No ramps were mentioned in The Gathering Storm except within the Hall.
The youngest Sitter opens each formal session by warning the Hall and any onlookers that any intruder will be bound to face the law as shown in The Path of Daggers, The Law and Crossroads of Twilight Surprises; she does not ward the Hall against eavesdropping.
It is the second youngest Sitter who wards the proceedings of closed sessions against eavesdropping thus Sealing the session to the Hall, not the Flame (The Path of Daggers, The Law and Knife of Dreams Call to a Sitting). Sealed to the Flame is reserved in A Crown of Swords, A Morning of Victory and A Crown of Swords, Sealed to the Flame for private written or verbal communications to and from the Amyrlin by and to one or more Aes Sedai. In The Gathering Storm, A Message in Haste, the rebel Hall session to discuss Elaida gaining Travelling which had calls to be Sealed to the Flame did not even have the Amyrlin present, and nor did she know of this meeting until long afterwards.
Another problem is the statement that Elaida disbanded the Blue in order to reach eleven Sitters for the raising of an Amyrlin:
Elaida was raised with the votes of eleven Sitters; she could hardly have revised this law before she was elected Amyrlin.
The minimum number for the greater consensus of the Hall was stated in the A Crown of Swords glossary as eleven:
without any qualification that these were new rules. Elaida disbanded the Blue because (apart from hatred and revenge) she would otherwise not have at least one representative from all Ajahs present necessary for any vote requiring the greater consensus.
The rebels didn’t worry about that. Egwene thought it was more important that the Ajahs all reunite than it was to achieve an official and ‘legal’ greater consensus, and revenge, by disbanding one of the Ajahs.
Thanks to the Tower Hall, Egwene still hasn't been raised Amyrlin with the greater consensus because no Red Sitters took part in the vote. (She was already elected Amyrlin by the Blues). Will this be a loophole in the future?