"Wheel of Time" Wednesday: The Curious Case of Elaida do Avriny a'Roihan
On both page and screen, the Red Sister is captivating and challenging precisely because she doesn't fit within a rigid good/evil paradigm.
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Few characters in Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time are more hated than Elaida do Avriny a'Roihan. Introduced in The Eye of the World–in which she meets Rand while serving as the right-hand woman and Aes Sedai adviser of Queen Morgase of Andor–she goes on to have a pronounced impact on the events of the Third Age. Most notably, she leads the coup against Siuan Sanche, deposing her from the position of Amyrlin Seat and taking that over for herself. In the end she gets a comeuppance when she is ultimately captured by the Seanchan and taken away to be one of their damane. For a woman of Elaida’s temperament and unassailable sense of self-importance, this is arguably a fate worse than death.
Despite the fact that she is one of the main villains of The Wheel of Time, what’s particularly striking about Elaida is the extent to which she isn’t evil, at least not in the same way as, say, the Forsaken, or the members of the Black Ajah such as Liandrin. Don’t get me wrong. She’s terrible, and she’s capable of doing awful things, even aside from deposing Siuan. However, she does all of these things out of a belief not just in her own rightness and importance–though she does possess both of those in spades–but also out of a sincere desire to see the Light triumph at the Last Battle.
However, the fact that she is Red Ajah means that all of her actions and beliefs are undergirded by an unshakeable and inflexible belief that men, particularly men that can channel, cannot be trusted and must therefore be controlled. This of course extends to the Dragon Reborn, and her belief that he must be controlled by the White Tower rather than allowed to go on his way is what motivates, at least in part, her toppling of Siuan. We as readers might not be asked to align with Elaida and her actions, but we are nevertheless enjoined to understand her motivations. For her, and for those who join with her, Siuan’s actions in letting Rand run around without supervision is profoundly dangerous and irresistible, perhaps catastrophically so.
This is exactly what makes Elaida so compelling, so fascinating, and so frustrating as a villain. Her actions are directly opposed to the characters that we as readers are led to identify with and care about, but we also can’t deny that they have a logic to them, at least from within Elaida’s limited perspective. Because she lacks the knowledge that the reader possesses, she can only make decisions based upon what she, in her self-righteousness, believes to be the right thing to do. You don’t have to like her in order to understand her.
I’ll also be the first to admit that I’m still deeply uncomfortable by the fact that she ends up as a damane. I’ve written here before about how much I loathe the Seanchan and their entrenched slavery of women who can channel, and I still don’t think that even Elaida deserved this fate. You’d better believe that I will die on this hill.
All of this brings us to the Amazon adaptation of Jordan’s series. From the very moment that I heard that the great Shohreh Aghdashloo was going to sink her teeth into this role and not let go. That indeed proved to be the case. With her husky voice and her imposing, statuesque beauty, she is the perfect person to bring this compelling yet deeply flawed and infuriating character to life. Like so many other members of the cast, she simply is Elaida. I cannot imagine anyone else fitting so neatly and potently into this role.
The adaptation Elaida, much like her book counterpart, is driven by a fervent and unassailable self-righteousness. From the moment that she arrives in Tar Valon accompanying Queen Morgase, it’s clear that this version of the character looks down on everyone currently in power in the island city, and I think it’s fair to say that no one does chilling contempt quite like Shohreh Aghdashloo. It’s there in the way that she looks at Siuan, sitting on the chair that she believes to be hers, and it’s there, too, in the way that she tries to cozy up to her fellow Reds. Though they look down on her, it’s immediately clear–from the cold glint in her eyes–that she’s not going to rest until she’s put the other members of her Ajah in their place.
At the same time, this version of Elaida also mistakenly believes that it is the external trappings of her office that give her the authority to do as she wishes. Throughout the third season she managed to needle Siuan almost constantly about the latter’s lowborn origins and her obvious love for Moiraine and, upon assuming the Seat herself, she makes sure that her own regalia is sumptuous and overwrought. Elaida might think that this gives her the aura of authority and respect that Siuan supposedly lacked, but to those of us in the audience there’s something desperate and even a little tawdry about it. Siuan simply exudes the kind of authority that Elaida, no matter how gaudy her headdress might be, can never attain. For her part, Elaida seems to realize this during Siuan’s climactic speech, and it may well be that she’ll find out just how infirm her power really is in the White Tower and beyond.
As I wrote at the time, what’s so striking about Elaida’s violent takeover of the White Tower is how neatly it matches Liandrin’s attack that began the season. Both women seem to think that it’s within their right to flout all of the laws of the Tower, and in both cases their actions lead to significant bloodshed and terror. I strongly suspect that Elaida will discover that the violent origins of her own time at the top of the Aes Sedai hierarchy will ensure that her own downfall will be similarly spectacular and destructive. Violence begins violence, in The Wheel of Time as in the real world.
Aghdashloo’s undeniable screen charisma also adds a further layer to our engagement with this vexing character. Yes, we can certainly loathe her for what she’s done to our beloved Siuan, and we can equally yearn for the day that she finally gets her comeuppance. At the same time, we also can’t help but be drawn into her charismatic orbit, and I give The Wheel of Time a great deal of credit for so skillfully braiding together these emotional registers. As always in the best of fantasy, we find ourselves loving to hate, and hating to love, our baddies in all of their complicated morality.
Elaida, whether on the page or on the screen, tantalizes and challenges us precisely because she doesn’t fit within our narrow understandings of what comprises heroism and villainy. If we were to really see the world from her point of view, she might even become a tragic hero in her own right, someone who is brought down by her own hubris and unwillingness to see the world as it really is. Robert Jordan excelled at giving us characters who challenge our preconceptions about the world and the way that it works. Elaida do Avriny a'Roihan, I sure do wish I could quit you.