Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

DragonCon Report - Matt Hatch (Paraphrased)

I was wondering, can you talk about how your lead character would have not one but three true loves, and how does your wife feel about that?

Harriet McDougal Rigney

rand, elayne, min, aviendha, rj on life, wot influences, harriet, the harem,

TGS Signing Report - Meg Lurvey (Paraphrased)

Regarding the Mistborn books, do you think you will ever write a prequel trilogy?

Brandon is hesitant to do so. He has considered it though. He [Brandon] "loves epic fantasy" and the "hero's journey, like Rand's journey at the beginning of the Wheel of Time". When writing the Mistborn books, he knew Robert Jordan had done epic fantasy the best it could be done, so thought to himself, 'what hasn’t been done?' The answer he came to was 'what if the hero [e.g.] Rand/Harry Potter/Frodo lost?' The idea was a good one, but that would make a "downer of a book".

Meg Lurvey

Brandon Sanderson

mistborn, brandon on writing,

4th Age Podcast Interview with Team Jordan (Verbatim)

Okay, so...my pet peeve is the famous library ter'angreal that was uncovered in Ebou Dar. Why is it that….is all that non-fictional knowledge ever going to come into play, and what's wrong with Elayne that she's not using it to find out some things that they probably desperately need to know? Or I guess she's using it as a doorstop.

Well, 1) we haven't seen Elayne in a whole book; we don't really know what she's doing, and 2) she has problems channeling because of this pregnancy deal, and 3) everything's going to be in the Old Tongue and she's a little busy to sit down and translate documents.

VIRGINIA

That's true.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

But you don't understand the significance of that ter'angreal: Jim foreshadowed the creation of the Kindle. [laughter]

VIRGINIA

Oh, no!

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Mmhmm, he did. And actually, Elayne—right now as we speak—is in her bed reading fiction on that.

JENNIFER LIANG

I bet they're dirty romance novels.

SPENCER POWELL

I was going to peg her for an urban fantasy fan.

MARK

No, no, no, no, no. She loves the Harlequins. Case closed.

VIRGINIA

Oh, the Harlequins. Yeah.

JENNIFER LIANG

Yes, totally.

MARK

Either her or Aviendha, but one of those two is definitely into the Harlequin super-romance.

VIRGINIA

How can she get all excited about the cover art of Fabio when she's got Rand? [laughter]

ANDREW GELOS

Have you seen the cover of Lord of Chaos?

VIRGINIA

Yeah, I'm telling you! No comparison.

JENNIFER LIANG

Yeah, that one was nicknamed at our house 'Passion of the Aes Sedai'. I actually had to take the dust jacket off of that one when I would take it to school, when I was in high school, because I was like, "I do not want people to think I'm reading some kind of filthy romance novel in class."

VIRGINIA

Well, I'm thinking more of, what was it? A Crown of Swords? Where he's got the, uh…all he needs is some baby oil and a little less clothes and he looks like he's posing…

JENNIFER LIANG

We love fist-pumping, body-building Rand.

MARK

Don't make me get out the water bottle to squirt you ladies. Jeez… [laughter]

JENNIFER LIANG

I have a big cardboard cut-out of fist-pumping, baby-oil Rand in my garage right now. I use it as a [decoration] at conventions. [Amusingly, it was stolen at JordanCon 2011, a few months after this interview.]

VIRGINIA

Oh, cool.

SPENCER POWELL

Is that cool, or is that creepy?

JENNIFER LIANG

Well, it's a little insane I think.

elayne, ter'angreal, cover art, alan, maria, lol,

Reddit: If you had a make-a-wish and for some reason chose Brandon Sanderson to answer one question, what would your question be? (Verbatim)

Did the body swap take place before Rand stumbled out of the cave, or during the period of time in which Rand and Moridin were in the tent? That first paragraph of the epilogue is quite ambiguous.

This is one of those that I don't actually know. My instincts say that it happened after, as I believe the idea from RJ was "the soul that wants to live finds the body that lives, and the soul that wants to die finds the body that dies." But I can't honestly remember if that's his explanation for why (he wrote most of the epilogue, so this event was done and written before he died) or if it's Team Jordan's explanation after the fact. But it's the one I embraced.

Footnote—Terez

I'm fairly certain that this did not come directly from RJ based on conversations I have had with Maria about this at the "Unanswered Questions" panels at JordanCon 2017 and 2018. Just to be certain, I will ask her at the same panel at JordanCon 2019; she loves this panel and we're going to do it every year.

MatrimRivers (16 October 2014)

Sorry, very late to this party as I just finished AMOL today. So many feels. Just on this topic, as Min, Elayne, Aviendha and Alivia are the only ones who know that Rand still lives, wouldn't Nynaeve etc return to the tent after Rands funeral, see Moridin is gone and be like "oh fuck, the Nae'blis is on the loose. We better hunt him down". Or should we just sort of assume that the important characters are brought in on the secret by those who know?

Brandon Sanderson (16 October 2014)

I am amused imagining Nynaeve's reaction, both to what you just described and to her discovery that Rand is alive. But I DO think she's got an inkling of what's happening, and will bully it out of someone before too long.

a memory of light, unanswered questions, bodyswap, rand, moridin, nynaeve, who wrote what?,