Anyone who knows the books at all knows that Rand al’Thor hears the voice of Lews Therin in his head—sometimes cackling like a madman, other times more helpfully. After wading through all of Robert Jordan’s notes, and listening to those dictated comments, do you have a new sympathy for Rand?
Robert Jordan dropped a bomb at the end of Knife of Dreams , with what Semirhage was saying about or to Rand, talking about his level of stability. I remember as a reader, going through as a kid—I think Robert Jordan blindsided me with Lews Therin, because I’d been told that “Rand will go mad, Rand will go mad,” but I didn’t accept that voice as Rand going mad. I accepted that as another person, inside of Rand’s head, and not a delusion or anything like that. Across the course of the books, Robert Jordan brought together this thing that he’d promised: “No, look, this guy is just going crazy. Yes, he’s seeing part of his past life, but he’s going insane. It’s the immense pressure that’s doing this.” In looking through the notes, and seeing what Rand has to go through, it’s hard not to sympathize with the poor guy.
Robert Jordan once said in an interview, when someone tried to get him to boil down the series to its core—he first said, you can’t boil down this series. I wrote it as long as I did because that’s how long I needed to tell the story, and so boiling it down doesn’t work. But he finally did say this: At its essence, this series is about what it’s like to be told that you need to save the world, and that it’s probably going to cost your life. Even all of the other characters, you could say that that is a theme for them, too. Egwene has had to give up the life that she’d assumed that she was going to live, and to adopt this other life in the name of the greater good. And that’s happening to everybody. Kings and queens are being cast down, and people who thought that their lives were just going to be normal and stable, and that’s all they really wanted, are being forced to take upon themselves these mantles of responsibility. And Rand is at the very heart of that. Rand is the center, the example for all of them of what they’re having to go through, and it’s the worst for him.
True—but I also meant for you as the writer finishing someone else’s series: As you’re writing, you surely have Robert Jordan’s voice rattling around in your head.
(Laughs.) It does kind of feel like that at times, particularly after I’ve spent some time reading Robert Jordan’s writing and then jumping into the book. It is like I have this voice saying, “Well, do it this way,” or “This is how I would approach it.” Juggling Brandon and Robert Jordan and trying to make sure that this isn’t a Brandon book—but it’s also not going to be a Robert Jordan book—and making sure that it’s a Wheel of Time book. That’s been a delicate balance.
I commented on the Dragonmount forums when I found this interview that it seemed that Brandon had accidentally confirmed construct theory in this interview, and that I suspected someone on Team Jordan had said something to him about it, resulting in the vaguer answers that followed on the book tour. Luckers emailed Brandon and got this response :
James,
Feel free to post this response from me.
“I stand by everything I said in those interviews; I did not make any miss-steps. However, there is one big misinterpretation. Terez says that I was asked by Team Jordan to be more secretive. That’s not the case. There was one time when Harriet asked me to be more secretive, but that was in regards to spoilers about Towers of Midnight when I was working on it, and she felt (rightly) that I was hinting about too many things that would come in the book.
I have not settled, and do not intend to settle, this debate except in regard to the things placed specifically in the books. The Geekdad interview response is primarily talking about my own reactions as a reader the first time I read specific scenes, long before I saw what was in the notes. At that point, as a fan, my view of the books shifted.
Those views may have shifted again while looking at the notes. I have not said, and will continue not to say, what was in them on this point. There are clues in the text. That is always the way it has been, and I think that is sufficient for this conversation. However, I can explicitly say there was no “Team Jordan order of silence” on this particular point. In fact, there have been few (or none) of those except in regards to spoiling surprises for the books not yet in print. I prefer to keep it that way, which is why I generally ask interviewers to run my interviews past Team Jordan for clarification, and so that they know what I’m saying and can steer me if I do happen to stray into areas best left quiet.”
Best,
Brandon
Of course, the bolded bits (emphasis mine) are still telling, and there must have been some reason why he decided to be less open about his feelings after this point.
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