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WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Wheel of Time Episodes 1-5, available now on Prime Video, and for the books by Robert Jordan.
As Episode 5 of Prime Video’s new hit series The Wheel of Time comes to a close, Moiraine’s efforts to bring her discovered ta’veren under the watchful eye of the White Tower are coming to fruition. Most of them have arrived in Tar Valon more or less safe, though Mat is ailing. Perrin and his golden eyes have helped secure escape from the Whitecloaks for him and Egwene, who has used her wits and feeble grasp of the One Power to help secure him while making a powerful enemy in the process.
Despite this, Moiraine’s machinations appear to be progressing according to the plan she has laid out. Moiraine has been warned that her secrets may soon catch up with her as the Amyrlin herself, the most powerful woman in the world, approaches carrying the burdens of leadership with a fierce eye towards meting out justice for those who have put the Tower and its reputation at risk. Alanna of the Green Ajah warns Moiraine that she has made an enemy of the Amyrlin, but this is just another one of her secrets.
Siuan Sanche, the current Amyrlin, has been a friend to Moiraine since their very first days in the Tower. It is said that women in the Tower bond most closely with those whom they share the most in common or those who come from completely different backgrounds, and both were true in the case of these two novices. Moiraine was born to a royal house in her native Cairhien, where she was taught how to ride a horse, the glyphs and speech of the Old Tongue and the subtleties of decorum and politics that are the breath and water of Aes Sedai culture and traditions. Siuan was a fishmonger with a vulgar vocabulary who had never heard of the things that Moiraine had mastered.
They were both apt pupils, though Siuan’s appetite for knowledge was voracious, and in short order, she was teaching classes in the Old Tongue to novices of the Tower. Once a woman is folded into its ranks they spend on average a decade as a novice, then another decade as Accepted, before becoming worthy of the shawl and raised into full sisterhood of the Aes Sedai. Moiraine and Siuan spent three years in each tier, matching or exceeding previously set records and their potential raw strength in the One Power had not been seen since the Breaking of the World. They were both prodigies who came to rely on one another and shared the most intimate of bonds, right up until the moment fate changed their lives forever.
The Aiel War, a bloody two-year dispute between the Aiel of the Three-Fold Land and an alliance of Westlander countries, culminated in one last devastating melee called the Battle of the Shining Walls. Situated just outside of Tar Valon’s mythic boundaries, every Aes Sedai in the Tower was dispatched to help Heal the surging number of wounded soldiers and civilians that had been injured during the conflict. The reek of smoke leaked into the Tower, along with the bitter cold, where only novices and Accepted remained except for the Amyrlin Seat herself, Tamra Ospenya, and her Keeper of the Chronicles, Gitara Moroso. A rotating complement of Accepted was tasked with attending the two Aes Sedai to carry out menial tasks, run errands and serve as messengers within the Tower.
As Tamra stared out the window and made a request for tea and Gitara, who had the Talent of Foretelling, made little progress on a letter she was composing, Moiraine and Siuan sat silently and obediently, waiting on something to happen that required their attention. Suddenly, Gitara sprung from her chair, rigid like a corpse in the throes of rigor, and shouted her final words, a proclamation that the Dragon Reborn had come to the world, born on the slopes of Dragonmount just on the other side of the window where Tamra had been staring off into the distance. Immediately, the shaken Amyrlin swore the two girls to secrecy and silence before tasking them with collecting the names of every woman who had given birth within the specified time frame, a duty that took months to complete.
In the interim, Tamra assigned senior trusted sisters with finding the Dragon Reborn before agents of the Shadow could. The Black Ajah, a secret cabal of sisters sworn to the Dark One who lived among the Aes Sedai, tortured Tamra and discovered that the Dragon had been reborn but killed her before understanding that he was an infant. In the days, months and years that followed, thousands of men and children who could channel or were deemed lucky or rose to prominence were murdered, as well as the Aes Sedai who were tasked with finding the Dragon Reborn. A decade later, the only two left were Moiraine and Siuan, women who were never suspected because they were not even Aes Sedai at the time of Tamra’s murder and overlooked as potential pawns that she might have used to advance her search.
Shortly after Tamra’s death, both Siuan and Moiraine were raised to the shawl. Siuan was tapped as the right hand to the Tower’s resident spy mistress and privy to the Aes Sedai’s most critical informants and intelligence operations while Moiraine was dispatched into the world ostensibly to collect information. A secret known only to the two of them, she truly was searching for the Dragon Reborn using the tools that Siuan could funnel to her, first as a principal among the Towers eyes-and-ears and later as the Amyrlin Seat.
The Wheel of Time show has already deviated from its source material in significant ways and Moiraine and Siuan’s relationship may look and behave differently than it did in the books, but their partnership was a cornerstone of how the Two Rivers ta’veren were identified. As Episode 6 approaches and the Amyrlin levies her serene fury on those that have displeased her, it will be fascinating to see if their time among the pages remains intact, or if the wheel has something else in store for them in the weeks to come.
The Wheel of Time is now streaming on Prime Video, with new episodes releasing on Fridays.
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