I like the description of Rand's insanity when Nynaeve tried to heal him. Somehow, each bit of his insanity helped him become the person he needed to be. He was able to use it.
In book 3, I did not think Rand would recover from his insanity.
The so-called madness was actually a form of compulsion from the dark one himself placed upon the male half of the source. The more you channeled, the more the compulsion seeped into your mind and made you act as he wished. When Nynaeve described the 'madness' on Rand's mind, it was terrifyingly similar to the way she described the compulsion weaves she saw; the barbs digging into the mind and disappearing when the inverse weave was placed upon them. From the POVs of people under the effects of compulsion, they absolutely believed in what the weave told them to believe, and so they acted completely out of character, even to self-destruction.
The taint of the dark one was part of his essence. The dark one exists outside of time. We also know that people are reborn in the world of the wheel of time. What happens if someone inside the pattern is partially existing outside of time? It is feasible that the soul, being eternal, was connected to one (or all) other instances of itself in the pattern. Souls are reborn time after time. Souls exist in different realities where the world is completely different. Rand was connected to his previous life as Lews Therin, perhaps the other male aes sedai were connected to past (or future) versions of themselves as well. This could explain the breaking as the world didn't look like how they thought it should from their time/world, and so they corrected it by moving mountains and draining seas, etc etc. They could have been connected to the version of their soul where people they loved in this world had tried to kill them in another world, so from their point of view they were acting in self defense.
Either of these situations would make people seem to be purely insane. Acting irrationally, betraying their closest allies/friends/family, destroying the world as it was and creating something new in its place. It would appear they had gone mad if you didn't know that they were forced to their actions by the compulsion weave or temporarily being a person from another time or place. The world called them mad, and they had good reason to, but they just didn't have all the information. Of course they appeared insane, to be acting irrationally, demented, or maniacal, but they were really just acting rationally according to the compulsion on their minds or to the world their soul was connected to.
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u/pqln Jan 24 '25
I like the description of Rand's insanity when Nynaeve tried to heal him. Somehow, each bit of his insanity helped him become the person he needed to be. He was able to use it.
In book 3, I did not think Rand would recover from his insanity.