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The Wheel of Time has some issues with its worldbuilding
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- Опубликовано: 12 авг 2024
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fictional language development is the biggest pain in the ass for any author. except for grandpa Tolkien.
Not really, only if you are trying to create languages. You can have multiple languages without any pain. It is only when an author is trying to create words/phrases in those languages that there is pain
@@glenbe4026 languages are formed from and interpreted as words and phrases. without words and phrases, you have no language. you only have a name without any meaning. its like writing a character that's the most powerful person on the planet and never elaborating on what that means.
@@commander31able60 NO ONE reads a fiction book, to find out about a language. Jordan's assignment of a single language (without even dialects) to his entire world is one that is a massive flaw in his world-building. And his OLD TONGUE which he does include words and phrases highlights and adds to that flaw massively since it has no linguistic connection to the common tongue at all. So in Jordan's world only two languages exist, and one of those sprang magically into being and magically spread across the entire world to replace the previous language that was spoken over the entire world. Meanwhile, Tad Williams has multiple cultures with their own languages in The DragonBone Chair, though we actually get less words & phrase in those languages than we get "Old Tongue" yet it feels much more real in that aspect of world building.
@@commander31able60 You can 'create' a language for a fictional world without ever specifying a single thing about how that language works.
You can do this for the same reasons you can write a story about the real world set in Japan or China while writing the whole thing in English.
Defining that different regions have different languages is a different thing from defining what any of those languages are.
Of course, if you're building a world where a long period of history is covered, it helps to know at least the basics of how languages form, derive from one another, influence one another, and change over time, but you can deal with all of this without at any point trying to create any actual elements of any of the languages involved.
Creating actual languages, even highly simplified ones with large gaps in vocabulary and the like is a much more difficult task.
And while describing 300 languages and their historical relations and derivations is not that bad of a task...
Once you start trying to turn any of them into an actual language, you immediately end up asking why not any of the other languages you've implied existed? Especially if there are interdependencies between such languages.
But that starts to become a truly overwhelming task at that point.
Creating an artificial language is hard, creating dozens to hundreds of them is on a whole other level...
@@KuraIthys that's an authorial issue I've encountered - you're one person creating a world in 1 year like one that was created by billions of people over 10,000 years. that's not a whole other level, that's downright impossible.
That bit about the Irish had to learn english because we had to trade with them is not entirely true, We were actually forced to learn English because England wanted us to distance our selves from our culture and become more easily managed.
Like what happened to those native canadians
26 + 6 = 1
And African Americans
@@GwestytearsDistancing oneself from a culture of constant war, looting, grape, murder and so much more savagery doesn’t seem so bad.
@@goldengamer1379Same with them as well.
Ah, yes, The series so long you can start re-reading when you are done.
That is literally how all re reads work
@@colin.2572 From what i can remember: Meant more in the sense of how you have forgotten everything by the last book, but sure, i could have worded it better.
@@textbookidiocy3896 ah yes
@@textbookidiocy3896 no, no, you worded it just fine, the implication was clear. It's not your fault that some people can only grasp the most literal interpretation of a sentence, and then blame you for their misunderstanding of it, as if you're the idiot. Too nice to them, you are.
Like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Once you’re done it’s already time to start over at the beginning.
Its hard to have different religions when their is literal proof of God and the devil constantly throws monsters at you...
Daniel Broome there is no proof whatsoever
@@isaiahburns5902 the "devil" LITERALLY created a hell army lol
@@isaiahburns5902 he's talking about In-universe, not about real life dumbass
19th Century Gentleman what?
Not really, as different cultures will still interpret that God and Devil differently, some might revere the Devil.
The rivers aren't "branching", those are tributaries flowing together in a combined watershed towards the sea. That's exactly how rivers work in real life.
Was going to say the same thing, but I'm a day late...
But several of them start in the same place.
To me it looks like the rivers starting near each other are flowing down opposite sides of a mountain range. Besides, smaller rivers can be pretty close to each other.
@@ninelivesstealerOk, in the video it showed them starting in the same place.
But I did my own investigation and got this: i.gyazo.com/7dfb4cc42b751a98b88ca42fcf4403cb.jpg
I don't know how much canon it is but the other map shown at the beginning of the video came out like this: i.gyazo.com/6fd76947a3b2754d973d163881c8af35.jpg
the major flaw with this argument is that X is most common, doesn't mean that one area can't have more Y than X.
Shh, nobody tell him how much resources it would require to send an army of 300000+ over distance greater than pacific ocean in medieval technology or his head would explode.
They could have gotten the help of the Sea Folk to change the weather, but yeah
Maybe the numbers includes all auxillaries and logistical personnel, not just combatants, like a migratory expedition. As for that million plus army at the end of the book, my opinion is that it literally is the Final Battle between the Light and Dark, not just a war between nations, so everyone and his grandma is going to the frontline.
@Brandon Neifert not me, I just there reading about it, much more exciting and much less dangerous.
*cough WoT is renaissance cough*
The Wheel of Time actually has renaissance era technology. I haven't read A Memory of Light yet but I believe *SPOILER* they're using gunpowder by the end of it.
Re: The Old Tongue vs The New Tongue:
My impression when reading the books was that The New Tongue is a hypothetical language spoken by the book's characters but translated into English by the author. As such the linguistic connections to The Old Tongue might still be there, just not visible or even explored at all in the books.
Robert Jordan actually confirmed this.
Like when I play dnd I like to use Latin words for like ‘high elven’ or whatever.
I know this is unrelated to basically everything... but there was a five hour ad on this video. It's skipable, but sweet jesus.
Five hours? That’s longer than a movie!
What was it for?
get premium, its worth every penny of the 15.99
I got RUclips red to turn off screen while videos play. But I love how I can instantly drop into any video.
@@szethvala12 lol u used premium
Arad Doman and Tarabon didn't "pull back"; the whole stretch of land between them is in dispute and they are constantly waging wars over it. Andor is mismanaged because of feudal disputes between squabbling lordlings who gather like hyenas anytime a new sovereign dies, and the land around Emond's Field, while at one point claimed by Andor, hasn't seen a tax-man in ages. It's hardly a stretch to believe that at one point a previous King or Queen brokered a deal and just refused to grant a pair of bitter rivals dominion over the field, but the fact that Elayne wasn't even aware that she wasn't collecting taxes from that region should tell you just how much of a toll the disputes have taken over the crown in Caemlyn.
Most of the land you highlighted is populated by townsfolk who simply formed their own governments and didn't bother to swear fealty to a crown, although depending on the region you can easily see passages in TBWB that talk about "country lords" of exactly the sort you described. Most of Altara doesn't pay taxes to Ebou Dar, and you could very carve up the actual borders around Murandy like a pot roast if you tried to account for all the warring nobles. The people are not "just vanishing"; there are just too many of them to write down, and none of them are relevant to the story. What you tend to see in the Wheel of Time are sovereigns who are incapable of governing more than the surrounding stretch of land, and this is something we are reminded of constantly in the books, whether due to Aes Sedai machinations or to remind us of what has been lost in the wake of a broken, pre-industrial world.
This deserves some applause.
@@PandemoniumVice Applause
Plus the large number of rivers and mountains across the continent would mean solid governing would be difficult to hold if a town suddenly decided to break away, or just not pay taxes.
"didn't bother to swear fealty to a crown" Except what would really happen in real life is the fact that king (or really, any duke or someone important bordering them) would see them as free lunch without standing military and attacked, if not to conquer, then to pillage. Raiding was a thing in middle ages, and exactly the reason why people agreed to pay taxes to a king. Please, area that 'hasn't seen a tax-man in ages' would be ripe for attack of the first warlord capable of drawing a band of soldiers to him...
Shamelessly piggy-backing on your comment. Most of N. Italy was part of the Holy Roman Empire. Given the difficulty in traversing, this region was ruled indirectly. This lead to more local government similar to the Council in Two Rivers region.
Robert Jordan was asked why the new tongue is not like the old tongue and wouldnt it have similiar roots? He said yes, but he is translating it for you.
Then why s "toh" the same sound as "toe"? Min makes that specific pun in Winter's Heart, when Aviendha talks about having "toh" to Rand. She replies "I don't know what toes have to do with anything, or feet either...." Translation my butt.
@@GunleaverDon't know what your first language is, but as a Swede I can tell you that translators will often change the words used (and thus the meaning of the sentence) when puns are used to conserve the joke. So yeah, the translation explanation still works.
Tolkien did the same thing with Westron and other Mannish languages in Middle-Earth.
@@Gunleaver was your disbelief suspended?
That was literally my first thought when the video brought it up. Obviously they're not actually speaking English.
Seanchan = continent
Sean-chan = a weeaboo
Lol
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Lol
16:22 Those are tributaries, not splits in the rivers. Rivers flow from inland to sea, so they're meeting in a confluence, not splitting
Came to say the same... tho one of them seems to split in the bottom left center.
I’m not sure I understand your point about the rivers. Are you saying that the rivers flow inland from the sea? That would be a much bigger problem than the rivers “splitting too much”, because rivers flow *toward* the sea, not away from it. What the map is showing are rivers with lots of tributaries, not rivers that split. There’s only one delta highlighted on the map, in Tear.
I was also going to say something similar. There were a few cases where the red lines to highlight the rivers in the video make it look like their splitting, but that is just were the sources of two rivers were linked (across mountain ranges as well) when they shouldn't have been.
Look at the lake in the middle left of the map at 0:50. Water from that lake flows out to the sea at four different place. In reality that doesn't happen, water always takes the easiest route so 3 of those rivers would disappear leaving just one.
But is that the official map, because when the video is talking about rivers at 16:26 they use a different map where that is not the case.
@@mart8675309 You're completely incorrect. There are many real-world examples of lakes that drain in multiple directions. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bifurcation_lake
@@musicmage4114 The article you linked describe bifurcation lakes as "unusual" and there are no examples there with three drainage basins intersecting in a lake let alone four. So while I was technically wrong that it never happens the spirit of my comment is correct.
@Tim Bourne Not sure if it is official and I see now that the maps are very different throughout the video some have fewer splits, maybe none. Perhaps its a problem in the art rather than the world.
Brazilian using a translator: Have you seen the hydrography of the Amazon? How can you say that rivers have too many ramifications?
I really appreciate the video, and the love the author displays for the world in spite of his obvious gripes with it. However there are a lot of flaws with his gripes.
First off, using Medieval Europe's estimation of population per capita is definitely the wrong move as there's a much greater dietary richness available to the people of WoT (Potatoes, tomatoes, and other foods indigenous to the americas are explicitly mentioned. The potatoes are especially important as they pack a lot of nutritive punch and allow for greater population density). Also the technology level of Wheel of Time is stated by the author to be about Renaissance level minus gunpowder (which isn't really relevant to logistics so we can ignore that component). So important agricultural innovations of the era as well as the more globalized economy seem to be much more relevant to WoT's world. Using admittedly (really) rough figures of population from the year 1700, Europe had approximately 316 million people. Using Europe here is probably a better approximation than a USA sized nation because there are large empty and relatively unpopulated areas in WoT. This would render Hawking's army to be approximately 0.15 percent of the population, which seems much more reasonable.
The unclaimed territory is covered by the story. Civilization is in a state of constant decline from a variety of factors, including being spurred on by the efforts of Ishamael and the Dark One throughout the history of WoT.
The language complaint is largely fair, lmao. The OP intentionally ignored it which I find fair just b/c there's already an intensive and unmatched level of worldbuilding in WoT.
The conquering of Seanchan didn't happen in one generation which is covered. Also there's an intensive level of military organization in most of Robert Jordan's armies (probably rooted in his own military experience). In addition the discovery of the a'dam is probably the technological improvement that allowed the conquering of Seanchan (which I believe is referenced).
Also the Aes Sedai can't use the One Power as a weapon unless they are explicitly in danger from getting harmed. This forces them to only fight during defensive engagements which the story covers pretty extreme examples of Aes Sedai not getting involved in battles until they are in direct physical danger. If all they can do is defend Tar Valon, this makes a lot of sense as to why during the war Tar Valon was at a stalemate with Hawking, him unable to break the island, and them unable to break the siege.
As far as religion goes, the author says that knowledge of the divine is explicit which doesn't allow for the formation of different religions. TBH there isn't a lot of text backing that claim up, but it's word of god about word of god, so it seems fair.
Again you made a lot of cogent points, but some had some very serious flaws, and I just wanted to bring them to your attention. Thanks for making the video! I devour all the WoT content I can get!
00:30 Is the "land of madmen" supposed to be australia. It looks like australia.
Yes, it was a joke by RJ.
i have never heard of wheel of time, I don't know why I'm watching this, or why I'm so interested
One of the best fantasy series ever. Recomend it.
It’s awesome but I can’t in good conscience recommend a series of 14 books at almost 1000 pages each.
It's a series of a good 6-8 books that somehow got stretched into 14. The author got too enamored with his writing to actually get around to finishing it, and kept expanding the storyline and/or wasting time treading water (narratively speaking) until he died. Then a big-name replacement author was called in to finish the story and had to write 3 books to do so.
Read the books... you will not regret it. The 14 books read as 1 book and 1 giant story. The last book even reads as 2 chapters.
Most probably one of the BEST fantasy books, besides Lord of the Rings (in my opinion)
The decline of nations isn't a problem with the worldbuilding - the decline of nations IS the worldbuilding. In part this is due to the close alignment with LOTR - the presence of external evil creates a kind of entropy, where each subsequent sense of nationhood is less grand than those preceding, both in moral and physical strength. Not only this, but semi-corporeal Ishamael and his darkfriends have been directly causing this as well, having direct input into the rise and fall of governments into the present time of the story. The Dark One WANTS a world weakened and fragmented so that the Dragon will struggle to bring any kind of unified force against him.
At least, this has always been my take. Mostly I agree on other aspects. Great vid :)
Well, not just the Dark One. Tar Valon also wants weak sovereigns, as has been noted many times.
Problem here is that in LotR, everything has been explained pretty well. Gondor was weakened not because "Sauron did stuff", but rather due to wars or epidemics which were followed by loss of territory. Gondor goes through civil war, their capital is destroyed. Gondor experiences terrible winter (or was it epidemic, I forgot), their army is stretched too thin and they stop guarding Mordor. Due to this, Nazghúl can enter Mordor, they besiege Minas Ithil and take it, which results in slow depopulation of Ithilien. And after another epidemic, Calenardhon is left depopulated and is later granted to Rohirrim. So at the beginning of 4th millenium of 3rd age, we know why Gondor is weak, but even then, it´s still able to field tens of thousands of soldiers, much more than Rohan.
Meanwhile, explanation in WoT is "lul, Dark One did it". And that´s just lazy.
I don´t think Tolkien was a historian, just a linguist.
Besides, you don´t need to study history to make up a logical background for your world. If you fail (or, even worse, are too lazy) to do it, your world becomes objectively worse.
@@DaDunge "High energy physics" and "eastern philosophy" don´t explain why central part of the map is empty. No countries, nothing.
You can´t just build part of your fantasy universe and be done with it. Like it or not, you need to provide explanations for such things in fantasy universes, especially when you literally state that these areas have been governed by countries previously.
And if you fail to do so, then that´s just bad worldbuilding.
@@DaDunge Yeah, and that doesn´t make sense. So there are lands which are sparsely populated and nobody goes for them because they would be hard to hold? How? Andor and border states could just spread further and further without any cost because holding land when there is nobody around you to take it costs pretty much nothing.
And "pattern acts on the world" explanation is one of those "magic did it" cheap explanations that are just an example of bad writing.
Something completely out of the line, when you gave the example about how old Englisch sounded at 10:00 I could completely understand it, but not in English, in German which is my first language. I always knew English an German were related, but to the extend that I can understand this very old English as German, is very fucking fascinating to me.
What I should add is that I hear :"Was ist dein Name?" "Mein Name ist Kevin und deiner?" which means "What is your name?" "My name is Kevin, what's your's?"
Closest modern language to English today (other than Scots, pidgins, etc) is West Frisian. West Frisian is the more modern form of Old Frisian which is derived from Old Saxon. Old Saxon is where the commonalities with German would come from. Old English would have even more in common with Plattdeutsch than with Hochdeutsch.
Arne Janett the Saxons - who later formed the Anglo Sanxon people in early medieval England were from Germania. So yes, old English (Anglo Saxon english) stems from German :)
English is a Germanic language. Anglish is a somewhat modern "idea" to return it to pure Germanic words again. Where you get things like "farseer" for "fernseher" (television).
Showplayer, Schauspieler, Actor, and the like.
Also, Dutch sounds more German than High German, if we take low German as the true German standard.
Even though I don't know A lick of German I did get the gist of the conversation. It did sound like someone speaking for the first time and trying to do a German accent at the same time.
the pronunciations of 'aes sedai' and 'artur hawkwing' are killing me
thank you, glad its not just me T.T
He could have easily checked the glossary for the pronunciation, but he didn't even bother.
I didn't hear anything wrong with it. It's been more than a decade since I read the books but Artur isn't exactly a complicated name. Not is Aes Sedai.
This chair is high, said I.
@@disht2 Its pronounced as Eyes
Alternate title: "James Tullos has some issues with understanding things that have explanations in canon."
I've never read the books, explain them please
@@RedMaitreya its the future, westlands is Europe
@@kaine241984 Hmmm thanks
I'll generally concede to all of your points, but I do have some minor justifications for a few.
Army size. It's established that in the last few weeks, civilization breaks down for the most part and what you USED to do stops mattering. You joined the fight. I would estimate that at least 10% of the surviving population wound up fighting in the Last Battle. Does this mean they're in a lot of trouble trying to recover? Absolutely. (Though the renewal of the land that seems to happen would likely help.)
Population/country size. It's established that the population as a whole has been on the decline for centuries. It's even pointed out that this goes against nature. (It's suggested that the Breaking, Trolloc Wars, and War of a Hundred Years, kept the continent destabilized. But that doesn't seem to cover how dramatically humanity is dying out. Maybe a sort of nebulous side-effect of the Dark One growing in power?) This absolutely needed more solid explanation as to why, but it is canon that the population is shrinking, and that's why a lot of the countries are shrinking.
Last, language. Disclaimer: the meta reason for this is obvious. Language is just not what the story is about, so he decided to write around it, even if it strains suspension of disbelief. In-universe, however, I want to mention a few things.
First, based on the timing, it's possible that Hawkwing conquering the continent could have been what finally decided the language. That still leaves a thousand years that the language should have shifted, but it is one step in that direction. This same explanation would also cover why Seanchan speaks the same language. Lastly, your argument about the Old Tongue being unrelated to the New Tongue doesn't really work, because we aren't reading in the New Tongue; we're reading in English (or whatever translation you're reading). The language we're reading isn't really the language that they're speaking.
Nathan Hall what
Yeah, the army size criticism got a little ahead of itself. Many ancient city states could easily field impressive armies. 1% of 1 million is 10k. Do you see how these numbers just aren't passing the sniff test? And armies don't require resupply from their home region. Armies can take what they want as they move through, and if they're already successful then they can also pay for what they want. Long supply lines didn't get Alexander to India.
Nathan Hall Also, I disagree on the topic of the old tongue getting supplanted by the new. I mean, england has an example of this very same thing happening with French/Latin. After William the conquerer, the upper class largely spoke French while the lower spoke an earlier form of English. However, In a few hundred years the upper class also adopted English. I think similar things happened throughout history too.
wow! Well done :))
"Lastly, your argument about the Old Tongue being unrelated to the New Tongue doesn't really work, because we aren't reading in the New Tongue; we're reading in English (or whatever translation you're reading). The language we're reading isn't really the language that they're speaking. "
Exactly what I was thinking. It's just like how all sorts of books and movies created for English speakers use English even though we're not to assume that the characters are actually speaking English. You wouldn't say it's a plot hole that most American books about Japan have the Japanese speaking English, or that most Japanese books about America have Americans speaking Japanese.
"The Lower Classes tend to start talking more like the upper classes, not the other way around."
The English language is a famous exception to this. After the Norman invasion, the Nobility spoke French, and it was the chosen language of both the noble court and the court of justice for about 400 years. While this French DID influence the English language, adding a few words and the like, the English language for about 400 years was considered a language of the peasants and serfs. This led to a loss of the more artistic and descriptive words nobility and artists use in a language which thus required Shakespere to reinvent them.
HOWEVER it is fair to say that this is a rather special case. English WAS influenced by French, leading to the beginning of English being this messy mesh of Latin and Germanic we see today. Likewise, the fact that they were two different languages rather then one being a dialect/evolution/devolution of the other like in the Old Tongue/New Tongue case also protected the language somewhat.
Finally, the moving of government from French to English was promted by a combination of multiple wars with the French, and several court cases that judges ruled such language was discriminatory and that laws for a nation must be written in a language the common man understands for fair enforcement. This last fact is not something the kings and queens of the setting will give a damn about.
There are instances of the ruling class adopting local language and customs outside of that though. The Normans themselves were Norsemen who were invited to settle in Normandy. The very fact that they did speak French was an example of them adopting local customs. This also happened time and time again with post-Roman states. The Visigothic Kingdom by the time of the Ummayad conquest had already been speaking the local derivative of vulgar latin among its ruling class. The Frankish Kingdom spoke a language most similar to west germanic languages like Old Saxon, but the rulers in that case also adopted the vulgar latin that was spoken among the commoners. The Ostrogothic and Langobard Kingdoms controlled Italy for some time and though both of them were conquered themselves, their Germanic languages and the language of their Greek and Frankish conquerors never become a part of the commoners' lives. The commoners in Italy spoke many distinct variations of vulgar Latin and whoever controlled them, Norman, French, Spanish, German, never had much of an impact on their language.
Great work man.
@@CraftsmanOfAwsomenes The problem with your examples is that none of those cases involved a majority replacement of the native nobility.
Bullshit~ Lower Class and Upper Class can have different accent if they dont have much interaction, aka class stratification. Example is the nobles and middle class speak Latin or Greek but the peasants and artisans speak a form of Common language in East Roman Empire, and Post-Roman Europe. In Asia, that would be Chinese Han period, where capital speak one accent, and provinces speak another (and this trend continue to nearly today). The language influence also can be turn around (lower to upper) if there's much social upheaval with continuous new blood joining upper class the form of marriage, newly rich, new power etc...
@@CraftsmanOfAwsomenes kind of makes us awe how dedicated the romans were to be able to force their language and spread it far and wide throughout the continent. Obviously aggressive expansion helped, but giving the effort they took to improve provinces it's likely that their decentralization of bureaucracy helped more.
I’d say anything with the history of seanchan we have much too little information to know how accurate it is
1). Who's to say how the Seanchan would have reacted to Hawkwings armies, maybe Luthair created an alliance as soon as he arrived and then slowly grew his power over the continent.
2). Why is there only one religion? because unlike in our world their religion is demonstrably real.
@@callachanmcnulty4722 To some extent. Once upon a time people were actively seeing the legions and monsters of the Dark Lord on their doorsteps. The Aes Sedair get their power from the One Power, which derives from the True Source, itself coming from The Creator, the deity of the Light. So you could say they are constantly demonstrating how real their religion is.
And there is the historical context where everybody not serving the Shadow were worshiping the Light. This solidifies the Light as being the single religion in the continent. It is very hard for a new religion to just spring up from nothing, at best a single religion will fracture which we kind of see through the Children of the Light. But realistically, in Randland, there doesn't seem to be an unified "church" and worship seems to be largely an individual thing albeit following some amount of tradition.
Well, there's a third condition to that about there only being two divine level powers (and they oppose each other). A typical D&D setting has as many religions as there are beings on par with gods. (or at least capable of granting demonstrable power) When you have only two grand powers around, most people are gonna pick a side.
@@callachanmcnulty4722 When people "name the Dark One" weird and bad stuff happens. So they at least know about the dark half of their cosmology...
I havent watched it all because i havenr had the time yet but so far unfortunately you arent properly read up on the series itself or its lore. In the books it is stated over most of the series that this is a world in decline and that it is because the very active and long term plotting of the dark one and those of the forsaken that remained free. The unclaimed lands, dwindling populations and loss of knowledge, technology and magic are all parts of this and one of the many ways in which he has been preparing for the last battle since his imprisonment.
I like the general idea you have of a proper critique of the world and there certanly is aspects left open for it but you arent read up enough on the source material.
It is stated in the books that people speak differently across the continent. In the first book it is stated that the way people from Baerlon spoke was strange compared with the two rivers.
That struck me more as differences in accent or perhaps grammar, rather than dialect.
@@Elvirth24 according to linguists, the lines between accents, dialects and languages is pretty fuzzy.
Yes, but the point stands in that they're all still speaking the same mutually intelligible language lol. RJ mentions Tairen accents and Seanchan drawls, and we've all enjoyed the grammatical oddities of the Illianers, but in the end all characters can understand each other. This is absurd, considering that 3 *thousand* years have passed since the common tongue began to diverge from the Old Tongue; it defies belief that the common tongue would develop in pretty much the same way across continents and oceans. Heck, look at Latin, the lingua franca for a solid swath of Europe. Rome collapses in 475. By 1200, there would have already been enough divergence that the Vulgate dialects in western Iberia would not be mutually intelligible with those in present-day Romania, though adjacent neighbors might still understand each other. By 1475, one thousand years later and roughly technologically equivalent to the Westlands in the series, Vulgate dialects had completely developed into distinct Romance languages, including Castilian, Galego-Portuguese, langues d'oc, langues d'oil, Italian, etc. These languages are not mutually intelligible between speakers at this point, excluding traders who might utilize pidgins or linguas franca.
Multiply this by 3 and look at our Emond's Field 5. They might understand the people of Baerlon, though the Two River's isolation suggests a distinct dialect. In Whitebridge, they should already start having some trouble communicating, and assuming the Crown of Andor has somewhat standardized Andoran around Caemlyn, the dialect of Whitebridge should be similar to the rest of the Andoran heartland's. But even so, Rand likely would struggle to understand Elayne. Then they warp to the other corner of the world; By Shienar, our characters should not understand a word being said. Now think about the Aiel living completely isolated for 2500 years. Could've really been a cool dynamic to have Rand othered by practically all of the people he conquers not only because he's foreign, but also because he literally doesn't understand them.
Oof, long post lol, got a bit carried away, but it is fun to imagine just how different everyone in the Westlands would speak. Anyway, I love the series, and I do get your point; after all, WoT is fiction and worldbuilding languages is *beyond* infuriating.
with your point on armies I'd like to point out that China during the warring states period levied insane amounts of soldiers irl with often more than a million soldiers fighting in one war. This was BCE times mind you, and the population of China was likely below 40 million/ close to 30 million. This was largely because of the doctrine of the succesfull states which relied on overwhelming numbers and an extremely efficient and extremely strict bureaucracy(legalism). However we can't be certain on the numbers but all evidence indicates that the armies of the time were indeed massive.
edit: this was also a time of constant warfare yet these nations were still capable of levying massive amounts of soldiers. Agrarian societies can levy more than one percent of the population also. I recall that 4 percent of the total population would be the limit of what can be levied.
Or they lied.
You do realise that most of pre-Song Chinese history is heavily mythologized, right? They have to 'clean' their records these days before it's published as "history".
Nothing from before 900-odd exists in China, save a few tombs and an wooden temple of dubious antiquity. There's less actual remnants from China pre-1000 than have been found in Vietnam, of all places.
There is a simple explanation. The concepts of multiplication and division were not well understood so extrapolation was very very inconsistent.
Thats how we end up with "millions"of Persians at Thermopylae when there were like 200,000 in reality.
Jarthen Greenmeadow I mean I believe these numbers were collected from state sources not from a random historian with barely any relation to the event like with Thermopylae.
One thing that ancient sources like to do however is count camp followers as part of the army resulting in incredibly inflated numbers, often also used to inflate the enemy army’s size to make your side’s victory look more impressive. Who’s saying that the sources in the Wheel of Time aren’t pulling the same trick? If whacky numbers can show up in our history why couldn’t they show up in The Wheel of Time’s history?
The proponderence of evidence does indeed point to ancient Chinese armies being absolutely huge.
The video author's implication that he knows enough about Artur Hawkwing's empire to know if large armies were sustainable, or even sustained, or their overall size at all, is far more questionable than any histortical accounting of the size of ancient Chinese armies.
The idea that a significant portion of the populace would not participate as armed combatants in a literal end-of-the-world battle upon which all freedom and life is dependent is, frankly, preposterous, especially considering the pains taken in the final novels to show people uprooting to join the Last Battle. It's just one of many invalid assumptions made in this video.
@@comradebear9477 Oh look, another China-hating Indian troll
As for the language thing assuming what we read is the language they are actually speaking might be presumptuous. When reading a fantasy novel I assume what we read as english, or what ever language you're reading it in is really another language that is essentially been translated by the book/author. So while we read the word brown, it could really have been something derived from the old tongue ... say deeb or debo ... but for the readers to understand everything being said & described it is pre translated. since the old tongue is meant to be another language its not getting translated establishes that. At least that has been my approach to languages in books & movies. Since it seems odd to think a world completely unrelated to ours would just happen to have a language that matches it perfectly.
I thought this was common sense?
I believe Jordan even stated this in an interview.
YES! This is why when fantasy authors indulge in puns, it throws me right out of the story. Jordan mostly avoids this, but there was one instance where Mat deliberately misinteprets "toh" as "toe". I couldn't believe it.
Also, I wish Jordan didn't write rhyming verse. ("The lions sing and the hills take flight. The moon by day, and the sun by night. Blind woman, deaf man, jackdaw fool. Let the Lord of Chaos rule.") Again, it strains my suspension of disbelief that what was written in Randland happens to scan and rhyme in English. However - this I can forgive more easily. There is a long tradition of translating sacred hymns into English (e.g, Martin Luther's _Ein' Feste Burg_, which became _A Mighty Fortress_) and making them scan and rhyme. Tolkien did this too, with Elvish songs. So, it doesn't take me out of the story in quite the same way.
Speaking of WOT authors, "The Way of Kings" has this problem in spades. Both Hoid and Shallan love puns that would only work in English. Unlike a translated poem or song, I just can't make myself believe that the author "translated" the wordplay from something that worked in the original language.
@@ps.2 I can't understand, what do you want authors to do build an entire language? Or they could create a fantastical language and write their book in that language and let the readers translate for themselves. There is no perfect way to do this, and barring jokes because it goes against the realism of languages is ridiculous. If this strains suspension of disbelief then magic should be an equal footing if we're going to get this nitpicky.
@@imbored5951 No, of course I don't want to have to learn Klingon to read a book. And I don't expect every author to go full Tolkien.
So, I mean, if you're Harry Dresden, of course you speak modern English (and Latin, badly) and are familiar with modern culture. Jim Butcher is clear that he lives in what we know as the real world, in modern times.
But if you're Mat Cauthon, the whole conceit is that you're _not_ in the modern world. Mat will not know the song _Hey Jude_ or the Man Jesus. He will never have an "English breakfast" or a "California roll". He will never compare someone to Ghengis Khan or Cato the Elder. He will never use terms like _financial system, jump the shark,_ or _Catholic._ He'll never say "There once was a man from Nantucket." Prior to Mr. Sanderson's butchery, Mat would never have known the word _backstory._
What I need from my secondary world fantasy is to believe that, while I'm reading English text, it's been "translated" by the author from something completely unrelated to English. Puns completely destroy that. To a lesser extent, so do common idioms. Fact: different languages have different idioms. If your characters speak or think in English idioms, it reminds us that the story didn't really come from another world, but from your own English-speaking brain.
For the most part, Robert Jordan was really good at avoiding idioms! Consider the scene where Mat remembers his father's horse trading skills: whenever someone thought he had out-traded Abell Cauthon, it always turned out they had got "the greasy end of the stick." In my world I would say "the short end of the stick," but Jordan was careful to come up with his own idiom. Similar enough that its meaning is clear to us, but distinct. Subtle, but it helps to reinforce that these characters are from a language (and culture) unconnected to ours.
So if puns are out, you can't use all your best jokes? Hard disagree! If you want humor, it doesn't have to be puns. In fact that's a pretty good rule of thumb for life. I know I keep coming back to Mat Cauthon, but pre-Sanderson I think his inner monologue was often very funny, _without_ breaking the language artifice.
I suspect many of the people who can't understand why puns break the immersion of this type of world, _do not speak any other languages._ Maybe it's less obvious, if you only know English, just how English-centric a pun or a specific idiom really is.
(An even subtler thing Jordan does: why the word _s'redit_ in place of _elephant?_ Because the word _elephant_ would imply a translation from the Common Tongue, which would mean _the Common Tongue had a word for elephant._ That's implausible, as elephants were unknown in Randland. Clearly the Seanchan had to either invent a word for elephant, or borrow the name from the pre-Hawkwing population in Seanchan. Perhaps their word _s'redit_ is from the Old Tongue (elephants were probably known in the Age of Legends) or at least derived from it. Anyway, I'm convinced Jordan did this on purpose.)
Is it weird that I get hung up on your pronunciation of Aes Sedai? I-Sedai... Great video though!
I'm not gonna lie, I had never heard it spoken out loud until after I already made this video.
@@JamesTullos it's pronounced "Eyes se-DAI", with emphasis on the last syllable, whereas you're saying "Eyes SE-dai"
How dare you mispronounce a made up word. This is unforgivable.
@@nicktafazoli4375 Yes! This threw me as well. I originally read the books in HS in 1989. I am 43 now. I have always prounced it "Eyes se-DAI".
I prefer Aegis pronunciation, but all words are weird to hear.
@@JamesTullos - Just say it's a regional dialect ;)
About your comment on the Blight basically being Mordor: I'd like to point out that LotR is meant to be a history of Earth, and WoT a future of Earth. The Age of Legends is hinted multiple times to be modern day or close to it. So assuming Middle Earth and Randland take place on the same Earth at different times, a Mordor-like area rising again fits into the lore of WoT perfectly, with the cyclic patterns of time. That would also be why there are so many other nods to LotR and the modern world scattered throughout the books
Aye, thank you for seeing this. No two works have felt more like living history to me and the fact they can be connected in this way give them a depth I could not explain to someone wanting to know about Wheel of Time.
Some of the "tales of the First Age" mentioned in the books, for example:
The giants Mosk and Merc who fought with spears of fire (the Cold War and nuclear weapons)
Queen Elsbet who ruled half the world (the British Empire)
Lenn who flew to the moon in the belly of an eagle (the Apollo program)
And in a museum the characters see the skeleton of an extinct long-necked mammal (a giraffe) and an "odd metal symbol" which is a Mercedes-Benz hood ornament.
@@arte0021 Uh no, WOT taking place in our world is literally canon. The First Age is our modern world, the Second Age/Age of Legends is when channeling was discovered, the Third Age is the one the book takes place in. See also the comment above where there's multiple references to events that have happened in our modern history (Alsbet = Queen Elizabeth, Salyra - Sally Ride, first female astronaut in space, Mosk and Merk (Moscow and America in the Cold War). There's also the fact that a lot of major characters and concepts are named after our present day legends, such as "Egwene al'Vere" being a distortion of "Guinevere" and Artur Paendrag (aka Artur Hawkwing) being a reference to King Arthur and/or Uther Pendragon. It's literally in the tagline of the book: "The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legends fade to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again." In other words, what we think of as our history has become WOT's legends and myths, and due to the cyclical nature of the Wheel of Time, what we think of as myths are actually the history of what happened in WOT.
And the fact that channeling "doesn't exist in our world" could easily be explained by the fact that we just haven't discovered it yet; after all, there had to have been some inciting incident for the Age of Legends, and that could easily be the discovery of a new, infinitely reusable resource that can be used for basically anything, aka magic/the One Power
No, our world is _heavily_ implied to be the First Age; In TSR the Two Rivers girls enter the Dreamworld and find a Mercedes star which gives off the feeling of being older than literally anything else there aside from the skeleton of a Giraffe.
Might explain how nobody seems to be using gasoline; It's still exhausted from the previous cycle.
@@destinygalearies7382 yes WOT heavily implies that technological development, civilization, and culture can devolve while time passes, that humanity's path is not linear and cyclical catastrophies can setback everything towards a more primitive state. That's why some people still believe that there were possibly very old but more advanced civs in our own history that have simply been erased and then forgotten. That's one of the things that made love the series so much since very few novels used that as concept in worldbuilding that spans milleniums.
Honestly had to stop. So many wrong assumptions under the idea of trying score points by being right.
gotta agree I think this was a little too much real-world assumption to a fictional world setting. That's like assuming an alien race would have to follow a humanoid carbon-based life form cliche. Also, the assumption of Hawkwing's thinking process seems more like projecting.
the religion issue makes it seem like we once again are basing everything on an earth history setting, as opposed to any number of fantasy ones with super dominant mono-religious settings, also dark ones...so not only one
This is not an acceptable critique. It might as well read as: stop trying to point out flaws in worldbuilding, smarty pants.
At best, it's juvenile. At worst, it's a refusal to learn.
I write fantasy and while you can get away with certain things by excusing it as fantasy, that will only take you so far. I love The Wheel of Time but ignoring the flaws in its worldbuilding does nothing but harm the genre.
I see what does constitute an acceptable critique?
@@aldreenampalayo1549 I would start by challenging the points you disagreed with by providing your own research. It's clear the creator of this video put a lot of work into their assessment, so simply dismissing the things you dislike as an attempt at seeming intelligent doesn't really speak to your (their) own intelligence. That's not how constructive criticism works. If you want someone to consider your rebuttal as more valid than what you're disagreeing with, you have to show you know what you're talking about. OP did not do that. They went the lazy route.
As for your comment about religion and why there is only 1. In any setting where there is quite a bit of demonstrable evidence of a deity and or that deities enemies you will end up with a single basic religion. Though you may have a few different sects of that religion that vary slightly on how they worship or act. Think about what would happen to all the varied religions of today if suddenly Christian style demons started showing up, claiming they served Satan and pouring out of some evil blighted place and killing people and doing their best to conquer everything. It would not take that long for the religion that fit the events to become the only one people paid any attention to and would believe. Much less if those events were continuous and lasted thousands of years. Not much sense in being a Hindu or Buddhist if there were Christian demons who are trying to kill everyone in the name of Satan that actually existed.
It is the same in many fantasy settings where there is some demonstrable evidence of a deity. In LotR you literally have elves in the world old enough to have actually met and walked with the Valar and heard them speak of their father, Illuvitar. In many others you have priests of gods who have magic like powers they get from prayer. If someone, right now, could walk into a hospital and pray away the sickness of people one by one then told everyone that their god was granting those healings even if you are a super skeptical person you would start to believe sooner or later when they just keep on healing seriously ill or injured people just by saying a quick prayer over them.
Give hard evidence of a religion and everyone will be of that religion more or less.
You forgot about the 'flat earther' and 'anti vaxxer' minority analogs. ie people who still believe in false things even though they have a mountain of proof otherwise.
@@tnk4me4 Slightly different things though as not believing the earth is a sphere or that vaccines hurt you does not in the end leave you with either damnation for eternity or at the least just exclusion from a heaven analog for all eternity for beliefs contrary to the evidence. A religion with proof is a MUCH more scary thing to disbelieve and be a contrarian to and thus much less likely to be a thing though with millions upon millions of individuals there will always be a super minority of those people.
You mean if suddenly Norse style firegiants started showing up, claiming they served Surtur (it's hard to clearly hear what the demons/firegiants are saying) and pouring out of some evil blighted place and killing people and doing their best to conquer everything.
-Save us THOR! That Jeebus dude is a pussy.
still, even if the existance of one deity was confirmed, there would be drastic differences in how they are worshipped. for example, muslims, jews and christians all worship the same god. and that´s not to mention all the different denominations among these individual religions. there are rooghly 15 christian ones alone.
TL;DR: one deiety doesn´t equal one religion
The Bible even says that Jesus Christ performed many miracles. Which you’d think would have showed proof to the Jews of his divine nature. But in the end they still rejected him. So, even giving a considerable amount of proof of deity does not necessarily guarantee that people will believe in that proof.
I was graduating Bootcamp in the 90s and was short on cash needed books to stay sane and saw Robert Jordan books who were double in size Read Eye of the World and was hooked. I used to read Raymond Feist David Eddingns David Duncan basically the biggest nerd in the world. When I read Jordan I saw the Tollkein in his writing. When Jordan passed away it was like a beloved family member passing and when Brandon Sanderson was chosen to finish TWOT I found a author who was even better than Jordan and Tolkien and the guy writes soooo many books it's like 20 people are writing his books. The thing I truly enjoy about Brandon is his magic system each world of the Cosmere has a different magic system and he doesn't use lazy writing by oh how do I get out of this oh magic. Right now rereading Oathbringer
I felt the same when Jordan passed away. It was a great shock. And with Sanderson growing up reading the Wheel of Time it felt like a real thread in the pattern for him to be chosen to finish writing it.
He has become my favorite living writer for novels and has a whole he is only behind Kentaro Miura for story craft for me. However Sanderson lacks the polish of Jordan and the majesty of Tolkien as he seems to have so much in his head he is tripping over himself to write it all down.
I love WoT as well and Seanchan were definitely sometimes so illogical that it often broke my immersion when I ever paused to consider how they even function.
I had an issue with how they were so technologically and strategically superior (or at least claimed to be), as far as I remember, the only fighting they’ve been doing is against the occasional rebellion, while the wetlanders have been fighting each other, Trollocs, and occasionally the Aiel all the time. Historically, you’d see a similar effect to what happened to China or Rome (which they are based upon) where they don’t advance tactics or technology because they don’t have to.
comparing any magic system to physics is a bit extreme... it's not like they actually have mathematical formulas for any of the magic in this word...
Formulas are alluded to, matricies are mentioned.
The White Ajah would probably get butthurt at the idea there's no formulae
As a linguist by career, the "old tongue" lettering hurts me so much.
As a somebody with interest in historical sociolinguistic, his thesis of how languages replace other languages, taking for the example irish language, hurts me so much.
Two stuck up as a statements in one comment. That hurts me :p
The numbers of Aiel in the waste for how little water there is always seemed suspect to me.
That's actually a really good point, I missed that.
Pfft, that's because Aiel don't need to drink water, they just use it for steam baths.
Actually water sources were all claimed, There were wells, and springs, just no flowing surface water to speak of, remember the Wastes were actually over a fresh water lake. The Aiel fought over the water sources in the open (mainly for goats but their holds contained springs and wells that rarely ran dry. All the water was subterranean, and took hundreds of years to find.
Millions of Jews left Eqypt and wandered the desert for 40 years. A few million Aiel, should not surprise you. The Army of Aiel was almost half their population, as all but Wise Ones, Black Smiths, and non-MotS would be considered warriors.
Theres no historic evidence for the jewish exodus, it didnt actually happen. We should be suprised by millions of people somehow surviving in the desert, but i think the aiels are pretty well explained to cover that concern
@@hayshed There is no historic evidence for Rand Al'Thor or the Aiel. There is Historic Evidence that Robert Jordan attended a Church. There might not be any evidence of you having thought that comment through before your athiesm got in the way of your thought process.
First, English is not The New Tongue. Your argument about language is otherwise valid.
Second, it's possible that Hawkwing's army established a small colony and adopted many local habits before building up the strength for conquest.
The rivers on the map are totally okay.
I first read this book in the early 90s as a teen. Even then I thought the map, and map making was poor, like someone drew a square on a piece of paper then added landmarks and detail over the top. But I loved the story & the characters, so I continued to read them.
Not sure if someone commented on this. But I think it is kind of interesting that the access to the two halves of “the one power” are given to the opposite gender of what the colors of yin and yang represent in reality. Yin （阴） which is the darker half represents the feminine aspect whereas Yang （阳） the brighter half represents the male aspect.
Might have a bit to do with the dark half becoming the "Dragon's Fang" and the light half becoming the "Flame of Tar Valon"
Been thinking about a fantasy novel idea for a while now and I had to come up with a legit reason for why everyone in the world speaks the exact same language. Partly because there's no way I'm getting into conlang just for realism, but mainly because the main character isn't even from that world and is smart enough to realize that it doesn't make sense that she can understand everyone.
Also ended up with a neat reason for why there aren't a variety of religions: It's basically a setting where the gods are literal people and you can walk into a bar owned by an actual deity.
The old english, for anyone wondering, translates as:
Alfred: Be well. (greeting, also used as toast)
Cefin: Be well.
Alfred: What is your name
Cefin: my name is Cefin, and yours?
I was surprised when the OP said that he and others didn't understand it. Honestly it sounded just like normal English to me, if heavily accented and with old fashioned pronouns.
@@billmilligan7272 Right? I mean maybe it's because I speak another germanic language aswell, but except for the greeting that I had to translate with my very poor knowledge of anglosaxon, it sounds perfectly understandable to me.
I understood that easily, it seemed to me to be a mix of english and swedish (or rather old norse).
Bill Milligan I think he means word by word. It’s quite easy to roughly translate using our modern knowledge of how people greet each other.
Yea context allows anyone to understand any language. Doesnt mean you could translate it or that you know it.
Granted the book might be translating what the characters are saying to english
I haven't thought about these books for many years, having read them in high school. But now I am realizing that they had a lot of dominance and submission subtext that I was just too naive to notice at the time.
You're forgetting a key part of how the Seanchan fight and invade new territories. They send more than just military, they send farmers and craftsmen etc as well. Hawkings army had sieged Tar Valon for almost 15 years or rather until he died, it's not really a large leap to imagine that they know quite well how to fight against channelers.
To a point yes, but the Aes Sedai were also constrained by the Three Oaths, so they wouldn’t be able to just nuke them from orbit at a whim. I don’t think it’s mentioned whether something similar existed before the Seanchan conquest, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable, the Seanchan probably wouldn’t talk about it if it did exist since they despise free channellers.
13:10 - "you can't conquer an entire continent without ressuply, and just by turning enemies one against another" I guess Hernan Cortez would disagree with you.
The thing about New Tongue being totally unlike Old Tongue, as the former is literally just English, could be chalked up to what is normally called "translation convention" -- all speech and writing in the native tongue of the characters the audience follows are rendered in the native tongue of the audience. So it's possible that New Tongue in-universe is nothing like English, and is just written as English in the books so we know what people are saying (kind of like how, in Lord of the Rings, everyone is canonically speaking one of Tolkien's conlangs, but it's written as English in the actual book). The rest of the language complaints are spot-on, though.
If you want your videos to get more views you need better thumbnails. This video has a good one but the rest look like you copy pasted you face on the cover of a book using ms paint and didnt even erase the white square background.
m.ruclips.net/video/xECUrlnXCqk/видео.html
Im not trying to be a dick but even if you think its funny everyone else
will just think it means the video is poor quality, anyway if you dont
care just ignore me.
@@GhostEmblem ...... irony, sarcasm.... does none of this exist in your head?
Im just saying how people will view it not trying to be a killjoy.
@@GhostEmblem I don't think you're being a dick at all, we just have different senses of humor. Merry Christmas!
Lol.. "They figured out how to *teleport* their armies so... it's not totally unrealistic". Great sentence.
Hey - interesting video - thanks.
Wanted to put in my thoughts on some of the points:
4. The one I least agree with is the conquest of Seanchan. With their being a host of different nations there, I can imagine one siding with the invading armies in order to take advantage of conquering their neighbours. This would give Hawkwing's armies a 'base' to work from and the extra manpower would bolster the local Seanchan nation in addition to novel and perhaps advanced tactics from the East. It might even be that this local country possessed a'dam and explains why Hawkwing's armies were drawn to ally with them - mutual interest. The resultant empire would then be a mix of the invading armies influence and the culture of the dominant country.
2 and 5. I do somewhat agree with the strangeness of the 'empty land' however, this at least explains your borders issue. The medieval borders you talk about are between two countries. Andor's northern border would be porous - not an actual border - and for map purposes somewhat academic. In reality, Andor's control would just slowly wane as it went further north. I think the maps are sometimes more for our benefit than reflective of the political situation in the book. Consider how the rebel Tearan lords grouped in Haddon Mirk. Here it is shown outside Tear's borders but that kind of suggests they saw it as an outpost of their realm - a march of some kind.
Additionally, we don't really see a developed feudal system in much of the Westlands. There are lords and ladies but, while Andor and Cairhien could be considered somewhat feudal, many others such as Illian are more like Noble Republics. Traditionally, republics were little more than city-states with a sphere of influence.
Finally, the compendium to the Wheel of Time explains that after the break up of Artur Hawkwing's empire, the entire Westlands was split up into countries but many of these have disappeared. I can't remember where I read it but I remember something about part of this being influence from the Dark One, causing population to dwindle. This however would add more weight to your comments about fielding such large armies - which I do agree with!!
3. Language - this one I do agree with you a lot on but, being a Linguist, I do like trying to come up with an explanation!! If you argued that the Old Tongue was used as a lingua franca in the Age of Legends and into the start of the New Age, it doesn't mean there weren't other languages in use locally. You could argue that the New Tongue arose from a more dominant of one of these. How it spread is the real issue!! You could be really farfetched and suggest that Hawkwing enforced linguistic uniformity in his empire and so all of the Westlands were forced to speak it then - this could also suggest how Seanchan spoke it. Shara and Aiel still don't make sense although in Shara they do use words for certain things that suggest another language is used (eg. Sh'botay and Sh'boten). 1,000 years though, with only accent differences in the Westlands.... hard to justify. The society is literate which would help to stop the shift but as you say you would still expect at least dialectal variation.
Great thoughts though - I love the series and it's good to hear someone thinking in depth about how it fits together... or doesn't!!
The Wheel of Time was my first, great fantasy experience as well, and it has remained my favourite ever since. You raise some good points - but:
1. Language. I'm not sure if I understood you correctly, but you made it sound as if you assumed the English (being the language "spoken" in the series) "shirt" should have developed from "galamok". That is Tolkienian thinking, where that is very much the case - Quenyan telpë and Sindarin celeb both developed from a Proto-Elvish "kyelepe", if I can recall my Elvish etymology well enough. If Jordan writes "shirt", that's because the language spoken is a "translation" to English from the New Tongue. Now that I'm typing it out, it feels like we must have misunderstood one another, but anyway, I've heard other people make distinctly Tolkienian points about non-Tolkienian languages before. The New Tongue word for "shirt" could be anything from "calan" to "lamk" and we have no means of knowing.
2. Language, again. Granted, it is unlikely that people who have been separated for three thousand years should be able to communicate, but I can't help but thinking of, say, the fact that General American is closer to Shakespeare's English than RP British English. The general consensus is that groups in diaspora tend to preserve traditions (look at the diaspora of the Jewish people, for instance) and linguistic features much more conservatively. In theory, an event like the Breaking of the World could have made people cling very strongly to what they already knew. Either way, this is in no way a weak point of yours, I merely felt it lacked a few considerations. Sharans speak a very guttural New Tongue that our characters struggle with, and if even they, who separated 3,000 years ago, can be understood, albeit with difficulty, then the Seanchans, whose dialect is a mere 1,000, should be relatively easily interpreted.
3. About the land unclaimed: Jordan makes it very clear that the point at which we enter the story is a time of general decline, one that has been going on since the death of Hawkwing. Governments are struggling to reach out to their citizens, the trollocs are more lively, the Aes Sedai don't live as long as they used to, and fewer girls are found with each passing year. Sure, the land might be fertile and there might be isolated groups of people living there, but it's just not worth it for a government struggling to collect its yearly revenue to expand into territory with very few people living there. Why would you claim it at all? As for the border of Andor, I believe we must assume that this is where the last farmsteads that belong to some sort of local political structure are located. North of that line, we must assume, few enough people live that they don't consider themselves Andorans and neither does Caemlyn.
Other than this, great video, and thanks for highlighting a masterpiece like Jordan's the Wheel of Time!
Not to mention that every geographical issue can be explained by the fact the entire surface of the earth was rooted ripped apart by every male channelers going insane
11:56 that actually makes sense, for example the roman aristocracy spoke greek during much of Antiquity, yet latin spread far wider than greek. Another small example is that the swedish nobility spoke a strange accent with french or german R-sounds instead of the rolling R of most swedish accents, yet that accent disappeared in the middle of the 20th century
"As civilizations develop lower classes start to talk more like the upper classes not the other way around." Unless my ears fail me, the Norman nobility stopped talking french a couple centuries after the conquest. Mongols stopped speaking mongol in favor of russian or arabic. This is very common. Nation's don't just "develop" the greater european world of the past 500 years has seen massive economic growth but that is not an inevitable fact (look to bronze age collapse, or the missippi river civilizations to learn how borders can recede). An accident of history that we're living in of dramatic economic growth is not a universal reality and decline is equally possible -something thats evident in the wheel of time.
I mean Spain basically conquered an entire continent with a single army that didn't get reinforced.
Most of that "single army" were other Mesoamerican groups rebelling against the unpopular ruling Aztecs, so yes, they did get reinforced, just not by Spain. And that was just central America and Mexico. Most of south america was colonized over a long period of time and there was also the Portuguese.
@@YouShallNotPassGo "Most of that "single army" were other Mesoamerican groups rebelling against the unpopular ruling Aztecs, so yes, they did get reinforced, just not by Spain."
That's basically how they conquered Seanchan too. They played off the politics of the different nations there and slowly took over.
mommid Another similar example is the British in India, proxy wars have been a thing for a long long time
@@YouShallNotPassGo Spain had technology and disease on their side, and they did get reinforced, all the time.
They have Cannons and rifles and horses the Aztec didn't know horses and got scared by them not only that they killed their king and his royal army by a trab.
The cost of fielding an army is significantly lower when you have channelers that can open gateways, plus, the ways were open and untainted then, so travelling was easy.
Good points. Just two things to comment on. You mentioned that it is odd that the continent of Seanchan speaks the new tongue. I don't think so. The ruling class (son of Arthur & initial soldiers) decided that the new tongue was the new language for the entire continent. Many regimes have enforced a central language. So why wouldn't they be able to make it the main language in a thousand years? Plus, it's hinted that some regions have a very strong accent (which often is a combination between the new language and the former language).
And my second point: you said that it was impossible for those armies to conquer the continent, because it's way too big for the supply chain.
The point is, they didn't plan to need a supply chain, and they probably scouted the area prior to the evasion. With 300.000 soldiers, you can easily conquer a nation on the continent that isn't prepared for an invasion from the ocean. And through that nation they could expand, slowly. The books say that the conquest took some 700 years. That's quite some time! Plenty of time to discover new methods of conquering the rest.
P.s. comparing the old tongue with English isn't fair. "The new tongue" is a fictional language, and the story is told in English. I've read the series in Dutch in the past. People all around the world read the series in their native tongue. For all these people it wouldn't be relevant if the old tongue wax a bit like old English. It would do more disservice to the story than service.
AAANNDDD Since when are there no ferries in the series? There are ferries. One in Tear for sure. And one in Taren FERRY. Lol. And one in Aringill. Oh and one in Carhien. And one in Ebou Dar. No ferries?
And ferries? There are ferries. One in Tear for sure. And one in Taren FERRY. Lol. And one in Aringill. Oh and one in Carhien. And one in Ebou Dar. No ferries?
Enforcing a central language is generally very ineffective. Countries like Austria-Hungary and Japan have tried it as recently as the 20th century, and all it does is cause minorities to resent their rulers. Trying to wipe out languages and cultural practices is considered a form of genocide for a reason.
Now, it's possible for the language of the ruling class to become very commonly spoken and used in things like trade and administration, similar to English in the current world or Latin in the Roman Empire. And while these *can* supplant lesser-known languages, it only happens when the region becomes extremely interconnected. Isolated areas will usually keep their old language.
@@JamesTullos not to put too fine a point on it, but the chained channelers would completely change the ability to control a population. Also, and I can not stress this enough, it is a fantasy book. Seriously dude, applying real world motivations and factors to a make believe world is like comparing apples to cactuses. It seems as though you have some real issues with the books and that is ok, but I am not understanding the point of the video. Are you saying Robert Jordan is a bad writer or did you just feel a bit peckish at the time you made the video?
Just to add a bit, Mat said he had about 15,000 soldiers, which would have been a "largish" force before Rand got started conquering.
Italrude beat an army of 300,000 that included seanchan scouts and officers, but the bulk was taraboners and other conquered people.
There were plenty of people, but most people arent soldiers, which was the entire point of the last battle being desperate. They had soldiers to do stuff, but most were guys like the blacksmith and merchant. Perrin's entire army was basically civilians that the Shaido captured. There is also a short scene where Mat explains to a young spearman that he doesnt have time to train the sword. He also shows them how to make palisades.
The people fought, but the majority werent soldiers. This is also referenced when they mention that arming the troops isnt a problem, since they have more weapons than soldiers after everyone is gathered.
@Amused Nah, I could totally imagine a bunch of ships puttering about from place to place on dry land, using the hands they most definitely have to repair the infrastructure. /s
I thoroughly enjoyed Mr. Sanderson's writings in the last few volumes of this magnificent epic work, however he greatly lacked Mr. Jordan's, let's call it enthusiastic writing style. When Jordan wrote a battle scene it took shape and form within my brain, I pictured it, practically smelled it, I would read them a dozen times, just for enjoyment. When Sanderson did the same, I knew what happened, but that was it.
@Jonathan Phillips Exactly.....TYVM...............Mind you I'm not saying Sanderson wrote poorly, I'm just saying when Jordan wrote it became a video in my head, When . Sanderson wrote they were just words on a page telling a story.
@@neanderpaul14 Yes, compare the Battle at Cairhien in tFoH or the Altaran campaign in tPoD to the lists of units marching and counter-marching in aMoL. Also, he used military jargon too much, which ruined the immersion, and sometimes betrayed his own ignorance. Look at Elayne in the meeting where she talks about dividing our forces in detail. Or a whole army hiding in a forest, while another army lures Trollocs on a several day chase to the woods, where the army jumps out to ambush them! It's not like hiding a squad in a grove of trees! It's hard enough to bring a whole army to bear on an open plain, let alone in a forest, with trees in the way. The advantage humans have over Trollocs is formations and discipline and cooperation, and scattering troops through a forest breaks all that up and turns it into a bunch of individual duels, which Trollocs would win, being bigger and stronger.
Have you ever heard of the b̶a̶t̶t̶l̶e̶ disaster of the Teutoburg forest?
Well, Arminius and his Germanians did eactly that, and obliterated 3 entire roman legions with a much less powerful army.
@@warwickthekingmaker7281 that's clearly where Jordan got the idea and I'll assume he was right "Varus, give me back my Legions". Though Arminius didn't get to keep the silver he earned for that too long
Jordan went to the Citadel and studied history, Brandon read tWoT. I prefer Jordan to B
I have a question about army info dumping for some of you more experienced authors, I’ve written military short stories before mostly 1800-1900s which is my favorite era to study. But now I’m going for a fantasy/medieval army, and something I’ve always struggled with is how to describe the structure, size, and operations of the army.
For example in one of my short stories there is a unit that consists of 4,000 troops. I always struggle on describing the army and it’s logistics while trying to avoid an info dump. I don’t want to have the reader reading 4 pages of all the lore and info behind my army, even though I’m a nerd and love that stuff I’m sure others wouldn’t.
Should I spread it out over the first few chapters, get it all over with in the first chapter, will the reader get bored after a few sentences of flanking tactics?
Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.
I think a lot of people don't notice all the real world references to myth/history from asian regions in this series, despite being right there to be seen. :) Some note similiarities with say seanchan, but really the entire WoT culture has certain qualities to it, an obvious one being the importance of code, or the frequent use of yin/yang nods. With RJs past, it's not a big shocker. It's also the biggest change I felt when Brandon took over, for instance a different naming structure with more germanic-sounding ones with the latter.
Anyway, i think aes sedai are a glue that keeps the nations relatively cohesive, and seem to be the main driving force of innovation until we see science rise again in the series.
Although some of the unclaimed areas are still quite populated I get the impression very very large chunks of them particularly the Carolingian grasses are almost completely empty and as such just not worth claiming by the major nations.
The conquest of Seanchan not making sense is not a statement of fact. It is an opinion and a singularly ill-informed opinion at that. Every source on the pre-Conquest Seanchan states that it was a land in constant turmoil, divided among multiple rulers constantly in conflict with one another, where betrayal was endemic. In that state of affairs, it is very unlikely that they would have been at technological parity with a unified empire, run for several decades by a forward-thinking genius. Your analogy comparing the Seanchan vs Luthair to artillery vs knights strongly suggests you are one of those people who doesn’t recognize an technological differences in between the invention of steel and the invention of gunpowder. In fact, Hawkwing’s era saw the so-called Westlands at their highest peak of military development, so while both sides relied on blades and arrows, Hawkwing’s armies were organized, disciplined and professional. They would have had complex ranks and systems of organization, very unlike a medieval-type culture where you got knights, and rank has to do with social prestige and bloodlines. Hawkwing had a superior system of command and control and discipline and there is absolutely no word on any such usages in Seanchan before his son arrived.
Meanwhile, channelers are not the be-all and the end-all of the battlefield. They can do a lot of damage, but at the end of the day, they are just individuals, who need decades to grow up and achieve and master their ability. A modern nation with artillery can simply make a new gun to order one that was destroyed, but a dead channeler is a resource that can’t be replaced. In Seachan, where dishonesty and betrayal was the order of the day, there was little incentive for a ruler to train more channelers, without a way to keep them under control and to prevent them from executing a coup. What’s more, there is no account of any sort of organization like the White Tower or the cooperative association of the Wise Ones or Windfinders, and everything we know about Seanchan before Luthair suggests there would have been no such thing, and any attempt to form one would have fallen apart from betrayals and power-seeking.
We see generals adapting their tactics to deal with channelers or strange creatures in the books, such as the Seanchan reacting to Rand’s forces using gateways in Path of Daggers, or Rodel Ituralde utilizing tactics to counter their advantages during his own campaign. And remember, these Seanchan are the institutional descendants of Hawkwing’s expeditionary force, not the in-fighting, grasping, every-man-for-himself natives that Paendrag faced in the conquest. Furthermore, the exotic animals are of suspect utility, according to their own handlers, and they are rare and hard to breed or train. So the multiple, divided and mutually hostile nations Paendrag’s forces faced would have encountered them in small numbers, rather than used systematically.
And I don’t remember a specific reference to Paendrag’s forces turning the locals against one another. The impression I got was that they simply took advantage of the disunity to take out the nations one at a time. But even if he did, “trade” is not how you do it. The trade to which the video refers was more like bribery, and you can bribe leaders with power. Lots of petty lords would jump at the chance to be higher ranking lords under a foreign conqueror, or be more than willing to embrace a foreign invader than see a local rival succeed. That’s not always the case in the so-called Westlands, where the national ideals encourage people to band together against foreigners, but there’s no reason to expect that Seanchan would not have had any collaborators.
As for the idea that the Empire destroyed everything - that’s flat out stupid. In the first place, they lacked the sort of weapons that turned 20th century battlefields into a blighted hellscape. In the second, since they were coming to conquer and rule, and had long practice from Hawkwing’s wars of conquest, they probably would have taken steps to avoid casual destruction. Everywhere the Seanchan conquer, they IMPROVE the place, not destroy it. Falme is intact, and so are the farms around it, when the heroes visit not long after the invasion. In the time it takes Mat to recover from multiple fractures, Ebou Dar is cleaned up and pacified. Tuon is appalled that Mat appears to have been mugged and holds it against Suroth, so this sort of thing is plainly the expectation, not an exception to their usual way of doing things.
Farmers generally sell their crops to whomever will buy them, and people, despite their national habits of resisting outsiders, find the lure of peace and stability too attractive to really resist for long. The modern Seanchan do well at winning over hearts and minds by providing a slightly increased level of law and order and stability, while Luthair & his army would have brought peace out of chaos and constant uncertainty.
The Seanchan conquest is one of the most believable things in the series. It might not be to people who learn what they know of military affairs from playing Medieval Total War, but that's hardly definitive.
actually it was mention in one of the later novels that Artur Hawkwing unified the nomadic, tridal locals of Seanchan (such as it was a daily life in Africa for thousands of years) but not that Artur himself was the one who lead his forces down to the land of Seanchan and did it himself. It seemed to be to me that was his childrens doing after Artur lost his empire and they wanted revenge on the people who did not uphold Artur Hawkwing empire and that was why during A memory of light Rand told Tuon on page 339 he says "Tell me something, Empress," Rand said. "What would you all have done if you'd returned to these shores and found Artur Hawkwing's armies still ruling? What if we hadn't forgotten our oaths, what if we had stayed true? What then?"
"We would have welcomed you as brothers," Tuon said.
"Oh?" Rand said. "And you would have bowed to the throne here? Hawkwing's throne? If his empire still stood, it would have been ruled over by his heir. Would you have tried to dominate them? Would you instead have accepted their rule over you?"
"That is not the case," Tuon daid, but sedmdd fo find his words intriguing.
"No, it is not," Rand said.
"By your argument, you must submit to us." She smiled.
"I did not make that argument," Rand said, "but let us do so. How do you claim the right to these lands?"
"By being the only legitimate heir of Artur Hawkwing."
"And why should that matter?"
"Thid is his empire. He is the only one to have unified it, he is the only leader to have ruled it in glory and greatness."
"And there you are wrong," Rand said, voice growing soft. "You accept me as the Dragon Reborn?"
"You musf be," Tuon ssif slowly, as if wary of a trap.
"Then you accept me for who I am," Rand said, voice growing loud, crisp. Like a battle horn. "I am Lews Therin Telamon, the Dragon. I ruled these lands unified, during the Age of Legends. I was leader of all the armies of the Light, I wore the Ring of Tamyrlin. I stood first among the Servants, highest of the Aes Sedai, and I could summon the Nine Rods of Dominion." Rand stepped forward. "I held the loyalty and fealty of all Generals of Dawn's Gate. Fortuona Athaem Devi Paendrag, my authority supersedes your own!"
"Artur Hawkwing-----"
"My authority supersedes that of Hawkwing! If you claim rule by the name of he who conquered, then you must bow before my prior claim. I conquered before Hawkwing, though I needed no sword to do so. You are here on my land, Empress, at my sufferance!"
Thunder broke in the distance. Mat found himself shaking. Light, it was just Rand. Just Rand...was it not?
this is verbatum from The Wheel of Time volume 14 chapter 17 titled Older, More Weathered page 339 and the reason why I wrote all of that is it shows how Tuon believes she is the true and only heir to Artur Hawkwing and she believes no one else can claim these lands due to Artur Hawkwing was the only one who unified the lands except The Dragon did unify the land with out violence. The point in all of that is how can a land no one but the Seanchan have seen for 1000 years after the 100 year war when Artur Hawkwings empire was long gone be the true heir when Berelain is the ruler of Mayene which in one novel and the title eludes me claims Mayene was where the throne of Artur Hawkwing was. I may misremember exactly the location but it was mentioned either by Cadsuane, Mat during one of his memories coming to him, or by a different Aes Sedai either a White or a Blue but it was mentioned. If Tuon is a decendant of a child of Artur and the Seanchan are only there for revenge as no prophecy that Rand has read mentions the Seanchan but the Seanchan claim The Dragon has to bow down to him. sounds like it is the work of one of the Forsaken as she had a foothold there and they did not show up to Falme until the forsaken were loose. The Seanchan maybe the decendants of the army that was sent on boats and not decendants of Hawkwing in any way
@@zrattaplays1231 I'm not sure what point you are making. The armies that conquered Seanchan were sent from Artur Hawkwing's empire. They were led by Hawkwing's son, Luthair Paendrag Monwhin. He is referred to by Renna, Egwene's sul'dam when she explains to Egwene the origin of the a'dam, saying that Deain, an Aes Sedai native to Seanchan, invented the a'dam and brought it to Luthair, who was not yet the emperor. That suggests he did eventually assume the title of Emperor. The Big White Book also mentions an army being sent out under Hawkwing's son and another being sent out under the command of his daughter to conquer Shara, which apparently failed. I think it is either the world book or a glossary entry that claims the royal family of Mayene is descended from a child or grandchild of Hawkwing smuggled to safety after his death. From what I recall, there is some doubt about that claim. In any case, Tuon claims direct descent from Luthair, who would be an older brother to that child and have a better claim to his empire.
The Seanchan claim is that the rightful heir's line still exists and they are ruling on that basis. They are more or less conquering the lands, but the fact (or lie) about Hawking's inheritance is a motivating factor that gives them the moral authority to do so. People will not be as motivated to conquer for conquest's sake, they do so because they believe there is a just cause. In Wheel of Time, a strong theme of the story is that it does not matter whether what people believe is true or false, they act on what they believe, and their actions have real consequences. Neither Rahvin nor Valda killed Morgase, neither one even wanted her to die, but both were killed by men seeking revenge, who BELIEVED that they had killed Morgase. And by rights, both of her avengers should have wanted her dead, since they were brothers, and sons of the woman who should have been queen in place of Morgase. But they don't know or don't care, they loved Morgase or her daughter, and when they believed she had been murdered, they tried to avenge her. Belief is what matters, and the idea that Empresses Radhanan and Fortuona are descended from Artur Hawkwing is one that gets soldiers to fight in their names.
Wheel of time is ill informed shlock
@death wish wow interesting finale to these two fanbois' essays on semantics of meaning and seanchan ontology.
@death wish Not even a re-write by Aristotle himself would save this piece of shit trainwreck.
4:35 huge parts of the continent are unpopulated. even in the first book a character wanders through a vast unpopulated area in the largest nation on the continent.
10:03 I love how old English sounds like Jabba the hut talking with a sims character
You know what Sanderson missed? We got a whole substory that men and women could combine their power to allow far more than just 12 women to unite their power, and then nothing was done with it.
Sanderson was instructed by Jordan's wife to stick to the notes he had left behind. If a subplot was missed it was because it wasn't mentioned in the notes. The last 3 books suffer because of this insistence, I assume if he hadn't died the notes would have been corrected (and probably expanded to an extra 3 meandering volumes) before the books were written. The most obvious mistake was Rand's father appearing and revealing information in one storyline before he had learnt it, and was still taking part, in the other storyline. It just comes across as very bad editing and was one of the things that ruined the whole series for me. I like to think that if Jordan had lived he would also have improved the (in my opinion) very weak ending. Egwene should have lived so that she could have seen her reforms through as well as stand up against the Seanchan. Her death seemed to make her entire storyline completely irrelevant. Her reforms could and probably would be reversed by her replacement, who was a staunch conservative. Rand should have died instead, his purpose in the plot had been served, and he wasn't very nice anyway.
I agree.
true, true ...
@@brand_holt Personally, I prefer that _someone_ of the top priority group of main characters died. There was practically no narritave tension anyways, so I guess it was a tad late.
@@maxieprimo2758 I agree with that, but in my opinion Egwene was, out of all of the main characters, the one that that needed to live the most. He could have killed off any of the others with far fewer consequences. That's why I said Rand should have died instead, he had done everything he needed to do and no longer had any real purpose. It wouldn't have been as tragic because he wasn't as likeable as any of the others, but the author could have made up for that by killing a few of the supporting characters as well.
Can I ask why you refer to Brandon Sandersons work as the main books? The Wheel of Time is Robert Jordans. Always will be.
16:39 the rivers are only mildly crazy, and can actually be explained by the breaking of the world. in fact in the prologue to the first book in the series.
10:00 English is very unique in this regard.
I can still understand Old Dutch from 1400 years ago, which is a very conservative language.
I would like to see you do a video covering Osten Ard from Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, which influenced Christopher Paolini and George R.R. Martin, and yet despite that, he's seems pretty underrated compared to GRRM and Paolini.
While I do not know much about the books, the closest thing I can think of about the conquest of the Sean-Chan is Pizarro's conquest of the Incas, and yes while Pizarro's men had the technological superiority, they only had 400 men if I remember correctly and heavily relied on locals troop for their conquest, by promising their supporter the Inca empire (spoiler : the Spanish kept the land). the same thing could have happened during the conquest. And judging by another comment the political climate of the land was like of middle-ages Europe (lot of betrayal and petty war) as such the Expedition would have most likely used a divide and conquer tactics.
One thing to consider on the languages is the WoT seems to have printing presses, and be a relatively literate society (Rand, Perrin, and Eqwene, raised on farms in the ass end of no where can all read), to get a sense of the importance of this, look at the difference between Old English ala Beowulf (11th Century or middle English ala Canterbury Tales (15th), vs Shakespearean English (16th), and Shakespeare vs today. A couple hundred years without the printing press produced vastly more linguistic drift than the past half millennium with it.
I look up like two videos on how powerful this "Rand Al'Thor" guy is and suddenly my feed is full of these videos.
But hey, at least it's about worldbuilding.
The existence of spellcasters (Aes Sedai) would make HAwkwing's armies doable in logistic terms, if only he wasn't strongly opposed to their very existence that is.
I just want to say even with superior firepower the Brits had to rely on Shaka Zulu's brothers to finish the job.
I finished WoT then read kingkiller chronicles impatiently waiting for book 3 but I was gonna read this Sanderson book idk Way of Kings or something? Should I read that or Three Body Problem?
English actually has a lot of roots in the Germanic languages, as well as latin. Probably explains why not all words are similar to latin.
About the armies of Hawkwing and Seanchan, you kinda left out one important factor...Ishamael.
I'm a bit late, but there are very good explanations to some of these (some others are not so easy to explain)
1. The languages - Jordan said that he was translating for the reader, the new tongue and the old tongue are actually similar. That's why whenever Matt spoke in the old tongue people thought he was just muttering or that they misheard. Also, even though they are technologically connected, they ARE connected through the Aes Sedai, in particular through the Forsaken posing as Aes Sedai as they could still travel. The black ajah had people in place world wide, including Seanchan. They would not want everyone speaking different languages, so they molded the regions to speak the same.
2. The uncontrolled areas - as was mentioned in the video, there used to be countries in some of those uncontrolled areas. And it was also mentioned that if a local leader was appointed by the leader of a country they would send a replacement if something happened. However, that doesn't take into account how fractured all of the countries are. All of the leaders are being influenced by the Aes Sedai, who in turn are being influenced by the Forsaken. The Forsaken want to make sure that civilization is WEAK when the dark lord returns. You can't compare our world to WoT, we don't have a real world example of something like that type of influence.
3. Artur Hawkwing's conquest of Seanchan - this also used to bug me, but you have to look at it from a different perspective. The 300K army most likely met a lot of defeats, most of them probably died. They must have been able to claim some land or negotiate a treaty with a smaller nation, where they influenced the locals into their beliefs. From there they would have been able to take over/unite Seanchan by working the nations against each other, etc. Also, there are the Forsaken to think of here as well. They wanted a united Seanchan, the timing of the invasion of the Seanchan was not a coincidence. The more chaos and strife that can be attained the better, and yes, Seanchan would have been easier to conquer if they were individual countries, but the Forsaken needed weapons in order to fight the White Tower. The entire purpose of the Seanchan in my mind was the creation of the damani to fight the Aes Sedai.
4. Only one religion - again, we have the Aes Sedai to thank for this, I'm pretty sure that they put down any other religion that strayed from the main religion.
5. The rivers - Those aren't branching, they are merging and flowing to the sea. That's how it works.
The world is crappy. You just made very very long excuses
@@Alejojojo6 TROLL ALERT!!!
Well old English is quite intelligible for me ( old English sounds just like german but whit a horrifying dialect)
Indeed.
Agreed
Automa Tisch yes
Because you would be right. Old English is closer to that of Germanic languages than modern English.
Today, English is split about 50 percent to German and 50 percent to Romance Languages (Italian/French/Spanish). English is actually quite fascinating because it's roots are from all over the place.
I like the fact that English used to be such a complicated language but ended up becoming one of the easiest one to learn nowadays (I claim that as a non-english native speaker)
On a more philosophical level, one thing I don't get is how, given that the Dark One is outside time and space, he could have been reached by humans. This sounds as an ontological impossibility and yet, eventually, everything happens as if the Dark One is part of the pattern. It is also hard for me to understand how, outside of the pattern, the Dark One can influence it in any way (and hence enable 'free will'). He's either in or out, not both.
14:07 I would like to suggest a potential answer to this from history where the Conquistadors rallied the surrounding nations to help them destroy the Aztec empire because it turns out sacrificing your neighbours to the sun god doesn't help you make friends.
Here after watching Daniel Greens last video where he recommended this. Nice job you’re doing here man 👍
K
Wait a minute, I seem to remember that a disgruntled Aes Sedai created the a'dam for Hawkwing but never got the chance to develop it the way the Seanchan did. I can't, of course, remember the source of this.
It's in the books- i read that too. IIRC-they collared her and placed her in some tower and she howled and shook the building. Or something to the effect...its been a long while since ive read the books.
Also, i dont think she was disgruntled- she knew paendrag didnt like channelers and created the adam I think for appeasement/ brownie point purposes not thinking it'd ever be used on her or used in the way that it was.
Also this may have been clarified in The Big White Book....
My big complain with most fantasy settings is that there are stretches of THOUSANDS of years where absolutely nothing happens just for the sake of sounding like the world has a lot of history. That's just not a thing with history, even in most boring periods, big events happen every couple decades. Stretching 350 years worth of events to 3500 years add nothing of value except make you question the world building - looking at you Tolkien! There is no reason why it took 3500 years since the war of the last alliance until the destruction of the Ring. Especially in medieval culture, without modern communication and record keeping, 350 years is long enough for the history to turn into myth. And don't get me started on the second age, which could easily fit into a single lifetime!
Ehm, a group of people just arrived to a continent don’t become a global empire in just a lifetime.
@@adamnesico most colonial empires expanded, shine and decayed in less than 500 years.
@@Alejojojo6 yes. As numenoreans has a far longer lifespan, we can expect their empire to last more.
Rand AlThor is coming to Amazon?
Seriously? Do you know how rivers work? Those are tributaries. That's how rivers work in real life.
Look here for an example of waterways of an entire country: i.redd.it/z0c6or0eeyjy.jpg
or here for one river and its major tributaries: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/Vistula_river_map.png/800px-Vistula_river_map.png
Regarding the size of the armies. The size of the population doesn't really matter here. With pre-industrial means, it is impossible to supply armies this size. They'd all starve to death because even if the food for them exists, there is no way to gather it in one place and distribute it to the soldiers before it rots. Note that historically, armies of more than about 100,000 soldiers appear only after the invention of tin cans for preservation. There have been a few exceptions, but those were always in carefully planned campaigns that either followed the coast or a major river to facilitate logistics.
You mention the Roman empire, but they never concentrated that army of 450,000 in one place. Typical Roman armies were about 30,000-50,000 soldiers because the Romans, masters at organizing, knew full well that larger armies just weren't feasible.
If you want an example of a society that really went beyond the size of the population to produce it, you should look at the Assyrians. They had more than 5 per cent of the population in the army and their economy collapsed because of it.
There are multiple ways to preserve food without the need of tins drying and salting are major ones and there are many many other methods as well. Wooden ships used several methods before the industrial era maybe you should look some of those up as well and considering they had to take all their food with them you know it had to be preserved.
really? because i know that Invasions of the Ottoman Empire in Europe were above 100k constantly. we also have notes about Persian armies being above 100k in antiquity.
and that's why gateways change the game :))))
HELP HELP I'M BEING REPRESSED!
My parents named me Perrin after Perrin from this book
Lol Perrin was awesome til he got whipped and grew a frikkin half baked vegan conscience. Mat turned out the best out of the 3 for me.🤣🤣🤣😅😂😂
I love Perrin ❤ You are so lucky!
@@KJ-nv9uz Mat is meh. A big child.
@@IchibanOjousama I think he started that way but grew into just the type of Ahole I like to be around. I won't lie, I definitely hated what his character seemingly "devolved" into in the last 3 books. However, I do like his storyline the best of the 3.
"Maybe buy food this month"
Okaaaaay, i'm subscribing. Gosh!
Actually, the language of the lower class tends to spread to the nobility, not the other way around. For example: the Franks adopted vulgar Latin/early French from their subjects (they originally spoke a Germanic language). The Normans who invaded England in 1066 spoke French, but nowadays the British royals speak English instead.
A large population only really switches language if another language becomes a "prestige language", which most often happens if there are clear benefits to switching. That usually comes in the form of giving opportunities to trade (e.g. the ability to trade with foreign merchants) or to advance in a political system.
Of course, in a more modern setting there can also be effective suppression of "lesser" languages through legal barriers or even flat out banning them.
For someone who speaks modern German though Old Engilsh is very easily understandable, by which I mean you can understand it without knowing either modern nor old english. The reason why English changed so much has very little to do with time but a lot with outside factors like the Norman invasion.
Lol, I completely understood that old English what is your name thing because Im dutch
you lost me on trhe rivers guy...tributaries.....
"When the show comes out, maybe that will be good." Oh boy.
16:18 What was your point about the rivers?
I REALLY want to watch this but just finished book 1 and loved it and having avoided spoilers until this point I am going to stop at 1 minute in.
Legend Level: Make a fictional world and multiple fictional languages and then write a book in the language which is most predominant in the country the book is based (having your basic fictional language to english dictionary at the start of the book) and then have your characters go to countries that speak different languages that your characters don't know but eventually learn (obviously having those parts with that language written in that language) the language in a way that teaches the reader the language.
at 10:05 I know what they are saying, Alfred, is saying hi, and so is Cefin. then Alfred asked his name.
I'm curious if you've read The Realm of the Elderlings? It's one of my favorite worlds, although that's because of the characters. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.