Wheel of Time: Why The Aes Sedai Leader (The Amyrlin Seat) Hates Moiraine

Warning: Contains spoilers for The Wheel of Time episode 4 and Robert Jordan’s novel New Spring.

In The Wheel of Time episode 4, “The Dragon Reborn,” the show suggests that the Aes Sedai leader, the Amyrlin Seat, and Moiraine might hate each other, but the animosity is not explained. As with much of The Wheel of Time, this relationship is more complicated than it seems. And, as with the Aes Sedai, the truth spoken may not be the truth the audience thought they heard.

In The Wheel of Time episode 4, Moiraine, Lan, and Nynaeve have found a camp of Aes Sedai where Moiraine can be healed. As Lan trains with Stepin, Kerene Nagashi’s Warder, they discuss the Amyrlin Seat, Siuan Sanche. Stepin tells Lan that the Amyrlin is still in power but “not any fonder of Moiraine” and that she had “threatened to fetch you two home personally.” Moiraine and Lan have clearly been out searching for the Dragon Reborn for some time, but they move covertly and Moiraine demonstrates that she does not wish the other Aes Sedai to know everything of her plan when she talks to Logain.

While the Warders and the Aes Sedai understandably think that the Amyrlin and Moiraine hate each other, Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time books make it clear that this is not the case. The Amyrlin and Moiraine are actually extremely close, but are plotting in secret to find the Dragon Reborn before anyone else so that they can use him to fight the Dark One. Their plot is kept secret as they are not sure who they can trust. The fear of men that can channel overrides many larger plans and they wish to avoid possible complications that could arise if other Aes Sedai or Darkfriends find the Dragon, and, if the Dragon is a man, gentle him, cutting him off from the One Power that would enable him to defeat the Dark One.

Robert Jordan’s prequel novel New Spring is set twenty years before the start of the main Wheel of Time series and details how Siuan and Moiraine heard the foretelling that the Dragon had been reborn. After becoming Aes Sedai, Moiraine left the White Tower to search for the Dragon and to avoid political machinations in the tower that would have seen her manipulated towards the throne of Cairhien. Owing to the timing of her departure and the secrecy behind the motivations, those who knew them assumed that the two friends had a falling out and they let the rumor persist to cover their plan during Moiraine’s extended absence from the White Tower of Tar Valon.

Indeed, New Spring shows just how close Siuan and Moiraine truly were. There are heavy implications in the book that Siuan and Moiraine were more than friends and had an intimate physical relationship. It seems probable that Amazon’s The Wheel of Time will continue this LGBTQ+ representation as they work to break down some of the more gender essentialist and heterosexual thinking that appears in much of Robert Jordan’s series. When Nynaeve is treating Moiraine’s injury in The Wheel of Timeepisode 3, “A Place of Safety,” Moiraine quietly mutters Siuan’s name in her delirium, implying that the two might still have an ongoing intimate relationship.

The Wheel of Time releases new episodes Fridays on Amazon Prime.

About The Author

Faefyx Collington
(489 Articles Published)

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Faefyx Collington (They/Them) is a senior features writer for Screen Rant. They’re a British writer of both fiction and non-fiction, focussing on science fiction, fantasy, and mystery for the former and on culture, gender, and current affairs for the latter.
Never content to settle to one thing, Faefyx is also a co-host and producer of the podcast and video series “Unramblings,” and can occasionally be found making music around the internet as well.
Having acquired degrees on both sides of the Atlantic, Fyx has settled (for the moment) in the southern United States where they live with their spouse and an entirely appropriate number of cats.

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