Warder thoughts

[primeideal]

So there's been some amusing Wheel of Time fic posted recently, some about Lan giving Thom the "if you hurt Moiraine you will regret it" talk and some where Mat misunderstands some things and assumes Lan and Moiraine are a romantic ship. And it's made me think about the Warder bond. How many platonic examples of the Moiraine+Lan type relationship do we have by the end of the series?

Rand: super-bond to Elayne and Aviendha (also Min), romantic. The Alanna bond was not consensual and wouldn't be a good example, but she's dead so that doesn't count.

Nynaeve: now bonded with Lan, romantic.

Moiraine: now with Thom, romantic

Siuan/Gareth and Egwene/Gawyn would fall into this category too, if they had lived.

Elayne and Birgitte were a special case. This is arguably the closest thing we have to the Moraine+Lan type "protective older sibling-type looking out for over-the-top magic person"???

Androl and Pevara have the double-bond, and it's likely that this will become romantic and/or set a trend for others (especially Reds). Most of the Asha'man who bonded someone early on were bonding their wives/partners, and there was a built-in romantic (and otherwise skeevy) aspect to it.

Browsing...Egeanin and Egwene technically counts, hmm, but only for a short time. Also apparently Nicola (the annoying Accepted who wanted to learn faster and tried to blackmail Nynaeve and Elayne) bonded Areina, her female friend, but this was only mentioned in the mostly-not-new-content encyclopedia?? Hmm.

I guess the thought process is that now that saidin has been cleansed, there are probably going to be about as many Asha'man (or male channelers generally) as Aes Sedai (or female channelers generally), so who needs warders, we can just team up in pairs and have augmented superpowers like Androl and Pevara. But the "replacement" of platonic relationships like Moiraine and Lan's with these romantic all-in-one, magical and romantic partners, makes me a little sad, especially given the platonic-versus-romantic implications of the ending.

("The Force Awakens" made me have Warder/Aes Sedai feelings about Finn and Rey. She's a raw and untrained magic user! He wields a blaster, or a laser sword if need be, and kicks butt! They fight evil! But that's a partnership that for me could either be platonic or romantic, hmm.)  
  Edit: I just asked Reddit for their opinions. I may regret this.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

Hmm, I assumed all the Aes Sedai/Warder relationships were platonic except for the Green Ajah.

I guess I missed something there.

[primeideal]

I feel like early in the series, the sense that we get (maybe just from Moiraine and Lan) is that most of them are platonic, even if we don't have a lot of examples by name. But as the series shifts, the main Aes Sedai/Warder characters that get focused on tend to be in romantic relationships.