#Anti Mat x Tuon

[fedonciadale]

Thoughts on tuon and mat?

Hi there!

Oh, many thoughts.... Mostly I think that Mat deserved better.

I'm very biased in that regard to be honest and I try to explain, why I think they are a bad pairing at least as things are now.

When I first worked out that the "daughter of the nine moons" probably was the Seanchan empress I was actually excited and I wondered how Mat could fit to her. The only Seanchan I knew close up by then was Eaganin and I was probably too optimistic about how easy it would be for Seanchan to realize that their understanding of the world is deeply flawed. What I expected was an Egeanin 2.0 and what I got was so much worse.....

a) I don't particularly like Tuon, and I was prepared to like her, because I wanted a person for Mat who would be his equal. In a way Tuon is that, but she lost all my sympathy, when she learned about sul'dam being able to channel and decided that she didn't care that she would just carry on being a slaver, even though she herself could learn to channel. That is just a level of hypocrisy that made me wanting to throttle her. It is also a matter of self-deceit which goes far beyond anything Mat has ever done (and he is quite good at deceiving himself). I cannot really like a couple if I don't like one half of the couple. I know RJ planned another book for Mat and Tuon, but as things stand after AMOL, Tuon is just yikes and I hate that the Seanchan got away comparatively lightly by the end of the book. If I had my way, all the a'dam would have been burned in a great bonfire.

b) Mat always wanted his freedom, to be rid of a duties, travel the world, and now he is fettered to the Seanchan court and the Seanchan society that must surely be the most rigid hierarchy in all of Randland. He will chafe himself raw at all the restrictions. The Seanchan might learn something from him, but he doesn't get anything from the bargain.

c) Mat is deeply suspicious of women who can channel (although he gets a bit better by the end of the books). Tuon can channel, I mean she is able to see weaves, which means that she probably could channel any moment. She just decides not to. As if that is possible! Will that decision really hold when we know that the One Power is irresistible? What will that do to Mat, when she channels? What will that do to herself? With all her internalized hate against channelers, how will she even cope? It's a recipe for disaster.

d) I hate that RJ sort of "prepared" Mat for Tuon with the whole Tylin story. Tylin sexually assaults him and he sort of grows accustomed to it, and I cannot help but wonder if this unequal relationship was meant by RJ to soften the blow of Tuon having the upper hand over Mat, mostly because her society says so, but it really leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. It feels like Mat's path was always meant to lead him towards a relationship where he has to fight every inch of the way to be accepted as equal, where he has to act from a position of lesser power, where he has to give up the freedom he so loves. Mat as ta'veren being turned and twisted around by Rand was never as bad as that. He really got it worst from the three ta'veren. He might be rich and mighty, but he'll be deeply unhappy.

e) I really don't like most of the canon ships in Wheel of Time. Sigh.

[butterflydm]

spoilers through A Memory of Light (from what I remember of it; it has been ten years almost_

I mentioned on a reply to @d-a-mante that part of why I disliked Mat & Tuon is because their dynamic reminds of my (thankfully divorced now) parents’ dynamic.

And it just made me wonder if I would have had a less negative reaction to their ending in AMOL if Tuon weren’t pregnant and an innocent kid weren’t about to be dragged into their terrible person/terrible person’s enabler dynamic. Because, having grown up in that kind of marriage... it sucked. I could tell, long before my mom finally gave up on him, that my dad had zero interest in actually engaging in family counseling or stopping drinking, etc. But she kept giving him second chances. They finally got divorced when I was sixteen and it was such a relief.

So, yeah, idk. I definitely see a lot of my parents in Mat and Tuon, with Tuon being absolutely comfortable in being an awful person and Mat making constant excuses for her, but I wonder if I would have more patience for it if there weren’t about to be an innocent kid stuck in the middle.