Trivia / The Wheel of Time

• Author's Saving Throw:
  • The last four books feature a drastic acceleration in the plot, after the four books preceding them were widely criticized for moving too slowly. Jordan himself admitted Crossroads of Twilight, which is pretty much universally considered the worst book in the series, was a failed experiment^note  For those who don't want to read through the slog, the gist of the criticism is that the book moves all of the ongoing plot lines forward to an almost infintismally small degree, if at all. Several of the chapters are of periphereal characters and their reactions to the cleansing of saidin that took place in the previous book. It could not even really be argued that the book worked as an interlude episode, as the plotlines remain mostly static and it doesn't even set the stage for greater events coming down the line. Rand's only appearance is in the very last chapter where he agrees to meet with the Daughter of the Nine Moons, a face to face meeting that had been eagerly awaited by readers for several books but which, because of events that take place earlier in the book, readers knew from the get-go that would be a lie. Of course, the rapid increase in plot developments after that book may have had something to do with Jordan's diagnosis with a rare (and eventually fatal) blood disorder as well. In any case, by Knife of Dreams and especially by The Gathering Storm (which, unlike the two volumes that followed it, had more of its prose written by Jordan than by Sanderson), the pace of the plot ramps up massively.
  • The Fires of Heaven features Thom and a minor character acting like they've never met before, when they actually have. In the next book, Thom explains that he figured she was acting like she didn't know him for her own reasons, so he played along. Though funnily enough, several fans have said that given the large cast, they never would have noticed the mistake if Jordan himself hadn't pointed it out.
• Died During Production: Robert Jordan died after book 11, and Brandon Sanderson took up the mantle afterward.
  • Darrell Sweet, who produced the cover art for the US editions, passed away before completing the artwork for A Memory of Light. Michael Whelan was hired to create the final cover but chose to start the artwork from scratch rather than try to finish Sweet's design.
• Divided for Publication:
  • The initial German version saw this happen to every book in the series, resulting in a run of 37 volumes. A later release recondensed it to 14.
  • Ditto for the Finnish version, which divided the first 11 books into 25 (the Sanderson-penned entries were not translated).
  • The Swedish editions followed suit, diving up each book into two, resulting in 22 books as of this writing (All of the original Robert Jordan books have been translated. The Brandon Sanderson books are still untranslated).
  • In Russia the first editions of the first 10 books were 2- or 3-volume sets.^note The 3-volume ones were The Shadow Rising, The Fires of Heaven, Lord of Chaos and Crown of Swords. Later editions put them into single volumes. The New Spring and Knife of Dreams were single-volume from the start, and Sanderson's works have not been published as of 2021.
• Promoted Fanboy: Brandon Sanderson, who got to complete the series.
• Shrug of God: Jordan's stock answer to many things was 'RAFO' - Read And Find Out (Brandon Sanderson inherited both the habit and the phrase after concluding the series). Also the official stance toward the conclusion of the series—Word of God is firm that anything that happens after the final page is strictly up to the reader.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original idea was for the Chosen One to be a middle-aged war veteran. Yes, like Tam al'Thor. But then Jordan decided to make the story more Tolkienesque, with a younger hero, and split this character into Tam and Rand.
  • Originally, there was going to be a fourth Two Rivers boy in addition to Rand, Mat, and Perrin. The character ended up being largely peripheral, and Jordan's wife eventually convinced him to drop him.
    • This is actually referenced in-story when the young man in question, Dannil, muses to Tam early on in the Battle of Merrilor what would have happened if he'd gone with the three main heroes when Moiraine took them out of the Two Rivers.
  • Robert Jordan initially planned to write at least two more prequels (one about Tam, and a second about Moiraine and Lan), as well as a sequel trilogy following Mat and Perrin several years down the line (collectively, fans tend to refer to these as "the outriggers"). Unfortunately, Jordan Died During Production before he produced much material on any of them, and it looks like they'll probably never get written at this point as neither Harriet nor Sanderson was comfortable working with such scanty material.
  • There was originally going to be a subplot in Memory of Light revolving around the Sharan leader Bao the Wyld better known as Demandred. Unfortunately, it threw off the pacing and forced Sanderson to do a lot more worldbuilding than normal, since Jordan hadn't left a lot of material on Shara. It got cut from the book, but ended up seeing the light of day as the short piece River of Souls in the Unfettered anthology.
  • It was eventually revealed that "Taimandred" (the common fan theory that Mazrim Taim was really Demandred) was the original plan. When, exactly, Jordan decided to change it isn't clear, though he definitely had by Winter's Heart which explicitly contradicts it^note Demandred doesn't recognize some of Rand's Asha'man at the Cleansing. Taim, who trained the Asha'man, wouldn't have made that mistake. It's also unclear why Jordan changed it, though if one wanted to claim that he had given the game away by foreshadowing a little too well, one might not be wrong.
  • Similarly, at one point Taimandred was supposed to have been Asmodean's killer (to prevent Asmodean tipping Rand off when Taim showed up), before Robert Jordan changed the killer's identity to Graendal.
• Word of God: Robert Jordan, occasionally putting long arguments to rest... when he didn't point the finger at RAFO.

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