Another of my old /r/wot posts:

Original Post

Gawyn and Galad are an interesting duo. Both are presented as handsome princes in shining armor, who always know the right thing to do, chasing their course without compromise or quarter. Loyal, brave, expert swordsman, selfless to a fault. Yet their moral frameworks are diametrically opposed: Galad's strict moral code, followed to the letter -- damn the consequences! -- versus Gawyn's innate inner compass, his guiding star, no matter what others around him think.

My thesis: both characters are one half of a single theme Jordan wants to explore, and like many of the themes in The Wheel of Time, the heroic tropes we've grown to love in other stories are thrown into the cold, hard light of reality -- where things aren't predisposed to go the hero's way -- lets the characters flounder.

And yes, let's get this out of the way: Gawyn sucks. We all know it, we've all read the posts, maybe taken part in beating that dead horse into a fine glue ourselves. But it's not really his fault. When we zoom out I think we'll come to see that Gawyn is just the chess piece Jordan sacrificed to drive home l his point. Gawyn is the cautionary side of he and his half-brother's little parable. The side that doesn't learn the lesson. His absolute absence of self-improvement contrasts heavily with Galad, who is the one marked by Jordan to become more.

Hero Tropes

Gawyn and Galad exist to explore two common hero tropes that sit on opposite ends of a what-it-means-to-be-good spectrum.

Let's cover Galad first:

Galad is Batman, he is chained to his moral code and completely inflexible in how he proceeds with it. He is the epitome of lawful good. And let's be real, in the right circumstances, we love this kind of character... when the story plays along and only gives the hero obstacles they can solve within their code (which means situations that are very straightforward), it just feels good. Life is simple! Being good is simple! Ignore all that moral grey! Just follow these three simple rules! It's a comforting lie to buy into for a bit. It lets you escape the complexities of the real world.

Strict moral codes -- especially around honoring ones word -- work best when there is no hidden information, and in the real world, there is always hidden information. You're going to be in for a bad time if you have a strict moral code that compels you to act without thought for what you don't know, and disallows you from changing course when the new information comes to light.

Let's take the ultimate example: the boat for Nynaeve and Elayne. Galad uses the Whitecloaks to secure river passage for our Wonder Girls and make good on a promise to his sister. In a bit of dramatic irony, he takes a ship by force from a group of red shirts also trying to secure it for Nynaeve.

Before we see how the book plays this, I want to introduce a thought experiment we are going to be using a lot in this post: let's think about how this scene would look if Galad was our protagonist in a normal fantasy novel.

Our hero would grab a squad of his men to secure a boat for his magical sister to continue her mission for the light. He would get to the docks and, there's a wrinkle: some stooges of the mad despot Masema are there, blocking his sister's way out of the town.

He'd have a sidekick that would balk, and try to turn back, but our hero would narrow his eyes and grit his teeth, laying a reassuring hand on our doubters shoulder and give some line about how he gave his word that he'd find a way out of this town for his sister, and it was their duty to see it through and get her to safety so she could continue her mission.

He'd march up to the prophet's men, give them and ultimatum, trying to avoid violence, but the mooks would strike first and our hero would have to beat them back as they caused the town to break out in violence (the book would go to pains to make sure we understand it's not our heroes fault). Our hero would clear a path for our heroines and get them off into the sunset and save the day.

We've all read that scene a million times. We basically don't question ever when the hero confronts the bad guy's goons and it devolves into violence.

Jordan, though, wants us to see this moment as an outside observer, not from the heroes point of view, so we can soak in how deranged it is to not taking stock and regroup when new information changes the context around a promise the hero made. The moment we get instead of a fun victory is:

“I didn’t ask you to start a riot!”

“A riot?” Elayne put in. “A war. An invasion. All begun over this vessel.”

Galad answered calmly. “I gave Nynaeve my word, sister. My first duty is to see you safely on your way to Caemlyn. And Nynaeve, of course. The Children would have had to fight this Prophet soon or late.”

“Couldn’t you simply have let us know the ship was here?” Nynaeve asked wearily. Men and their word. It was all very admirable, sometimes, but she should have listened when Elayne said he did what he saw as right no matter who was hurt.

Without actually being there we get to see the fallout of doing the right thing no matter what -- in this case, keeping one's word -- without the blinders a normal story would put on. We see how obvious it is that Galad should have been a little more flexible once he saw the boat couldn't be taken without violence. This is especially good dramatic irony for the audience since we know his actions were totally pointless, and Masema's men were acting towards the same goal he was. If he had simply stopped to confer with his sister about what the next move should be given the situation, it all would have been resolved peacefully.

Now let's turn to Gawyn.

Gawyn represents another type of hero: the hero who listens to his heart and nothing else. Who's morality comes from within, and who holds steadfast to his beliefs until the bitter end.

Let's take his most infamous and annoying thread: his incesessant belief that Rand killed his mother in the face of all evidence.

In Gawyn's mind, Rand is pulling the wool over everyone else's eyes, deceiving them all with his charisma and maybe the Power. Gawyn just needs to find proof to unmask Rand and he'll save the day.

And let's be honest, we've all read that story and rooted for that hero. But normally the story makes sure that they're right. The villain really has fooled everyone and against all apparent evidence is actually evil.

This happens all the time to Gawyn, he's the head strong hero who listens to his gut against all evidence. He backs Elaida, a woman he's known since childhood against the secretive Suian who is hiding his sister (in another story there would be nefarious reasons), he sacrifices himself to kill the big bad at the end, and he would have been redeemed, if he has won. We as readers forgive a lot of stupidity in other stories when the hero wins.

And constantly, Gawyn makes bad choices while in orbit and Egwene, all of which complicate her life rather than showing her what a good and competent man Gawyn is. The story doesn't contrive to give his actions justification.

Gawyn is in many ways a prototypical fantasy hero, except Jordan has put him in a world where his wild hunches happen to be wrong and his reckless gambles don't fall his way. When you tell right from wrong by listening to your gut, sometimes your gut is just horny.

You need some structure to help work through that and examine it.

Balance

Saidin balances Saidar, and Galad balances Gawyn. Through Galad's failures we're shown the pitfalls of having an inflexible moral code, but through Gawyn we see what happens when moral instincts are applied with no structure. Through both we learn the importance of not just ignoring new information, but also of not actively seeking it out as you make a knee-jerk moral judgment.

Through Morgase, Galad learns to temper his code with internal consideration. To seek common ground between what is righteous and what is right. He is able to find a middle way with Perrin.

More importantly he learns a lesson both he and Gawyn miss: it's always okay to change course when presented with new information. Sometimes sticking to your guns is just a way to perpetuate a suboptimal decision based on bad information. It is not a moral failing to have an opinion evolve.

Gawyn never gets the memo, and dies running face-first into a sword no one needed him to cross.