There are no beginnings to the Wheel… so when did Birgitte become Birgitte?
Spoilers ahead! Don’t read this unless you’ve read through Towers of Midnight, at least…
Okay, this has been living in my head and I need other WoT people to tell me how they interpret it.
Birgitte tells Nynaeve: “I am Birgitte. At least, that is the name you would know.”
She remembers countless previous lives: different names, different circumstances, different versions of herself. We know she was Jethari Moondancer, Maerion, etc. She describes those lives almost like books she has already read.
But when she is between lives in Tel’aran’rhiod, she is Birgitte Silverbow.
That made me start wondering: why Birgitte?
My first instinct was that Birgitte Silverbow must have been some sort of original/defining incarnation (e.g., the woman who eventually became the Hero of the Horn we know as Birgitte.)
Except… There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time.
If the Wheel truly has no beginning, then there can’t be a “first” incarnation of this soul. There was never an original Birgitte from whom all the other incarnations followed. Which makes me wonder if Birgitte isn’t actually an incarnation at all in the way I’ve always thought about her. Maybe Birgitte is the archetype of the soul itself.
And THEN there is the line after Elayne bonds her, when Birgitte says she vaguely remembers hearing a story about a female Warder in a life so long ago that she can’t remember anything more about it.
Which creates an even stranger possibility: could Birgitte be remembering herself?
Not herself earlier in this turning of the Wheel, but herself from another turning?
If the Wheel has turned eternally, then Elayne bonding Birgitte hasn’t just happened once. Presumably some version of these events has happened before and will happen again.
So you end up with this bizarre loop:
Birgitte → countless lives → Birgitte/Jethari/Maerion/etc. → Elayne’s Warder → countless more lives → another turning of the Wheel → Birgitte → Elayne’s Warder again…
There is no original Birgitte.
There is no first time she was bonded.
There is no first life.
And yet, between all of those lives,** she is Birgitte.**
So what exactly is “Birgitte Silverbow”? Is Birgitte the Pattern’s permanent identity for that soul? Is she an archetype that exists outside the individual Ages? Is “Birgitte” simply the identity that happens to be remembered in the Third Age, so that’s how Nynaeve perceives her?
And do you think the female Warder Birgitte vaguely remembers could actually be herself from a previous turning of the Wheel?
I finished the series and somehow THIS is the kind of question that keeps me awake. 😂
Would love to hear how everyone else interprets it, or if there’s something in the books/Jordan interviews that completely blows this theory apart.