Because of the balance in Randland I knew there was going to be an opposite. But because it was only discovered during the last big war/battle and then forbidden, I figured that no one bothered to "Test" and try to find a way around it because it was forbidden. And risky.
Wasn't Tam with Perrin's army though? And Birgitte had died by that point. The whole thing was she needed to show them that 1.) she wasn't dead and 2.) that all hope wasn't lost.
then on page 824 near the bottom she talks about waving the sword and holding the sword
and then the next page...
To be fair, even at the time Elayne herself commented about how silly it was and how she didn't know if she'd even be able to swing the thing. But a queens gotta do what a queens gotta do!
And I agree with Tazren, I wasn't surprised. If anything, it was an amusing little section in a time when...
I didn't expect a ton of deaths because well... healing. Anything short of death can and will be healed. I imagine that the important people in the book got top priority, such as Perrin. Basically the ones that happened were due to close close combat or freak accidents.
I thought each age was different, the only thing that is the same is the name being reused. And we've seen that the DO has no problems with accepting new members to the forsaken, so who is to say that come the next age of Legends that he doesn't go recruiting? But I think that Rand's solution to...