Wheel of time gay characters

This page provides an index of all confirmed LGBT+ characters in The Wheel of Time.

emarin wheel of time

This includes characters who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or any other gender or sexual minority. Anyone take any interest into the apparent presence of gay relationships in The Wheel of Time?

The more obvious one is the one between Ailil and Shalon revealed under the cover of the more or less subtle title of "pillow-friends." I've also read posts mentioning the activities of the young women. Situational homosexuality doesn’t make a person a homosexual. There's some LGBT activities and characters but it's mostly implied rather than explicitly.

There's polyamory as a main plot point, though. Aran’gar is trans (technically) and bi. Wheel of Time season 3 on Amazon Prime Video is finally bringing Elayne and Aviendha together with Rand — and, in the premiere, with each other romantically as well. Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted. Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture?

Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show! I would even go so far as to say that it has woven a deeply queer sensibility into the very essence of the show itself, building on the remarkably diverse milieu that Robert Jordan himself created and giving us a story and a secondary fantasy setting in which everyone can feel at home.

Omnivorous is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Rafe: For me, you know, as a young guy who loved fantasy but was also realizing that I was queer, there were not a lot of series that I loved where I saw myself in them. Like I feel like people like me are in this book. Sometimes you see, you know, first-sisters and pillow friends and all of these things that are not just a little whisper on the side of the world but are pretty intrinsic to the core relationships in the book series.

Elayne and Aviendha together, their relationship in many ways even in the books is as important as the relationship they each have with Rand. So you know I saw myself in there and I felt like with the show too I want people to be able to see themselves. So that leads to my second question, which is about Siuan and Moiraine, who obviously are one of the core couples in the show. Could you elaborate how you struck that exquisite balance that a less talented showrunner and team of writers could pull off?

One thing that they talked about at the end of season one was: these are two really powerful women, extremely driven to achieve whatever they set out to achieve. It would be interesting to see them in conflict with one another. That was something that was interesting to Rosamund and Sophie. Sometimes you get nervous when you only have one queer relationship or one queer character in a show.

To me that makes me very nervous as a writer. I think the great gift is that we have so many queer characters on the show, because it does let them each exist in their own world and exist in their stories without having to bear the weight of the whole queer experience within the show. I wanted to hear more about how you find that balance between queer inclusion without making it feel tokenized.

Rafe: I think one thing that was so amazing when I read The Wheel of Time was that queerness existed, and that was something that was true of our world, too. It can be both of those things, and it is in the books. So we get to see two formal sets of first-sisters, and then another budding set of first-sisters in the show in season three. So even within the Aiel culture we get to see multiple versions of queerness in the world.

With the Aes Sedai at the White Tower, this is essentially an all-female society and female same-sex relationships in the Tower are really important in the books. A pillow friend is a very different thing than a first-sister, but both can incorporate two women who are truly in love with each other. I just wanted to get that light-hearted question in there.