Nerdanel wrote:Essentially in the first trilogy I think it could be said that Lord Foul was using a very skillfully used version of the Even Bigger Hammer strategy. In the Second Chronicles he took a subtler route and was therefore spared the effort of building lots of huge armies to beat the peoples of the Land into submission or death. Also, I think the Sunbane was vastly more clever in its cruelty than the simple unnatural winter Foul had used earlier.
I think a flaw Lord Foul has shown is impatience. If he had but waited and made the Sunbane reach the cycle of one day and spread beyond the Land, Covenant would have had a much harder time of it and probably wouldn't have been able to succeed. There would have been no Andelain, since Hile Troy would have been eventually overwhelmed, no Giants to take Covenant to the One Tree so that Vain would get to share the essence of it, and the Elohim would have been turned into Lord Foul's puppets, making a new Staff of Law and the healing of the Land impossible even if Covenant had somehow managed to become the Arch of Time anyway, despite the much greater and more unrelieved despair heaped upon him in this version.
Well, yes, but you should also consider another possibility... I agree that in the First Chronicles, Foul's strategy was remarkably straightforward (although the sheer manipulation of the Lords so that they would eventually break the Law of Death and fulfill his self-made prophecy that he would "have the command of life and death" is intriguing), whereas in the Second, he was quite subtle. But I think he had a very clear idea of when to summon Covenant - after all, he could have waited for another generation in the Land, and that would have been enough to set the Sunbane on the one-day cycle, even though it would have meant... how much, 10-15 days in Covenant's world?
No, I think he consciously chose that moment because it offered him the greatest chances of success. Remember, "it boots nothing to avoid his snares, for they are ever beset with other snares"; his main plan was for Covenant to fall into despair and willingly give him the ring, true, but differently from the First Chronicles, in the Second Chronicles he plans contingencies. So, he sets up "short-cuts" to the destruction of the Arch of Time, making sure Covenant will encounter several such pitfalls before reaching him. So:
1) He poisons Covenant with Marid's venom, making him more powerful, so that if Covenant were ever to lose control, especially after the various relapses, he might well destroy the Arch without wanting to;
2) Even if that doesn't work, he has Gibbon show Covenant, through the Soothtell, what the reason for the Sunbane was, so Covenant goes off in search of another Staff of Law - which Foul knows he cannot get, since the Worm had been touched once by Berek and would not suffer another attempt. So, Covenant's attempt at taking the branch of the One Tree will likely trigger a battle between him and the Worm, possibly breaking the Arch of Time;
3) Even if that doesn't work, he has a Rider give Covenant another relapse when he's about to fight the Clave; as the Clave can call upon the power of the Banefire, Covenant will supposedly need wild magic to survive, and after being just poisoned again (the bees), he might use too much power and break the Arch;
4) Even if all of the above do not work, by that time Covenant will be so broken, poisoned, and lost in his despair that he will be willing to give Foul the ring.
I think Foul's impatience shows up only when he does get the ring - at that point, he is so eager to break the Arch, seeing as how the goal he has tried to attain for thousands of years is finally in his grasp, that he overlooks hints that not everything is how it seems. That, I think, is Foul's undoing.
