A nagging inconsistency

[Turin Turambar]

In book 6, the Aes Sedai use Aes Sedai that don't yet have the ageless faces disguised as servants to capture Rand before Dumai's Wells. These are Full Aes Sedai. Yet Setalle Anan uses the fact that Elayne doesn't have an ageless face as the basis of her claim that Nynaeve and Elayne aren't Aes Sedai. What's up here?

[Angsos]

Nyneave and Elayne are too young to be AS whereas the others went the normal route. Elayne jumped the line because she's Elayne, Nyneave jumped the line because she fought a Foresaken basically to a draw.

[Turin Turambar]

Setalle said that it was the lack of the ageless face that ticked her off, I think. Which the Dumai's Wells AS didn't have.

[WildSpeculation]

It takes a while for newly raised Aes Sedai to develop the ageless face after swearing the Three Oaths. So it is possible that new(ish) Aes Sedai were sent to capture Rand. They wouldn't have the ageless face yet and would have been harder to detect. Setalle Anan should know this so she may have suspected that while Nynaeve and Elayne could be newly raised full Aes Sedai, I think other things tipped her off that those tow had not sworn the Three Oaths.

So, I don't see an inconsistency.

[king of nowhere]

it's been a few years since my last reread,  but I seem to remember the point was that they look too young. the young aes sedai that captured rand may have been 25 and may have actually looked 25.

nynaeve, if I recall correctly, is somewhere around 26, but she looks much younger. egwene is less than 20, and probably looks her age.

it would have beeen perfectly plausible to believe that they were newly raised aes sedai who looked younger than their actual ages because some people actually do. heck, i knew a girl who was 24 and could have reasonably passed for 16.

but setalle knows about runaway novices joining the kin, she took the simpler solution.

 

[The Sovereign]

On 8/22/2019 at 8:24 PM, Turin Turambar said:

In book 6, the Aes Sedai use Aes Sedai that don't yet have the ageless faces disguised as servants to capture Rand before Dumai's Wells. These are Full Aes Sedai. Yet Setalle Anan uses the fact that Elayne doesn't have an ageless face as the basis of her claim that Nynaeve and Elayne aren't Aes Sedai. What's up here?

Setalle actually acknowledges that Nynaeve could plausibly be an Aes Sedai who has slowed but hasn't yet developed the ageless face. The issue is that she thinks regardless of slowing that Elayne is too young to have been raised and makes the logical leap that if Nynaeve were in fact an Aes Sedai who hadn't yet achieved the ageless face, then she would not perpetuate that Elayne were Aes Sedai. Because Nynaeve does, Setalle concludes she is lying and therefore not Aes Sedai.

[old man moomba]

Now, IIRC, the Aes Sedai that Rand didn't notice both kept their heads down and wore hooded cloaks so Rand couldn't see their faces.