I’m here to discuss everyone’s least favorite character in The Wheel of Time—Gawyn Trakand. While Gawyn is almost universally hated by fans, in many ways he is one of the most interesting, flawed characters that Robert Jordan brought to life in the pages of his epic tale. And in my current reread of The Wheel of Time, undertaken in anticipation of the upcoming Amazon TV series, something new about Gawyn occurred to me… I realized that this heavily disliked character (written as a parallel of the famous Sir Gawain of Arthurian legend) mirrors in many ways another iconic fantasy character that most people love and admire: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Éowyn.
[Spoilers for The Wheel of Time (and The Lord of the Rings, for that matter) below.]