What would Winnowill have done with the Palace?

I mean, if Rayek hadn't stopped Winnowill, and she had been able to enter the Palace as a spirit. Would she have been able to take it over? If so, what would she have done then?

Would the other spirits in the Palace have fought her, or simply accepted that she would be the one calling the shots from now on?

And would death have ended up changing her, as it did other elf spirits when they entered the Palace? Or was she too far gone for that?

This is something, that to this day, no matter how I mull it over, I don't understand.

Was Winnie so evil that her spirit would have saturated the Palace? Surely, due to the way we've seen the EQ-verse work up until that point, she would have gone the same way as Kureel and entered the Spirit-pool to sleep?

Out of all the events in EQ, that one, for me, stank of Deus ex Machina - just a way to keep Winnie going, even though her character had gone about as far as it could.

But still, owing to the story, if she had made it into the crystals, I think she would have been compelled to sleep - that does seem to be the way of all other spirits in the Palace (unless they're specifically called).

Maybe she herself doesn't know. The Palace calls to all elves, in one way or another. The Wolfriders, the Go-Backs...we how it affected the Gliders as they got close to it. But it doesn't seem to mean the same thing to all elves. The Go-Backs, for example, seem to want it because then it would be theirs (which sounds like a silly reason, but also makes a sort of sense, considering the Go-Back mentality). What's the thing that would draw Winnie most? Power. So the Palace makes her think that if she gains it, she would get all the power she ever wants - and then if she does get it, she'll go to sleep, safe, home, like all the elven spirits were menat to be. Perhaps it's just the Palace's way to call her particular spirit home.


Ah, whatever. Late night ramblings. :? :D

Well, the thing is that the fact that Winnowill shouldn't be killed was what drove the whole plot of Siege at Blue Mountain. As Cutter said near the beginning: "You want to be free of Winnowill? Well, you can't do it by destroying her body-- she's an elf! Kill her, and her spirit will live on-- free to do whatever harm she likes, to any of us-- forever!"

It was not until the next series that the Wolfriders found that death can "gentle an elf's spirit," as Cutter put it, referring to Strongbow's encounter with Kureel in the Palace. But one wonders why all the elves are so sure that death will not gentle Winnowill's spirit. In Shards, they are all convinced that upon death, her spirit will take over the Palace. That's why Rayek has to stop her.

It's possible that death could gentle her, and/or that she'd be unable to control the Palace due to the other spirits who dwell there. But I suppose it was too great a risk to take. I do find myself wondering, though, if part of the reason she is "pure evil" now, as Rogue's Curse says, is that she was withheld at the critical moment from the gentling effect of the Palace. But in that case, Rayek's whole sacrifice would be for nothing, for a mistake-- and that's not bearable.

So I suppose the elves are right-- that they can sense, somehow, that Winnowill's spirit has become strong enough, set in its ways enough, to not be gentled by death or contact with the Palace. But one wonders, if that's the case, whether Rayek will ever be able to "redeem her soul." I hope so, for both their sakes.

Well, it does seem that, at the end of Shards, they see her spirit entering the Shards, apparently seeking to seize control of them. In the illustration, she looks like a dark, oozing cloud, which Rayek forcibly sucks into himself. Maybe Winnowil was able to be conscious in death to an extent that other elves were not?

I dunno... it's an interesting question.

It always seemed to me that the Palace (and its dead denizens) have tried to maintain a level of neutrality both in power and the moral use of it. The spirits there have a low level of independant consciousness but it's rarely a thing they push or actively pursue. Any living elf who's powerful or knowledgeable enough can call on its use in whatever form they want. Winnie, on the other hand, even in spirit form, is definitely [i:2d3cdb7ebd]not[/i:2d3cdb7ebd] a morally neutral or somnabulent being. Adding her malnevolent presence into the Palace's power base would kinda be like adding an acid or alkali to pH neutral water, making the liquid impure no matter the degree.

I think, at the end, she never had any real, concrete plans on using the Palace (shards) in her spirit form. She was basically acting as the spoiled brat that she can be, screeching, 'If I can't use the Palace the way I want, neither will any of you lot!' Her strongly conscious 'infection' of the shards would serve to keep the other living elves from taking full advantage of the splintered Palace's power. It might be that she could [i:2d3cdb7ebd]only[/i:2d3cdb7ebd] manage to try it because the Palace wasn't whole and its attendant spirits' consciousness was splintered as well. I don't think her attempt was a [i:2d3cdb7ebd]deus ex machina[/i:2d3cdb7ebd] act because a) it failed, b) it was in character Winnie-being-Winnie and not believing her powers have any limits, and c) her character has managed to 'live on' and be just as villainous in the Quest without being part of the Palace. If there was a true [i:2d3cdb7ebd]deus ex machina[/i:2d3cdb7ebd] usage that really rubbed me the wrong way it was Zhantee's spirit's way-too-conscious use of his living powers to erect a bubble shield around Cutter in [i:2d3cdb7ebd]Discovery[/i:2d3cdb7ebd]. That just smacked of lame-o cameo placement. Really, was there [i:2d3cdb7ebd]no[/i:2d3cdb7ebd] other living elf in the Palace at that time (which was packed to the crystal rafters with magic users) that couldn't have managed a similar feat?

These are good points, Medea. I had somehow forgotten the basic fact that the Palace was not whole at the moment Winnie attempted to invade it-- and that she would have been incapable of re-assembling it by herself.

You're right-- she probably had no other plans than just to invade the Shards-- thinking, possibly, that she could augment her own power that way, even while disembodied.

Well.. according to the story in Rogue's Curse (elfquest vol 2)


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Winnowill's spirit wouldn't be able to saturate the shards.. just because the shards themselves won't accept her.

True, but she didn't know that. :)

But the way you put that gives me an idea regarding my confusion about that Rogue's Curse story.

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Maybe there's a difference between flying the Palace (which Winnowill was able to do quite easily in Shards) and saturating it? I never could understand why Ekuar would say "only a true and loving heart can channel the power of the Palace" when Winnowill had flown the Palace when she stole it, just before it broke. But maybe simply commanding the Palace and channeling its power are two different things.

[quote:f078d876b1="Raenafel"]Well.. according to the story in Rogue's Curse (elfquest vol 2)


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Winnowill's spirit wouldn't be able to saturate the shards.. just because the shards themselves won't accept her.[/quote:f078d876b1]

Also, don't forget "Rogue's Curse" is set about 400 years after the events of [i:f078d876b1]EQ: Shards[/i:f078d876b1]. What a Palace shard (or the Palace entire) might not let Winnie do four centuries later, it might have let her do earlier. Especially since the Shards had no Palace master at the time, but in 'Curses' time it's (presumably) full of Timmain and the Sun Folk, at least.

Yeah. I mean, the first time it let someone not "true and loving" drive it, it got smashed. Perhaps it learned?

Hmm. That's an interesting thought. However, Rayek was hardly a "true and loving" person when he was in the process of carrying out his plan to wipe out all past generations. So I don't think Winnowill qualifies as the first unloving and untrue person to drive it.

Rayek didn't really learn to love till later, according to Leetah.

On this, I think, we'll disagree. Rayek was a loving person. Maybe it didn't show much, but it was there. He loved the Palace. In a certain way, he loved Timmain. And I don't think anyone can dispute that he loved Ekuar. His words to the Go-Backs when he left for Blue Mountain are evidence enough of that.

But whther he was true - that I don't know. Maybe in this case it depends on [b:d7e0e26451]Ekuar's[/b:d7e0e26451] definition of loving, not ours. An to Ekuar, Rayek has been loving ever since he took pity on a poor cripple in a hole.

[quote:0428e1f949="Jade Owl"]Yeah. I mean, the first time it let someone not "true and loving" drive it, it got smashed. Perhaps it learned?[/quote:0428e1f949]

Yeah, let that be a lesson to you elves: Friends don't let friends fly drunk (with power).

I love that, Medea!

Actually, Jade Owl, to a certain extent I do agree with you. Rayek has a lot of good in him, and his intentions were always good-- but he did go off on a tangent there and acted without thought of the harm he was doing others. He seems to have started going wrong from the moment he met Winnowill for the first time. And it took Ekuar to bring him back to reality again. I remember in Shards, at the moment Winnowill stole the Palace, it said that the spirits in the Palace do not judge their use for good or evil. They certainly seemed to be willing to let Rayek use them wrongly. So it does seem to me that what Winnowill was trying to do in entering the shard must have been something deeper, something more.

But that seems to lead back to the whole thing I was trying to avoid-- that Rayek's sacrifice was actually for nothing. That the shards would have rejected Winnowill's attempts to invade them at the moment she died. Bleh.

Or maybe, if unable to actually enter the shards, she might have wreaked havoc on the living elves, and possibly the humans as well?