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2.1.5: What's up with Mat and his memories?

[Don Harlow, Joe Shaw, Pam Korda]

When Mat went into the Red Door of Rhuidean, he asked for the holes in his memory to be filled [TSR: 24, Rhuidean, 281]. He ended up with more than he bargained for. The holes were filled with "historical" memories, memories from people who lived between the time of the Trolloc Wars and the time of Hawkwing. In every memory, he is a military man, and most of his memories are of fighting and battles.

Where did they come from?

One idea is that the memories are the memories of Mat's own past lives, i.e., Mat is one of the heroes that the Pattern spins out every so often, and he is remembering his previous incarnations. This seems to be supported by the way the Snakes address Mat when he asks his questions. They seem to talk to him as if to some sort of archetypal figure: "Go to Rhuidean, son of battles! Go to Rhuidean, trickster! Go, gambler! Go!"

An argument against this idea is that the Heroes of the Horn do not recognize Mat as they recognize Rand when they meet in TGH. On the other hand, there is no reason why they should. Not every reborn person is a Hero of the Horn. Perhaps all the continuously-reborn souls don't "know" one another-- only the Heroes of the Horn, and they only recognize LTT/Rand, because they are somehow bound to follow him.

Another idea is that Mat's memories are not actually those of his own past lives, but that when he asked the Foxes to fill the holes in his mind, they just put in random memories of various battle commanders through the ages. The immediate question one must ask is "how did the Foxes get those memories in the first place, then?" They couldn't have gotten them from other visitors, because the Foxy door has been stuck in Rhuidean since the Breaking.

Of course, Cyndane's comment in WH about being held by the Aelfinn AND the Eelfinn means that there must be some sort of connection between the Snaky place and the Foxy place. According to Moiraine in TSR, the AS who studied the Snake door in Tear said that the Snakes (the Aelfinn) feed on experiences and emotions - memories, in other words [TSR: 15, Into the Doorway, 179]. Which may explain where the Eelfinn - the Foxes - got them. The problem is, this idea implies that every single one of the men whose memories are in Mat's head went into the Tear doorway at one point or another. It's not impossible that this is the case, since the Tear doorway was only hidden in the Stone for the past three hundred years and prior to that it was in use in Mayene [TSR: 6, Doorways, 95-96], but it seems rather improbable, especially if we're talking about thousands of men (see below).

Yet another problem with this is that Mat had historical flashbacks of a military nature before he went to Rhuidean. (Consider the scene in TDR where he is Healed in the Tower [TDR: 19, Awakening, 167-168].) So, at least some of his memories are "genuine."

There is no mention of Mat having memories of being two different people at the same time. A common misconception is that the sequence of memories described in [TSR: 37, Imre Stand, 424-5] indicates that Mat has memories of being two different people in the same battle. This is not the case! What is actually going on is that these are two different guys, at different times. In the earlier memory, Mat is an advisor to a king, and is killed through the treachery of the enemy. In the later memory, Mat recalls seeing that same enemy, then older and grayer, die in another battle someplace else. There is enough time between the two incidents for the enemy to age considerably, and for Mat to be reborn and grow enough to become a soldier.

The closest there is is [LOC: 5, A Different Dance, 113] "Slices of other men's lives packed his head now, thousands of them, sometimes only a few hours, sometimes years altogether though in patches, memories of courts and combats stretching for well over a thousand years, from long before the Trolloc Wars to the final battle of Artur Hawkwing's rise. All his now, or they might as well be."

Courtenay Footman interprets it thusly: "Since we have to fit the lives of "thousands" of people into a period less than two thousand years long, it is clear that the average number of those people alive at any one time during that period numbered in the dozens." If this were the only interpretation, then Mat's memories could clearly not be his own. However, this is not the only way to read that passage. "thousands" could just as well refer to "thousands of slices," as "thousands of men." Furthermore, the term "thousands" could be figurative, not literal.

A third theory, which is on the Loony side, but worth mentioning, is that some of the memories are of Mat's past lives (thus explaining the pre-Rhuidean flashbacks), but that most of them are from Mat's ancestors. Warren Way explains: "Mat's non-Mat memories are a combination of actual past lives plus an effect similar to what Rand went through in the circle of pillars in Rhuidean. Rand realizes that what he experienced were the memories of his Aiel ancestors. So when the *finn filled the holes in Mat's memories, they did so with the memories of Mat's forebears in addition to some memories from actual past lives. Perhaps the factors of Mat being a ta'veren and the memory transfer of the *finn being imperfect causes the jumble of previous lives and ancestral memories. Why such a limited time frame? The Pattern needs to give Rand a superb general, so Mat gets memories from Randland's bloodiest period. Or maybe, like Johnny Mnemonic, there's only so much space in Mat's head. Nynaeve would probably agree on the latter." This idea has the same problem as the "random memories" idea: how did the Foxes get memories of Mat's ancestors? Maybe there is some sort of genetic memory in Randland.

RJ stated at a post-TPOD booksigning that "Gender/soul rebirth he said is best illustrated by Mat and Birgitte." (reported by John Hamby.) Note that this implies that Mat's memories are indeed due to his past life. (If some of the memories weren't genuine, then Mat would not be a "best illustration.")

Who was Mat? Was he Aemon?

There has been a lot of speculation that Mat is the reincarnation of an ancient king of Manetheren. If Mat's memories are due to reincarnation, and not just shoved in there willy-nilly by the Foxes, then it is clear that Mat is the reincarnation of a fairly large number of personalities (I would say "different" personalities, except I suspect that they were all fairly similar). This is evidenced by Mat's pseudo-memories that emerge when Jasin Natael is singing a song about a battle at a river and how the enemy of Manetheren had mercy on the defeated Manetherenites, because they were so brave, etc. Mat remembers himself, the king's advisor, being killed by that foe's treachery; and then he remembers himself, somebody else, seeing that foe, older and grayer, being killed in another battle somewhere else. [TSR: 37, Imre Stand, 424-5]. Plus, we have many scenes in which Mat remembers being guys who were definitely not Aemon.

Additionally, he forms the Band of the Red Hand near the end of TFOH, which was supposedly a band of heroes who went down defending Aemon himself. This looks like another marker, though there's nothing directly of Aemon's memories that Mat has.

It's clear that Mat was not King of Manetheren in the memory described in [LOC: 5, A Different Dance, 112-113], at least. Mat is remembering several lives. Mat may be one of those souls that the Pattern spins out every so often, and he is remembering his previous incarnations. Mat was just a brilliant military advisor for the Manetheren kings, not the King.

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