Elania al'Manir
Aes Sedai
Did anyone else feel uncomfortable with how Tylin treated Mat? At the beginning of Chapter 29, The Festival of Birds, she straight up rapes him.
Tylin mentions after she's done that he seemed to enjoy himself, and hints that he's good in bed, but there was never any explicit consent. He tried to avoid her as much as possible beforehand, and continued trying to avoid her afterwards. If their roles had been reversed, we would have seen this even more so as a case of rape.
Why do you think this was included? Was it just a plotline that was supposed to be amusing, with Mat being chased rather than doing the chasing? Or was this supposed to be an actual message that men have this issue too?
But since you wish to play roughly. . . . Hands at your sides. Move.” The knifepoint gave a direction. He shuffled backward on tiptoe rather than have his neck sliced....
[Tylin] kept him tiptoeing backward, until suddenly his shoulders bumped against something that stopped him. With that flaming dagger never easing a hair, he could not move his head, but eyes that had been focused on her face darted. They were in the bedchamber, a flower-carved red bedpost hard between his shoulder blades. Why would she bring him...? His face was suddenly as crimson as the bedpost. No. She could not mean to.... It was not decent! It was not possible!
“You can’t do this to me,” he mumbled at her, and if his voice was a touch breathy and shrill, he surely had cause....
Mat put a hand over his eyes and tried very hard not to weep. When he uncovered them, she was gone.
Climbing out of the bed, he tucked the sheet around him; for some reason, the notion of walking around bare felt uncomfortable. The bloody woman might leap out of the wardrobe. The garments he had been wearing lay on the floor. Why bother with laces, he thought sourly, when you can just cut somebody’s clothes off! She had no call to slice up his red coat that way, though. She had just enjoyed peeling him with her knife.
Tylin mentions after she's done that he seemed to enjoy himself, and hints that he's good in bed, but there was never any explicit consent. He tried to avoid her as much as possible beforehand, and continued trying to avoid her afterwards. If their roles had been reversed, we would have seen this even more so as a case of rape.
Why do you think this was included? Was it just a plotline that was supposed to be amusing, with Mat being chased rather than doing the chasing? Or was this supposed to be an actual message that men have this issue too?