this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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Wheel of Time - TV Show on Amazon Prime
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EDIT: If you haven't read this yet. WHICH map are you using? I'm leaning on the close-up map. See my removedfest after about how the maps have never agreed with each other about where the roads really are.
To clarify, what you said was 8:18 appears to be 8:01-8:05 on my side. They're standing on a hill, DM back-left. I know the angle/view is awkward, but remember from the map that Dragonmount is at 8 o'clock to Tar Valon with Southarbor being 6 o'clock... On the 8:01 hill video, it is ALSO at 8 o'clock to tar-valon. I can see an argument for bad camerawork and/or SFX and it seems more like as much as 10 o'clock, but that's a stretch and 8 o'clock is clearly within the realm of possibility for that view.
Remember, Tar Valon is not N/S. It is at a 10-20 degree angle to true-north. That puts them overlooking Osenbein.
If you want to have anything to complain about, when I first mathed all this out months back against the haters, I discoverd an annoyance that the canon maps do not all agree as to where the roads come in, most notably Caemlyn Road. I DONT THINK THEY'RE ON CAEMLYN ROAD ANYWAY in the show, but some maps show it coming in from the south, but the Tar Valon map shows it coming in from the West. Does it matter to today's chat? Probably not (except that Jordan is more off-canon than the show on consistency). But it annoys the hell out of me.
EDIT: Missed your mention of the 8:39 (8:23 for me) shot. That's the thing. It matches a view from Osenrein perfectly, more clearly than the previous shot. That's a NW shot of Tar Valon, taken from SE to SSE, like somebody at Osenrein looking vaguely towards the tower (and then suddenly launching a Camera Drone...).
I disagree with your take that the angles don't work. They work really clearly from there for me. Again, maybe yhou could argue it wasn't good enough SFX work and didn't make the position of Dragonmount perfectly obvious... I just disagree that it IS wrong. I'm convinced they intended it to be in the right place. Disputing whether they were unclear is a different topic that's harder for me to fight. Obviously they were at least somewhat unclear about the location of Dragonmount being correct or you wouldn't be so convinced.
My whole reply comes from the TV map, the scenes in question, and the zoomed in world map side-by-side.
(My timestamps are from viewing the episode on the Prime website using the web interface)
The best canon map I can put my hand on is this one. Even this map is a little confusing because TV is top down, while DM is shown in perspective. Also the scale of the island vs the size of DM is wrong.
I'm having trouble following your clock orientation argument. If you are saying that when looking top down, Southharbor (in the foreground) is at 6 o'clock and Northharbor (not visible) is at 12, then the POV from the hill shot puts Dragonmount at 10 or 11 when it should be at 8. DM is only left of the tower in this shot because it is so far away and the viewing angle from 5 o'clock. If you had a POV from 3 o'clock, DM would be to your right when it should either be directly ahead or to the left (depending on the map you use and the orientation of the island).
This is much less of a glaring error than if the boys are approaching from the west, so I'll downgrade it to a nitpick if you assume there is a reason for them to be approaching TV from the east. I honestly can't justify why they would have crossed the Tar Valon / Caemlyn road (it doesn't have a name that I can find), then found a way to cross the river (where there are no crossings north of Aringill) rather than just turning north. Whoever made the "Character Journeys" map on the Prime extras page seems to have come to the same conclusion, because it does not show them crossing the river. Even if that were the writer's intent (and I can see how it wouldn't add to the story to explain why they did all that) the only justification for them doing so would be to set up this shot. It is these kinds of cinematography driven decisions that seem to be behind some (of what I'd consider to be) odd choices.
Here we are. This is the Tar Valon map, taken off the page of a book. https://aidanmoher.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/y1tR8.gif (make-pretend NSFW if you know what I mean)
On that map, Dragonmount is at approximately 8 o'clock due to the fact that North is the upper-right on the map.. It's hard to pin because Dragonmount is massive and looms in the background.
And I'm saying that there is an ARGUMENT that Dragonmount is closer to 10 (I wouldn't say anywhere near 11, and I misspoke if I did) because of the particular angle... but I think it is an accurate reprsentation of what a massive mountain at 8 o'clock would look like. The "Hill View" however seems to have a slightly horrific lend effect like someone overusing a cheap fish-eye. That's the reason I think the position is slightly distorted there. That's what I meant by "bad vfx". The latter view overlooking Osenrein, however, I think is a perfect representation plain-and-simple.
I'm a bit rusty on some of the road names. I thought it was stilled called "The Caemlyn Road", but now I'm second-guessing myself on that. My reasoning however is that the Road directly connecting Caemlyn and Tar Valon is a massive thoroughfare, and despite there being about 100 people or so on it, the tiny 1-foot-wide dirt path we see around the 7:01 mark in S1E5 is absolutely not that.
Look at your map, though. I swear (but can't cite) there were formally a few small connecting roads between the road from Caemlyn and the Cairhien Road (the latter is correctly named). But the "why?". They were avoiding big roads by (and after) the Grinwell Farm. And remember, they aren't coming directly from Caemlyn anymore, despite coming from Andor.
You want an Easter Egg? I keep going back-and-forth about this one, whether it was intentional. Look at THIS map You might recognize the town closest to where that shot must have been taken. My estimate of the town closest to the spot the "Hill Overlook" picture was taken? Just a small off-the-grid no-named town called Dumai's Wells. As we all know, subtly hinting at Dumai's Wells couldn't possibly be an attempt to pander at the most hardcore of us.
And those ARE the families of Easter Eggs we're being consistently given by the showrunners who knew they had a hard uphill battle to fight.
...and while I agree about odd choices, there are very few even readers who are going to fault the show terribly from the angle they arrived that aren't already faulting the show for Tar Valon replacing Caemlyn.
I guess this is where we have to agree to disagree. To me there is no way that mountain is below 9 o'clock. I can't see how to argue this further without a 3d model, and I don't have the graphic chops for that.
Interesting that the name "Caemlyn Road" only appears in TEotW with respect to the east-west thoroughfare of Andor. It is never mentioned again.
Agreed, and I noted earlier that I could buy that the people on the road were refugees from Cairhien.
I'm having trouble finding a reference, but I'm fairly certain that there is no crossing of the Erinin between Aringill and Tar Valon. (The wonder girls mention there being no crossings of the Alguena with the maidens in TDR, but oddly they don't actually mention how they got across the Erinin) They might have been able to catch a barge or swim across, but why? Without some explanation for that, it is natural for anyone watching (and looking at Amazon's own supplements) that Mat and Rand approached TV from the west - regardless of the director's intent.