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2.3.13: Is Cadsuane's hair thingy a Ter'angreal?

[Leigh Butler, Adrienne Huston]


Cadsuane Melaidhrin sports a hair-ornament the likes of which we've not seen anywhere else in Randland:

"An iron-gray bun decorated with small dangling golden fish and birds, stars and moons." [TPOD: 27, The Bargain, 536]

This thing is mentioned in just about every scene in which Cadsuane appears. Various incidents in TPOD led us to believe it may be an angreal or ter'angreal, and in WH and COT we find out we were right:

We also learn in COT that there are three ornaments - two fish and a moon - which Cadsuane does not know the function of [COT: 23, Ornaments, 532].

Where did Cadsuane get them from?

In WH, Cadsuane reflects on where she learned her most important life lessons:
"[Nynaeve] had not been put through the lessons that what must be endured, could be endured. In truth, Cadsuane sympathized with her. Somewhat. It was a lesson not everyone could learn in the Tower. She herself, full of pride in her new shawl and her own strength, had been taught by a near toothless wilder at a farm in the heart of the Black Hills." [WH: 34, The Hummingbird's Secret, 624]
Then in COT, we have:
"A pity she herself had not come to the shawl fifty years later than she had... But fifty years would have meant that Norla died in her little house in the Black Hills before Cadsuane Melaidhrin ever went to the White Tower. That would have altered a great deal of history. For one thing, it would have been unlikely that she would be in anything approaching her present circumstances." [COT: 23, Ornaments, 534]
A few pages later she mentions how she had "begun earning" her ornaments all those years ago in the Black Hills [COT: 23, Ornaments, 536].

So it seems Cads got her ornaments from this wilder, Norla. How Norla got them is anyone's guess.


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