Race: Forsaken
Sex: Female
Faction: Shadow
Rating: 7.7
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Arena Status: Active (S2)
Among the Forsaken—those ancient betrayers of the Light sealed away during the end of the War of Power—few inspire such primal dread as Semirhage. Known in the Age of Legends as Nemene Damendar Boann, she was a celebrated Restorer, a master of Healing in a time when the One Power could mend almost any affliction short of death itself. But beneath her benevolent façade festered a sadistic hunger that no position of prestige could suppress. When faced with exposure by the Hall of the Servants, she rejected justice, turned to the Shadow, and pledged her soul to the Dark One. As Semirhage, she became the Forsaken’s Lady of Pain—beloved of no one, feared by all.
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| Semirhage, One of the Forsaken |
How Powerful Is Semirhage in the One Power?
By the standards of the Age of Legends, Semirhage’s innate strength in the One Power ranked at the absolute peak for women, equaled only by legends like Lanfear and the Seanchan former damane, Alivia. Her rating—1(+12)—places her at the highest end of female channelers. Unlike the post-Breaking Aes Sedai, who rank themselves by strength in a strict hierarchy, the Forsaken rarely bother, but it is known that even Mesaana—a peer in strength—considered herself evenly matched with Semirhage “on most points,” despite a slight deficit in raw power.
Semirhage’s abilities extended far beyond brute strength. Her weaves were horrifyingly precise. She had an expert’s grasp of the nervous system and the human psyche, turning Healing—traditionally the most sacred of weaves—into a tool of torment. She could manipulate the pleasure centers of the brain to induce euphoria before instantly reversing the effect to inflict agony. This wasn’t simply an exercise in cruelty, though there was plenty of that. It was an instrument of domination. She could, and did, break some of the strongest-willed individuals alive into loyal thralls of the Shadow.
It’s worth noting that, despite her immense skill, she was oddly limited in certain domains. She struggled with weather manipulation and showed no particular talent in the Talents that dealt with forecasting or controlling nature. Her strength was in people: breaking them, remaking them, controlling them. Her sadism wasn’t a liability in her toolkit—it was the point.
What Did Semirhage Look Like?
Striking is the only appropriate word for Semirhage’s appearance. She was notably tall—taller than most men, standing around 6'1½"—but carried herself with such grace and proportion that few remarked on her height unless she stood beside someone else. Her skin was a deep charcoal black, her hair short and wavy, her lips full, her eyes like obsidian mirrors: wide, black, and unreadable. She dressed exclusively in black, a choice other Forsaken privately attributed to her ongoing, petty rivalry with Lanfear, who always wore white.
In many ways, her appearance was a tool no less than her weaves or her needlework. People were disarmed by her beauty, thrown off by her calm speech, and devastated when they realized what lay beneath.
What Was Semirhage’s Role in the War of Power?
During the War of Power, Semirhage ruled over territories where cruelty was not an aberration, but the norm. Cities under her control became laboratories of suffering, with populations forced to torture one another in communal spectacles. Blood was replaced with acids, bodily systems reengineered, entire populations subjected to experiments that not even the other Forsaken would replicate.
She took particular pleasure in targeting those who had once condemned her. The Hall of the Servants, who had once offered her mercy or punishment, were methodically subjugated and turned to the Shadow under her hand. Her reputation was such that people bit through their own wrists upon hearing they were to be handed over to her. That wasn’t rumor; that was documented pattern. Her nickname—“the Lady of Pain”—wasn’t poetic hyperbole. It was descriptive.
Semirhage was also the first to perfect the technique of forcibly turning channelers to the Shadow through a ritual involving thirteen Dreadlords and thirteen Myrddraal. Although the practice became associated with the Shadow's modern tactics, it originated with her—another legacy of her obsessive interest in altering the human mind and soul.
How Was Semirhage Released and What Did She Do?
After three thousand years trapped in the sealing of Shayol Ghul, Semirhage was released early in the events of The Wheel of Time. Unlike some of the other Forsaken who initially operated through proxies or sought political alliances, Semirhage launched directly into her signature methodology—torture, impersonation, and high-level infiltration. She posed as Anath Dorje, the Truthspeaker to Tuon, heir to the Seanchan Crystal Throne, manipulating the invading Seanchan empire from within.
But her plan unraveled. Tuon, with her characteristic iron will, resisted Anath’s manipulations. After Tuon’s escape with Mat Cauthon, Semirhage abandoned subtlety and turned to assassination, murdering the Seanchan Empress and attempting to replace the regime with a puppet in the form of the Darkfriend Suroth.
Semirhage’s next major arc began when she impersonated Tuon during a scheduled meeting with Rand al’Thor. It failed, due in part to Cadsuane’s ter’angreal, which unraveled her disguise. However, not before she launched a fireball that severed Rand’s hand—fulfilling a dark prophecy Min had foreseen.
After her capture, Semirhage was subjected to nonviolent interrogation by Cadsuane and others. She responded not with fear but indifference, discussing her previous torture victims in clinical and ecstatic tones. Cadsuane eventually realized that Semirhage’s pride could be broken where pain could not. And so it was: she broke Semirhage not with the rack, but with humiliation.
How Did Semirhage Die?
Shaidar Haran eventually freed Semirhage from captivity. Elza Penfell, a Darkfriend within Rand’s circle, handed her the Domination Band—a ter’angreal that allowed a woman to control a man who could channel. Together, they used the band to enslave Rand. Semirhage’s power over Rand was nearly total. She forced him to strangle Min Farshaw, his love, and nearly succeeded in breaking his will.
But in a moment of panic and fury, Rand tapped into the True Power—gift of the Dark One, marked by searing agony and unrivaled strength. With it, he shattered the Domination Band and incinerated both Elza and Semirhage with balefire. Her death was total, irrevocable—erased from the Pattern itself.
What Is Semirhage’s Legacy in the Wheel of Time?
Semirhage’s death did not end her influence. Her legacy endured in the psychological trauma she inflicted, the Seanchan political chaos she instigated, and the reminder of how terror can be wrapped in beauty and precision. Among the Forsaken, she stood not just as a wielder of the One Power, but as a psychological weapon—one who broke others through art and science alike.
The phrase "when rain falls in sunshine, the Dark One is beating Semirhage" reflects the mythic, near-supernatural role she played in the fears of common folk. That she died not by mercy, but by balefire, underscores her position as one of the few Forsaken too dangerous to be handled by any method less final.
Semirhage's Raw Power
Semirhage's raw power receives a score of 8.0 out of 10, placing her near the pinnacle of magical strength across fantasy universes. This rating reflects the sheer potency and technical mastery with which she wielded the One Power, particularly in its most precise and psychologically devastating applications. Although her talents were narrowly specialized and not as wide-ranging as some of her peers, her raw ability to manipulate the fundamental forces of reality was formidable in scope and lethal in execution.
Strength
By definition, strength is concerned with physical might—lifting force, striking capacity, and bodily endurance. Semirhage's strength in this category is modest. While she was physically tall and had a commanding presence, her physique played no real role in combat effectiveness. She was not a brawler or warrior in the traditional sense, and there is no evidence that she trained her body for conflict or possessed any natural brute force beyond what would be expected of a woman of her stature in a high-technology society. Her violence was psychological and arcane, not kinetic. Therefore, on raw physical terms, her strength would rank significantly below average among powerful fantasy figures.
Magical Ability
Magical ability is where Semirhage’s rating surges toward the upper tier. In terms of raw strength with the One Power, she is at the maximum possible level for women, equaled only by rare individuals such as Lanfear and Alivia. That alone elevates her profile dramatically in a multiverse context. But Semirhage was not only strong—she was precise. Her knowledge of weaves extended into forgotten or forbidden arts, especially in manipulating the nervous system to control pain and pleasure responses. She could torture or kill without leaving a mark, cause ecstasy or agony with equal control, and warp the mind’s natural defenses through purely magical means. She also developed techniques for forcibly converting channelers to the Shadow—a feat that required immense arcane knowledge and control.
While her command of large-scale destruction was less often demonstrated, it is clear from her duel with Rand that she was capable of wielding fire, Air, and other elemental weaves effectively in direct combat. She struck with lethal force and speed, and nearly killed the Dragon Reborn in a surprise attack. Furthermore, her understanding of exotic and ancient weaves—including the manipulation of biological systems—marks her as one of the foremost sorcerers of her world. However, her inability to control weather and her disinterest in Talents that did not involve interpersonal cruelty impose some limits on the breadth of her magical toolkit. Her ability was deep and specialized, not all-encompassing.
Combat Prowess
Semirhage’s combat prowess is complicated. In direct magical duels, she was extremely dangerous, especially to the unprepared. Her power level meant she could overpower most modern channelers, and her control over pain made her almost impervious to standard interrogation or torture methods. But her strengths lay more in premeditated, controlled environments. She did not relish open conflict unless she was guaranteed control. During her capture of Rand using the Domination Band, she demonstrated clear knowledge of psychological warfare and combat manipulation, but was ultimately caught off guard when Rand accessed the True Power.
She was vulnerable to direct confrontation when deprived of surprise or control. Her assassination attempts—disguising herself as Tuon, or infiltrating the Seanchan imperial court—reflected more of an assassin’s methodology than a general’s. Still, her lethal potential in one-on-one or even small-scale magical combat is undeniable. She simply did not specialize in battlefield engagements, nor is there any evidence of prowess with physical weapons.
Semirhage's Tactical Ability
Semirhage earns a Tactical Ability score of 7.5 out of 10, reflecting her adeptness at psychological warfare, infiltration, and long-term strategic manipulation, even if her battlefield-level tactics were rarely tested. While not a general in the conventional sense, her strategic mind and resource arsenal placed her among the most feared manipulators within the Forsaken. Her strengths lie in psychological domination, political subversion, and orchestrated cruelty—forms of strategy aimed less at winning battles than at reshaping the terrain of resistance itself. This rating, while formidable, recognizes the difference between tactical cruelty and broad-spectrum military command.
Strategic Mind
Semirhage possessed a calculating, sadistically focused intellect. Unlike Forsaken who preferred blunt force or chaos, she planned her operations with clinical precision. Her long-term infiltration of the Seanchan court under the alias Anath Dorje demonstrates this well. Rather than assault Tuon directly, she embedded herself into the very heart of the empire’s power structure, insinuating her influence over time. This reflects a high-order understanding of psychological control and a patient willingness to work within foreign political systems. When her plans to control Tuon collapsed, she pivoted and orchestrated the mass assassination of Empress Radhanan and the Seanchan imperial court—a surgical decapitation of political order, executed with chilling detachment. However, she was not above strategic overreach. Her attempt to impersonate Tuon in front of Rand al’Thor was bold but ultimately uncharacteristically careless, leading to her capture. Her reliance on deception and layered identity games made her effective, but not infallible.
Resourcefulness
Semirhage demonstrated significant improvisational ability when plans failed or variables changed. After losing Tuon, she immediately shifted her efforts to Suroth and the broader Seanchan destabilization strategy. She had no army of her own in a traditional sense but instead weaponized existing networks, Darkfriends, and cultural expectations to turn whole factions into her puppets. Her torture of Cabriana Mecandes and manipulation of that information to enable Balthamel’s reincarnation as Halima Saranov reveals deep knowledge of organizational leverage and magical reconnaissance. However, she was often dependent on environments she could tightly control. Her failure to anticipate Min’s presence or Cadsuane’s ter’angreal when impersonating Tuon reveals a rigidity when denied total dominance, which limits her score slightly.
Resource Arsenal
Semirhage’s strategic assets extended beyond conventional magic. Her command of the One Power allowed her to exert absolute psychological and physical control over enemies and allies alike. She invented or perfected the technique of using thirteen Dreadlords and thirteen Myrddraal to forcibly turn a channeler—an extraordinary contribution to the Shadow’s tactical doctrine. Moreover, she created terrifying psychological weapons out of her own reputation. The phrase “when rain fell in sunshine the Dark One was beating Semirhage” attests to her mythologized presence in the collective unconscious, which itself was a tool of deterrence and compliance. She made even her name a strategic weapon. She also wielded knowledge of obscure healing and anatomical arts that could be repurposed for interrogation or assassination. However, she lacked access to large independent armies or major infrastructure and often worked alone or in elite cells. Unlike other Forsaken who could command legions, Semirhage's toolbox was deep but not broad—specialized rather than omnidirectional.
Semirhage's Influence
Semirhage receives an Influence score of 8.0 out of 10, reflecting her formidable psychological dominance, terrifying reputation, and sheer willpower that allowed her to bend even seasoned channelers and rulers to her purposes. While she was not known for winning hearts or inciting mass followings through charm, her command of fear, her unshakable self-assurance, and her near mythic reputation granted her a form of influence that was no less potent—just rooted in dread rather than inspiration. This score acknowledges that while her tools of persuasion were brutal and fear-based, they were devastatingly effective on an individual scale.
Persuasion
Semirhage’s version of persuasion was clinical, invasive, and most often physical. Her preferred tools were not words or flattery, but pain and the knowledge of how the mind responds to it. Yet in situations where pain was not an option—such as her role as Anath Dorje, Truthspeaker to Tuon—she demonstrated a nuanced, strategic use of rhetoric, subtle reinforcement, and calculated silence. Though Tuon resisted her manipulations, Semirhage did manage to position herself close enough to the heir to the Seanchan Empire to plot a takeover through proxy. Even more telling is her ability to induce obedience in individuals who knew exactly who and what she was. Her presence alone bent minds toward surrender; prisoners often killed themselves upon learning they would be given to her, which suggests her legend was a form of persuasion all its own. However, her reliance on extreme duress as her dominant mode of influence—while undeniably potent—limits her score slightly in this subcategory compared to more diplomatically versatile figures.
Reverence
The fear Semirhage commanded borders on supernatural reverence. Among the Forsaken—hardly a sentimental group—she stood out for being the one even her peers were unnerved by. Graendal, no stranger to manipulation or cruelty, referred to Semirhage’s sadism with a mix of disdain and caution. In the War of Power, entire cities capitulated in terror, and people mutilated themselves to avoid her attention. Her sobriquet—“the Lady of Pain”—was not an affectation but a social fact, one backed by atrocity after atrocity. Reverence in this framework doesn’t require admiration; it requires awe and recognition of power, and Semirhage excelled at engendering precisely that. Her personal mythos, crafted through millennia, operated as a kind of social gravity: once within her orbit, escape was rare and usually fatal. Still, she did not command vast cults or social movements, which keeps her score below the upper echelon.
Willpower
This is where Semirhage reaches her peak. Her psychological resilience and domination over her own body and mind were absolute. Even when imprisoned and facing certain death, she displayed unshakable composure. Cadsuane Melaidhrin and the other Aes Sedai who guarded her commented repeatedly on the futility of using pain or fear as leverage. She had, as they realized, already walked through every chamber of horror in her own mind and returned unbroken. In fact, she seemed to welcome torture, viewing it as a dialogue of wills—a game she always intended to win. Even humiliation, her only real weakness, had to be wielded with surgical precision, as when Cadsuane used symbolic discipline to pierce her ego. Her command of the Domination Band over Rand al’Thor, and her ability to force him into near-murderous actions, testifies to her psychic dominance not just over herself, but over others. Her will was not merely unyielding—it was invasive.
Semirhage's Resilience
Semirhage earns a Resilience score of 8.0 out of 10, placing her firmly in the upper echelon of fantasy characters in terms of endurance, survivability, and psychological durability. Her terrifying consistency as a torturer, her nearly invincible willpower, and her sustained relevance across epochs—despite imprisonment, capture, and death—testify to an enduring presence that is extremely difficult to break, either mentally or metaphysically. While not immortal in the truest sense, her resilience is rooted in an extreme mastery over her own pain thresholds, a calculated disregard for death, and a legacy that outlived her physical form.
Physical Resistance
Although Semirhage was not a frontline combatant by disposition, her physical resistance should not be underestimated. She survived numerous magical and physical confrontations, including torture and imprisonment by powerful Aes Sedai. While there are few accounts of her surviving significant bodily trauma, she maintained an unflinching composure under extreme duress, indicating an extremely high pain tolerance and bodily discipline. The episode in which Cadsuane and her associates attempt interrogation—without physical torture—demonstrates her body’s capacity for stillness and resistance. Even when bound and stripped of power, she projects control and does not exhibit weakness. However, her physical form was ultimately vulnerable to balefire, a reality that lowers her physical resistance slightly when compared to the most indestructible fantasy entities.
Magical Resistance
In terms of resisting magical or supernatural control, Semirhage exhibited an elite level of resistance, not through raw shielding ability but through deep knowledge of the One Power and the human mind. She was able to shield and counter weaves with great precision and was believed to know how to block gateways from closing—an advanced feat rarely understood even by the most powerful of her peers. Her understanding of compulsion, inversion weaves, and neurochemical manipulation allowed her to navigate and manipulate magical energies at the boundary of theoretical understanding. Though not impervious to the True Power or balefire, she functionally resisted domination by most conventional magical tools. Notably, while imprisoned and warded, she retained a psychological grip on those around her, despite being blocked from using her own power. Her eventual release via Shaidar Haran reinforces that she remained an asset too valuable to be left restrained, which reflects her importance and perceived resilience by even the most powerful agents of the Shadow.
Longevity
Semirhage's temporal resilience is perhaps her most demonstrable asset. She was sealed within the Bore alongside the rest of the Forsaken during the War of Power and emerged three thousand years later without any apparent degradation of personality, will, or capability. Her identity and skillset remained intact, and she immediately resumed executing complex operations on behalf of the Shadow. The continuity of her mission, her legacy, and her infamy after millennia of stasis reflects an extraordinary ability to endure existential threats and resume purpose. Furthermore, her psychological imprint—fear, reputation, and cultural memory—persisted through multiple generations. Even after her balefire-induced death, her legacy shaped interactions with later Shadow operatives and altered the strategies of Light-aligned forces.
Semirhage's Versatility
Semirhage scores a 7.0 out of 10 for Versatility, reflecting a character whose skill set is highly specialized and brutally effective but not broadly adaptive across diverse challenges. She is a master of precision cruelty, possessing an unrivaled capacity for torture, coercion, and neurochemical manipulation. Her formidable expertise with the One Power, particularly in sadistic applications and psychological warfare, defines her identity—but this same narrowness ultimately limits her capacity to improvise in unstructured or chaotic scenarios. She thrives when the battlefield is the mind and the weapon is control; she falters when adaptability and fortune are required beyond the confines of pain and power.
Adaptability
Semirhage exhibits moderate adaptability within a tightly controlled sphere. She is capable of infiltration, evidenced by her successful masquerade as Anath Dorje within the Seanchan court, navigating a foreign culture and inserting herself into its highest echelons. She adapts to new roles when it serves her goals—pretending to be a Truthspeaker, manipulating noble succession, or deploying psychological domination in lieu of brute force. Yet these shifts are invariably rooted in her core competencies: deception, control, and pain. In the face of truly unpredictable variables—such as Mat Cauthon’s abduction of Tuon or the unraveling of her disguise via Cadsuane’s ter’angreal—Semirhage displays less flexibility. She does not pivot to new strategies so much as she escalates force, often fatally. Her worldview, shaped by ego and sadism, restricts her from working effectively in teams, collaborating across ideologies, or responding constructively to disruption.
Luck
In the conventional sense, Semirhage is not lucky. Her manipulations are carefully plotted and dependent on information control, not serendipity. She is precise, methodical, and cerebral, but not blessed with improbable fortune or cosmic coincidence. While she does escape from captivity and reassert herself post-release, these events are the result of her allies’ interventions (notably Shaidar Haran), not random chance or resilience to entropy. Her final downfall—triggered by the unexpected effects of the True Power—underscores a life poorly insulated against the stochastic or unknown. In multiversal terms, she is more deterministic than lucky, and this deterministic nature makes her potent in closed systems and brittle in open ones.
Shaved Knuckle in the Hole
Semirhage’s hidden advantage is her deep understanding of pain and the human mind. She weaponizes psychology and biology with such mastery that her interrogations border on mind control without the use of Compulsion. Her ability to manipulate the pain/pleasure centers of the brain grants her a level of influence beyond what most channelers can achieve through direct force. This skill is her trump card—an unanticipated edge against any opponent unfamiliar with neurochemical warfare. Moreover, she created and refined techniques so sophisticated that even other Forsaken held her in dread. While not a tactical shapeshifter or a polymath spellcaster, she brings a devastating wildcard into every encounter: her ability to break nearly anyone, given enough time and access to their nervous system. However, her "shaved knuckle" lacks universality. It is terrifying, but not broadly useful in combat or negotiation contexts where time or proximity is limited.
Semirhage's Alignment
Semirhage, born Nemene Damendar Boann, is a human of the Wheel of Time universe and a member of the Chosen—better known as the Forsaken—who pledged her allegiance to the Shadow during the Age of Legends. Once a respected Restorer, her descent into the service of the Dark One revealed her true nature: sadistic, authoritarian, and utterly devoid of moral restraint. Across the canonical books of The Wheel of Time, Semirhage functions as a terrifying force of control, torture, and psychological domination, more feared than most of her peers for the sheer intimacy of her cruelty. Based on her consistent behavior, motivations, and role in both pre- and post-Sealing events, her alignment is best classified as Lawful Evil.
Semirhage’s evil is never incidental or reactionary. Her cruelty is systematic, meticulous, and grounded in an ideology that places her above moral judgment. Her actions are not chaotic outbursts but highly controlled expressions of dominance and purpose. She embraces hierarchy—specifically when she is at the top—and resents systems that do not validate her supremacy. This is evident in her rejection of the Hall of Servants, who dared to judge her moral character despite her societal value as a healer. Rather than accept binding or gentling as punishment for her sadism, she chose instead to join the Shadow, where her proclivities could be institutionalized rather than suppressed. This is not the behavior of someone rejecting structure, but someone selectively replacing it with a framework more conducive to her own ambitions.
Even as a Forsaken, Semirhage enforces structure within her own domains. During the War of Power, the lands under her rule were not merely tyrannical—they were laboratories of fear and torture where entire populations were coerced into helping inflict torment on each other. This was not madness but design. Her skill at interrogation was not just a tool but a philosophy: control through pain, loyalty through annihilation of will. When she orchestrated political coups, such as the assassination of the Seanchan Imperial Court, it was with the intention of installing a puppet empress, Suroth, who would adhere to a rule of Semirhage’s design. These are actions of deliberate manipulation of political systems, not the impulsive chaos of unmoored evil.
The lawful nature of Semirhage’s evil is also underscored by her obedience to the Shadow’s hierarchy. Though prideful and confident in her abilities, she defers to Shaidar Haran and executes the directives of the Dark One with loyalty and zeal. She adheres to the plans of the other Chosen when they align with her goals, and even her manipulations are undertaken within the broader framework of the Shadow’s objectives. Her interactions with fellow Forsaken, while often condescending, still respect their ranks and roles. She is not a wildcard among them; she is a scalpel—deliberate, calculating, precise.
Thus, her alignment is best described as Lawful Evil. She is evil not because she is chaotic or destructive without reason, but because she seeks to impose her own perverse order upon others. She belongs to the race of humans, albeit enhanced and extended through her use of the One Power, and is affiliated with the Forsaken, the upper echelon of the Shadow’s mortal agents. Her evil is systemic, her malice principled, and her role within the narrative one of methodical horror. Pride and Prophecy keeps an updated character alignment matrix across all planes of existence.
Semirhage's Trophy Case
Arena Results
Titles & Postseason Results
Halls of Legend Records
Overall Conclusion on Semirhage and Position Across Planes of Existence
Semirhage’s final rating of 7.7 across planes of existence reflects a position of formidable, but not transcendent, power within the broader fantasy multiverse. Her strength lies not in raw destructive output alone—though her One Power strength is elite even by Forsaken standards—but in the terrifying totality of her precision, cruelty, and psychological domination. She exemplifies a specific kind of power: not the explosive chaos of elemental cataclysm, but the inescapable grip of systematized suffering and intellectual cruelty. This makes her a dominant force in many fantasy worlds, but not one that ascends to the absolute highest echelons of metaphysical or reality-altering power.
Semirhage’s raw strength in the One Power is at the highest possible tier for women in the Wheel of Time universe. Robert Jordan described her as equal to Lanfear and Alivia in sheer magnitude. She is a master of healing (Restoration), a rare art among the Forsaken, and is capable of manipulating the human body with both life-saving and life-ending finesse. Yet despite this immense capability, her style of engagement tends toward surgical and interpersonal domination rather than large-scale battlefield devastation. Her combat feats, while horrifying in impact, rarely demonstrate the kind of multiversal or large-scale destructive capability that would place her among the top-most fantasy beings such as world-shapers or godslayers.
Instead, Semirhage operates as a strategic and psychological weapon. Her role in the War of Power included creating states of terror where entire populations tortured each other. Her discovery of the thirteen-channeler-and-thirteen-Myrddraal turning method—a technique to forcibly convert channelers to the Shadow—represents a devastating long-term tactic rather than a show of raw force. Her manipulation of the Seanchan Empire through her disguise as Anath, her assassination of the Imperial Court, and her attempt to install a puppet Empress all speak to her influence as a tactician, infiltrator, and architect of collapse.
Her downfall, significantly, did not come from a lack of power but from a miscalculation of her opponent. Her use of the Domination Band on Rand al’Thor nearly broke him, and her sadism peaked in this moment—forcing him to nearly murder Min Farshaw against his will. Yet it was here that Rand channeled the True Power, breaking her control and ending her with balefire. In this, her defeat came not through weakness, but through the rise of power levels that eclipse even the Forsaken’s mastery of the One Power. She lost not to someone more cunning or cruel, but to someone whose access to a deeper cosmic force exceeded her paradigm.
Semirhage’s 7.7 score, then, reflects her immense threat level in worlds governed by rules of internal power hierarchies and magical skill. She would dominate or destabilize many mid- or high-tier fantasy settings. But her lack of cosmic-scale power, reality-bending dominion, or multiversal reach excludes her from the absolute topmost tier. She is a terror in the flesh, a mistress of pain and order, and in any world where empathy or restraint are valued, her presence is apocalyptic. Pride and Prophecy keeps an updated power ranking across all planes of existence. This will only be sortable on desktop viewing. The below table shows a summary within the same plane of existence of this article.
