Kahlan Amnell

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Kahlan Amnell is a fictional character from the fantasy series The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. She is the Mother Confessor and the last remaining Confessor. Kahlan is the love interest of the Seeker of Truth and main character of the series, Richard Cypher.

The name Kahlan is pronounced by Goodkind as /ˈkeɪlən/ KAY-lən, not /ˈkɑːlən/.^[1]

Kahlan is played by Bridget Regan in the live-action TV series Legend of the Seeker.

There are many differences in her character in the book than in the TV series. For example, in the series, she does not start out as the Mother Confessor, though she does eventually become the Mother Confessor.

Physical description

Kahlan is a beautiful woman with green eyes (although they are blue in the TV series); long, brown hair; and typically wears a white dress when acting as the Mother Confessor. Her brown hair brushes her lower back, the length of which is a symbol of her authority and position as the Mother Confessor. She is almost as tall as Richard (who is described as a very tall person) and about the same age (she starts the series in her mid-twenties). She typically wears the white, square-necked dress of the Mother Confessor. The cut of this dress is iconic and specific to Confessors and is widely recognized by the citizens of the Midlands, with the dress's white color signifying that the wearer is the Mother Confessor. The weave of the fabric is fine and smooth and bears none of the lace or frills of more conventional dresses, with no print or colors. She wears boots of leather. When not dressed in her Mother Confessor garb, the length of her hair and her bearing speak of what she is and the power she has.

General characteristics

Kahlan is a creature of magic known as a Confessor. A Confessor has the ability to 'touch' a person with her power. Once 'touched', that person is no longer who they used to be, but now eternally devoted to the Confessor. The purpose of which is to take the voluntary confession of those who have been sentenced to death, so that all may know their innocence. As does every Confessor, she needs time to regain enough strength to use her ability again. However unlike most Confessors, she only needs a couple of hours to do so. The leader of the Confessors is Kahlan Amnell, the Mother Confessor, however, there are few Confessors left. Kahlan is not only in charge of the Confessors, but also of the Midlands as well. Kahlan speaks every major language in the Midlands and most of the minor ones. She is strong and quick, rarely does anyone need to slow on her account while traveling. She also has a gift for knowing and reading people and realizing why they do what they do even if the person himself does not know why. She is courageous and determined, full of intelligence and wit. Nevertheless, she is terrified of the underworld and the boundaries, due to her time spent crossing one and the things she saw inside. She is also uncharacteristically afraid of snakes and of the witch woman Shota, although the latter is common of most people in the Midlands.

Kahlan can recover the strength of her confessor's power with unusual speed, in about one to two hours after she releases it, as opposed to anywhere from half a day to a full day and night for other Confessors. A Confessor's recovery speed is also an indication of her power, one of the reasons Kahlan was chosen to be the Mother Confessor. Due to the way the power of Confessors works, people touched by Kahlan are able to perform far beyond their normal strength or human limits; they may even fall dead instantly at her request. While this would not be so for a weaker Confessor, even the slightest application of any Confessor's power permanently obliterates the free will of a victim and replaces it with love and subservience. A Confessor's power latches onto the love inside the person and expands it until it entirely consumes their being. Richard, however, is untouched by Kahlen's powers due to the love that they shared. In the "Legend of the Seeker" TV series Richard is not immune to the touch of Kahlan. Richard learns, from the Book of Counted Shadows, that when he uses the power of Orden he will become immune to the touch of a Confessor (episode 20, Sanctuary).

Kahlan is also able to invoke an ability called the Con Dar. The Con Dar enhances a Confessor's power by decreasing recovery time to zero and also gaining ranged use of their ability, as opposed to 'touching' a person. However, the Con Dar may only be invoked by a Confessor to protect the one she loves most. Normally this ability is taught from the mother to the daughter, but Kahlan's mother never had a chance to pass this knowledge down due to her death early in Kahlan's life. However, when she believed that her love Richard had been murdered, she invoked the Con Dar, literally meaning "blood rage," intuitively. This is likely due to her innate strength with her power and her incredibly strong will. Throughout the series she also invokes a weaker, temporary version of the Con Dar that allows her to hurl blue lighting bolts in defense of Richard.

Her father, Wyborn Amnell, was a warrior and king of Galea. He taught her armed combat and battle strategy. In Stone of Tears, she led a relatively small group of Galean soldiers against a superior force of Imperial Order insurgents outnumbering her forces as high as ten to one. Her leadership resulted in the slaying of the entire enemy force. When fighting the main force of the invading Imperial Order, beginning in Faith of the Fallen, she successfully maintained guerilla operations for over a year. While her attacks did little to significantly deplete the Order's vastly larger force, her actions greatly delayed their Northward drive, allowing her to take preparatory actions to save the lives of her people.

Early life

Kahlan was born and raised in the Midlands of the New World. Due to her race and position she, like the other Confessors, only had friends among the other Confessors. As a child, she was taught a great many things about war and sword-fighting by her father. Although girls in the Midlands were not meant to shoot a bow, Kahlan took it up as a diversion when she was young, before she began taking confessions.

Before Kahlan became a woman, her mother was stricken with a terrible sickness which no healer could cure and died shortly thereafter. Dennee's mother took in Kahlan and comforted her. The two girls, best friends, had been thrilled that they were to be sisters, and this helped ease Kahlan's pain of losing her mother. Dennee did not have the strength of power that Kahlan did, and over time, Kahlan became her protector, shielding her from situations that required more force than she could bring from within. Kahlan would often go to take confessions in Dennee's place, to spare her the torment of the task. Kahlan, too, disliked taking confessions, but she was stronger, wiser, and more reflective and thus better equipped to handle it. She understood and accepted that being a Confessor was her power; it was who she was, and so did not hurt her the way it did Dennee. She recognized and accepted that she had no choice in the matter of her powers. Kahlan had always been able to put her head before her heart. For a long time, the confessions of those she touched would give Kahlan such nightmares that she would fear sleeping. Dennee died after she was hunted down by an assassin and shot in the back with an arrow (One of the assassin had tried to kill her with a sword but was killed after Kahlan struck his neck with a knife) shortly before the series began. Kahlan discovered Dennee discarded in the brush at the side of the road, moaning with mortal pain, left broken and brutally gang raped. She died in Kahlan's arms, only after Kahlan gave her the bone necklace that Kahlan had inherited after her own mother's death. It was the first time Kahlan had ever wanted to use her power to hurt or kill someone.

In her early twenties, Kahlan left the Midlands for Westland to find the First Wizard, who unknown to her at the time was Zedd, in order to convince him to appoint a true Seeker of Truth who could defeat Darken Rahl, the cruel leader of D'Hara, a powerful country to the east. Kahlan herself was chased and attacked by a quad. It was at this time that she was spotted by Richard Rahl (then known as Richard Cypher), who offered to help her. With his help, they were able to kill the members of the quad and travel to Hartland. Richard brought her to meet his good friend and mentor Zedd, who turned out to be the First Wizard. Zedd later appointed Richard as the Seeker. After this, Kahlan and Richard went into the Midlands to find the Boxes of Orden and keep them out of the hands of Darken Rahl. At this they succeeded. During their travels, however, a strong sexual feeling developed between Richard and Kahlan, which made her extremely reluctant to make love to Richard, lest she accidentally "touch" him with her power. When Richard had been the captive, pupil, and mate of a Mord-Sith, it was Kahlan's name that triggered his recommittment to their purpose. An unerring devotion existed between the two, which has not been broken since. Both Richard and Kahlan are honorary members of the tribe known as Mud People, who gleefully accepted their marriage, which appears to have come as a matter of course.

Family

Kahlan's mother was killed by an illness before she became an adult. Her father was King Wyborn; he killed himself after his wife died.

Wyborn was married to Cyrilla and Harold's mother, Bernadine, and then later was taken for a mate by Kahlan's Mother. Kahlan's mother chose Wyborn because he was strong, a good leader, etc. -- the attributes she wanted her future daughter to have. She asked "permission" in a sense to take him as a mate while Wyborn and his wife Bernadine were not on good terms. He taught Kahlan all he knew about weaponry, wartime strategy, and fighting in general through instruction of Kahlan's mother.

Kahlan is also the half-sister of Princess/Queen Cyrilla and Prince Harold through King Wyborn.

References

External links

• Kahlan Amnell profile on The Sword of Truth wikia
• Official Terry Goodkind website
• Unofficial Terry Goodkind website (endorsed by Terry Goodkind)