Character from The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
The most powerful of the Forsaken — a philosopher who chose the Shadow because he believed the Dark One's victory was mathematically inevitable, then went mad enough to think he was the Dark One himself.
Ishamael was Elan Morin Tedronai — the foremost philosopher of the Age of Legends, a man brilliant enough to prove that the Dark One's eventual victory was inevitable through logical analysis of the cyclical nature of time. He joined the Shadow not out of desire for power but out of intellectual despair — if the Dark One would eventually win regardless, resistance was merely prolonging suffering. Three thousand years of semi-imprisonment drove him mad. He appeared throughout history as Ba'alzamon, manipulating events and believing himself to be the Dark One incarnate. He founded the Black Ajah, triggered the Trolloc Wars, engineered Artur Hawkwing's anti-Aes Sedai policies, and shaped the world's descent toward the Last Battle. Reborn as Moridin after Rand killed him, he became the Dark One's Nae'blis — his chosen regent — and the connection between him and Rand through their crossed balefire streams created a bond that neither could sever. He wanted the world to end. Not to rule it — to end it. That's what made him the most dangerous Forsaken.
As Ba'alzamon: a figure wreathed in flame, with eyes and mouth that burn with hellfire. As Moridin: tall and handsome with a cold, aristocratic face and eyes that contain saa — black flecks that swim across them from his use of the True Power. He dresses in black so absolute it seems to absorb light. His presence radiates a wrongness that makes channelers instinctively recoil.
Also known as: Ishamael, Ba'alzamon, Moridin, Elan Morin Tedronai, the Betrayer of Hope, Nae'blis