Character from The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
The Brown Ajah scholar who was secretly Black Ajah for decades — not because she served the Shadow, but because she needed access to study it. Her final act was the most devastating intelligence drop in Tower history.
Verin Mathwin is the greatest long-term undercover operative in the Wheel of Time. She joined the Black Ajah — swearing oaths to the Dark One — not because she believed in his cause but because she wanted to study the Shadow from the inside. She spent decades gathering intelligence, documenting every Black sister she could identify, and waiting for the right moment to deliver the information. She found a loophole in the Dark One's oaths: you couldn't betray the Shadow while alive, but the oaths said nothing about betraying it while dying. She poisoned herself, gave Egwene a complete list of every Black Ajah member in the Tower, and died having accomplished the most devastating intelligence operation in three thousand years. She was brave in the way that only deeply patient people can be brave — the courage to spend a lifetime pretending, knowing that one mistake meant death and damnation.
Plump and motherly with a vague, distracted manner that made people forget she was in the room. She wore her Brown Ajah shawl like a comfortable blanket and carried books everywhere. Her expression was perpetually curious and slightly absent. It was all a performance.
Also known as: Verin, Verin Sedai, Verin Mathwin