Greetings, Cosmere Chickens, and welcome back to Elantris! Don’t mind the slime, there’s plenty of wonderful things to do here. Uh.
Right?
Surely there must be…
Oh. Hold on a moment, I’m getting a report that…
Huh. There’s nothing, huh? Nothing redeeming at all about this city?
Well. Um. Welcome anyway?
In this week’s installment of the reread, we’re delving deeper into Elantris as Raoden makes a new friend and gains something invaluable, and Sarene makes herself out to be a simpering idiot in order to get the better of two very powerful men. Won’t you join us?
Spoiler warning: This week’s article contains some small spoilers from the Stormlight Archive, and a bit of greater Cosmere theory. Proceed with caution if you haven’t read them yet!
Last time on Elantris: Family Matters and the Unification of Hate…
Sarene meets some family members she wasn’t expecting, and Hrathen details his plan to unite the people of Kae in hatred of the cursed Elantrians in an effort to prevent the wholesale slaughter of the population in the upcoming invasion.
Chapter Essentials
POV Character(s): Raoden, Sarene
Chapter 7
Those three marks—two lines and a dot—were the starting point of every Aon.
He continued, drawing the same three-line pattern at different angles, then added several diagonal lines. The finished drawing looked something like an hourglass, or perhaps two boxes placed on top of each other, pulling in slightly near the middles. This was Aon Ashe, the ancient symbol for light.
Raoden nodded, drawing his own Aon, Aon Rao. Four circles with one large square in the center, all five connected by lines.
“They must be related,” Raoden mused. “The change in Elantris, the way the Shaod started making people demons rather than gods, the ineffectiveness of AonDor…”
L: At least he’s on the right track. The magic is linked to the geography of the world, and that geographical pattern has been changed due to the earthquake.
P: It’s almost painful how they can’t figure it out.
L: In hindsight, yes. I remember on my first read I was just as clueless as they were!
There was a metal plate hanging there. Though it was tarnished with time, Raoden could still make out the shape etched into its surface—Aon Ashe, the character he had drawn just a few moments ago.
“Those plates used to glow more brightly and steadily than any lamp, sule,” Galladon explained. “The Elantrians could shut them off with a bare brush of their fingers.
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L: So the Aons can be stationary, rather than having to be drawn each time by a practitioner. That’s interesting, in terms of Investiture. Sort of like the fabrial technology on Roshar. Those require a source of Investiture in order to run (namely, spren being trapped within them), but since Dor is permeating the world all around the Elantrians, it seems as though these stationary Aons just draw on the power that’s surrounding them in the very air.
P: Which is super cool, when you think about it—so much power that already drawn Aons worked with seemingly no explanation.
Raoden walked over to the newcomer, who had collapsed after stumbling up the stairs. Raoden carefully removed each of the man’s food offerings and, after tucking a certain one into his belt, he dumped the rest to the houndlike men waiting below.
L: And so Raoden begins to put into action his plan to grow food within the confines of Elantris. (What he took was, as we will discover later, seeds.)
P: It begins. I love how he’s just like, “you’re one of us now” to the newcomer.
L: It’s one of Raoden’s most redeeming qualities. He’s a lot like Kaladin in that respect.
Raoden paused, then said, “Just call me Spirit,” using the translation of Aon Rao.
L: Interesting that he chooses to take on a pseudonym.
P: He doesn’t want anyone to recognize who he was before the Shaod took him. Which I get, on one level. Though as time passes, it’s hard to hide what he really is.
Chapter 8
She was usually good at everything she tried, but the secrets of painting completely eluded her.
L: It’s important to recognize your faults as well as your strengths!
P: This makes me giggle. She’s trying so hard to paint and it’s just not good.
“Slavery is illegal, but it probably won’t be for long. Ten years ago there weren’t any nobles or peasants in Arelon—just Elantrians and everyone else. Over the past decade, commoners have changed from families that owned their own land, to peasants beneath feudal lords, to indentured servants, to something more resembling ancient Fjordell serfs. It won’t be much longer before they’re nothing more than property.”
L: ::sigh:: No matter what society you encounter, there are always people who try to find a way to subjugate others.
P: I guess man’s legacy here is to lord over other men.
Society was supposed to have progressed beyond that point.
L: Indeed.
“The merchants’ guild was an autonomous organization—and many of its members didn’t get along too well with the Elantrians. You see, Elantris provided free food for everyone in the area, something that made for a happy populace, but was terrible for the merchants.”
L: Free food, free healthcare… sounds like a utopia to me.
P: Seriously. It’s sad that the common man turned against them after the Reod.
“Eventually the merchants’ guild struck a deal with Elantris, getting the Elantrians to promise that they would only provide ‘basic’ items to the populace for free. That left the merchants’ guild to import the more expensive luxury items, catering to the wealthy crowd in the area—which tended to be other members of the merchants’ guild.”
L: An interesting balance of socialism and capitalism, here…
P: Yes, the wealthy crowd should definitely have to pay for stuff.
Lukel smiled. “You sound like Prince Raoden.”
Sarene paused, considering. “Did you know him well?”
“He was my best friend,” Lukel said with a sorrowful nod. “The greatest man I have ever known.”
L: I’m so glad to see Sarene finally forming a connection with someone who knew Raoden personally!
P: It’s just so sad to think of her alone and wishing she had gotten to know him.
The king’s entire government is built on the idea that monetary success is justification for rule.
L: Ah… A plutocracy, then.
“Svordish scientists claim that the human mind can only maintain six languages before it starts to jumble them.”
L: This made me curious, so I looked it up. Apparently it’s true—the average person can learn a maximum of four to six languages (though of course there are outliers). Fascinating!
P: That is fascinating. I’ve never heard this before now.
She had been so looking forward to surprising him with her early arrival—not early enough, apparently.
L: Ugh, my heart aches for Sarene. To just be starting to fall for someone, then to have all that potential stolen by (what she thinks is) death… heartbreaking.
P: Yeah, she definitely got the raw end of the deal here. For now.
As she walked, she reached out and rubbed her hand across the groove of a carved Aon sculpted into the side of the city wall. The line was as wide as her hand. There were no gaps where stone met stone. It was as she had read: the entire wall was one seamless piece of rock. Except it was no longer flawless.
L: Because the wall was created by (and imbued with) the power of Dor, which is now corrupted, presumably. I can’t help but wonder if there are some wider Cosmere implications here, in regards to the corruption of spren on Roshar by the Unmade.
“Isn’t ambition serving our own lusts?”
L: Sarene, 1. Hrathen, 0.
P: This whole exchange leaves her ahead.
“…hard times make people willing to accept a man who preaches change.”
L: Very true.
She scanned the city once more, trying to put Kaise’s disturbing comments out of her mind. As she did, her eyes fell on a particular trio of figures—ones who didn’t appear to be as pitiful as the rest. She squinted at the figures. They were Elantrian, but one seemed to have darker skin than the other two.
L: This is one of those moments where you just want to scream because he’s RIGHT THERE! SARENE! IT’S RAODEN! Argh. Infuriating.
P: Poor thing. Struck by him when she doesn’t even know it’s him.
L: I just want to take one final moment to praise Sarene for so handily exploiting gender stereotypes to completely get the upper hand in these two social situations. She’s deftly manipulating these men based on their assumptions about her—though Hrathen isn’t quite as easily fooled, as we’ll soon see.
We’ll be leaving further speculation and discussion to you in the comments, and hope to join you there! Next week, we’ll be back with chapters 9 and 10.
Paige resides in New Mexico, of course. She has been to numerous baseball games so far this season and is looking forward to a family trip to see the Yankees this weekend! Links to her other writing are available in her profile.
Lyndsey lives in Connecticut and makes magic wands for a living, as well as working as the costumer for two of her local Renaissance Faires. If you enjoy queer protagonists, snarky humor, and don’t mind some salty language, check out book 1 of her fantasy series. Follow her on Facebook or TikTok!
Galladon’s comment about Elantrians shutting off the lights makes me think it is them investing the Aons and removing that investiture rather than free floating power. Closer to using Stormlight than, said, using breaths, but similar to both.
I will save my comment on the practice of giving away food and who it actually harms for some other day (but if you want an idea, read up on the Great Soviet Famine of the 1930s).
What I came here to say is that a system of magic that relies on physical geography staying constant seems very susceptible to exactly what happened here. Rivers change course ALL the time. Earthquakes do happen too. And I don’t even want to think about how this knowledge could be misused by someone who wanted to take the people down who practice the magic. It seems like all it would take to destroy the magic is dig a canal or build a dam (those endeavors do take quite a bit longer than an earthquake admittedly)
I just misread “Hold on a moment” as “Hoid on a moment.”
I’ve clearly read too much Sanderson lately.
@3 I can’t leave that argument alone since I am familiar with it. Great Soviet Famine resulted from situation when Soviets scapegoated farmers (especially those who owned the land and or farm animals) as next enemy of Communist Utopia, and to be fought against and divert blame for catering economy from Soviets. This resulted in Soviets FORCEFULLY confiscating food from farmers leaving them to starve and with no seed for next season. Then forcefully “relocating” said farmers to “re-education camps” in frozen Siberia and then replacing them with untrained city folk who were REAL “labor class”. And thats after devastating civil war that left most of farmland destroyed. So blaming that Famine on “free food”, instead of backfiring of strategy of scapegoating farmers to centralize their hold on the country by having an enemy to blame for their woes, is very simplistic view, as simplistic as blaming Great Irish Famine on unbridled Capitalism.
As for Elantris, one can presume that Elantrans paid for the food by magic and their magic tools, they just gave it away for free for free. And they were the scapegoats first for Merchants and now for Hrathen.
I was so confused about the geography thing the first time I read this book! LOL In hindsight it really does feel like it should have been obvious, but I had no clue.
Ok, this always confused me. if the dot in the middle and the three lines are the start of every aeon..than how come every aeon is completely different and some don’t even HAVE that start?
Maybe I just need a refresher, but I thought the idea is not that the Dor overall was corrupted, but rather all the instantiations that had relied on the previous geography. I don’t think we know much about how the Unmade corrupt spren, but I would hazard a guess that it involves Connection in some regard, maybe corrupting the Connection to Honor/Cultivation and adding a different one? That is not so far off from a parallel with what’s happening here, with the Connection to the land getting distorted (by virtue of the land itself changing rather than anything else). And … I shudder to think what a Bondsmith could do in this regard.
Thanks for stating that it was seeds; I had been wondering about that and was even still wondering after Raoden showed the seeds to Galladon.
A couple other quotes from the chapter that struck me:
This is even an in-universe callout that Galladon’s father’s study is special. I see Isilel’s comment when I brought this up last week that it could just be that it was made manually, without use of AonDor (which is plausible, with at least Galladon and maybe father being experienced in such things). Yet there is that illumination plate we see this week, and I am not sure that just the form of construction would explain the dry air in the basement in such a humid, coastal climate. I think there might be something else working on the air, at least.
I think we see something similar to this theme show up in Stormlight, e.g., with Kaladin trying to focus on saving his crew rather than give in to despair. But the actual phrase “keep moving” didn’t show up quite so prominently in a google search (though Lift does keep it as something of a motto).
Does anyone remember if this becomes relevant later? I am trying to pace myself to just read the week’s chapters and not rush ahead.
@1 RogerPavelle that’s an interesting point; I guess we’d have to know whether a non-Elantrian could control the light plates or not, in order to really be sure.
“I just want to take one final moment to praise Sarene for so handily exploiting gender stereotype”
As I belatedly pointed out in a comment on the previous post, it doesn’t make sense to me that Arelonians are so sexist, while the Derethi – even Dilaf! are more open-minded in this respect, when it should have been the other way around.
Speaking of people being turned into serfs, it is also a little odd that there wasn’t more resistance to the process. Particularly since even common Arelonians used to be somewhat educated.
So, could Elantrians create, like, everything? It seems odd that they chose to humor the merchants, if the merchants weren’t actually needed at all. It also seems that the farmers were not opposed to the distribution of free food.
Brent @3:
As somebody who read quite a bit about that time period in Soviet Union and also got to interact with people who lived through it, you are barking up the wrong tree. In addition to what Masha @5 has already posted, USSR continued to export wheat during the famine. The whole thing was politically motivated and purposefully organized to break the peasantry and maybe also to create a pool of slave labour for some of the big building projects of accelerated industrialization.
I 100% agree with you about the apparent fragility of Elantris. It really shouldn’t be difficult to cause another Reod, particularly if certain cosmeric forces are working with or through the Wyrn.
Steven Hedge @7:
Yes, this confuses me too. Some Aons just don’t have it.
kilobravo @8:
But as we shall see AonDor isn’t corrupted at all, just pent up. It would seem that it has simply permeated the city for so long that it can’t maintain it’s integrity without the constant influx of investiture anymore.
Isilel @9:
Right, AonDor is fine; it’s just the previous/current instantiations of it, that assumed a now-incorrect geography, that are acting corrupted. When their Aons are fixed-up, the AonDor is fixed as well. Maybe Lyndsey could shed a bit more light on what she was thinking of as being corrupted.
With regard to “constant influx of investiture”, that seems like the sort of question that RogerPavelle @1 was wondering about — I’m not sure we have a clear answer on the source and flow of the Investiture involved in keeping the city running.
No, Ambition is dead, Splintered by Odium. I have no idea what Sarene is talking about.
The names of the Shards being mostly fairly common concepts can make a Cosmere-initiate twitch inappropriately sometimes.
It’s also ridiculously fast for a class of aristocrats to arise and impress all farmers into a serf class. Ten years? Pish tosh. There has to be some Shardic interference to speed up history that much. There is a relevant WoB.
SPOILER: Brandon RAFOs whether Jaddeth is an avatar of Autonomy: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/509/#e15951
Brandon has refused to confirm or deny, but I think it’s highly plausible.
@8
You quoted and said:
This is definitely similar to something Kaladin would say/think. I used this quote in my Elantris mental health article because it spoke to me so profoundly.
@12 would you please link to your Elantris mental health article? Maybe it’s obvious but I’m not seeing it.
@lauraa, that would be this:
https://www.tor.com/2019/10/10/the-pain-of-elantris-depression-in-the-fantasy-of-brandon-sanderson/
Thanks, @carl, much obliged!
Thank you for doing the reread, really enjoying it. Elantris doesn’t get as much love as many of other Cosmere works, imho!
Just wanted to add re all Aons having the starting shape and the dot, Steven Hedge @7 and Isilel @9!
I just went over all of them (used the Coppermind list as reference) and they all, indeed, have that motif. Sometimes, the dot is hidden by other lines, in a couple of Aons, like Eon, you can see the dot and the line, on others the dot is hidden by the thickness of overlapping lines, like Ido, and sometimes, it seems that the dot is a bit further away than expected,such as in Shao, but it’s more or less in the right place. Some,like Tae and Soo, seem to be completely made from this starting motif. To spot the dot or guess where it is, I try finding right angled triangles with one side curved and the dot should be roughly in the middle of the hypothenuse.
@9 If I may quote the chapter 8 annotation.
“The truth behind the Elantrian magical abilities is far more limited than Sarene or Lukel acknowledge in this chapter. If one were to go back fifteen years, one would find that the Elantrians who had the skill to fabricate complex materials ‘out of nothing’ were actually quite rare.
As we learn later in the book, AonDor is a very complicated, difficult skill to master. As I was writing this book, I imagined the complicated Aons that Raoden eventually learns how to draw being only springboards to massive equations that could take weeks to plan out and write. Fabricating something very complex would require a great deal of detail in the AonDor recipe.</p
Even still, I think the tension between the Elantrians and the merchants is a natural outgrowth of this situation.”
Does this help witgyour question?
BenW @17:
So, it is largely a matter of misconceptions. I really should read the Annotations for Elantris, thank you for reminding me of their existence
It actually does raise some interesting questions what economy would look like in a scenario like that. That said, one could always be a merchant of things that are unique and limited, or of experiences of a type.