Greetings, oh fans of the Cosmere, and welcome back to the Oathbringer Reread! This week, we jump back in time again, thirty-three years, as Dalinar shows what a warrior armed with Shardplate can do to… well, pretty much anyone without Shardplate. It does have a few disadvantages, though.
Reminder: we’ll potentially be discussing spoilers for the ENTIRE NOVEL in each reread. This week’s post doesn’t have any Cosmere spoilers, though we make no such promise for the comments. But if you haven’t read ALL of Oathbringer, best to wait to join us until you’re done.
Also, Lyndsey had a killer weekend at Anime Boston, so Paige is graciously giving her another week off.
Chapter Recap
WHO: Young Dalinar
WHERE: Rathalas
WHEN: 1140 (33 years ago)
Dalinar, Gavilar, and Sadeas, all in Shardplate, lead the attack on Rathalas. Nearly impervious to the defenders’ weapons, they take the wall and let their troops into the city. Dalinar steps into a trap, and falls down the side of the Rift; though he’s mostly protected by his Shardplate, he destroys one gauntlet and breaks his fingers in the fall. Recovering, he finds the local highlord, Tanalan, who bears the Shardblade Oathbringer. Dalinar defeats him by throwing them both down the Rift again, and follows the soldiers who retrieve their dying lord into a hiding place. There he finds Tanalan’s weeping wife and their six-year-old son, who struggles to lift Oathbringer to defend himself and his mother.
Dalinar and Gavilar rest after the battle, considering the probable necessity of politics as Dalinar holds his newly-won Shardblade.
Threshold of the storm
Title
“The Rift” is pretty obvious, as titles go. This is the first time we see the city of Rathalas, at the northern tip of the Sea of Spears, in the weather-protected Rift… which doesn’t protect it very well from Blackthorns.
Heralds
We’ve got Nale in all four spots this week: Herald of Justice, the Judge, Just & Confident, patron of the Skybreakers.
Alice: Okay, so Dalinar is extremely confident, but I’m not sure I see a lot of justice here. Maybe the opposite, I don’t know. Paige, any ideas?
Paige: I’m fixating on the fact that Dalinar actually spared Tanalan’s young son. He was an innocent, a small child trying to protect his fallen father from a monster. Perhaps Dalinar’s mercy in leaving the boy alive shows a smidge of sound judgement in the midst of his Thrill-tainted thoughts in this flashback.
Icon
The icon is Young!Dalinar’s inverse Kholin shield, of course, since it’s Dalinar’s second flashback.
Stories & Songs
A: At some point between the first and second flashbacks, Dalinar has acquired Shardplate:
He’d won it himself, in combat. Yes, that combat had involved kicking a man off a cliff, but he’d defeated a Shardbearer regardless.
He couldn’t help but bask in how grand it felt.
A: Turns out there are some drawbacks for Dalinar. For one, there’s no need for actual skill, when the other guy might as well be wearing tinfoil and waving a cardboard sword against the enhanced strength and imperviousness of a man in Shardplate. For another, in a city like Rathalas, with all its bridges and wooden walkways, the weight of the Plate makes it easy to rig traps that will send the bearer plunging down into the Rift. Still, I’m amused at Dalinar’s declaration that he’s going to sleep in it, if he has to, to get used to wearing it. Isn’t that pretty much what Moash did back in WoR?
P: Sounds like it’s a helpful tactic to get used to the Plate, though I can’t imagine it would be very comfortable.
A: Anyway, in this chapter he acquires the Blade to go with his Plate:
“Oathbringer?”
“Your sword,” Gavilar said. “Storms, didn’t you listen to anything last night? That’s Sunmaker’s old sword.”
Sadees, the Sunmaker. He had been the last man to unite Alethkar, centuries ago.
A: So far as I’ve been able to determine, Sadees was the guy who brought down the Hierocracy, and then decided that since he was on a roll, he might as well take over the rest of the planet. Something like that, anyway. He killed an awful lot of people for really lame reasons, but in Alethkar he’s a cultural hero. (Weird, bloodthirsty people that they are.) His biggest legacy, aside from trade routes that far outlasted his kingdom, is that his sons squabbled over the kingdom until they finally broke it up into ten princedoms; the families that rule the princedoms all consider themselves direct descendants of Sunmaker. There was a fair amount of speculation in the pre-release discussions that maybe he was the author of the in-world Oathbringer, since the Blade was his back in the day.
P: The Alethi are, indeed, a weird people, Alice. They tend to solve problems with brute force and devalue human life to an alarming degree, at times. I have wondered if the Sunmaker named Oathbringer (let me know if I’ve missed it!) and if so, the name feels a bit ominous, considering his ruthlessness as a warlord.
A: As near as I can tell, the best thing that Blade has ever been used for was buying all of Sadeas’s bridge slaves.
P: I agree. I would like to see the freedom that Blade granted to those bridgemen become its lasting legacy.
Relationships & Romances
“If Gavilar commands me,” Dalinar said, “I’ll marry.”
“Don’t bring me into this,” Gavilar said. He summoned and dismissed his Shardblade repeatedly as they talked.
“Well,” Dalinar said, “until you say something, I’m staying single.” The only woman he’d ever wanted belonged to Gavilar. They’d married—storms, they had a child now. A little girl.
His brother must never know how Dalinar felt.
A: All the family, right there in one piece. Dalinar, Gavilar, Navani, and Jasnah. I… don’t really have anything else to say about it.
And then there’s this:
With those keen, pale green eyes, he’d always seemed to know so much. Growing up, Dalinar had simply assumed that his brother would always be right in whatever he said or did. Aging hadn’t much changed his opinion of the man.
A: I’m not sure whether I admire this or hate it. I’d probably think it was cool, except that Gavilar made some spectacularly horrible decisions later in life. I guess at this stage, Dalinar’s probably all of 20 or so, right? So maybe assuming his brother will always be right is is still understandable?
P: The admiration for his older brother is definitely to be expected, especially at Dalinar’s age, as you say, Alice. I found it sad, because Dalinar, already so misled by Odium and the Thrill at this point, has so much misplaced admiration for his brother.
Bruised & Broken
He reached gingerly with his right hand, the less mangled one, and raised a mug of wine to his lips. It was the only drug he cared about for the pain—and maybe it would help with the shame too. Both feelings seemed stark, now that the Thrill had receded and left him deflated.
P: Rereading this after learning of Odium’s preparation of Dalinar really makes the horror of the Thrill hit home. It turns Dalinar into someone else, much as his excessive drinking will do after his next visit to Rathalas. It changes his behavior, as we see during the attack on the wall, when he felt dissatisfaction at the ease with which he had killed so many people. He then actively seeks out the Thrill to banish that feeling, and again takes pleasure in the slaughter. It’s disconcerting to see, and he does seem to crave the Thrill like a drug because of the high it gives him. Though that knowledge of Odium’s plan makes me loathe Young!Dalinar slightly less than I did during the beta. Only slightly, though, because as he says during the Battle of Thaylen City, he made those choices … it wasn’t Odium’s influence alone that resulted in so much death at the hands of the Blackthorn.
A: It still feels a little odd to think of Young!Dalinar growing up into Old!Dalinar (is that the right name?)—he was such an admirable character, almost flawless, in the first two books, and now we see him as a young barbarian. As you say, Paige, the knowledge of Odium’s influence mitigates it a little, but … he really was the monster Tanalan accuses him of being.
P: He was truly horrible, yes. But Brandon made me love and admire this character so much in the first two books of the series, that even knowing of the atrocities he committed didn’t mar my opinion of him in the present day.
Diagrams & Dastardly Designs
A: You know, this totally doesn’t fit here, but I can’t find a better home for it, so… here it is. Because mysteries, or something. See also, Will Come Back To Bite You.
[The wine] was the only drug he cared about for the pain—and maybe it would help with the shame too.
A: The big question, first time through, was just why Dalinar was feeling so ashamed. I had fun going back and scanning through the raging debate on the serialization over whether or not Dalinar had killed Tanalan’s son, which was the primary candidate for the shame. There were a lot of good arguments on both sides, but most of them came down to whether the reader though Dalinar would more likely be ashamed of having killed him, or having let him live. We now know, of course, that he was ashamed of being too “soft” to kill the crying little boy.
P: I agree, Alice. I think this quote is telling:
Dalinar closed his eyes, distracted by the shame he felt. What if Gavilar found out?
P: In retrospect, it seems pretty obvious that he’s ashamed of something that he feels would disappoint Gavilar. He regards his brother so highly that sparing that child’s life shames him. It’s actually quite sad.
A: Which reminds me… there were a few voices claiming that the shame was for his feelings about Navani. Turns out, no. The other major speculative debate over this chapter was whether there was enough brutality here to cause Kadesh to vomit and leave soldiering for the ardentia. And again, we now know for sure that this was not that event.
P: Yes, we knew when we didn’t see that tidbit in Dalinar’s recollection that we would be revisiting the Rift at some point. And we were not particularly looking forward to it.
Squires & Sidekicks
“Calm, Dalinar,” Sadeas said from beside him in the mist. Sadeas wore his own golden Plate. “Patience.”
P: It was interesting to see Sadeas as an ally to the Kholin brothers after seeing his outright animosity toward Dalinar in the first two books of the Archives. Of course, knowing how oily and manipulative he will be in the future colors the motivations of this loyal sidekick of a Highlord. He is just not to be trusted, even this early in the game.
A: I have to say, though, it was pretty funny watching him get so frustrated with these punchy Kholin boys.
P: Indeed, it was. *wink*
A single black arrow fell from above, swooping like a skyeel. It dropped one of the soldiers. Another arrow followed, hitting the second soldier even as he gawked at his fallen ally. … He turned, spotting a man standing near the sheared-off section of stone above. He lifted a black bow toward Dalinar.
“Teleb, you storming miracle,” Dalinar said.
A: Hi, Teleb. That’s all.
P: I did like Teleb, he was pretty much a badass.
A: One of the best.
And for good measure, we’ll throw this bit about Sadeas in here:
“Congratulations,” Gavilar said, nodding toward the Blade. “Sadeas is irate it wasn’t his.”
“He’ll find one of his own eventually,” Dalinar said. “He’s too ambitious for me to believe otherwise.”
A: Ironic foreshadowing, much? He’ll eventually get this exact Blade. Not that he’ll keep it very long, mind you.
P: I do love that little tidbit, considering the fact that he didn’t so much find a Blade as trade a thousand slaves for one. Which makes me wonder, once again, how Sadeas never acquired his own Blade in the intervening thirty-three years.
A: Seems kind of odd, on first thought, but there is some valid rationale for it. For one thing, Dalinar is the guy who goes charging ahead, so he’s a lot more likely to get to the Shardbearers before the more cautious Sadeas. (I think that’s how he obtains the Shards he gives Gavilar that eventually go to Elhokar, right?) And then once they get the kingdom gig mostly sorted out, Sadeas stays in Kholinar playing politics, while Dalinar goes out and fights the battles. So after while, Sadeas lost his chance until they started the Vengeance Pact and went after the Parshendi.
P: Point. Lots of points, rather. But not even a duel? Of course, if he’d already owned a Blade, he wouldn’t have traded all of his bridgemen for Oathbringer. *shrug*
A: Narrative necessity FTW.
Places & Peoples
“The Rift” was a fitting name. To his right, the chasm narrowed, but here at the middle he’d have been hard-pressed to throw a stone across to the other side, even with Shardplate. And within it, there was life. Gardens bobbing with lifespren. Buildings built practically on top of one another down the V-shaped cliff sides. The place teemed with a network of stilts, bridges, and wooden walkways.
To survive in Alethkar, you had to find shelter from the storms. A wide cleft like this one was perfect for a city. But how did you protect it? Any attacking enemy would have the high ground. Many cities walked a risky line between security from storms and security from men.
A: I was going to explain how the Rift both helps and hurts the people of Rathalas, but Dalinar just did it.
P: Truth. That 12-foot wall may have provided some measure of protection from regular troops, but not from Shardbearers.
Tight Butts and Coconuts
“Brightlord Tanalan is a Shardbearer, right?” Dalinar asked.
Sadeas sighed, lowering his faceplate. “We only went over this four times, Dalinar.”
“I was drunk. Tanalan. Shardbearer?”
“Blade only, Brother,” Gavilar said.
“He’s mine,” Dalinar whispered.
Gavilar laughed. “Only if you find him first! I’ve half a mind to give that Blade to Sadeas. At least he listens in our meetings.”
P: I just adored this entire conversation and the exasperation that Sadeas shows by sighing.
A: He was kind of a ruthless bastard even back then, but he seemed a lot less slimy. It helps to see how he and Dalinar were once allies.
“All right,” Sadeas said. “Let’s do this carefully. Remember the plan. Gavilar, you—”
Gavilar gave Dalinar a grin, slammed his faceplate down, then took off running to leave Sadeas midsentence. Dalinar whooped and joined him, Plated boots grinding against stone. Sadeas cursed loudly, then followed.
P: Okay, fine. I didn’t hate this bit of Sadeas. Not really. It’s actually funny that he’s the voice of reason and Gavilar and Dalinar are like kids playing at war.
A: You took the words right out of my mind! “Voice of reason.” Sadeas? Heh.
That had been a flat-out greenvine mistake.
P: “Greenvine” is a great in-world substitute for “rookie”.
Weighty Words
Dalinar might not pay attention to the grand plans Gavilar and Sadeas made, but he was a soldier. He knew battlefields like a woman knew her mother’s recipes: he might not be able to give you measurements, but he could taste when something was off.
P: I liked this bit, it shows that despite the fact that Odium led Dalinar around by the nose, Dalinar did have a mind for tactics and the like.
A: That was a great moment; even though Dalinar himself fell into the trap, he figured it out before the other two were caught. And then, naturally, he used the trap to his own advantage, because a guy in Shardplate is really stinking hard to kill. I don’t have any strong feeling that his battle sense (or whatever you call it) is necessarily related to his eventual bond, but … you never know, do you?
P: At least not until we’re told otherwise!
Military Motivations
We’re going to put all the conquest-y stuff in here, because the motivations are discussed in this chapter more than usual. To start off with:
After two years of fighting, only four of the ten princedoms had accepted Gavilar’s rule—and two of those, Kholin and Sadeas, had been easy. The result was a united Alethkar: against House Kholin.
A: So they’ve only been at this conquest thing for a couple of years now. That would mean the first flashback is set only a year or so into the effort. I think that fits the situation there—long enough to have developed reputations, but not so long that Dalinar being 19 is completely unbelievable.
P: Knowing how young they were, it makes sense that so many princedoms resisted their rule.
A: it really does. Who wants to accept some punk kid as the king? Why take these boys seriously? It’s interesting that at this stage, Gavilar wants to manipulate the opposing houses into mutual backstabbing, while Sadeas wants to have such a fierce reputation that they’ll give in rather than fight.
P: Exactly. Alethi highlords likely had quite a few “get off my lawn” moments with those Kholin boys and their unfortunate-looking friend.
“We’re going to have to grow up,” Gavilar said softly.
“And become soft? Like these highlords we kill? That’s why we started, isn’t it? Because they were all lazy, fat, corrupt?”
“I don’t know anymore. I’m a father now, Dalinar. That makes me wonder about what we do once we have it all. How do we make a kingdom of this place?”“By the time we’re done, I’ll have it so that nobody even thinks of Sunmaker anymore. Just House Kholin and Alethkar.”
A: So on the one hand, they started out to “fix” the corruption of the highlords, and now Gavilar is starting to realize that it’s going to take more than killing them to make a kingdom. And then mere moments later, he’s all about the glory of house Kholin and Alethkar. In the meantime, they’re busy being … well, horrible.
P: Completely detestable, yes. I can’t help but go back to the concept of them playing at war … just haphazardly (and happily, ugh) slaughtering their way across Alethkar, as Tanalan says below.
“The way I see it,” Dalinar said, “the people of Alethkar deserve a king who is the strongest and most capable of leading them in battle. If only there were a way to prove that.”
“You speak of the people. As if this were about them. As if it were for their good that you loot, you pillage, you murder. You’re an uncivilized brute.”
“You can’t civilize war,” Dalinar said. “There’s no painting it up and making it pretty.”
“You don’t have to pull sorrow behind you like a sledge on the stones, scraping and crushing those you pass. You’re a monster.”
A: There are definitely two sides to the story!
P: Tanalan’s not wrong with that comment about pulling sorrow like a sledge on the stones. That makes one look at the “unification” of Alethkar with different eyes. They are indeed descended of the Sunmaker, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.
A Scrupulous Study of Spren
A: I don’t believe we see any new spren this week. According to my list-as-you-go notes, we’ve got anticipationspren whipping in the air behind Dalinar as he waits for the charge; lifespren bobbing around in the hanging gardens; angerspren boiling like pools of blood around Dalinar at the loss of Thakka & his men, and again around Tanalan when Dalinar challenges him; painspren crawling around the young heir as he tries to defend his daddy; and exhaustionspren spinning over Gaviliar’s head after the battle is done.
P: Dalinar’s lucky no shamespren showed themselves after the battle. Gavilar would certainly have noticed. Now that I’m thinking about spren, I’m wondering if Dalinar’s shame prevented a gloryspren from popping in when he was praised about the acquisition of his Blade. /rambling thoughts
Quality Quotations
- “The Kholin boys are chained axehounds, and we smell blood. We can’t go into battle breathing calming breaths, centered and serene, as the ardents teach.”
- This was how it should be. Dalinar, Gavilar, Sadeas. Together. Other responsibilities didn’t matter. Life was about the fight. A good battle in the day—then at night, a warm hearth, tired muscles, and a good vintage of wine.
- He was a destroyer, a conqueror, a glorious maelstrom of death. A god.
P: That one isn’t a favorite so much as it is utterly creepy.
A: Especially since it’s a total result of the Thrill.
- He struck with a crash of Plate on stone. It didn’t hurt, but his pride took a serious blow.
- Well, Tanalan was a fine enough fellow. Dalinar had beat him once at pawns, and Tanalan had paid the bet with a hundred glowing bits of ruby, each dropped into a corked bottle of wine. Dalinar had always found that amusing.
- Well, Dalinar had used both Blade and Plate, and if given the choice of one, he’d pick Plate every time.
- Honorable duels like this—on a battlefield at least—always lasted only until your lighteyes was losing.
- “Daddy said … we fight monsters. And with faith, we will win.…”
- “We can’t just keep acting like a bunch of thugs,” Gavilar said. “We can’t rob every city we pass, feast every night. We need discipline; we need to hold the land we have. We need bureaucracy, order, laws, politics.”
Well, we’ve said our piece. Share your thoughts in the comments below, and join us next week for Chapter 12. It’s another long one, wherein Dalinar attempts to play politics on a global scale, with mixed results and a gut-twisting finale.
Alice is thoroughly enjoying her beta read of Skyward, the new YA science fiction project from Sanderson due out in November. She’s also having fun creeping the “teen beta” spreadsheet, where her daughter is participating in a new target-audience beta read. There are some seriously insightful kids out there!
Paige juggles two jobs, two cats, numerous writing projects, and her sanity. She’s stupid excited to be traveling to JordanCon in Atlanta this month for her extended family reunion. She lives in Truth or Consequences, NM, which is a real, weird place. Also, #goYankees!
Sea of Spears? *looks it up* Oh, I forgot and thought of it as a lake. Is it fresh or salt? Are the rocks jutting out of the water its “spears”?
Tanalan seems a notable name in this context.
So I keep seeing Young!, Future! etc. for describing characters at a different point in time from the main narrative. How did this use of the exclamation point get started? I’m just curious.
Lots of – probably most – modern nations have “Heros” just like that you know…
I just realized something. Gavilar and Sadeas are relatively young here right? They are already the head of their houses?
Dalinar’s lucky no shamespren showed themselves after the battle
Well, Shallan did note that they seem to be surprisingly rare …
I think it also to credit Dalinar’s tactical talent that he prefers the Plate to the Blade as the opposite seems the usual way. And in this chapter, I almost felt sorry for Sadeas as the brothers stormed off. Almost.
Edit: storming typo
@3 The Alethi probably don’t erase the Sunmaker’s victims the way we tend to do for our “heroes.”
It occurs to me that Dalinar sparing Tanalan’s son is one time where Sanderson actually plays a trope straight. Figures that it results in something horrible enough to make Kadesh find religion.
I feel that Dalinar sparing Tanalan’s son is our first peek at the man Dalinar could be if it were not for the Thrill amplifying all his negative sides. To be clear, I am not excusing his actions, and as both Alice and Paige wonderfully pointed out that Dalinar said, it was his choice. But I like how Sanderson inserted all these little hints, that little by little start to grow, and finally take root in my opinion when Renarin cries with him, and then he ultimately goes to the Nightwatcher.
I never thought of this before, but the discussion of this chapter made me think of it. The character evolution between Young!Dalinar to Old!Dalinar seems very similar to the character ark of Logan Ninefingers at the beginning of the first law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie.
Bethod conquored the Northlands and united them together using force, and the ferocity of his champion, the bloody-nine. We meet Logan Ninefingers after this has happened, and he is in a state where he is the most noble character (arguably) in the book despite having such a ferocious background. So the character ark of being this ferocious and feared warrior in the youth, and being a noble character as an adult seems remarkably similar, and I only really made the connection here.
So yes, the first law trilogy is really just a grimdark version of the stormlight archive lol.
tim_s @2 – I’m not sure where the Young!Dalinar designation got started, but I first ran into it on the beta read. I don’t know about everyone else, but in this particular case it helps me think of them as almost two distinct people. Which, with the missing memories, they sort of are. Maybe Paige can help with this? I think either she or Darci started using it on the beta.
@8 it’s also a very similar arc to the one Warbreaker the Peaceful followed. Warbreaker just went through the whole arc and then retired to a third career before we ever met him.
The charge made me think Leroy Jenkins, when I first read it. But ya we knew we were coming back after the kadash incident didn’t happen.
By dalinars preference for plate over sword it could be that it honestly does more for a person then a sword, it buffs str and endurance and does an amazing job protecting you, whereas a sword makes you dangerous your still a squishy glass cannon of a human.
So, I wouldn’t say that there is no need of actual skill while fighting in shardplate, because Dalinar did defeat the previous owner, somehow. He probably had the help of his elites, but still. Also, I think that he only survived the battle in this chapter both due to being very lucky (or thanks to Odium’s helping hand, perhaps?) – that fall probably did have a decent chance of killing him, like, again his predecessor in that very armor was killed. And his subsequent survival against Tanalan and his soldiers was due to Dalinar being such a superb fighter and so deeply in the Thrill. I am pretty sure that anybody else would have died, except for, possibly, Gavilar, who was, decades later, the only traditional shardbearer who came very close to killing Szeth.
After all, we know that a lot of highlords and even Highprinces somehow manage to keep their positions despite not having access to the shards, so there must be strategies and tactics for countering run-of-the mill shardbearers. In fact, Tanalan had prepared a pretty good trap, he was just unlucky that Dalinar’s warrior instincts were that good and he also should have kept more soldiers back in order to finish survivors.
I am of two minds re: unification by the force of arms, because if we are honest, a lot/most of RL unifications happened that way unless your surname was Habsburg – and, as it turns out, their empire forged by marriage instead of weapons fell apart eventually anyway. And in most cases unification, is, indeed, preferrable for the people in the long run, when compared to constant squabbles between many small prinicpalities, not to mention the negative effect of all the borders and their tolls on trade, etc. But yea, if you set out to unify by conquest, you’d better actually succeed and make things sufficiently better for the posterity, otherwise you are just a vainglorious butcher. Unfortunately, Alethi are far from “weird” in glorifying bloodthirsty warlords, though – iRL history is pretty much permeated by admiration and worship of such people. In fact, more skeptical view of wars of conquest it actually fairly recent… sigh.
Pretty interesting, how young Sadeas consistently tries to convince Dalinar to pay attention to politics, to think about responsibility of rule, etc. And how old Sadeas really hated it when his old pal finally did all these things. Also, while already ruthless and cruel and playing the devil at Gavilar’s and Dalinar’s shoulders, it doesn’t really seem like young Torol was particularly addicted to the Thrill. All these interesting parallels almost make me wish that Sanderson hadn’t killed Sadeas in WoR, instead of going with his original plan of having Iyatil assassinate Amaram.
Hm, so young Sadeas had worn golden sharplate, but by WoK he had it repainted in red and Ehlokar was the one in gold. Symbolic of growing Thrill addiction on his part?
And it is odd that Sadeas never won a shardblade of his own or had one bestowed on him by Gavilar. After all, he duelled powerful Highprince Yemev to the death some short time after the second Rathalas – presumably because Yemev was the one covertly behind the rebellion there. It is odd that, he was, apparently, shardless. Particularly since he didn’t sound like somebody whom Kholins put in place after his predecessor (and his line?) was killed during the wars of unification, like Vamah.
Teleb… now Dalinar’s faithful follower, helping to bring down another seemingly good ruler :(.
For those who are familair with the excellent TV series “The Wire”, young Dalinar’s justifications of their conquest and overall behaviour generally remind me of Marlo, except for all the honor and occasional mercy.
I don’t think much of Mrs. Tanalan – surely she should have tried to save her boy, rather than draping herself over the body of her husband and letting a little kid face Dalinar alone?!
Gavilar is very ambivalent here – on the one hand, he didn’t seem particularly happy that Dalinar ostensibly killed the kid, but OTOH his little brother knew him very well and he didn’t choose to bring Tanalan’s family to him when he spared them. On the gripping hand, Gavilar already seemed to think about how to organize his new realm, instead of reveling in more war. In fact, he seemed to become more and more statesman-like pretty early on, much sooner than alleged in WoK, and yet he still failed in the end, both with actual unification and with bonding the Stormfather.
AeronaGreejoy @1:
Ta-Nalan? Intriguing idea, this never occured to me. I am really curious about the meanings of all the prefixes and suffixes in Alethi names. Also, I am really surprised that root for “strength” isn’t very commonly used in them. Too bad that according to Nash’s glyphs for the First Oath, it is supposed to be something unwieldly like “tafets”.
@12 Isilel
When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When you have a sword…
The Sunmaker united all the Alethi. Then he went on to invade everyone else. The idea of empires being more “peaceful” is just false; instead of lots of wars between little principalities, you get lots of wars of conquest between the empire and all its little neighbors, and eventually a few giant wars between big empires.
Then the ruler dies, and the empire breaks up into lots of little principalities again, which is usually even uglier and bloodier than the usual wars between small nations.
Whenever someone talks about how “stable” empires are, they’re wrong. The Roman Empire lasted for a very long time, but they had an absurd number of rebellions, coups, and civil wars. Without a method of peacefully resolving differences and transferring power, the only way to solve problems is violence.
In contrast, America has had exactly one civil war in two hundred and forty years. Name a historical empire that can match that record of peaceful, unbroken succession.
Reading these and the few of the comments I got to really do show my difference from people here sigh. I don’t have the reflex hate of conquering that all of you do. Combing of people into one powerful group rather than several weak ones is generally almost always better. Look at the difference between Rome and Greece for one. One survived for thousands of years and controlled almost the entire known world the other fell as soon as one of its parts became actually powerful. This changes somewhat of course when democracy is born and people can join together not through warfare but still – you need to be powerful enough to protect yourself and projecting your power outward even as a democracy is always good (why the US removing bases from Germany and Japan is actually a bad thing).
Everyone killed here were soldiers in war. Its not like he was going on a killing spree among children or even civilians.
If we ever loose the protections of modern society….how quickly many people here would fall. Sigh.
I think Dalinar’s trip to the Nightmother had another consequence that I have not seen mentioned. Cultivation temporarily pruned away his memories of Evi, including his role in her death. The purpose was that he could go on living for a while without those memories (the pruning). Yet, in time it would grow back gradually so that Dalinar could have time to adjust to remembering who he used to be and what he had done. This part of the boon and curse has been discussed in depth.
What I have not seen discussed is that without such removal of the memories (even if temporarily) I do not think Dalinar would have matured into the man we have seen in the current timeline. It as if his bloodlust and personality traits that made him the Blackthorn also withdrew. As a result, there was room for his current day personality to flourish. I believe that had the bloodlust and Blackthorn related personality traits remained, they would have choked down his current personality.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
@13, dptullos:
Egypt. China. Japan.
Shall I go on?
Alice lamented Dalinar’s comments about Gavilar’s infallibility. Personally I see it as a reference to/prefiguring of Renarin and Adolin.
Andrew @@@@@ 15, I agree, If the Nightmother had not done her pruning, Dalinar would have truly been Odium’s Champion!
I believe the origin of the ! notation, ie young!Dalinar, is from programming. Several programming languages – R is probably the best example – use a syntax like set!variable to describe a specific element in a larger data structure. I think its use here is quite intuitive.
@14 dwcole
The rift is a city/town. People’s homes were crushed by the trap Dalinar fell into and he remarked about how Tanalan didn’t warn them, so those were innocent people dying. The battle in the rift took place practically in the city proper. Again civilians. Now the fact that they were vulnerable is a burden on Tanalan, but just making the point that not only soldiers were killed in that battle.
@@@@@ 8 – Doesn’t Ninefingers revert back to his old ways at the end of the trilogy? I’m not 100% sure since I didn’t enjoy those books and only read them once, but I remember feeling like the ending was depressing and wiped away the character development for almost everyone but Glotka. Here is hoping that doesn’t happen here; reading about Dalinar turning away Odium gives me chills every time!
I like the highlighted quotation about Gavilar and Dalinar being chained axehounds because it echoes Dalinar’s words to Tanalan Jr. at the worse Rift scene. I can’t remember the exact wording, but Dalinar tells him that he is a beast and should not be.. beaten? baited? Something like that. I didn’t remember this axehound comment the first time I read the book, but this time it immediately brought the ultimate Rift showdown to the top of my mind. This chapter really was full of contrasts to other Dalinar flashbacks/the present day, such as when he is depressed that you could replace him with anyone in his Plate and still kill hordes of troops (later he revels in killing countless common troops when he almost kills Gavilar) and Sadeas being the one to encourage the Kholins to stop “acting like thugs” (previously, Sadeas was the one looking to rape women whose villages they conquered, and he will revert to acting like a thug by WoK).
This chapter also makes me more curious about why the Kholins want to unify Alethkar. We have one flashback where Dalinar thinks they did it because they essentially wanted more stuff. Here they sort of allude to the fact that the Highprinces are lazy or corrupt, but they certainly don’t act like they are unifying based on a belief of moral superiority (unless you count Dalinar’s quip to Tanalan that conquering everyone shows them who is the strongest and that they deserve the strongest king, but that seems more like taunting than an actual belief of Dalinar’s). I may just have missed where we learned why they started the mission (and how they earned Sadeas’ support first) but it seems like something we should know. It is ironic how the other princedoms unite against them here. I wonder what would have happened had Gavilar not succeeded? Without him becoming king, there is no treaty with the Parshendi, no execution, and no war on the Shattered Plains. Would it have delayed the Desolations? I guess that is a LONG rabbit hole to fall down!
Seeing Young!Sadeas’ role here at the soother really is interesting. How sad to see the quote “This is how it should be. Dalinar, Gavilar, Sadeas. Together.” It really does make the big betrayal in WoK seem so much more awful.
I also agree with previous commenters about seeing the seed of the man Dalinar will become. He laments the ease of killing when he is “himself”; the joy in mass murder comes when he permits himself the be possessed by the Thrill. He is already handling the guarding ofthe king, with his elites serving as Gavilar’s bodyguards here. We know he values this role in the present since he places so much emphasis on guarding Elhokar in WoK and WoR. He does not kill the engineers when he smashes the catapults on the fortifications but lets them run away. Of course, he spares the little boy, whose whisper of “we fight monsters. And with faith, we will win…” breaks my heart every time I read it. It also foreshadows the current day when they are literally fighting monsters, largely on faith. What beautiful irony that Dalinar, the monster of the past and Odium’s intended champion, becomes the Bondsmith with faith strong enough to hold the world together thus far.
“I found it sad, because Dalinar, already so misled by Odium and the Thrill at this point, has so much misplaced admiration for his brother.”
I hadn’t noticed before, but this adds another nice layer to Dalinar’s growth. He was wrong to admire Gavilar so strongly, but that admiration was what allowed Gavilar’s death to catalyze the personal growth that allowed Dalinar to renounce Odium and all his works.
@9 Wetlandernw – at age 68 I can definitely say that I am a very different person than “me” at age 20. I also am on long term medication for depression and the person I am on the medication is truly a different person than the one not on medication.
Dalinar ,especially, but not exclusively among the Alethi, is like an addict of the The Thrill. Once he throws off the effect he does become a completely different person. You wonder why Odium didn’t choose Sadeas rather than someone who had the potential to change.
It’s never mentioned and so not anything to do with the plot but if Gavilar was “seeing everything” as Dalinar describes him how could he not be aware of how Dalinar felt about Navani.
@2 @18 : Re: the ! syntax: 18 might be right about derivative of programming (I haven’t used those languages myself) but I believe it’s been a wiki markup thing for a long time (probably because of programming) to differentiate links to young-(character) vs old-(character) or good-(character) vs evil-(character) or what-have-you. So, I think people reading on wikis and message boards got used to the convention, so it carries over into blogs, etc.
OK this chapter brings me to a physiological question. Is the healing process here as opposed to our world not only quicker because of the magic, but better? Here is why I ask, anyone in our world who suffered as many injuries as Dalinar does over the course of his battles would barely be able to walk later in life. Think of a 15 year NFL vet who has many, many surgeries behind him, that person wouldn’t be able to lift their arm above their head, would walk with a permanent limp and would almost certainly have a very hard time just getting out of bed in the morning. Johnny Unitas famously couldn’t even hold a football at the time of his death because of the arthritis in his right hand. So with all these broken bones, torn tendons, etc, etc, how is Dalinar, 20 years later, able to even move around at all, let alone still fight? When injuries heal in the Cosmere, they must not leave the scar tissue that would be left here on Earth with the same injuries.
@20 Evelina
I too was not thrilled with The Blade Itself. I get what the author was going for in that life is a cycle that repeats itself, and so too happens to all the heroes in the novel, but personally it left a very bad taste in my mouth. Just not my kind of book. So I agree I hope it does not happen here either lol
@24 Brent
So on one hand yes the people on Roshar have stronger immune systems and are healthier because of stormlight and the high level of investiture on their planet. On the other hand, that does not necessarily mean they can all take the kind of damage Dalinar did and come out ok from the simple fact that the surgeons themselves were surprised he was capable of this. So personally I theorize it is either due to the thrill, or Dalinar being a proto radiant even as far back as then, or both. Or could be neither. Just a thought lol.
@24 It’s suggested that Dalinar has been subconsciously using Stormlight to heal himself for awhile.
Another seed of Present day Dalinar is tha the doesn’t care about social status, such as weather someone is a light-eyes or dark eyes he promotes someone to his elites based on merit, such as when he promoted the archer who tried to kill him to his elites.
@14 dwcole
You have no idea what it’s like to live in a society that’s being conquered. The Rape of Nanking is a good example of the kind of atrocities that conquerors commit. If you did some research and looked at what it’s actually like for civilians in the path of an invading army, you might be less dismissive.
Most of the soldiers on all sides during Gavilar’s wars are peasant conscripts who were forced to fight in a war they didn’t choose. All of them are fathers or brothers or sons, and their families mourned when they died.
As everyone who has read Oathbringer knows, Dalinar did not stop with murdering soldiers. Conquerors never do. I’m happy that you live in a time and place where you’ll never have to worry about rampaging armies, but it would be good if you thought about what actually happens during an invasion before you praised the glorious conquerors who make a throne out of the bones of “unimportant” people.
@28 Isn’t that why you instill discpline in soliders? So that doesn’t happen? Or am I an idiot?
Speaking of conquerors I can’t help but wonder if Brandon Sanderson is borrowing from Genghis Khan and the Mongols in the Alethi. See History vs. Genghis Khan – Alex Gendler
@29 BenW
Discipline means that soldiers follow orders. If the people in charge give the wrong orders, discipline is part of the problem.
Historically, plenty of commanders were perfectly okay with their soldiers committing atrocities as long as they obeyed in a battle.
Genghis Khan also used atrocities as a tool of conquest. If cities decided not to surrender when the Mongols gave them the chance, they simply killed everyone inside.
@31 Did you watch the linked video?
@22, goddessimho:
You could assume that he was aware of Dalinar’s attraction to Navani and simply trusted him (correctly). He wouldn’t acknowledge it because that would make Dalinar feel even worse. Navani certainly was aware.
Thanks Alice and Paige,
I’ve always wanted to know more about how Dalinar got his Shardplate. As you quoted, the text just says he kicked someone off a cliff, but how could he have done that to a man in Shardplate? I’m sure that’s one helluva story…
Re: Dalinar and Gavilar’s relationship – I have read it as Dalinar basically “hero-worshipping” his big brother, like a lot of younger brothers do. Add to that the fact that his big brother uses Dalinar to do what Dalinar loves and exceeds at (namely, fighting), and it’s clear why Dalinar would be incredibly loyal to his brother, do what his brother commands, and be reluctant to do anything against his brother’s interests (like confess his love for his brother’s wife).
Re: Tanalan’s son alive or not debate – I remember that discussion. I never thought that Dalinar would strike down in cold-blood a six-year old boy defending his father. Dalinar was a brute and a terror, but (unless he was deep enough in the Thrill to kill his own soldiers) his brutishness was never unnecessarily cruel or without consideration. I didn’t think that Dalinar believed for a second that he would need to kill the child in order to take the Blade, and so I figured he wouldn’t kill him, but would allow everyone to believe that the boy was dead. Dalinar also was likely aware that letting the boy survive could potentially lead to problems for Gavilar down the line, but there was no guarantee that would happen and since the boy wasn’t a direct or immediate threat Dalinar would not be inclined to kill him. So I figured that Dalinar’s shame would come from sparing the boy’s life and lying to Gavilar about it.
@1: Re Tanalan – Ha! Nice catch there. Maybe that’s another reason why we get Nale’s image in the Herald section.
@7 – In the first 2 flashbacks we see hints of the good man Dalinar will become: he spares/recruits Teleb and stops the rapes of Teleb’s fellow townspeople; and he spares Tanalan’s son.
@15 – Re: Dalinar’s Blackthorn personality pruning – That’s a great point. I think Cultivation’s pruning definitely helped to shape Dalinar to become the man – and Bondsmith – that he is in OB.
Another reason I brought up the Mongols and linked to the video was it’s mention of the Annihilation of Baghdad reminded me of the Burning of Rathalass later in the story.
I don’t know if this is due to knowledge of how things ended up, but even in these flashbacks, Sadeas seems to me more manipulative than friendly towards Dalinar (and maybe, to a lesser extent, Gavilar). He shows frustration when the brothers act differently than he wants while, at the same time, pushing Dalinar’s button.
One things for sure. We can now the reason that Dalinar was once friends with a man like Sadeas is because Dalinar was once a different man than he is today. in short Dalinar changed, Sadeas hasn’t.
Isilel @12 – “Teleb… now Dalinar’s faithful follower, helping to bring down another seemingly good ruler :(.” Alternatively, “Teleb, now Dalinar’s faithful follower, continuing to defend his liege with great skill.”
dwcole @14 – “If we ever loose the protections of modern society….how quickly many people here would fall. Sigh.” There’s a difference between decrying and denying. While we may (rightly, IMO) decry humanity’s seemingly endless thirst for bloody conquest, that doesn’t mean we refuse to recognize or be prepared for it.
AndrewHB @15 – Personally, I’m generally waiting until the relevant parts of the book to dig into what the Nightwatcher pruned away and how it affected Dalinar’s development.
calyx @18 – Thank you! I hadn’t made that connection, because I haven’t done any programming in donkey’s years (and never with the more current languages), but that totally makes sense. Except… should we be doing Dalinar!Young and Dalinar!Old in that case?
Evelina @20 – Nice observation on the “chained axehounds” connection. That later chapter is actually titled “An Animal” and the statement you remember goes like this:
Ouch.
One thought that occurred to me when reading this chapter: we know that when not painted or decorated, Shardplate is a medium gray. The description of the effects of wearing Plate is awfully similar to the description in the Mistborn books of burning pewter. It seems to me that there just has to be some connection there.
It’s a general Alethi belief. They are the soldier kingdom who remain strong by fighting each other. It makes sense that they have cultural ideals that promote fighting.
An empire might sound good for those in charge, it usually isn’t so good for the conquered, who are often treated badly by the rulers. America only has only one war if you don’t count the wars against the original inhabitants (but of course the conquerors aren’t interested in the fate of the conquered).
@39, David_Goldfarb:
Interesting thought. Does Shardplate cause fast healing like pewter-burning? BWS has said that Surgebinding has a lot in common with Awakening, but of course that does not rule out similarities with other forms of Investiture, too.
@40: One war? Perhaps you meant “one civil war”? Still wrong, but less wrong.
@39 David Goldfarb and @42 Carl
Regarding pewter and shardplate. We know pewter increases the strength of the burner by double, maybe three times with flaring.
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/9-calamity-philadelphia-signing/#e7674
So although you would be stronger, you wouldn’t be lifting a car over your head and throwing it. Shardplate on the other hand we have seen literally heel kick a catapult as well as other feats of strength in that vein. So I am of the opinion that stormlight gives the standard increases pewter does (a degree of strength increase, speed increase, balance, and durability), but it is shardplate that truly brings to fore a far greater level of strength than what pewter can provide.
It’s interesting to consider how others fit into the larger context of the Kholins’ unification war.
We see one aspect of this raised a lot in this book when it comes to Dalinar’s reputation. We’re so used to the reformed Dalinar of TWoK, but his transformation was relatively recent. Here we see a very young guy who spent DECADES conquering innocent people. His reputation with the Azish and Fen is really not surprising.
A more obscure thought is how Kaladin’s parents fit into this. According to my notes, Hesina was about 7 at this point, and Lirin is probably in that ballpark. If they’re FROM Sadeas’s princedom then they probably didn’t experience too much war firsthand. But it’s really enlightening I think to realize that Lirin grew up with Alethkar constantly at war. He lived through a roughly 6 year long civil war during his childhood, and then watched campaigns against Herdaz and Jah Keved all through his adult life. When Lirin thinks about Kaladin serving under Dalinar Kholin, he doesn’t imagine his boy serving the Honorable King of Dads. He imagines his boy serving that bloodthirsty lunatic who attacked cities of innocent people for most of his life.
I am one of those readers having issues with Dalinar’s character, not issues in the sense I dislike the character, more in the sense I don’t find him to be a Great Man.
In other words, while I can reason out his blood-thirsty years were a consequence of the society he lived in and the dreams of grandeur his brother had, I cannot accept him slaughtering his own soldiers is so easily brushed under the carpet. I find this scene is constantly glossed over, whenever the discussion moves onto Dalinar, but I cannot forgive him for killing his own men. Killing the ones you perceive as “enemies”, even if you are wrong to believe so, can always be rationalized in one way or another or, at the very least, put within the right context but nothing, IMHO, justify being so brutish you end up killing your own men. And, more over, nothing justify the remaining men to still want to follow Dalinar afterwards.
Why wasn’t he arrested? Put to death? Imprisoned? Why didn’t the men riot against Dalinar? He is killing his own soldiers! He is a beast and beasts have to be put down.
Hence, I can move past a lot when it comes to Dalinar, but not this.
I was one of those readers convinced Dalinar did kill the boy because, huh, this was the man who killed his own soldiers. What’s to him to kill a child? Hence, I was very surprised when we found out he didn’t kill the boy, those showing perhaps the only redeeming quality Dalinar ever shown prior to his trip to the Nightwatcher. On the matter of which, I do agree with the above commentary stating Dalinar only became the man he is because Cultivation took a liking to him and prune him out of his bad memories. Sure, he did become this man, but only because he was given something he never deserved: he was allowed the chance of forgetting the worst of him, he was allowed to believe he is honorable up until the bad events were so long ago in the past, it didn’t matter anymore Dalinar remembered. It didn’t matter anymore if Dalinar burned Rathalas, killed his soldiers and caused his wife’s death.
Hence my issues with Dalinar’s character: he got the butter and the money to buy the butter. He didn’t deserve Cultivation’s gift nor does he deserve to lead humanity, but he got both of those things. I do so agree with Hoid back in WoR: Dalinar is a tyrant and he may be the man they need, right now, but in any other time, he would need to be opposed.
@44 jofwu
That is a very interesting point about Lirin, and adds more depth to the feeling of a father wanting to spare his son the pain he saw in so many people growing up. Thanks for that :)
You can see why Sadeas doesn’t for a moment believe in Noble!Dalinar in WoK and WoR. He must assume that either Dalinar is faking it for some reason, or he’s completely lost the plot following his alcohol issues and Gavilar’s death.
I also feel slightly sad (but only slightly) for WoK and WoR Sadeas. Whatever you think of him, and I think nothing good, in these flashback chapters Gavilar and Dalinar are his two best mates. Now Gavilar is dead and Dalinar appears to him to be a totally different, holier-than-thou person. Really, even without his ambition to be the power behind the throne, you can see why he’d come to be furious with Dalinar.
Gepeto @45 – I can assure you, we won’t be glossing over Dalinar’s various horrific behaviors… when we get to those chapters. If we do, you have my full permission to reach through the internet and slap me.
@45, Gepeto:
Why wasn’t he arrested, etc.? Because he lived in a bizarrely, extremely violent and warlike culture. It’s like asking why the Old Norse didn’t exterminate the berserkers (who famously did that sort of thing and may have inspired Sanderson’s portrayal of Dalinar)–because they admired them, even as they recognized the danger of being anywhere near them.
The ancient Romans used to practice “decimation” against their own soldiers. If a unit did poorly 1/10 of them would be summarily executed. They aren’t portrayed that way in secondary school history classes (in the USA at least) but they were also a death-obsessed, violence-loving expanding empire. Sanderson is here correctly portraying a perfectly real part of the spectrum of human behavior–just as his portrayal of Lift’s kindness or Geranid’s and Ashir’s scholarship are portrayals of real human potentials.
@48, Wetlandernw: Alice, you’re clearly being influenced by Young!Dalinar–your first thought is violence! :-)
@45: I can’t wait to read those reviews! I find Dalinar to be a fascinating character. I dislike the individual, not the character. His flashbacks were one of the highlights of the book for me, especially once we reach the ones with lil Adolin. Still, I find he got away with much.
On an other topic, I found there is something playful in how Dalinar approaches this particular battle. He is excited, he cannot wait for it to start and once it starts, I felt I was reading a small child running around into the ball park. He loves the fighting, it energizes him. He’s in it because he just plains enjoy this and yeah, it gets more gruesome, eventually, when he faces he kid and when his men are killed, but there definitely is a childish glee to young Dalinar.
I love comparing battles and evaluate how our different characters are reacting to them. I must say no one else ever exhibited the same happiness, the same positive energy nor the same pleasure at fighting we see in this chapter. Kaladin fights because he needs to do in order to protect other people, he does it for his beliefs, because standing up for others gives him a purpose. He finds himself useful when he does so, but there is nothing gleefully childish whenever he picks up the spear. Adolin fights because he has to. In most of his fights, especially in OB, there is a sense of responsibility, duty and more responsibility. He does not enjoy it, he takes no pleasure in it and if Dalinar reads like a child on the Christmas morning, Adolin reads like a man who just ran the marathon, but then needs to run another one.
@49: Still it is odd to me soldiers would readily follow a man dangerous enough to kill them whenever he gets into one of his frenzies. I also have a hard time accepting killing your own people is a valid behavior. Shouldn’t armies be struggling to get more soldiers? They died for nothing and that bothers me, but in the end, what bothers me most is how Dalinar is considered a Great Man when really, he’s not. He’s just a berserker who was given the opportunity to change upon a wish, he took the opportunity and he became a better man, but he probably never deserved it in the first place.
I disliked most of Dalinar’s flashbacks on my first read, and some of them are worse now with foreknowledge. Like knowing that Dalinar will later kill so many more people as a result of having spared this child and draw for himself the conclusion that mercy is wrong. Everyone subsequently living is lucky he was made to forget that ‘lesson,’ I expect.
@49 Ironically I think current Dalinar would agree with you. i hope the next book deals with more with the fallout of his retruned memories and his book/confession.
A quick question, do we believe everyone really died at Rathalas? We are told only six people knew the truth. Is there any possibility there were a handful of survivors who also know the truth?
Do we believe the Rathalas arc is done and gone or do we believe more is to come as retribution never really happened. And the boys do not know the truth.
@53 They will. Remember Dalinar is writing a book where he confesses his sins to the world. Perosnally I look forward to see where the ramifications of this in the next book. Not just in the world but among Dalinar and his family members.
I also think there is a reason we deal with Teft and his addiction to Firemoss in his book, as it mirrors Dalinar’s addiction to the thrill.
@53: But do we know if Dalinar wrote about his actions at Rathalas? Specifically. And do we know if he intends his sons to read it? I am curious to know what Tor.com thinks of this particular narrative? More down the pipeline or Red Herring? Will it matter or will “matter” like Shallan finding the truth about Helaran (which is not considerably so in the sense it did not become a plot point)?
The question is not WILL it matter but HOW will it matter?
Speaking of Shallan I wonder if the book will make her tell Adolin about how she killed her own parents. True the circumstances were COMPLETELY different then how Dalinar killed his wife but she still bears a lot of grief over it.
It might both Shallan and Adolin come to relaize that thier own families were NEVER perfect to begin with. Shallan has this romanticized image that before she killed her mom things were fine in the Davar household but there are hints that it was never true to begin with. Just like Adolin holds this or held this romanticized view of his father that is going to break even if Adolin himself doesn’t. In a way Adolin and Shallan are perfecttly set up to help each other though this crisis.
I also want to bring up foils again. we talk about Adolin as a foil. but he sin’t the only foil here. I mentioned how Shallan also killed family members, but I just realized that that she and Dalinar BOTH had repressed memories one was psychologically induced, one was magically induced. And Teft and Dalinar both struggle with addition.
Speaking of addiction I want to point something out about Addiciton Addiction changes the way the brain works, this is why our society ENCOURAGES addicts to SEEK HELP CURING their addition yet EVEN THEN it is only when many addicts hit rock bottom that they admit they have a problem, DALINAR lived in a SOCIETY that ENCOURAGED HIM TO THROUGH HIMSELF INTO his addiction. He had only had the gentle proding of his late wife and ONCE by his son to encourage him to seek help. When you consider that he mostly figured it out ON HIS OWN it’s AMAZING THAT HE MANGED TO RECOVER. I am NOT saying that this excuses Dalinar’s actions. I am just saying that he is a FAR BETTER man than we give him credit for.
Gepeto@45&50 – Your issue is that Dalinar is seen as a great man by some of the Alethi? Why? In a society that respects warfare and conquest above all, why is it surprising that the most feared and powerful warrior is perceived as great?
During the Kholin’s time of conquest, his men seemed to fear and respect him. He appeared to value the skill and capabilities of his men regardless of their birth and status. He didn’t appear to play politics, and he often led by example as opposed to hiding behind his men. It seems clear why soldiers would respect, if not revere him. They were also aware of the Thrill, and could therefore rationalize and somewhat excuse the behavior of their most feared and respected warrior who was clearly caught up in it.
After Gavilar became king, it seems that Dalinar was Gavilar’s most respected and capable general, defeating foreign enemies multiple times. Dalinar was also Highprince of the most powerful princedom in Alethkar, and was second in line for the throne of all Alethkar.
All of those factors make it easy to understand why Dalinar was likely seen as a great man by the average Alethi. Look at how the Alethi view Sadees the sunmaker, who was a greater killer and tyrant than Gavilar or Dalinar combined. For this warlike culture, being a great warrior/conqueror was a major factor in perceiving that individual as a great man.
Now, since (presumably) most of Oathbringer’s readers are products of more peaceful, democratic societies, it makes sense for us not to see him as great (although many in our world still label as “great” some incredibly flawed people, some of who have done some deplorable things in their not too distant past), or to not see him as all that good of a person at all. But it seems understandable why a product of a warlike society like the Alethi would perceive maybe their greatest warrior as a great man.
@56: I hope Shallan revealing the truth about her parents will not happen behind closed doors, during the one year gap. Brandon warned us “things” would happen during the gap, he warned us “some of us will dislike it” though he suspects “others will be pleased”. Obviously, it is near impossible to even attempt at guessing what events he may be referring to, but I will not rule out the possibility of Shallan speaking the truth and the boys learning the truth outside of the main narrative. I arguably believe it would make a more impact-full narrative if those two elements were made to correlate one with another and if they were to happen within the actual pages of the book, but Brandon may have other plans in mind.
Still, I do like the idea of Adolin finding out the truth about his father, breaking down the perfect hero-worshiping image he has of his father is a very interesting arc to use to mirror Shallan admitting about the same about her past family life, especially now she was reunited with her brothers. I would love if this event would be strong enough to break Adolin’s perfect boy who can do no wrong image he has going on. After all, if Brandon wants to go forward with Maya, he is going to need to convince his readership Adolin actually deserves it, which he hasn’t demonstrated so far.
One of my dreams would be Shallan to act as a foil to Adolin here, but I am dreaming in technicolor here: it will never happen in a million years. I do however agree many arcs seemed to have been written to mirror each other: Dalinar/Teft for the addiction, Dalinar/Shallan for the memory repression, Moash/Kaladin for the vengeance. You make a solid point in stating how Dalinar winning over his addiction is actually a phenomenal accomplishment, though I only believed it happened because he was pruned by Cultivation: without her touch, I doubt Dalinar would have succeeded. In a way, she acted as his “therapist” and by removing the reason why he drank, she removed him from the need for alcohol, hence it became much easier.
Speaking of the alcohol addiction which Dalinar truly had and which his sons really did witnessed… Does it strike as odd to anyone else neither Adolin nor Renarin seem to harbor negative thoughts over alcohol? Adolin even going as far as hoping his father would allow him to get drunk on occasions? It seems to me, the more realistic behavior, the one most commonly seem into children of former addicts (when they do not become addicts themselves: none of the boys has shown any inclination towards it) is to refuse to touch alcohol for fear of developing an addiction. Hence, having read the flashbacks, I wonder how Dalinar’s addictions and his sons lack of issues with it correlate one with another.
@57: Well, yes. Had Dalinar deeds resumed themselves to being a blood-thirsty warrior, a conqueror winning battles with a tad heavy hand on the bottle, at times, then yeah, I’d buy it.
But Dalinar was a barely leashed beast who went as far as slaughtering his own men. He then became a worthless alcoholic, a shadow of himself, always drunk and this lasted for several years. How then I am supposed to rationalize it is logical for his men to have such a great vision of him when the man has been a living shell for years when he wasn’t a monster? Even in societies which revere war, it seems like much.
On an other side of things, I found it odd everyone in Dalinar’s close family thinks so highly of him. Alcoholism usually leaves scar within a family, especially on the children, but both Adolin and Renarin adore their father. Jasnah and Elhokar also adore him and view him as great. Navani loves him. What is it with Dalinar? The man was despicable, he ignored the existence of his youngest son for years, he pushed away the oldest for another set of years, he had them witness his addiction and they still think highly of him?
What am I missing here? Why does everyone love Dalinar?
I think we can see in the hero status of RL people that subsequent generations forget the foibles and atrocities the real person had. Then when someone finds proof of the reality of the hero some even feel betrayed that the hero was a person and not a paragon of perfection. Think of Jefferson and slavery as an American example. Or the terrible choice made by Churchill over letting innocents die or revealing knowledge of the Allies code breaking.
I have often wondered why we don’t want heroes to be beset by the same choices and doubts we all have.
Carl @49 – I almost snorted coffee up my nose. Thanks.
Well SOME of it is that Dalinar and Evi hid the worst aspects of their relationship from their kids. I don’t know all of it I can only guess at pieces but I can guess at pieces. There might also be some youthful optemesim on the part of Adolin’s part. Remember that sence where Dalinar drunk is looking for an excuse to berate him, but Adolin only saw it as constructive criticism? That might be part of it. The kid saw it through rose-colored glasses rather than for what it really was. Kinda like Shallan in a way. Only with out being broken.
I also think there is something both honest and tragic when Dalinar admits he deserves to be hated for the way he treats his kids, and the facts that he seeks help because of it is what ultimately separates him from Shallan’s father
Again I look forward to seeing how this plays out
@59: Actually, my last interrogation was meant to question why does Dalinar’s close family think so highly of him. Alcoholism often leaves many scars into a family and we have seen none with the Kholin family. There is Dalinar, but everyone else was not affected by it and this was odd. Hence, my questioning, why does Adolin, Renarin, Jasnah, Elhokar and Navani love Dalianr so much? What is it about him which makes no one hates him? No one is willing to hang his behavior over him? Especially Jasnah, knowing what Dalinar did to Renarin? Isn’t this odd?
@61: I do feel an argument could be made Adolin’s rose-colored glasses and his inability to see unwarranted criticisms combined this his feeling he’s always the one to blame is actually a sign of him being broken. The difference would be, unlike everyone else, he never acknowledged he is broken, he never realized it. He doesn’t think he is broken, hence it never really shows into his narrative. It made me think how some people, victim of abuse (now I don’t mean to say Adolin is a victim of abuse, I mean to say the behavior makes me think of one we sometimes see into such people), refuses to see themselves as victims, refuses to believe they were abused. It is a rather prevalent line of though among some people: this inability to realize they were badly treated, always finding reasons to explain it, thinking they are too blame. I read a lot of this into lil Adolin: he seems to genuinely believe if Dalinar criticizes him, it must because he deserved it.
In a weird way, it is very similar to Shallan… who thinks she deserves to hurt and to feel pain because of what she did. Adolin is obviously not hurting, but there is something odd with how he takes things in.
Obviously, I would never link Dalinar to Shallan’s dad. Dalinar was a bad father more out of a personality weakness: he never sought to purposefully harm his children, but he harmed them by not being able to love them properly. It is just odd how Renarin grew up to love the father who rejected him so harshly… And what of Jasnah and Elhokar? How could they so easily forget what their uncle did? I think it can be reasoned out Adolin’s behavior comes out of a hero-worshiping complex which made Dalinar treat him like Gavilar once treated him: as a tool to be edged as he needs it to be edged. It is much less obvious with the other younger Kholins.
@62 Obviously there is more to the story to be told here. I don’t want to speculate to much because we are clearly missing pieces of the puzzle. It’s this info that I look forward to in future books.
Gepeto @58. While Dalinar’s sons have not shown a proclivity towards alcohol abuse, Dalinar’s nephew, Elhokar, has. He started drinking very heavily in WoR, culminating in him passing out drunk during his attempted assignation. I think there is a history of alcoholism somewhere in Dalinar’s family history.
Gepeto @62. As with the addict, sometimes the family or loved ones of an addict likewise refuse to admit there is a problem. It is possible that some members of Dalinar’s family knew he drank heavily, but they chose to ignore that. They though his alcoholism was a stage that Dalinar would grow out of it. I believe there is a flashback where Elhokar is talking to his father that they tried to hide the alcohol from Dalinar. And that is probably what his family thought happened. I do not think most realized he went to the Nightmother.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
@64: Good point about Elhokar, I definitely over-looked him. I was focused on him seeming to love his uncle very much, I ignored his alcohol issues. Though, about this last one, soon we are going to see Elhokar become a tad bitter over Dalinar. I think those chapters will be very interesting to re-read, especially since I have recently read Brandon’s initial plans were for Elhokar to “turn bad” and have Dalinar being forced to kill him. Considering this was one of my speculations for the character, I was more than pleased to hear the author did consider it, even if he ultimately went for another narrative, which I think, works very well too.
Good point about Dalinar’s family perhaps trying to ignore he has a problem. It would be consistent with how Adolin chooses to ignore his father’s bad behavior or is so wrapped up in his hero worshiping, he cannot see it for what it is. Ah it made me think of this local series where a young girl becomes entangled with under-aged prostitution after falling in love with a pimp: he hits her, but she rationalized it isn’t really his fault. He was raised being hit, hence it was just a natural reflex for him to hit her and she did deserve it. What did she do? She texted her brother… when she had runaway from home to be with her pimp.
Of course, this has nothing to do with the story at hands, but I find it does show how strong denial and/or rose-colored glasses can be. I just find it odd basically everyone within Dalinar’s family had the same attitude towards his behaviors. I can buy Adolin mentally denying it, twisting it in having Dalinar not being guilty of anything: this works with how the character was written in OB. It is harder to make the same rationalization with the other characters though.
The scene you are referring to was Elhokar and Adolin talking to Gavilar about Dalinar: they are concerned and they do not know what to do. Elhokar starts saying unkind things and Adolin’s temper flares, but he is peace down for Gavilar. They all thought he was drinking because he missed Evi: Dalinar over hears them and deems them foolish for thinking he is missing Evi.
So yeah, the family did hide the alcohol, but Dalinar always found more. Perhaps they went soft on Dalinar because they thought he was grieving….
Elhokar was a tad bitter over Dalinar at Dalinar and Navani’s wedding.
@65 Gepeto
I think one reason is that Dalinar’s drinking does not seem to have outward manifestations – it doesn’t lead to violence against others or verbally lashing out in a way that leads to scars. Instead it is all inward, self-destructive. That leads more towards pity than bitterness.
@59, goddessimho:
No, think of Churchill ordering millions of people he considered his racial inferiors to be starved to death for reasons that boil down to spite and bigotry.
http://www.ibtimes.com/bengal-famine-1943-man-made-holocaust-1100525
@BenW: the “must hit bottom” thing is fictional rather than real. Addicts can quit without their lives having the structure of a 3-act play.
Something this discussion made me realize about our “main Radiants” and their history:
Kaladin: feels responsible for brother’s death.
Shallan: personally killed her parents.
Dalinar: ordered actions that resulted in his wife’s death.
Lift: feels responsible for her mother’s death, maybe?
Teft: betrayed his parent’s cult, causing his father’s execution.
Venli: betrayed her sister in a way that led to her eventual death.
Szeth: for whatever reason doesn’t use his father’s name.
We don’t know the histories of other Radiants (Lopen, Malata, Stump). Lopen’s father seems to be missing, right? The shoemaker whose name I forget was a murderer, but I can’t remember if he killed a family member.
@68 Carl
Szeth didn’t use his father’s name because being Truthless was such a dishonor he didn’t want it to reflect on his father. Nale does use Szeth’s father’s name when talking to him (Szeth son Neturo, or something close to that), so he may change his mind on that.
Ym was used by someone else to deliver poisoned wine. He didn’t know it was poisoned. The victim wasn’t his relative (as far as we know).
I left out Jasnah, who considered assassinating her sister-in-law and murdering her cousin but didn’t do those things, but who has killed apparently many others both by assassination and her own hand.
In a group that includes Venli (who exterminated her own entire culture after betraying their millennia-long mission) and mass-murderer Jasnah, why do people condemn Dalinar again?
@68 Sorry for the generalization. Also good point about radiants and the guilt they feel.
@67: Dalinar does lash at Adolin during one of the flashbacks, being overly critical and needing to be convinced to agree to attempt to his son’s dueling match. He was also not nice to Renarin since well forever. Jasnah is the one who consoled young Renarin, she witnessed the result of Dalinar’s abandon and yet, she still sees him as a great man. I can buy Adolin not holding his treatment of Renarin against Dalinar as the boys weren’t raised together: they hardly spent any time together growing up. He didn’t really witnessed much of it, but Jasnah?
@68: I think the living examples we have of Radiants just illustrates the “easy” way to break someone: they each lived through incredibly events one in a thousand if not more individuals (one in a million for Shallan if not more) never even come close of going through. They each are characters the author doesn’t need to spend much time to convince his readers they are broken and thus valid candidates for the Nahel Bond.
Take Renarin for instance, back in WoR, we knew very little about him but, in a general manner, readers didn’t struggle too much to reason out how he could be mentally broken. Readers are not struggling figuring out Lift was broken even before we all read Edgedancer because “street urchin” was enough for everyone to fill in the holes and draft a plausible scenario. If Rock becomes a Radiant, as I suspect he will, then readers do not need more page time to be convinced: the ending of OB was more than enough.
Hence, as a rule of thumb, the Radiants were given tragic backstory which makes it easy for the readers to accept their current trajectory as Radiants. The author does not need to write a narrative having for purpose to convince the readers any of those character is broken. Readers are not struggling to figure out how Jasnah is broken, they just imagined some mental illness or some tragic event.
The problem is when we reach a character such as Adolin who is really not obvious. I personally thought it was interesting to read a character breaking down for simpler reasons, not out of having been a blood-thirsty warmonger, not out of having been beaten and enslaved, not out of feeling guilt towards having killed anyone, just the strain of trying to do what needs to be done while trying not to show he is straining. I thought after reading so many dark backstories, it would be fun to read diversity into the Radiants, to show people not having been tortured in their past can still become Radiants too, but other’s millage may vary.
People have break down in their real-life for much lesser reasons: sometimes just the day to day routine is enough. This is called a burn-out and it is very prevalent within our modern day life: the strain of being perfect is really taking its toll on many people. Just yesterday, I read an article on parental burn-out speaking on how parents, trying to be the perfect parents, can reach a point where they actually crack as no one can be perfect. Ever.
It occurs to me that Renarin, if he is a Radiant, is one of two I can think of who has had much screen time that has never to our knowledge killed a sapient being. The other is Lift. They are the two healers. Now that Dalinar can fix things he has stopped killing, if you notice. Not to say he won’t do it again, but it’s an interesting trend.
Have we seen a Fused heal (someone else)? It would be odd if they couldn’t.
@71 Carl
When was Jasnah a mass-murderer?
@74 Carl
There does seem to be an implication that the fused have access to one surge each (the flying fused gravitation only for instance, while another fused only abrasion, and the armor molding fused potentially cohesion or tension). So that would imply to me that there is a fused that uses regrowth which would mean they could heal others.
@75 scath
I don’t know of this is because of Odium itself/himself or because he is on Braize, but unlike Honor and Cultivation, the number 9 is key.
10 orders of knight Radiant, 10 stormlight surges.
9 unmade 9 types of fused, 9 void surges.
@76 skidamarink
Brandon has said that the voidbringers do not have an analogue for the bondsmiths, so I still am of the thought that there would be a regrowth surge among the ranks of the fused personally. If there is to be a surge missing, I think it is one of the bondsmith’s
@75, scath:
When she arranged multiple assassinations?
I would expect so, too. I’m just commenting that we haven’t seen it.
We only concretely know of one potential assasination plan on the queen by jasnah which she did not to through. Her issues with mraize are conjecture at this point and the assassin known as the weeper on her paid retainer was to inform her only if contracts were taken out on her family, that she would pay double to stop it. The alley was a fight and the soldiers were at war. So to me that does not fit the definition of mass murderer
I wouldn’t refer to Jasnah as a mass murderer either as which mass of people did she single-handily killed? I do not feel having plotted or even organized a handful of assassination is enough… To be a “mass murderer” I tend to think one needs to be responsible for killing a large group of people. Good examples? Sadeas at the Tower. Young Dalinar. King Gavilar. Jasnah? If she is responsible for equivalent atrocities, the narrative isn’t inkling towards them.
This being said, she does come across as a sociopath and she seems to struggle with empathy, but this may be due to a lack of exposure. I am however dubious over Queen Jasnah. I have seen too many readers assume she will be amazing because she is so smart and knowledgeable, but these do not strike me as the best traits to have in a monarch… To follow.
I don’t know about mass murders but Jasnah has defiantly killed people. Remember the street thugs? Also this may or may not be relevant buy Jasnah does NOT have a healing and/or fixing surge
@81: Oh Jasnah definitely murdered people, but are a few thugs enough to refer to her as a “mass murderer”? Jasnah can heal herself, just like every Radiant.
I was referring to healing OTHERS
@83: Oh my bad, but what is the link in between Jasnah not possessing the surge of regrowth and her potentially being labeled as a “mass murderer”? I am lost a little here…
I think others were saying that radiants how can heel/fix as one of their surges no longer kill after they gain that surge as opposed to other radiants. that being said I don’t think MASS has anything to do with so much as killing in general. See post 74
Wow, why all the hate towards Dalinar? First, it was Shallan getting all the hate. Now, it is Dalinar.
I find the emotional reactions, albeit in the negative side, to the characters as proof of how good a writer Brandon Sanderson is. He can elicit very strong emotions.
Just my thoughts.
@Gepeto: I disagree with your rather arbitrary definition, but feel free to substitute “multiple murderer” and remember that Jasnah arranged the deaths of several Ghostbloods.
As to Jasnah as Queen, in fact it’s made clear in Oathbringer that Navani would be a better Ruling Queen (as opposed to Queen Mother) but everyone ignores that. Note how much more effective she was diplomatically, which everyone agrees is what’s needed right now.
@80 Gepeto
I agree with your examples of individuals that could be termed as mass murderers
I am among those who feel Jasnah would make an excellent monarch. Some examples include
1 Her admitting when she is wrong regarding Shallan and making an effort to change
2 Bringing together disparate groups for a unified purpose (stormwardens, scholars, and ardents), even those groups she disagrees with
3 Organizational skills
4 Strength to make difficult decisions
5 In depth knowledge of the political landscape (both nationally and internationally) and training since she was a youth
6 foreign nations and dignitaries (azir, thayla, etc) all respect and admire Jasnah
7 Dalinar, Adolin, and Shallan all agree that the alethi highprinces would listen and obey Jasnah
Just some of my thoughts on Jasnah as queen
@81 BenW
Yes Carl was making the point that people with healing surges could potentially not kill (which I disagree with considering what Nale said about Edgedancers as well as what the epigraphs spoke of them as being feared yet they are healers. Finally there is a the fact that past edgedancers did use blades given that Adolin’s blade is a confirmed edgedancer blade), but what I was responding to was terming Jasnah a mass murderer, which I disagree with for reasons I will continue on later in this post
@86 sheiglagh
I agree the range of emotions for the main characters speak volumes to the skill of Brandon. I feel he deftly presented us Dalinar as noble and honorable, thereby garnering a lot of love and admiration of the fandom. He then showed us how people can change, by showing a very different image of the man we came to look up to. Having such images shattered does cause a wide range of emotions but also elicits deeper understanding and thought. I personally feel there were glimmers here and there even among young Dalinar of the man he could potentially become. I feel it was the loss of his wife, and then the aid of Renarin and the Nightwatcher that helped him become that man. Personally I loved reading the evolution of Dalinar
@87 Carl
That is not an arbitrary definition. Actually it is quite close to the concrete definition which is
“Mass murder is the act of murdering a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. Mass murder is also defined as the intentional and indiscriminate murder of a large number of people by government agents, for example, shooting unarmed protesters, throwing grenades into prison cells, and randomly executing civilians”
So as I stated before, where do we have concrete in book evidence of the number of assassinations that Jasnah arranged for the Ghostbloods? I do not recall any scenes in the book where Jasnah recreates the moment in the Godfather where Michael Carleone cleans house by whole sale killing his enemies as he takes over the family. All Mraize has said is that Jasnah is no angel, and started it. We have no idea in what way this occurred. it could be anywhere from completely altruistic where Jasnah was defending someone who was going to be hurt by the Ghostbloods, killing their member and resulting in the animosity. Or it could be like you said, Jasnah showing up and laying waste to a whole pocket cell of the Ghostbloods. Or it could be any spectrum in between. But at this stage we do not know. I feel it is far too early to throw such a label on Jasnah till we have more information. Once again all we know about Jasnah is
she considered assassinating the Queen to protect her family, but did not follow through
she paid assassins to come to her if they were hired against her family
she killed three men attacking her in an alley (not talking about the morality, just the core facts)
she killed multiple men and fused who were attacking her in a war
To me all of the above does not fit in the definition of mass murderer. As to Jasnah as queen, please see above regarding my response to Gepeto. Thank you
Just one point: I didn’t say or mean that healers can’t kill. I merely said that in this particular narrative, two healers (and one person with a Surge he can use to fix things) haven’t killed. I doubt it’s an accident.
@87: I agree with Scath @88, I feel he has posted a very apt definition of the term “mass murderer”. Hence, while I agree Jasnah most likely got more people murdered than what we saw on-screen, I doubt she ever was involved within an event leading to the death of a significant number of people.
Now, is this because Jasnah wouldn’t mass murder people or is it because, as a woman, she never were in a position to make decisions which would cause mass of people to die? In other words, had Jasnah been a man, what kind of man would she have been, given the Alethi culture? Would she have grown up to be another Gavilar?
We have much to speculate on here.
On Jasnah being a Good Queen or Not.
This is where I am going to enjoy speculating for a while and elaborate fictional scenarios…
One element of Brandon’s writing which has come to mind when reading his books is it isn’t rare for his characters to have “alternate” trajectories. I mentioned earlier how Brandon admitted his initial plans were for Dalinar to be forced to kill Elhokar. He went with another narrative where Elhokar’s character make different decisions, which ultimately still lead to his death, but in a very different manner. Hence, Elhokar’s character had two trajectories: one where he goes bad and one where he redeems himself. The first idea had been my leading preference for his character, prior to reading OB, as I did see his character potentially going down this way, if he plays out certain aspects of his personality above others.
All of this to say, I read Jasnah in a similar manner, I read her as a character which can go many ways, depending on which decision she ultimately chooses to make. Therefore, while everything Scath @88 says is true, I do find there is a rational which leads to Jasnah not being a very good queen…
Jasnah is incredibly smart, knowledgeable, organized, researched. She is authoritative, direct and she has keen knowledge of politics (or we are told she does, we do not get the opportunity to see much of it in the books). It seems she has decent military knowledge, probably nowhere near an Adolin, but enough to know which man to put in charge of what.
What could possibly go wrong with Jasnah?
She is smart, highly intelligent, but one of her downfalls is she views everyone as he intellectual inferior. It may be everyone else really is her intellectual inferior, but one cannot hope to lead and to inspire others by looking at them from an arrogant pedestal. Her inter-actions with Kaladin also highlighted what may be her greatest weakness: she cares little for other people’s emotions. Hence, while she can be trusted to make the most rational decision, can she be trusted to factor in the, huh, “human factor” into her decision-making? Her inability to listen to Kaladin’s arguments did make me fear for her ability to be a good queen… Is she going to treat everyone exposing a views of things which clashes with her own in the same manner? By shouting at them?
I also fear the line in between Jasnah and Gavilar is…. very thin.
This being said, we have seen Jasnah feel empathy, towards Renarin, but I am wondering if this is enough. Which path will Queen Janah walk? I am unsure, but I do agree with Carl @87: Navani does strike me as the best possible choice, too bad everyone just ignores she exists.
On Healers Killing (edit)
I has been argued Edgedancers/Truthwatchers were pacifists and would refuse to kill. This argument is usually use to dispel the idea Adolin might grow into an Edgedancer (currently very unpopular within the fandom).
I personally find it might be extreme to state all members of a given order would refuse to fight/kill when the need arise. Edgedancers have a odd combo: they have the ability to be amazing fighters and they can heal. I feel their order might be one made of contradictions, but I do not think Radiants owning the surge of Regrowth would all be pacifists.
Quick question on surges – If you have an ability, do you also have the opposite ability? So, for example, can Lift use her Abrasion (?) surge to stick in place (total friction) instead of becoming slick (no friction). Or, to tie to other discussions here, can someone with the Regrowth surge (healing) also cause something to decay (injure/cause disease/rot/etc.)?
@90 It’s been awhile since I have read the previous books, could you quote the Kaladin/Jasnah scene for me?
@89 Carl
I understand now and that is an interesting observation. I wonder how that will develop
@90 Gepeto
Thank you. That is an interesting question regarding would Jasnah have grown up as a man have ended up like Gavilar. I think finding out what caused her to be in a dark room screaming and feeling betrayed by her loved ones would play a large part in potentially answering this. For instance if what happened involved the Vorin religion and her father, I could see Jasnah even as a man separating herself and following a similar path that she did as a woman. She would be divorcing herself from the main stream society that harmed her so much. It could be even more difficult for her as a man, as she would be potentially be pursuing scholarship, which is a feminine art, and be ostracized from the only group where that would be acceptable, the religious Ardents. So I think if the inciting incident was caused as I posited, I could see Jasnah taking the same path, but having to overcome possibly additional hurdles.
I see what you are saying regarding Jasnah, and respect your opinion. Some of your points I view a little differently. True there are instances with Navani and others where she comes off as intellectually pushy, but there are also instances with Taravangian, Dalinar, and Shallan where she defers to others, listens to their advice, or revises her original outlook/plan based on new info. Very true she is not infallible. Far from it. But I feel she does have a nice balance that can be quite the asset to a ruler.
Regarding Kaladin, if you are referring to the scene where they are meeting regarding the parshendi there are a few things regarding that. First, Kaladin instigated the shouting to which she responded calmly at first but eventually it did escalate. Second, the order went something like this
1 Kaladin said can’t we just not fight them, while not offering a realistic alternative during a war counsel
2 Jasnah pointed out that the parshendi get possessed by the fused, so regardless their inclination, at any time they could become a hostile combatant
3 Jasnah then points out if they are going to preserve the parshendi (in response to Kaladin’s upset over fighting them she is offering solutions where they aren’t fought), they need to end the function that causes the fused to return and possess the parshendi
4 Jasnah reasons that the heralds returning to damnation is the way it was done in the past. At this point none of the characters know that this potentially would not work. She suggests then asking the heralds to return, or baring that kill them with the aim of buying them some time
5 Kaladin calls her insane, and again offers no alternatives
6 The discussion between Kaladin and Jasnah devolves
Now, I readily admit, letting the discussion devolve in that way is a poor showing for Jasnah, but I would also point out that it is a poor showing of Kaladin who is a soldier, and a poor showing of Dalinar who is leading the meeting. Kaladin should have been more professional and offered tactical options. Instead he was understandably upset about what he experienced and acted emotionally. The correct thing to do, would be provide the intel, and then excuse himself from the meeting, as he was emotionally unfit to contribute. This does not mean it should be emotionless, but frankly it was a war counsel that decides the fates of countless people. Closing your eyes and just hoping everyone will be nice to each other is not a solution nor appropriate. Information must be provided, examined, and discussed. Kaladin kept shutting the discussion down. Dalinar did listen to Kaladin, but also pointed out about being realistic, and he should not have allowed the discussion to devolve as much as it did as leader of the meeting. So no one truly came out of that meeting smelling of roses. Jasnah just tends to get a bad rap for it (in general, not specifically from you, nor am I saying you were accusing her of such) because she brought forward the hard options that no one liked, but had to be discussed. I had been saving my thoughts on this scene till we had reached it but since it got brought up earlier, I couldn’t resist lol
So in summation, I can see how Jasnah could walk many paths as you say, just in my opinion I feel she has the characteristics and resources to do the best with what she has in an unenviable position. Leading a nation during the end of the world.
@91 RogerPavelle
That is a good question as there seems to be some conflicting information though I do lend to one interpretation over another. So on one hand it could be said that radiants get both “sides” as we have seen Lift scale walls which imply increasing friction. We also see dustbringers create fires which implies to some they are increasing friction coupled with division. I personally think however that is not the case. With Lift I feel the climbing is a by product of her increased cognitive presence due to the boon/curse she received from the Nightwatcher. So she is not actually using her surge to employ Wyndle to climb, and had she been a normal Edgedancer, she would not have been able to do so. Regarding Dustbringers, the first surge they have access to is division, which also implies they have great proficiency with it than the skybreakers who share the surge. I do think there is an interaction between division and abrasion on the part of the Dustbringers. I just do not think it is increasing friction that is the cause. What I feel supports this is that there is adhesion to abrasion, regrowth to division, tension to cohesion, and so on. I do not believe all the surges have a direct opposite, nor am I saying the surges are direct opposites, but my point is this. Why have abrasion users have the ability to increase friction, when thematically at least, adhesion users get that already? Why have regrowth users be able to decay objects, when thematically at least, division users get that already? Also if that is the case, then why not have it work the other way as well? Why cannot Kaladin slip and slide using adhesion by creating a pocket of air pressure directly around his skin like a hovercraft? Why not have Nale, Szeth and Malata heal by reversing the decay of objects? So although it is a very interesting thought, I personally think that each surge works only as that surge works. The difference comes in with their interactions. Abrasion with regrowth, Abrasion with division, and so on.
edit @92 BenW
Was my summation of the scene enough, or is there any particular aspect of it you would like elaborated on? I could pull it up on my kindle and provide whatever reference you need. Happy to help :)
@91 – No. The surges only work going one way. The Abrasion surge reduces friction; it doesn’t increase it.
@93 Thank you that helps. I also forgot that scene was in THIS book.
@95 BenW
No problem, glad to help :)
Austin @94 – “The surges only work going one way. The Abrasion surge reduces friction; it doesn’t increase it.”
That’s the first I’ve heard of it. Is there a WoB on the subject?
Alice, some of the Surges are opposites (e. g. Dalinar’s version of Adhesion that can fix things and Malata’s Division that can break/destroy them). It makes no sense if they can both “reverse their spells” like a D&D cleric and do the other’s trick.
So much ground has already been covered here, I’ll just echo a few thoughts:
I’m also wondering what Gavilar’s motivations were. He hadn’t started hearing the visions/voices yet (“Unite them!”), had he?
Love seeing how Cultivation is playing the long, long game. Wonder what else she may have set into motion.
Gepeto @50 – you are right he didn’t deserve it, but, that’s perhaps getting into a theme of grace.
Kaladin can make himself lighter by lashing upwards or heavier by lashing downwards, but that isn’t really gravity and antigravity, just gravity applied in different directions.
Lift probably uses growing (plants) to climb, not the opposite of no friction.
@Lisamarie, there is a WoB (IIRC) that Gavilar in fact was seeing the same recorded visions.
At 19 (Dalanar) and Early 20’s (Galavar) are leading house Kholin.
What in the storms happened to Daddy Kholin?
Also assuming Torrel Sadeas is similar age and leading his house. Were all the old men over the age of 40 purged?
@22 I think Odium chose Dalinar for the same reason Eshonai was a more devastating candidate for the first Stormform than Venli.
Honestly..? As brutal as Dalinars actions in the rift were, Tanalans son 10000% caused that by pulling that underhanded BS breaching their parley with an attempted assassination.
Obviously the whole point of the arc is Dalinar takes responsibility, can’t just blame it all on odium and the thrill, but that guy was also a real piece of crap.
If he really cared about his people then he could take the deal, become a high lord, pretend it was an angle, and everyone’s safe. But no he only wanted petty revenge. People always argued that a story from his perspective he’s the hero, the underdog rebel resisting the brutal warlord of the conqueror, but he isn’t just a group of soldiers who took on this cause he’s got a whole city of innocents to consider. Absolutely as much to blame for what happened as Dalinar is, it doesn’t help Sadeas sadistic ass was there ensuring it’s a full on massacre.
Its also really sad in retrospect with gavilars POV we have now just how exploitative he is and how little he thought of his brother