Welcome back to the Warbreaker reread! Last week, Siri misbehaved rather badly—she spoke to the God King! This week, Lightsong also behaves badly—he runs away from his petitioners!—and Siri discovers that she survived the night despite her irreverence.
This reread will contain spoilers for all of Warbreaker and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. This is particularly likely to include Words of Radiance, due to certain crossover characters. The index for this reread can be found here.
Click on through to join the discussion!
Chapter 12
Point of View: Lightsong, Siri
Setting: Lightsong’s palace, the God King’s bedchamber
Timing: The morning after Chapter 11, apparently the sixth or seventh day of the Wedding Jubilation?
Take a Deep Breath
Lightsong grumbles internally as he listens to petitions from his followers. His great frustration is that people actually think of him as a god, when he knows perfectly well that he’s completely useless. The only think he can do for them is, someday, sacrifice his own life to heal someone else; they don’t seem to realize what they ask of him each time they bring him a petition. The hardest ones, for some reason, are the children. Finally he can’t take it any longer and rushes out of the room, leaving his priests and petitioners bewildered. Llarimar remains calm and sympathetic, as always.
Once the petitioners are gone, Lightsong asks Llarimar to explain something: why are the Returned considered gods when they are all fundamentally useless until they die? Llarimar explains the current understanding of the purpose of Returned; Lightsong remains skeptical. The topic shifts to politics, and Lightsong makes plans for the following days Assembly.
Siri looks out the window of the bedchamber, reflecting on the events of the night. She had spoken directly to the God King, made a demand, looked at him… and yet, there has been no apparent repercussion. Feeling aghast, relieved, and encouraged all at once, she decides it’s time to move forward. She’ll be herself again; she’ll quit being all cautious and frightened, even if it does bring punishment.
Breathtaking
He had no desire, despite what he sometimes said, to leave his comfortable home in the court. He was not a man of jungles; he was a man of parties.
But sometimes he wished that he could at least want to be something else. Blushweaver’s words still weighed upon him. You’ll have to stand for something eventually, Lightsong. You’re a god to these people…
He was. Whether he wanted to be or not. That was the frustrating part. He’d tried his best to be useless and vain. And still they came.
We could use your confidence… you’re a better man than you give yourself credit for being.
It’s tough being a reluctant god, isn’t it?
Local Color
This week’s annotations provide background on the concept of the Returned accomplishing one healing miracle—it was something Sanderson played with for the Seons in Elantris but then deleted from that story. It’s an interesting notion: a being which has the innate ability to do one major miracle (healing, in this case), but doing it will kill them; it’s also a very useful tool in Warbreaker’s structure. The other note is on the necessity of rushing Siri’s fearful-and-indecisive phase for the sake of moving the plot—and keeping her from getting so boring no one could care about her.
In Living Color
I love this picture of Lightsong, and give my thanks to BotanicaXu for kindly allowing me to use it. I see it reflecting Lightsong’s inner pensiveness even as he attempts to appear frivolous—which is where we find him this week. He’s tried so hard to keep everyone from taking him seriously, but they do it anyway. Aside from his title of “Lightsong the Bold,” the god of bravery—a designation guaranteed to draw certain people no matter how he behaves –there are people who see through the façade. They may misinterpret what they see (ahemBlushweavercough), or they may simply know more of his character than he does himself (Llarimar!), or any of several other variations. But those with discernment can see a depth of character that he himself wishes to deny.
Apparently many readers see him as shallow as he tries to appear; I suspect that if he had a choice, he’d love the surfer-dude persona of the original audio version. That’s exactly how he wants to be perceived. And it’s a lie.
IMO, this chapter clarifies much of his problem for us. While it does make sense in context, I find it hilarious that Lightsong has been a “god” for five years and still doesn’t know the theology of his own religion. And yet… not so hilarious, because that’s the root of his problems. His sense of responsibility is at war with his sense of ability, if that makes … sense. (Um?) He’s supposed to be a god, and is treated like one, but he has no confidence in his ability to do anything for those who revere him. The only thing he can do, so far as he knows, is choose to die so that some random person can live, and somehow he’s just supposed to know who, and when.
Llarimar explains it, to him and to us, at least as far as the Hallandren understand it, and it goes something like this:
Certain people, presumably due to the noble nature of their dying, are given the opportunity to Return from death. They choose to do so based on something they see after death, where the future is visible to them. Because of that vision, they return to “fix a problem, share information, or otherwise help” the living. Each one returns with a specific objective; the difficulty is that transitioning back to the physical realm fragments the memory. Not only do they not remember their former life, they don’t remember what they saw in death that made them choose to return. The hope is that through recalling their dreams, viewing the offerings, and hearing the petitions, memory of their objective will be restored and they will be able to fulfill it. The purpose of the priests and devotees is to keep them alive with Breath long enough to accomplish their task, and to gain whatever insight into the future the Returned can provide. After that, they can find someone who deserves the healing of a divine Breath, and they can continue on their journey “across the Iridescent Wave”—presumably, to the same Beyond as other worlds have shown us.
I really wish we knew how much of this is accurate! Some of it is, certainly, but how much is truth and how much is fancy? And how much more is there that they don’t know? Despite my wariness of Sanderson’s unreliable narrators, I shall cautiously proceed as if this is more or less accurate.
Snow White and Rose Red
We get just a brief glimpse of Siri as she considers her survival. It’s implied, at least, that she believes her actions of the previous night are just like her previous behavior, and that from now on she’s going to go back to “being herself.” She doesn’t realize just how much growth she’s accomplished by a week’s worth of careful self-discipline. IIRC, anyway, her actions going forward are much more carefully considered than before, even while being consistent with her natural personality.
Exhale
I’m a little confused on the timing, but … I think I worked it out? In Chapter 11, Siri mentioned kneeling naked for six nights; in Chapter 12, Lightsong thinks about the Wedding Jubilation not being over for another few days, and Llarimar comments that the new queen won’t be presented for another few days; in Chapter 13, Siri is dressed for her court presentation since the Jubilation is over. It’s possible that Chapter 12 takes place on the 6th day of the Jubilation, leaving Siri one more night of kneeling and meaning that the Jubilation started the day after she arrived. That would mean we skip a day between Chapters 12 and 13. Alternatively, it began the day she arrived (which makes more sense given what Llarimar said about Lightsong not hearing petitions that first day), and Chapter 13 is later the same day as Chapter 12. Either way, it appears that there’s a minor continuity error in Lightsong’s section, because that bit about the Jubilation not being over for a few more days doesn’t fit. But it’s pretty minor, really.
One other thing about the Hallandren religion, which apparently not all its adherents understand:
“Please, Great One,” the woman said. She sniffled, then bowed her head. “Oh, please. He was brave, like you. My Breath, it would be yours. The Breaths of my entire family. Service for a hundred years, anything. Please, just heal him.”
She doesn’t seem to realize that the promise of all that Breath and service would be meaningless to Lightsong, because he’d be dead. I suppose it’s possible that she knows he’d be dead, but would consider his sacrifice worth it for the sake of the Breath and service given to the pantheon in general? If that’s the case, then she really doesn’t have a clue about the interrelationships of the gods!
That’s it for the blog—now it’s time for the comments! Join us again next week, when we will cover Chapter 13 and its annotations, in which Vivenna tries to decide what to do next and Siri prepares to be presented in the Court.
Alice Arneson is a SAHM, blogger, beta reader, and literature fan. If you Facebook, you can join her in the Tor-Sanderson-rereader-specific group known as the Storm Cellar; since it’s a closed group, you have to ask to join. Identify yourself as a Tor friend, and one of the moderators will add you.
Being a God (in that environment) would be really depressing to me; having to see children give up their breath every day and being presented with so many people begging for my help…I’d probably end up healing somebody right away just to get out of it.
As frustrated as Lightsong is, I’m almost surprised he hasn’t done that already. I wonder if there’s just enough subconscious impulse to “fulfill the objective” that they can’t quite bring themselves to do it.
I seem to recall reading that Lightsong is one of the few Returned that actually tries to meet his obligations by viewing the paintings and hearing the petitioners every week, even if he doesn’t himself believe in his abilities. Of course that would go a long way towards explaining why he isn’t successful at being perceived as useless.
#1 @Lisamarie – No kidding. I’d be really upset with Endowment for not letting me remember why I returned.
What I don’t get about the Hallandren gods is their lack of other actions. Why is Allmother the only god we see fixing problems that can be fixed? Do the other gods not take action? Can they really sit there for YEARS to hear the same types of pleas every week and not take small actions to fix problems?
No, the dying child is not something that could be fixed in this case. But if granting the woman 10 gold coins to buy better food for herself and the child to feed themselves – could fix the problem – I’d want to bloody fix the problem! If the woman had received aid for better medicine earlier, maybe her whole family would not now be dead or dying.
Considering the waste of funds we see in the food, fireworks and clothes – alms for the poor would be cheap by comparison.
Like we see in Allmother’s court. The fisherman just needs a new type of job to live.
Did all the gods start out like her, then as they died, the new gods weren’t trained / encouraged to do anything else? It’s “Heal someone and die” and nothing else? AGGG! It drives me nuts.
Daily, people around the world pray to their God for many things, only a fraction of which can be fixed with a healing spell.
The general population of Hallandren receives omens from the gods too, but really this is a an odd religion to me.
Do the gods have money to give alms for the poor? It may be also the culture would not accept using the money for the fireworks as alms for the poor – think of the huge cathedrals in the middle ages rather than money being spent on the poor. I agree I find it wasteful – but man those cathedrals are beautiful.
@5 – I wonder about this too. I’ve been to some of them, and they are gorgeous. But then I also think you could extend that argument to any kind of artistic endeavor ever. Why create anything beautiful, or spend money on anything at all beyond the bare necessities? During both the middle ages, and now, there are a lot of people doing stuff for the poor in addition to whatever their artistic endeavors are. My husband grew up in a rural Midwest town that has a very old and beautiful church – certainly not on the level of a gothic cathedral, but still pretty ornate for the setting and time period that it was built. But in the history of the town it describes how it was a point of pride for everybody to contribute to it however they could.
This isn’t to say there aren’t flagrant abuses and over-opulence at times. I don’t know where the line is. There seems to be something different between a lasting work of art vs celebrations/feasts/parades.
@@.-@ and others
It’s all about control.
Isn’t the entire pantheon system built around a façade of protecting the God King’s store of breaths? And also in place to give the country/city a sense that they’re being lead by gods?
I think what Sanderson is pointing out in the underpinnings of this entire system is how Control is being asserted. This system of control was originally started by Vasher, to keep his creations out of the hands of those who would abuse it, and to keep the wealth of Breath he acquired to end the war safe from misuse. All ‘safe’ and controlled.
So, just as Siri is basically useless as a Queen, so is Lightsong, even though it’s control under the façade of total power and freedom.
This book is nothing if not a giant dichotomy. :)
The other question might be how many gods achieve the thing they were sent back to do. It’s ironic when you think of the returned in Idris. Idris has been trying to avoid a war that will destroy them since Vivenna’s betrothal. We know there’s been at least one returned in that time, someone who may have come back to try and prevent that war. That person died within a week. That person also died without healing anyone since he or she wouldn’t have known how to give breath to heal even if giving it weren’t seen as an evil act.
Yet, to keep that person alive would cost one breath every week. If that person were still alive, it would have cost hundreds of breaths–and there aren’t a whole lot of people in Idris in the first place.
Then, there’s Blushweaver. Blushweaver is drawn to politics and to taking actions she feels will protect her country from outside threats. Was that her reason for coming back? Did she stick to that goal or was she corrupted by a desire for personal power? Given the ending of the book and her role in the causal chain, did she do what she came to back to do? Or not?
@8, IIRC, in the annotations, her “mission” was to inspire Lightsong. Her backstory is she was a star witness in some sort of financial trial, and whatever mobster she testified against had her offed.
Has Sanderson ever said if Returned are more common in Hallandren? If all Returned come back because they see the future and believe they can change it, wouldn’t it make sense that someone would Return in Idris only if it’ll take them less than a week? Whereas in Hallandren, they have effectively unlimited time to remember and make a difference.
In theory building cathedrals was about religion, but it was really a way for cities to show off their wealth and attract tourists/pilgrims (together with having the best relics). Today there is still competition about who builds the biggest skyscraper. T’Tellir shows that it is special because it is ruled by gods and not just human kings, although the real ruling seems to be done by the priests.
That being said, the Returned are really people who come back from the dead, tend to be paragons of physical ideals, and have the 5th Heightening from jump. I hear fashioning a religion around resurrected people can be a successful endeavor.
The Lightsong part of this chapter was great. I love serious Lightsong, grappling with all this stuff. And it was really interesting to hear more about Iridescent Tones theology. They’re actually more right than I thought at first about what’s going on with the Returned.
Yeah, it is a little puzzling about the gods not trying to help people in other ways. It seems like a rather obvious thing to do. Wouldn’t it make Lightsong feel so much better about turning down petitions if he could do something else for those people? If listening to them didn’t just consist of being asked over and over for hours to give up his life? That would wear anyone down. I’m actually fairly surprised he’s managed himself this well thus far.
I think it would have been interesting if Lightsong had actually been a useless fool like he keeps wanting people to recognize. (Of course, if he actually was, he wouldn’t have been a very engaging character and the book would be a lot less interesting.) As it is, he only proves everyone right about his having hidden depths. It slightly annoys me; the things he’s saying about “not every quick-tongued fool was a hero in disguise” is perfectly true, just not in Lightsong’s particular case. It almost feels like it invalidates what he’s saying somewhat because his words don’t actually apply to him. Brandon Sanderson doesn’t seem to write “quick-tongued fools” that don’t have hidden depths very much, either.
The wastefulness that most bothered me is the daily burning of textiles that (may) have touched the God-king, even if it was deemed necessary.
At this point, I was feeling that Lightsong didn’t deserve such a pretty name.
hammerlock @12 – That bit about “paragons of physical ideals” is more than a tendency, it’s totally their choice what they look like. Since their ideals are shaped by their culture, they’re all going to be paragons according to the people who worship them. It would be funny to see a Hallandren god who decided that he or she needed to be unattractive… but in a sense we get that with Vasher, right? There’s a scene toward the end of the book where he changes from the scruffy nerf-herder look to a Greek-god look, and totally freaks Vivenna out.
theinsolublelurnip @13 – As you say, a character who really is that shallow would be a terrible main character. You can have a side character like that, though it’s hard to do it while making them still seem like a real person instead of a cardboard cut-out. But a main character who is super shallow, who never really grows, who never has any more depth than Lightsong likes to pretend he has? He’d be boring, and your book wouldn’t sell. Bad news for an author!
So I guess I’m the only one who noticed this? It’s not an important thing but the description of Lightsong’s clothes- more complicated to put on than it looks and it looks tricky. Is this another subtle way of controlling the gods? By making it so they can’t even get dressed by themselves if they wanted to?
And as everyone above was saying, there had to be some other way for the gods to be able to help the people besides just their one healing breath. Wear an outfit twice or something, give that money to someone. But either they don’t want to help, don’t know how, or want to be seen as lazy. Pretty sad, but it’s not like they’re really have ‘new god orientation’
As @16 says, it’s not like they have “new god orientation” available. It’s all up to the priests to make sure their new divinity learns what to do and how to do it. I wonder if there is an aspect of apathy towards the masses that has developed. All these issues (poverty, homelessness, starvation, etc.) have been ongoing for so long that the priests just don’t care to tell their gods they have other options to help other than giving their one Divine Breath. The other, older gods don’t bother to impart any wisdom of their own, or if they do, it’s ignored, and the cycle continues. Given how the politics of the war play out, I feel like this is the most likely reason for all the apathy in the Court of Gods
If I remember correctly this group of gods is a lot less carrying about the outside world. I have a feeling this is partly because of blue fingers and his group. Also allmother if I remember correctly said even what she did was putting an act on, and that she was one of the oldest of the gods.
Re: Cathedrals from the Middle Ages – I think of them as the way that the religious provided a living for the peasants. This is very similar to The New Deal initiated by FDR to lift the nation out of Depression during the 1930s. The US did not build works of art like the gothic cathedrals. The US built engineering feats like Hoover Dam.
Different strokes for different folks, but the end result is the same – jobs for the poor so that they can earn a living.
Medieval cathedrals didn’t provide work for peasants but for skilled town artisans like stone Masons. The motives behind their building were complex and many faceted; Civic pride, employment opportunities, religious fervor, a desire to create something beautiful and lasting, and more.
@1, Lisamarie, I could not agree more. Hearing petitions would drive anybody a little crazy I think.
What would it be like to be told you have a purpose worth returning from the dead for, but you don’t remember what it is or how to accomplish it? Frustrating! Maybe there’s a reason the gods are desperate to distract themselves with pleasures.