Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week Kaladin returned to the chasms to initiate new bridgemen and find out something about his own powers. While he was exploring himself, I was experiencing London during this year’s Worldcon. That was a fantastic experience, and contained a lot of triumph for Tor.com, but it means that I only got back to the states yesterday and haven’t had a lot of time for the reread. Luckily, this week’s chapter is extremely short.
This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere books that become relevant. Be ye aware. This post only spoils the later parts of this book, but who knows what might appear in the comments section?
Chapter 10: Red Carpet Once White
Point of View: Li’l Shallan
Setting: The Davar Estate, Jah Keved, Six Years Ago
Symbology: Pattern, Vedel
IN WHICH the world ends; Shallan is to blame; a father wipes his blood-stained cheek and promises protection; Shallan’s eyes freeze open; a monster hears a familiar lullaby; a man bleeds, a mother does not; a strongbox glows brightly; and a door is closed on a room full of corpses.
Quote of the Week:
Now go to sleep in chasms deep, with darkness all around you…
Though rock and dread may be your bed, so sleep my baby dear.
Now comes the storm, but you’ll be warm, the wind will rock your basket…
The crystals fine will grow sublime, so sleep my baby dear.
And with a song, it won’t be long, you’ll sleep my baby dear.
This week I’ve selected Shallan’s lullaby for the quotation. The lullaby seems to be somewhat inspired by “rock-a-bye baby,” although that could just be the only nursery rhyme I know that uses wind to rock cradles. I assume such a motif is much more common on windy Roshar. Fan Alex Crandall put these lyrics to music, producing an extremely minor-keyed and chilling rendition. I can’t say eleven-year-old me would have taken much solace from this particular version, but sometimes stuff intended for kids is spooky.
Commentary: Welcome to the backstory! I hope you like trauma, sadness, abuse and murder, because that’s what we’re in for. The first backstory chapter establishes that all of Shallan’s chapters will be aftermath. Despite being eleven, Shallan is already a murderer, has already seen her mother try to kill her, has already bonded a spren and forced herself to forget about everything. She’s already editing her memories.
How different were Kaladin’s chapters, in which we got to see him be a child with some hope of fitting in and making a good life for himself. Perhaps this is why I scoff at Kaladin’s attempts to act tough around Shallan. She went through as much shit at the age of eleven as Kaladin handled for most of his life.
The chapter also starts by characterizing Shallan’s father as a loving, nurturing human being. Things go downhill just as fast for him, but it’s interesting that he’s positioned so favorably at the beginning. I suppose we can’t feel the family’s fall as acutely if we can’t see where they’re falling from. Their depths are felt more poignantly because we know that, in kinder circumstances, that family could have been happy.
We can tell that Shallan is suffering from shock. She’s trembling uncontrollably, and she can’t seem to blink. Most horribly of all, Shallan feels alienated from her own body. She first assumes that the room is shaking, and “[feels] her skin squirming.” This is practically an out-of-body experience for her.
I’m sorry Shallan. You didn’t ask to be a protagonist.
Sprenspotting: We sort of see Pattern here, shining around the cracks of the strongbox, although I didn’t fully realize that’s what was in there at the time. Shallan perceives the strongbox as glowing for the entire time that Pattern is locked in there, for reasons I don’t fully understand. She perceives Pattern as a monster throughout this time, and is sure that everyone can see her guilt, so it’s possible that she’s mentally creating the light for herself.
Ars Arcanum: It should be clear from the description that Shallan’s mother, who barely bleeds and who now has horrible eyes, has been killed by a Shardblade. Her eyes have been burned out. I knew from The Way of Kings that Shallan had a Shardblade, and it’s not possible to tell from this chapter that the Blade and Pattern are one and the same, but the backstory chapters will draw us ever closer to that realization.
Heraldic Symbolism: It is gross that Vedel presides over this chapter. Her divine attributes are Loving and Healing, and Brightlord Davar is doing his best to provide both, but you couldn’t exactly claim that it’s working. Ugh, I feel bad inside. I feel real bad now. Also gracing the chapter is our symbol for Shallan: Pattern inscribed in a double circle. We’ve never seen this symbol before, which suggests that the Shadesmar icon belongs more to Jasnah. I really like the construction of this symbol.
That’s all I have to say about this chapter, since it’s only two pages long. In exchange for your forbearance, I will be reading and answering questions that you post in the comments. Ask me about Loncon, the Stormlight Archive, or anything else you might be curious about!
Carl Engle-Laird is an editorial assistant at Tor.com, where he acquires and edits original fiction. You can follow him on Twitter here.
Welcome back, Carl. Thanks for putting your chapter blog together with minimal time.
Just because this chapter is short doesn’t mean it isn’t packed with stuff to discuss, as we saw last week.
More Healdic Symbolism:
(1) Vedel’s soulcasting properties are quartz, glass and crystal. There is a line in the lullaby about crystals fine growing sublime. Could be a stretch, maybe not.
(2) Vedel’s essence is lucentia. I finally got around to looking up the meaning of the word: shining, dawning, becoming light, showing through and becoming visible. Well, duh.
This chapter provides much-needed backstory, but it was generally kind of a bummer. Shallan is so shattered that she rejects her dad’s love. And poor Pattern. He’s locked away in a safe for the next 6 years.
Thanks Carl!
I actually thought that the light she sees is Pattern (i.e. the sword that was shoved into the safe, as if that would keep a spren locked in…) Unless there’s something more going in, it just seems like she sees it glowing because she can see Pattern/the shardblade,probably in a different way from her unbonded father, who might see a sword but wouldn’t see a glow or any crossover from the cognitive realm.
That lullaby is so creepy, especially the bit about chasms deep. The crystals fine line caught my attention, mostly because it references something new. We’ve seen plenty of chasms and rock (the whole shattered plains is chasms, and all of Roshar outside Shinovar is rock), but crystals fine sounds like something new, especially given the later Lift interlude with Wyndle, when we learn that he was a great artisan at growing crystals before his council had him bond Lift.
We actually never see the full extent of the Davar family’s fall, at least not yet. The earliest memories we get are of Shallan’s mother attacking her and being killed (later in the book) and then being dead (this chapter). But we still haven’t gotten a good picture of what her life as a child was like before Pattern bonded her, or what the initial bonding was like, or what her mother’s relationship was to both Shallan and to her father and brothers. So many unknowns, even though this was Shallan’s backstory book. SAAAANDERSOOOOOOOONNNNNNN!!!!!!
MDNY @2
Yeah, locking Pattern in a safe can’t have really trapped him, but Shallan rejecting him is a total downer. I’m inclined to agree with you that it was only Shallan who saw the glow from the safe for the next 5 or so years (ETA-real, or imagined due to guilt as Carl mentioned).
ETA
And who killed Shallan’s mom’s friend? I think it was her dad, but skipping through the Shallan flashback chapters last night didn’t answer that question. Carl, can you answer that one?
The lullably almost seems like foreshadowing for the experience Kaladin and Shallan will endure out in the chasms during the storm later in the book.
This chapter got me thinking about how the process of bonding is usually traumatic for humans or causes them to doubt their sanity. There clearly isn’t a How to Introduce Yourself to Humans book for bonding spren to work from. And there’s the fact that the bonding always seems to be initiated by the spren themselves. How do they know who is a good Radiant candidate, and as others have asked, why select children?
Are there any examples where bonds turned out not to make someone a good candidate for Knighthood? What happens then?
@@.-@ We know that there were bonds and surgebinders before the Knights Radiant were founded (from Dalinar’s visions, for example, and his conversation with Nohadon). It was implied that surgebinders presented a problem when they were unsupervised, which was partly why the Knights Radiant were founded, to ensure some sort of oversight on the surgebinders and spren bonding. Nohadon implied to Dalinar that some surgebinders were poorly selected (he said something like: “alas, not all spren are as discerning as honorspren”).
The fact that Shallan can see the area where her shardblade was placed continue to glow for years afterwards doesn’t mean that Pattern was trapped there. She still sees the glow with Pattern beside her in that room in Urithiru. Spren can’t be trapped in that fashion, it’s just an illusion based on guilt feelings. As Alice has remarked on several occasions, once you learn Shallan’s horrific backstory, you quickly gain respect and empathy for her in being able to overcome such a childhood and adolescence. The enormous gulf between what Kaladin imagines her lifestory to be and the reality, allows us to laugh with her at his presumption. Shallan’s retort when Kaladin is told the truth of much of her story (not the matricide, however – that she still hides from herself) is also precious. Kaladin is amazed that she can still function and even smile. “It helps if you’re crazy”, she replies. That scene of the two them trapped in a chasm oddly reflects the lullaby cited. Shallan sleeps during a highstorm in the cubby hole that she has fashioned in the chasm wall using her Pattern blade, with Kaladin providing warmth. As was remarked, even the crystals of the lullaby can be seen as a thing of the Cognitive realm – a reflection of the presence of Pattern.
@5 Very true about historical surgebinders, but I was thinking more about in the present time. Are all the spren we know excellent judges of character?
We see Kaladin going off the rails in this book, but since we’ve been inside his head, we can be fairly confident that he’d return to the fold and mature into the Knight the story needs him to become. I’m curious how much we’ll see other characters, maybe less prominent ones, live out the Stormfather’s fears about surgebinders.
Rats. Too much to do today and I can’t even read the comments fully until tonight!!!!!
But for what it’s worth, I’m mentally composing my own tune for the lullaby. It should sound like a lullaby, something Shallan loved hearing as a child, not chilling background music for a creepy aftermath scene. (That said, my version will also have alternate chording that conveys this setting…)
The new chapter header for Shallan bothered me a bit, though in hindsight I suppose it makes sense. Kaladin and Jasnah’s (and by extension, Shallan’s) headers both were very reminiscent of something from another Cosmere world – Jasnah’s looked like it could be an Aon, while Kal’s resembled some mixture of Allomantic symbols (I think it was bronze and something else?). So originally, reading through Way of Kings, Dalinar’s symbol bugged me because it didn’t fit that trend. But Words of Radiance seems to have ended that trend entirely, with Shallan and Adolin’s symbols as well.
Unless anyone has a Cosmere symbol that either of those bear resemblence to.
Ahw… this chapter. And Carl you said Alice gets all the good one.
As for a setup of “Hi welcome to Shallan’s backstory”, BWS couldn’t have picked a stronger two pages.
But as we learn, for the rest of the book, we only get forward from this point onward, which leaves us all going “Brandon! We NeeD more!!!”
And if Pattern is locked in blade form in the safe, What form of blade was he? Was he the traditional 6 foot version, or the smaller knife we see Shallan preferring later on in the WoR?
But yes, I’m with the others that think only Shallan sees the light and it is a reflection of her guilt.
And we all agree that the man killed was not the mother’s killer. Does anyone think maybe he was a priest trying to do a type of exorcism? That her mother saw Pattern and being a KR as akin to being demon possessed?
Does this event drive her father to the Ghost Bloods, or was he already one of them?
And Carl, when are we going to get pictures from your time in London? Did you go search out any of the cool benches painted to honor children’s story?
@10 I am sadly the absolute pits when it comes to taking photos on vacation. All my pictures are from the British Museum, and have no bearing on LonCon. I didn’t run into any of the benches, but they sound amazing.
Carl, in this chapter is Shallan’s father truly a “loving and nuturing human being” or is he acting this way to be nice to Shallan since she can summon a Shardblade? When reading Shallan’s other flashback chapters, I think the reason he (almost) never hit Shallan or otherwise harmed her was not just because she was the “jewel” of House Davar. I think that one reason he did not beat Shallan was that he was afraid that if he threatended Shallan, she would summon her Shardblade.
(BTW, I wonder if when he says that Shallan is the “jewel” of House Davar, it has some connection to the fact that she can summon a Shardblade.)
Ways @1. Why do you say that Pattern was locked away for 6 years? I think that shortly after the Shardblade was locked in the strongbox, he “got out” of the box. I got the impression that a lockbox could not hold a spren like Pattern. If Pattern was locked in the box for all that time, how did he get out when Shallan left to steal from Jasnah? I also think that the lockbox was not glowing all the time. Rather, that was Shallan’s subconscious acting as part of her defense mechanism where she chose to forget her past. The scene at the end of WoR (IMO) confirms this. Shallan even makes the comment that the Shardblade (i.e. Pattern) would not have stayed in the lockbox.
I think the lullaby has some connection to the Shattered Plains. I think it was a type of warning that people used to say during the last Desolation. Over time it has become a lullaby. Similar to the origins of Ring-Around-The-Rosie. For those who may not know, it had its origins during the time of the Black Death.
Thanks for reading my musings,
AndrewB
(aka the musespren)
@12 In this chapter Shallan’s dad is on the verge of tearful breakdown. I don’t think he’s being so calculating as all that. He really loves her and wants to protect her, and he locked the Shardblade away and tried to make sure she never used it, so I don’t think he’s thinking of her as a threat or a resource.
Can’t figure out why all posters seem to be convinced that pattern was not locked into a shardblade form in the safe. We all know spren can be locked into shardblade form, it is what the whole ‘dead/screaming spren’ thing is about. We also know that a Knight can choose to ‘abandon’ their spren in shard blade form, that it what the whole betrayal thing was about. At the time of murder, Shallan clearly hated the blade/pattern (even if it did save her life, not suggesting this is rational thought) So yes, I do think it possible that pattern was in fact locked in the safe for those years. As to how pattern got free again, Shallan’s thoughts on summing the blade again in WOK might have been enough to do this.
Greetings, first time posting. In this chapter we do not see her father put Pattern in the strongbox. I do not remember all the rules of Shardblades but I’m not sure that her father even could take the blade from her and put it in the strongbox. It is my thought that for the 11 year old
Shallan the strongbox is the most secure place in the house, so that is where in her mind the blade is now, safe from her ever using it again.
AndrewHB @12
See my @3 follow up.
Braid_Tug @10
Don’t we get info on who the guy is later? It’s not in the flashback scenes, but in the main time line, IIRC. Maybe at some point while Shallan is travelling from the Frostlands to the war camps. Or maybe I’m just recalling some speculation on 17th Shard.
But I still want to know who killed the guy, Carl (or anyone else who recalls). I suspect it was Lin (Davar) since the guy wasn’t killed with a Shardblade.
@16 I don’t totally remember. I thought the father killed the guy, but I could be totally wrong.
2. MDNY I have to disagree about chasms being creepy. In their world, a chasm is protected from the storms. We might have said valley, but I suspect Roshar has more chasms than valleys, unless perhaps you are in Shinovar.
10. Braid_Tug Exactly, what kind of blade? Just how big was that safe?
12. AndrewHB The father probably does not see the cognitive dissonance in his own mind. He is loving. He is just also violent and cruel. Nasty combination that.
First of all – Thanks Carl for putting this post together despite your time at Loncon and the associated jetlag. It’s greatly appreciated.
I also think you summed up Shallan’s backstory quite concisely. Scary if you think about it that “trauma, sadness, abuse, and murder” are the four most fitting words to describe a character’s childhood. The more I find out about Shallan, the more surprised I am that she’s even remotely functional.
Although, I have to say that in this case, the killing of her mother was definitely more in self-defence than outright murder (granted, we don’t necessarily see that until later on). I remember the discussion getting derailed back in the WoK re-read on the issue of murder versus justifiable killing, so I don’t want to dig into that too much – regardless of what word you’re using to describe it, it would be incredibly traumatizing to have your mother try to kill you, and end up killing her instead.
sam_home @14
I don’t believe Shallan completely severed the Nahel bond with Pattern, thereby locking him into Blade form in the Physical Realm (until bonded by another human), she just rejected the bond due to guilt and put her guilt in the safe. My opinion is that the Knights did something entirely different in the Recreance, severing their bonds completely and really ticking off Stormfather in the process (so those blades stayed in the Physical Realm). Further, I can’t imagine Shallan devoting whatever portion of her mind is necessary to maintain Pattern as a Blade in the Physical Realm for about 6 years without a lapse of attention and Pattern popping back to the Cognitive Realm. Having said that, I may be completely wrong. There’s also the deal about “dead” spren Shardblades all having a Polestone (whatever that is, guessing some kind of fabrial) and I don’t believe that’s the situation when Shallan uses Pattern as a Blade in the chasms.
Carl @18
XD
@20. You stole my point :). Shall an May be a killer at age 11, and that old be a terrible horrible burden, but she’s not a murderer…
I will temper my post #14 by saying that we don’t know enough yet about severing the Nahel bond to outright reject the theory that Pattern might actually be trapped in the blades physically form. It would certainly clarify things to know if Kaladin’s bond w/ Sly was actually severed by his actions (and later re-forged) since, if it was, it clearly was not an intentional act. Conversations between Kaladin/Storm Father seem to indicate that un-intentional betrayal of the bond is a possibility. No idea if this somthing BS could answer or if it’s RAFO
Somewhere in the book I recall reference to the Polestone fabrial being a later addition to the abandoned shard blades.
Two things that come to my mind right now:
1) Pattern is a “live” spren / shardblade, therefore it is entirely possible he turned into somthing more like a dagger that an 11-year old can use and that would fit perfectly in a safebox. I don’t know if it would stay in the box though, we’re never shown a live shardblade being released by its owner and maintaining form.
2) I always believed (and still do) that Shallan’s mother and “friend” were like Teft’s family, the ones who wanted the Radiants to return and kept throwing themselves off cliffs to be awakened. She was not really trying to “murder” her daughter as much as she wanted to bring forth the Radiant. I find it ironic (and deeply disturbing) how that worked out, they got their wish fulfilled and died for it. It also sort of explains why a mother that loved her child (you can tell she loved her from the backstory) would try to “kill” her.
VladZ @@@@@ 24
Shallan released her live shardblade to Kaladin when they were trapped in the chasmes and it retained its form.
But I also believed that worked becaused Shallan wish it to work. From my understanding the sprens become the blades because they want to help the bonded person, not because they have to. So I don’t believe that Pattern was trapped in the safe. He probably took his own form as soon as he realised that Shallan no longer needed the blade.
Kabbom @@@@@ 25
Ofcourse, thank you :)
I should’ve qualified my statement: I meant that we never saw a live shardblade released when the spren wanted to do other things. In the chasms Pattern agreed with Shallan that he should be a shardblade for Kaladin to use. My question is, what if he didn’t want to be one, can the “owner” force the form?
Did most of you get the first time around that Shallon had actually killed her mother? Going in to it thinking that Mr Davar had done it I didn’t pick up the (now obvious) clues that it was Shallon.
I think Pattern would have been in a fairly small size/form when Shallan uses him. And we don’t see who or how he gets put in the strongbox, I like the idea that@15 stated of the strongbox just being where a child would place something important and believe it would stay there.
I don’t think Pattern was stuck in the box the whole time. I think it’s her guilt and maybe surgebinding ability that is making the box glow in her perceptions of it. Certainly no one else sees it glowing. I think Pattern would have gone back to observing her for those years.
On the other hand… maybe he was stuck like that and this is why he loses so much of his memory and is so childlike when he reappears. You’d think she would have noticed him if he was hanging around for so long but it’s hard to say.
About shardblades and living/dead spren. I’ve always found a key part of this puzzle to be Dalinar’s vision of the Recreance and the fact that the blades stop shining the moment someone other than its Knight/bond uses it to kill another person. I would submit that the Knight severing or ending the bond might not be enough to fully ‘kill’ the spren (and I think some of Syl’s statements indicate that in some ways they aren’t really dead anyways) but that the severing probably locks them into blade shape and then being used to kill other people by a non-owner is the final blow so to speak.
On that subject I imagine the reason so many blades are different sizes and shapes is based on the spren and its original owner/bond.
And on a final note about her father: It seems like several characters who have sort of gone over to the dark side are obssessed with controlling others. In Mistborn there’s some negative side effects o hemalurgy and contact with Ruin. I think when we look at Shallan’s father and then at the Parshendi shardbearer (my mind went blank on her name) after she becomes a voidbringer, it seems like both are fixated on controlling others. I think this has a lot to do with their relationship with Odium or whoever it is who is behind the red spren and the voidbringers and etc.
Come to think of it, I don’t think we are getting an entirely accurate early history of Shallan. She must have been broken even prior to killing her mother, because she had already bonded Pattern. She remembers things being peaceful and idyllic before killing her mother, but I don’t think that is all accurate.
JoeH42 @28
Sounds good. And her name is Eshonai.
With Pattern locked and so far away from the middlefest place, how was Shallan able to Lightweave in front of Hoid? Perhaps Pattern wasn’t always in the strongbox?
@@.-@ Re. spren inintiate bonds: Was it that way for Lift, too? Lift seems to think she initiated her “voidbringer” bond.
@32 Lift clearly has very little idea what the hell is going on. She calls Wyndle a “voidbringer” and says they need to “voidbring” things when she wants to use her abilities. Wyndle mentioned that she was chosen for the bond by some sort of council among his spren type, over others that he deemed more suitable, because of her experience with the Nightwatcher (their “Mother”), so I would say that the spren initiated their bond, according to all we know so far. Syl certainly seems to have initiated the bond with Kaladin, based on what she’s said so far (about how she was “looking for” him). We don’t know much about how Shallan’s bond formed, nor how Jasnah’s formed, but Dalinar also seems to have first been singled out by the Stormfather (with his visions, just as Gavilar was before him). So far, all the bonds appear to have been initiated by the spren, from what I can tell. If Szeth does form a bond, that might be at the direction of one of Heralds, apparently, but we don’t know yet how that will play out.
@31: I thought Hoid was doing the lightweaving there. Feel free to correct me if there’s good evidence otherwise though.
I’d also like to point out that the chapter icon for Shallan’s flashbacks is black-on-white, while the one for her regular chapters from here on out is white-on-black.
Nothing terribly enlightening to add but after reading the book again I can’t help but think of this quote when I think about Shallan’s father’s story: “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Love Dark Knight.
The first time I read the book I was totally revolted by Mr. Davar. The second time around, I found that his character is quite tragic. He was protective of his little girl and tried to shield her from the terrible events that took place in this chapter. However, he was already a flawed man and the extra burdens of this event’s repercussions compounded with the loss of his wife (who I assume he loved) was too much for him. I’m curious what the Davar family was like before all of this happened.
Many of the questions about the shardblade in the safe are answered at the end when Pattern forces Shallan to confront her memories in the room in Urithiru with a picture outline in the same spot on the wall as the safe in Shallan’s home.
Pg. 1058 in hard cover:
Shallan fights it, but the memory of the day in this chapter comes back. Shallan’s child mind thought her mother’s soul was in the safe. I infer that she kept that thought for years and that was what caused the glowing in her mind’s eye, but that’s not explicitly stated.
Her memory also answers two other questions:
“A small Shardblade. (So it was small as theorized above). Thrust into the strongbox hastily, tip piercing the back, hilt toward her.” “This was you,”…”Father took you from me…and tried to hide you in here. Of course, that was useless. You vanished as soon as he closed the strongbox. Faded to mist. He wasn’t thinking clearly. Neither of us were.” (If Shallan’s feeling of her spren is to be trusted, Pattern definitely was not trapped in the safe. Her memory of it sticking out the back when first thrust in, even in its short form, indicates as well that it can’t have been a permanent arrangement.)
Pg. 737-738 also indicates Pattern was around after the incident, but dumb because of Shallan’s mental blockades. Pattern confronts Shallan and says she most admit “the truth about me” and “what I can do, and what we have done.” Then he says “you must obtain your abilities. Learn again, if you have to.”
“Very well,” Shallan said. “But if we did this before, can’t you just tell me how it is done?”
“My memory is weak,” Pattern said. “I was dumb so long, nearly dead. Mmm. I could not speak.”
“Yeah,” Shallan said, remembering him spinning on the ground and running into the wall. “You were kind of cute, though.”
This particular recollection of Pattern seems to me to be <i>after</i> this chapter and Shallan putting up her mental defenses. Pattern was appearing at times to her, being cute, but dumb, but she continued to very effectively block out all memories of him and her power.
Thanks @@@@@Patillian.
It’s funny, I’ve read the first part of the book about 4-5 times. But the back half only twice. Much easier to forget the best tidbits.
Except for Kaladin’s “She smiled anyways.” That struck me the first time. And still does. Very powerful message about overcoming abuse and hardship.
The chasms in the lullaby can’t be the ones on the Shattered Plains. Humans only went there after Gavilar’s death. Isn’t there a special word for chasms that protect cities from Highstorms?
@38 I don’t know of a word for chasms protecting cities, but in general cities are often built in a lait- leeward to a cliff or other natural formation to protect it from the storm. This is partly why the Parshendi’s new reverse storm could cause unparalleled damage.
I believe the word you’re looking for is: Lait. Which seems to be a re-purposed/imagined word on Roshar by Brandon, as it is not a modern English word (and it’s usage in SA has nothing to do with the Old English root usage, nor does it have anything to do with milk, its Latin etymology) – See Here for example
birgit @@@@@ 38 – I believe the word you’re looking for is a lait – a natural formation that protects cities from highstorms and allows adequate drainage afterwards. Not necessarily a chasm, though, iirc.
ETA – In WoK, Shallan thinks of her Shardblade as the proceeds or fruit (forget the exact wording atm) of her greatest sin. In all likelihood, this is just part of her willful self-delusion, but I have to wonder what she thinks of as her greatest sin if she already has Pattern/her Shardblade here, before killing either of her parents.
While ‘lait’, meaning a platform, may not be found in some modern dictionaries, it is a real word. JRR Tokien, a philologist, uses the English term in the ‘Lord of the Rings’ to describe the Elvish tree platforms in the forest of Lothlorien. I don’t know that Sanderson’s father-in-law, who is said to have written the lullaby, was aware of the role assigned by Brandon to chasms in Shallan’s life, but the lullaby can be read as having such a significance. The role of the lullaby is emphasized by its repetition in the two dramatic episodes in young Shallan’s life. First, Lin Davar’s crooning the lullaby in an attempt to calm his young daughter after the killing of her mother and friend; then Shallan crooning the lullaby as she strangles her helpless father. The first episode is only partially described in this chapter which deals with its immediate aftermath. The second is described much later in detail, and constitutes one of the most shocking actions by a sympathetic protagonist in literature. She first poisons her father to stop his violent rampage against his son, having already killed their stepmother. When he revives partly, but is paralyzed, she completes the action by strangling him with a necklace that he had given her. Such action is preceded by her statement, “Thank you for all you have done for me; I love you”. She then proceeds while crooning that lullaby.
@41 Perhaps awakening her powers in the first place is the greatest sin in her mind. I wonder if her mother associated with Skybreakers. They don’t seem to fond of radiant powers. Perhaps her mother’s beliefs influenced Shallan a bit after she became the central figure in the destruction of her family.
I’m excited to learn more about House Davar. Shallan’s father is such a fascinating character. He loved his family and slowly lost his control over everything. This was a very sad and creepy chapter.
Thanks
40. sillyslovene
41. jeremyguebert
42. STBLST
I could have sworn lait was a regular english word, but I was unable to find it online, except as meaning other things. Thank you for clarifying that. It was really starting to drive me nuts.
Patillian @36
Thanks for the refs. I thought there was more than what’s in the flashback chapters.
Hmm. I’m going to go back to my initial response to reading this chapter. Like Bellaberry, most of the people talking about WoK were assuming (as everyone was supposed to) that Lord Davar had killed his wife. That’s what everyone “knew,” right? He hadn’t officially admitted it, but that’s the story he had allowed to spread – that he killed his wife and her lover in a jealous rage.
When I first read this chapter, I was awed by the implications – primarily, that Shallan, not her father had killed Lady Davar, and that Shallan had control of a Shardblade somehow. Going back to the beta-read comments, I did figure it out the first time through, but NOT because I’d gone into it with that expectation. It was Shallan’s thought about how a monster should not be held in love, thinking that her father should not hold her so tenderly. We knew she’d killed her father, but this brief flashback told us that she had a lot more secrets than that, and that they were going to be horrific. I also came out wondering whether we were going to learn that Lord Davar’s famous temper was initially a matter of covering up for Shallan.
This scene gave me SO much more sympathy for Lord Davar, especially once I knew I was reading it right. A man who loved his only daughter, even though she’d done something unimaginably terrible, so he sang her a lullaby and told her he’d protect her… and then he spent the next five years *living* with that. She at least managed to blank it out.
While I don’t necessarily think Lord Davar was perfect up to this time, I think he was a genuinely loving father. But… what man knows how to handle the knowledge that his precious, beloved, only daughter just killed her own mother, his wife, with a Shardblade? Eleven years old, and she somehow has her own Blade. That would freak out any parent, right? And the knowledge he holds is too terrible. Precious Shallan is a killer, and in trying to hide that knowledge from everyone else, including her brothers, his own ragged edges become serrated. His worst flaws are magnified as he struggles both to hide what he knows, and to live with that knowledge.
I think what really hit me in this chapter was the obvious closeness of father and daughter, even though neither of them knew how to handle the events (which we don’t get fully clarified until the last chapter of the book). It was absolutely clear to me because it’s so similar to the relationship I had with my own father – except for all the killing and stuff, you know. My dad was not perfect, and he could be cranky after a hard day, but I was always daddy’s little girl. I wasn’t his only daughter, like Shallan, but I was the one who tagged along, held his tools, ran to get him a cold drink on a hot day, brought coffee on a cold afternoon, and snuggled up in his lap to read at night. This scene gave me exactly that vibe, except with a whole lot more anguish going on. At the time, I commented that if I was right, it was absolutely heartbreaking… and I was right.
Wetlandernw @46:
Yea, and it wasn’t just Shallan who is a killer, his beloved wife also was revealed as an attempted murderer of their own daughter! And then, Davar had to bear the fallout of their actions, despite being himself innocent, be virulently hated for it by his own sons, whom he presumably also initially loved and used to be proud of, believed to be a spouse-murderer by his Brightlord peers, etc. And he just couldn’t handle it…
BTW, it seems that Davar also irrationally believed that Shallan’s shardblade remained in the strongbox, because when Helaran threatened him with another shardblade, he momentarily believed that Shallan may have loaned him hers, then looked at the ceiling towards the room with the strongbox, said something along the lines of “impossible!” and finally noticed that the shape of the blade was different.
So, did Davar actually know that Shallan was a surgebinder? He never tried to convince her to relinquish the blade to him, but maybe he just didn’t want to remind her that she had one. OTOH, he managed to take it away from Shallan in the aftermath of the fight with Lady Davar and her friend and, at least until confrontation with Helaran, he also apparently believed that her shardblade was locked in the strongbox?
And yes, I have to say that Shallan is really fresh and unique as protagonist go. I didn’t like her much in WoK – she seemed like a stereotypical feisty princess, who was supposed to be witty (but really wasn’t, which I attributed to failure of writing), but Sanderson did something really special with her in WoR.
It is one of the reasons why I don’t understand how people can think that WoR is inferior to WoK. I mean, Kaladin is well-written, but his story is far more stereotypical so far. And I love Dalinar, but even he isn’t a patch on Shallan originality-wise. And the interludes in WoR are pretty stellar too, IMHO. Oh, well. YMMV and all that.
I agree that Lin Davar was a creepy character, but I could not bring myself to truly hate him. I guess knowing how he ended up being this bad person makes it more easy to relate to him. I also think Brandon did amazing work in portraying his evil characters who, despite being evil, also are very human. We tend to forget the average human is not a sociopath and does act to the best of its knowledge and capacity. Lin Davar thought he was doing the right thing, he wanted to protect his small daughter whom he obviously loved, but it destroyed him and trust him onto a path of self-destruction and abuse.
None of this absolves Lin Davar of his crimes, both towards his second wife and his sons, but it does make us understand how somehow could turn into a monster.
The lullaby was creepy. I wonder if Shallan is going to sing it again… and for who?
Isilel @@@@@47 – Thank you! Not too many people seem to understand my sympathy for Lin Davar; I find my heart breaking for him just as much as for Shallan. As you say – none of this was his doing, but he bore the full weight of his wife’s and his daughter’s actions, all in secret. Pretty much any man would break under that strain; sadly, the way he broke was destructive to himself and his family as well.
@@@@@ many re: Shallan’s blade, we have to keep in mind that as far as anyone in-story knows at this point, all Blades behave the same way – there’s no reason to think that hers would be any different, no matter where she got it, or what her father knows about where she got it. If you stick a Blade point-down in the stone, it will stay there when you let go of it, right? So Shallan has a smaller-than-normal Blade, and he may or may not know anything about its origin, but there’s no reason for him to think it would behave any differently than any other Blade he’s ever heard of. At the time, at least, it makes a certain amount of sense that he thought it might actually stay in the safe.
Later he’d have to wonder, of course; he presumably opened the safe at some point and realized the Blade wasn’t there, in which case the logical assumption is that it has somehow returned to Shallan’s control. Then, along with his desire to shelter and protect his beloved daughter, he’d have a growing fear of her to add to the weight of his other burdens.
Incidentally, I don’t think the “Envisager-style” link for the mother holds up. Heated arguments with her husband about their daughter being “one of them” were based on evidence already displayed. There’s no need to threaten her life to push her into manifesting powers when she’s already manifesting them. It looks a lot more like they were out to destroy a budding Radiant before she could do any more “damage.”
IMO, this makes it more probable that Lady Davar had connections to a deeply traditional Vorin group. During the Heirocracy, the priests had worked very hard to make the Radiants into The Bad Guys, and in that they succeeded as far as most of the Vorin nations are concerned. It seems logical that someone from a very traditionalistic society would see Surgebinding as a horrible thing, and believe that anyone who shows hints needs to be destroyed. Your basic witch-hunt attitude. It’s even possible that she was connected to Nalan’s current incarnation of “Skybreakers,” committed to destroying any Surgebinder to avoid bringing a Desolation.
I don’t get the Skybreaker attitude. (Are Skybreakers not already Radiants themselves?) As far as I can tell, Radiants exist to defend against a Desolation, but voidbringers cause it. The Radiants are an indication that it’s going to happen, but not the cause. If you destroy Radiants, you’re destroying humanity’s main defense, right?
Wetlandernw @49:
My confusion re: Lin’s understanding of the nature of Shallan’s blade came from the fact that stronboxes aren’t normally made of stone… But now it occurs to me that when he took the blade away from Shallan in the aftermath of his wife’s death, he may have made her stick it into stone, and thus could have believed that the bond was undone.
Unbonded dead shardblades stay around, don’t they? So, he put it into his stronbox fully expecting it to remain there.
What is somewhat odd, is that apparently he didn’t try to bond the blade himself or even check on it until his confrontation with Helaran, apparently, since he seemed to believe that the blade still remained in the strongbox, as his glance at the ceiling revealed.
Presumably, he, like Shallan was so traumatized by what had happened, that he didn’t want to have anything to do with her blade despite it’s obvious value. And when he did check on the shardblade after Helaran left, he found Pattern gone. And started to fear Shallan.
Reiko @50 – Well, there are Skybreakers, and then there are Skybreakers.
The originals, the Knights Radiant, were part of humanity’s defense against the Desolation and the Voidbringers. Something about their spren and/or their combination of Surges also seems to have given them an extraordinary sense of justice. But that was back in the day.
We know very little about those who call themselves Skybreakers now, other than that there is a secretive organization in existence, which Helaran apparently sought out. (It’s possible his mother had some connection to them, which he discovered and pursued. Or not.) We know almost nothing about them, although there is some marginal evidence that they were in opposition to the Ghostbloods.
There are also the Skybreakers Nale himself was (apparently) leading in the current timeframe – sort of a modern justice league whose sole concept of “justice” was finding legal justification to kill anyone who showed signs of Surgebinding. Whether this is the same as the previous group is impossible to say at this point.
We know that the rise of the Radiants is not what caused the Desolations, but people of the current timeframe in Roshar don’t know very much about it. All they had was that the Heralds, the Radiants, and the Voidbringers all showed up about the same time, and then there was a Desolation. For a people who have been taught for a few centuries that the Radiants betrayed humanity and were essentially Bad People, the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy would be easy to fall into.
Do we know (either from the text or WoB) whether one of the orders of Kinghts Radiants adheres to the prinicpal of the ends justify the means? If so, which one?
Thanks for reading my musings,
AndrewB
(aka the musespren)
AndrewHB @53 – We know they all hold the first Ideal in common, so “the ends justify the means” is a bit antithetical to their foundation. That said, I suspect that different Orders have somewhat different interpretations of the first Ideal, and would spread out on a spectrum of what they consider “justification” of certain actions.
I’m pretty sure the Windrunners fall near the end of the spectrum where the means are the most important thing, and I can guess that the Elsecallers are nearer the other end, but… we just don’t know quite enough. WoB is also that there are Orders who wouldn’t have much of a problem with Adolin’s actions in the final chapter, so… they might be even closer to that end than the Elsecallers.
@53: I have not scientific proof nor quote nor WoB to bring forward as proof, but I believe orders such as Dustbringers, Elsecallers and Willshaper probably held themselves to one end of the spectrum whereas orders such as Windrunners and Bondsmith held themselves at the other end.
My two cents are that Windrunners are at one end and the Dustbringers are at the other: all other orders falling within.
Skybreakers are a separate case. I am not sure where they would fall as they do not follow Honor, nor Cultivation, but Law. Strange lot. They don’t get along with Windrunners who are Honor’s champions, but I doubt they get along better with Dustbringer who may have a sense of justice independant of lawful constraints (think Adolin), but all this is just speculation.
Those who enjoyed Alex Crandall’s rendition of Shallan’s lullaby might also enjoy this version by Vi Hart: https://soundcloud.com/vihartvihart/sleep-my-baby-dear-shallans-lullaby-from-words-of-radiance-by-brandon-sanderson
Wetlander @46
Well, I recall the original discussion about who had killed Shallan’s father, and being castigated roundly for believing it was her. And later in the WoK theorizing, about who had killed Lady Davar. I’d always sensed in the POVs from Shallan that she considered herself the worst person alive, and that her father’s treatment of her was undeserved. I had to believe that she considered herself, if not the immediate agent, then at least the indirect cause of her mother’s death. Then, when we got the first description of her mother’s eyes, it was clear that a Shardblade was involved, and that settled it for me.
Isilel @47
It is a vital point that, until Lord Davar’s death, Shallan isn’t a murderer. Killing two people who are bent on your death is never malicious, and Shallan is anything but malicious. She used what was available to her to protect herself. A very strong case can be made that her decision to kill her father, being done to protect her brother, was justifiable as well, given all that can be known about the father’s mental state.
Agreed that he is among the most tragic of characters, trying desperately to keep his daughter from harm, and destroying not only himself, but the family in the process. Although the purpose of having events go this way is story-driven, it also provides a lovely moral, that truth is less painful than deception. Had all of the truth been presented in the aftermath of her mother’s attempt to kill Shallan, Brightlord Davar would not have suffered the hatred and venom of his sons and everyone else who knew him, he may not have engaged the Ghostbloods to regain the stature and business lost, etc.
Has it been remarked before now (I mentioned it to Brandon when he was last here, but it didn’t warrant further discussion at the time), how ironic it is that Shallan’s first display of unusual ability (her instantaneous capture of a “Memory”), is a virtual inverse to her emotional hindrance of forcibly denying those painful memories? Could it be that her willful avoidance of recollection is responsible for triggering this unique ability? Inqiring minds. . .
Freelancer, isn’t it the case that Shallan Forgets her Memories after she draws them on paper? Perhaps her forgetting the horror is related to that somehow?
Xaladin, I hate to be nitpicky, but … . Shallen does not truly forget the Memory after drawing it. It is just that she does not remember with such a fine detail. After she drew the sea creature Shallan saw when she went into the water, Shallan did not forget that what she saw. What happens is that she looses the Memory (with a capital “M”) so that she could not reproduce the drawing in the same detail. After she looses her satchel with all her original artwork, Shallan cannot reproduce the Memory again to draw the sea creature on paper as she had. But she never actually forgets what she saw. Shallan will remember like a normal person (i.e. without the Talent — to use a term from the Wheel of Time universe).
This does not change your analysis — just the phrasing.
Thanks for reading my musings,
AndrewB
I really suspect we are going to see a connection between the ways people are broken, and the powers they manifest. Further, I expect we will see the Ten Fools, as the proto-Heralds in their broken state, before being empowered. In particular, I think the current
DustbringersSkybreakers are in their Foolish state, and not their Honorable state. They remind me of Javert from Les Miserables.@56. tiornys Vi Hart singing the Lullaby ? That is awesome.
Of course, Rock-a-bye Baby (from old ordinary Earth) is a creepy enough lullaby if you think about it. Many of the old rhymes and Fairy Tales are.
edited for Skybreakers
Freelancer @57 – I’d have to go back to the WoK reread to see what my comments were at the time, but I don’t recall having a personal set opinion re: who killed Shallan’s mother; I’m pretty sure I was open enough about it that I recognized it immediately when I read this chapter. I think I also believed she’d killed her father, though I think I probably assumed it was self-defense. I really, really ought to go back and read those discussions! My memory just isn’t what it ought to be these days. And of course, anything we discussed after last September is unusable for determining my initial reaction, because by then I already knew the answers. Still.
Zen @60 Dustbringers or Skybreakers? I don’t recall meeting any current Dustbringers.
@50 I suspect that Nale knows full well that killing proto-Radiants will not prevent a desolation. He may be trying to prevent them from stopping Odium, believing that the only way to end the conflict for good is to let Odium win.
Have any of you seen this? It’s the best, yet shortest write up summary of the Cosmere I’ve seen.
Also helpful for those that find the Coppermind or 17th Shard overwhelming.
Also, seeing the outline of all the Cosmere works Brandon has in his head – just wow. I knew he was a prolific writer, but between these an his “break” projects, the man is going to have a very full list of works.
http://thewertzone.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/a-rough-guide-to-sandersons-cosmere.html
Freelancer @57:
It is a vital point that, until Lord Davar’s death, Shallan isn’t a murderer. Killing two people who are bent on your death is never malicious, and Shallan is anything but malicious.
I thought that it was Lin himself who killed the “friend”? IIRC, his body was quite bloody and burned-out eyes were never mentioned. Or did Shallan also kill him and hacked on his corpse a bit in affect for the good measure?
Not that it matters or changes my opinion on Shallan, who acted in self-defense. In fact, she probably didn’t even know that Pattern would turn into a shardblade, she was just desperately afraid and wished for something to protect herself and her father.
But my point was that Lin Davar _also_ had to live with the knowledge that his beloved wife _was_ an attempted murderer of a particularly vile kind, since she tried to kill their little daughter.
In fact, it is difficult to discern which of the lies that destroyed the Davar family and eventually turned Lin into a monster were for Shallan’s sake, which were meant to protect Lady Davar’s memory, and which were the result of Lin being unable to think clearly in the immediate aftermath of a horrible event and coming up with an explanation that was more damning for himself than it needed to be.
I still don’t understand how nobody, and particularly not Helaran, ever wondered how Davar had managed to murder his wife with a shardblade, when he didn’t own one.
Given the manner of her death, I really don’t see why Lin couldn’t have blamed outside assassins for the whole tragic mess? Am I missing something or was it the case of Lin being bad at subtrefuge at the time and/or not thinking clearly?
In any case, I guess that the next post-WoR step in Shallan owning/conquering her past is going to be her fessing up to her brothers, once the Ghostbloods obligingly bring them to Urithiru. Is truth always healing? Hm…
Though I kinda wonder why the younger brothers didn’t run away to join the army/ardentia respectively, when the things started to become unbearable. I understand why Balat thought that he had to stay, but now that we know that there are companies/regiments entirely consisting of low-dan lighteyes, it shouldn’t have been impossible for Jushu to escape and lose himself among such. I am not even sure if Lin would have tried to prevent the younger boys leaving.
64. Isilel Don’t forget the part where she sees the truth about how her brother died and WHO killed him. That might not go as smoothly.
61. Wetlandernw My bad, Skybreakers was right.
Zen – Yes, they are sort of like Javert… I’m not convinced that there are any actual Skybreakers, in the sense of the Five Ideals, Surgebinders, real Knights Radiant. Nalan certainly seems to be a twisted version of himself, but even though Helaran is said to have sought out the Skybreakers, there’s no evidence he was actually a Radiant. If nothing else, his Blade and Plate were left behind when he was killed, so they weren’t “living.” Of course, we don’t know if the “Skybreakers” Helaran joined are the same as the “Skybreakers” Nalan claims to be leading, either.
Isilel @64
I like what you are proposing in that comment. I personally suspect it was Lin Davar, based on the evidence you mentioned, who killed Lady Davar’s friend. If Shallan had killed him with her Shardblade and hacked on the corpse with it afterward, then the corpse still would not have been bloodied unless she used a different piece of cutlery. (Right?) Shallan grabbing a different sword or knife to do that, under the circumstances, seems illogical and counterintuitive. The most conclusive evidence, though, that Shallan didn’t kill him (IMHO) is that the friend’s eyes were not describe as being burned out. So I’ve concluded that Lin did the deed. Who actually killed the guy probably doesn’t impact the ultimate fate of the cosmere one iota, but it certainly could be another factor in Lin Davar’s breakdown.
Ways @67
A Shardblade will cut into dead flesh as if it were a normal blade. That said, it seems more likely that Lin Davar killed Lady Davar’s friend.
Ways @67: Once a body is dead, Shardblades can cut it. This is explicitly mentioned in WoK in the chasmfiend hunt scene. (“Now that the beast was dead, the Blade could cut its flesh.”)
As to who killed the friend, we know who did it – unless Shallan remains an extremely unreliable narrator all the way to the end of this book. The friend was wounded during the hand-to-hand when Lin Davar tried to protect Shallan but ended up pinned on the floor, so there was blood already. Ch. 88 says “Her mother’s friend lay on the floor, bleeding from the arm, though that wound hadn’t killed him.” It may be that in the shock of seeing Shallan summon a Shardblade, the friend let go and was overcome and killed by Lin (resulting in more blood) but there’s much better evidence that he went for Shallan and she killed him. A few paragraphs after the above quote, she says “He let everyone believe that . . . he’d murdered his wife and her lover in a rage, when I was the one who had actually killed them.”
FWIW, I’ve always supposed that Lin Davar went back and “killed” both of them by ordinary means so that it wouldn’t be obvious that they were killed with a Shardblade. Otherwise, the ardents or whoever did the funerary stuff would know too much. Shallan probably didn’t find out about that part, but it’s another item to add to the weight he carries – that of either hacking or bludgeoning the dead bodies of his wife and her friend to make it look like he’d killed them. Poor man. That one night would be enough to drive anyone to the brink of madness. Living with it and never once defending himself with the truth would be unbearable.
@70 Wasn’t her mother the only one with burned-out eyes, not her (mother’s) friend? I can’t check the book right now to confirm, but I seem to recall that.
rhandric@@@@@ 71. I could be mistaken but I thought that it was possible to kill somebody with a Shardblade and not have the dead person have burned out eyes. I seem to recall instances of characters dying via a Shardblade without having burned out eyes.
Thanks for reading my musings,
AndrewB
(aka the musespren)
@70 Wetlandernw, while the full story of the death of Shallan’s mother and associate has not been revealed, my speculation is a bit different. The lack of mention of the eye appearance of the ‘friend’ is either because it was not too germane, or because the Pattern blade didn’t sever his soul, i.e., it only caused a serious wound. In the latter case, the ‘friend’ died from the continuing loss of blood from Lin’s attack or the shock of the Pattern wound. Shallan, however, sees it as her doing. As to covering up the manner of death of his wife, Lin Davar could have just ordered his servants to prepare a funeral pyre for the bodies after draping them with cloth to avoid anyone seeing the burnt out eyes. There is no need to assume a body smashing or dismemberment or a formal, religious service. The body disposal could have been much like what Shallan later used to dispose of Tynn and her hirelings. I agree that this incident was highly traumatic for both Shallan and her father. However, the personality disorder that he exhibits was likely only greatly heightened by that trauma. He apparently already exhibited a controlling personality. After the incident, it became a mania and a source of violent behavior.
At least in chapter ten, the dead man’s eyes are never mentioned, only that he’d bleed, and it’s implied that he did bleed a lot. I don’t remember the last chapters all to well though.
As it is, I don’t think it really matters. Shallan killed her mother and this is the death, which affects her deeply. Wheter she killed another person or not at the same moment likely doesn’t make a big difference regarding her emotions.
Isilel@64 – It may have been hard for Brightlord Davar to convincingly claim assassins killed his wife and her “friend,” as the house staff appear to have been aware that Brightlord Davar and Shallan were in the room when Brightlady Davar and the man were killed. (Some of the maids unabashedly whisper about the events in front of Shallan in Chapter 19.)
Shallan was rendered mute for months and even when she started to draw, she would draw the scene of her mother’s death. Helaran was convinced that his father had killed their mother and Brightlord Davar’s attempts at explanation weren’t received well. Unless I’m forgetting a section that states differently, it appears that Brightlord Davar had no control over how the tale was told; all he could do is deny, threaten and strike out.
Not a justification for Lin’s actions; more of an observation of how tragic that situation was. It destroyed any reasonable hope of happiness for every member of that family. At least, until Shallan met Jasnah…
But you do raise a good point about how no one questions how Lin may have killed his wife.
Since it’s not absolutely explicit, there’s room for speculation. However, I think the statement that the bleeding wound wasn’t the one that killed him argues for a Shardblade more than the lack of reference to his eyes argues against it. YMMV.
As for the question of whether or not Brightlord Davar attempted to cover up the means of death, as I said, this is merely my supposition. I just think it’s likely that he would not have risked the possibility that anyone, however accidentally, might see those eyes and start asking questions.
I do agree that the “assassination attempt” explanation might be made difficult by the circumstances – location, Shallan’s presence, etc. It’s also quite possible that Davar simply wasn’t thinking clearly enough to concoct a really good story that would throw the blame on “person or persons unknown.” In any case, letting people think he’d done it was probably the most thorough way for him to make sure no one suspected Shallan.
We really have not heard how infidelity is treated or seen on Roshar or in Vorin culture. Except for Shallan’s parents.
He wasn’t punished in a court of law for killing his unfaithful wife. Just the court of public opinion. He was even able to make a second marriage. But it does sound like he told wife #2 that he didn’t kill #1. Guess it made it easier on her to say “yes.”
Makes you wonder why he did not go with the “Lover killed her, I killed the lover” angle. Or did he, and was still tried in public opinion? I need more sleep currently.
So the infidelity story was the best he could think up at the time. But if so, that makes me sad. Because that would imply that Lighteye women have few rights and the culture is okay with “honor killings” or very USA pre-1920s women’s rights.
That would not have been tolerated even USA pre-1920, but nobility have always been able to get away with more than the peasents.
Keep in mind, too, that though both are “Vorin cultures” there are definite cultural and legal differences between Alethkar and Jah Keved. Alethi women seem to have a bit more “different but equal” status in many ways, although perhaps less so rural areas. Veden women seem to have a rather lower standing relative to the men. I know I made that mistake many times in WoK – assuming that what I saw in one place could readily be applied in another. It just ain’t so, ya know?
But IIRC, the question of prosecuting Lin will come up, only they’d need a lighteyes witness to testify against him and Shallan will decline to do so.
No crickets this week!
rhandric @68 and bad_platypus @69
Yep, you guys are certainly correct about that little detail, which I had forgotten.
The bottom line is that we don’t have enough evidence to draw a firm conclusion (beyond a shadow of a doubt, as the attorneys/judge advise in murder trials) about who killed the friend. Although it does appear (as wetlandernw pointed out) that it is likely Shallan unless she remains an unreliable narrator.
My objective in exploring the topic was to further rationalize Lin Davar’s crazy-pants behavior/drift to sociopathy. Regardless of what really happened that evening, it had to be contributory.
Different topic:
I thought it was nifty that Vedel is the Herald for this chapter and her soulcasting essence is lucentia (becoming light/showing through). So Shallan believing she saw Pattern’s continued glow from the strongbox…yeah, perfect. Even if the Ars Arcanum isn’t 100% spot-on, that one seems all too obvious.