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Showing results for tags 'devotary'.
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I have a theory and while I think it might be a little obvious I don't think it's been brought up directly on the forums. Here's the gist. The Vorin church over the past 4500 year has been run and structured for the main purpose of confusing and corrupting knowledge of the Knights Radiant, the Desolations, and the Voidbringers. I also believe that this was due to the influence of Odium as any long term effort to hurt the people of Rhosar's chances to survive the final desolation could potentially be accredited to the Odious one. Furthermore their takeover of the Silver Kingdoms during the Hierocracy preceding the intervention of the SunKing was not folly, but their masterstroke. They were able to destroy practically all books or resources containing any knowledge of the past (except the library of Karbranth of course). Lets take a look at what we know about the church and how it's very structure prohibits the spread of knowledge. Devotaries are the main way by which pious Vorin's show their faith. A Devotary has each devotee devote themselves to ONE noble aspect of the church. The male arts are brute and mostly involve fighting, since the church teaches that the greatest calling a man can fulfill is to be the greatest of warriors and to ascend to the Tranquiline Halls and reclaim them for man. This Devotion caused men to hold no interest in scholarship, lighteyed males had better rule a town/halmet/city/territory get to war or become and ardent, that is what is proper. They have no desire to read or gain knowledge of the past, reading is a shameful activity for a man, better to have a proper lady read to you. Even the amount of reading that Dalinar has pursued caused court gossip, thoough the fact that the book is the Way of Kings doesn't help. The female Devotary arts are mostly art (painting, music, poetry, embroidery) and scholarly pursuits, but a real lady should try to stick to the flowery ones since the most prominent scholars tend to become Heretics like Jasnah Kholin (I'm just riffing here some of this isn't explicitly said but are either implied or are the feelings I get from reading) {Also I don't agree with the sexist nature of this I'm just talking like an Alethi here). What they've done is separate those with Power (Men, Warlords, High Princes) from those with knowledge (Women, Scholars, Artists ) . Now I know a good light eyes couple will always be paired up, but even in this context the females are hiding knowledge in simple messages and texts with footnotes that men don't know about. And what men can read? Ardents can! And through this power they can have a greater influence on history. **Spoiler Spoiler ** The distinction between Vorinism and Old Vorinism is the reverence of the KR and the Heralds. They were venerated once and now are thought of as betrayers. Now the Recreance sure didn't help this, but a huge shift in trends like this needs some kind of push to get things going. Then it needs a stealthy hand to guide it on the right track. This is how Over the years, possibly without the entire churches overt knowledge, they could quietly secret away bits of lore and knowledge until we get to the current model of understanding about the past (not much that's accurate). Now if it is a smaller subset of the church driving this, it could be that during the Sunmaker's destruction of the Heirocracy, this piece of the church would need to completely break off to survive. They wouldn't disappear however they'd become ... The Ghostbloods. Do they have a secret library of old world knowledge? Is it the library of Karbranth? Tune in for WOR and hope we find out! I'm kind of running out of steam now so I'll come back later with some references and the like. But I think this is an interesting topic of pursuit and I hope it sparks some conversation.
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