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I've searched through the forum and haven't found any threads specifically discussing this, which is a little surprising. If such a thread exists and I missed it, I apologize. Now on to the topic. What's the deal with Aesudan Kholin, Elhokar's wife? In the WOR prologue, we learn that Jasnah was contemplating having Aesudan assassinated by Liss before changing her mind and having her merely spy on the queen for the time being. But why? what's so special about Aesudan? Who is she? What sort of threat does Jasnah believe her to pose to her family that she is willing to go as far as have her assassinated? Sure Aesudan, as shown in Lhan's interlude chapter in WOR, is definitely not a really good person nor a good ruler, throwing lavish parties and being excessive, wasteful and out of touch with and uncaring of the common people. All of this make her a terrible person but it's not enough to justify Jasnah's actions against her. Like Jasnah had to have been convinced that Aesudan was serious bad news for her family to even contemplate going as far as an assassination attempt. Not to mention Jasnah had this planned while Gavilar was still alive, so Aesudan wasn;t even queen then. There's also the fact that Bordin, said to be one of Dalinar's most trusted servants, had been left behind in Alethkar to spy on Aesudan, or at least this is what Mraize claims. If that's true then does that mean Dalinar shares at least some of Jasnah's suspicions regarding the queen? I highly doubt he knows about Liss and Jasnah's almost assassination attempt against Aesudan since I'm sure he wouldn't have approved of it. But both Dalinar and Jasnah must now something about Aesudan that warrants having people spy on her. And how do the Ghostbloods know about, for that matter how much do they know? Is Aesudan somehow connected to them? Or maybe she's associated with the Diagram or some other secret organization since Roshar seems to be crawling with them. I think it's pretty obvious that there's more to her but what? There's something else mentioned in the Lhan interlued that might also be relevant somehow: Why is that? What has she done or things she's done that led her to believe the Almight might be displeased with her? I don't have any concrete theories about this yet myself, gotta do a little more investigation, dig a little deeper, look for more hints and foreshadowings and things like that if there are any in the relevant chapters before forming one. But I figured I start this discussion here to see what you guys think and if any of you have any theories/ speculations of your own or know of any WOBs regarding this because this is something that has been on my mind since I finished WOR.