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[Theory] Taravangian's real way of saving mankind


Raysen_ht

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Hi guys,

This is my first post, please be kind

 

I've had this theory for sometime and i couldn´t find anything like it searching the site.

 

Taravangian (there must be a simpler way to refer to him... Mr.T perhaps) asked for the capacity to save the world and i think he recieved that as the blessing, but not in the way he thinks.

 

I believe that he can save everyone when he is in his most stupid/mercifull state. It's said in the books that when he is like that he has an easer time to unite people and make them like and follow him. That way he could unify the all the people to fight against the desolation.

 

I think that the super smart is actually his curse, and that following the diagram will bring the opposite effect of his wish and destroy the people.

 

what do you guys think? 

 

 

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Welcome :)

 

I think Mr T is strongly missled. In WoK, we found out about his "good days" and his "bad days". He thinks his role is to save the world and he thinks he needs to turn it into a warzone for this to happen. He purposely had all the leaders of the major nations assasinated. He purposely kill people in order to hear their last words as they are supposed to bear some truths. He hides behind this nice king persona but in truth, he is a monster.

 

Now, we can argue about who is Mr T really. A monster? A genious? A tool? Hard to guess at this point. He could end up being some sort of savior on his dumb days, but I would rather see him fill in the role of the villain. He has such a good cover for a villain as everyone think so highly of him.

 

Just my two cents.

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This has been suggested before but one of the biggest arguments against this is on his bad days he can barely function as a human being. If that was his way of saving humanity than it seems a bit suspect.

 

My personal idea is that the intelligence is indeed the way of saying humanity but that he is working off a false basis much like how Dalinar thought he was meant to unite the Alethi high princes when that isn't the case. Mr. T says he will "unite them" which is from whatever visions Gavilar received. He/Gavilar could have misunderstood what that meant and now all his intelligence is being used based on that misunderstanding. He's even against the Radiants which I assume is because they would supersede his uniting the people under him. 

 

The second idea I had is that if this thread idea is correct than maybe his capacity to save mankind is in fact if he doesn't do anything. Maybe by getting involved he only further complicates the issues at hand. This has some flaws though

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I think Mr T is strongly missled. In WoK, we found out about his "good days" and his "bad days". He thinks his role is to save the world and he thinks he needs to turn it into a warzone for this to happen.

 

Minor nitpick: Taravangian would be very against turning the entire world into a warzone, since that would kill most of the people he's trying to save, and he needs soldiers. He's not above starting a civil war, as in the case of Jah Keved, but there's no point starting a mini-Desolation before the first. Taravangian needs the old leadership removed (or firmly under his thumb), and needs the people of the nation to want him as leader. I think he'd prefer not to do things by putting each nation into a civil war.

 

The plague in the Purelake was most likely started by Taravangian, and now he's sent his healers to help. That nation will probably take him on as king without much in the way of bloodshed.

 

Babatharnam is also easy: the oldest person rules. Taravangian just needs to assassinate all the oldest leadership and then make a convincing application or gain honory citizenship, given his current age. No civil war needed, though there's currently civil unrest there which Taravangian could swoop in and solve to get the public's support.

 

I'm sure we could make more predictions if we knew how the politics of more nations worked.

Edited by Moogle
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Assuming that the premise that Taravangian's boon was actually his stupid/mercy state and the curse his superintelligent sociopath state, I'd venture to predict that the way in which Taravangian saves the world will have almost nothing to do with his Diagram at all.Taravangian noticeably suffers motive decay whenever he goes smarter; the Diagram's endgame is unlikely to be something that Taravangian would normally want. Perhaps there's a form of magic necessary to defeat Odium which can only be used by someone of complete mercy and love, or perhaps Taravangian's specific mindset is needed to bind a special spren of some kind which is instrumental in the final scenes of the story.

 

In the end, the question is: what can a stupid but compassionate person do which a superintelligent sociopath, or even your normal everyman, cannot do? Being that this is the Cosmere, I'm putting my money on magic which requires, or utilizes, the state of mind which only one person in the world has from time to time.

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It might not be him taking action, exactly. Something like 'oh hey we've got a magic ritual to defeat Odium forever except we need to use the mind of a person completely devoid of intellect, because that's the only mind that's empty enough to hold Odium and not do anything with the shard', or something?

 

It almost certainly won't be exactly that, it sounds hackneyed even to me, but the principle of the matter, I think, is that the way Taravangian is used in the end won't be anything like any of us are expecting. My model of the situation is that T is sort of a... reagent, not an agent. It won't be his master plan that saves the world, he's just a pawn who happens to have the highly-desirable-for-some-unknown-reason property of being a complete drooling idiot at times.

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The way you put it makes it sound surprisingly plausible. I'm not sure about what'd /happen/ if T picked up Odium while incredibly stupid and compassionate, but all the possible outcomes sound so interesting that I think I'm going to consider that my favorite theory about T.

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Thinking on the idea of Taravangian bonding a lovespren while monumentally stupid and compassionate, in some sort of mirror of the Unmade being made of listeners who sacrificed their minds... I don't think I could find it in myself to hate how things turned out.

 

Okay, maybe just a little at how cheesy and faintly ridiculous it would be, but the Voidbringers defeated through some sort of carebear stare would be an incredibly surprising subversion of the epic ending most people anticipate for every fantasy series.

Edited by Moogle
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I don't really see Mr.T saving the world in his idiotic state either, but a point could be made in that favor due to:

 

Lightsong spent most of Warbreaker thinking he was this great detective, and such. The whole book we wonder what great heroic deed he did to deserve to be brought back. The whole book be wonder what great purpose he will have that he is pursueing. In the end he was just a fisher, and his great heroic deed was to sacrifice his breath to give the godking a tongue. It ended up being huge, but how many people thought that would happen early in the book?

 

So is it really so far fetched that somehow in his idiotic state, that Mr. T couldn't do, or mistakenly do something that would save the world?

 

Now in my opinion, I could see his boon and curse being the same. His boon is to save the world, his curse is to be the villian that causes all this chaos and problems, that by trying to kill Dalinar, and Kaladin and so on, ends up bringing together the people that will ACTUALLY save the world. So he does save the world, but by unknowingly bringing together the people who will do the deed, not actually him. 

Edited by P4thf1nd3r
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  • 1 year later...

Personally, I thought that the capacity he needed was both his extreme intellect and extreme compassion, the accompanying curse being that they never happen at the same time. That would  be a really vicious curse, much worse than seeing upside down--possibly worse than not remembering your dead wife, although that is still likely to turn out to be more important than it seems.

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@Pathfinder

(Idk how to quote on mobile) So essentially Taravangian is Annakin Skywalker? He is supposed to bring balance to Roshar, not destroy it. But by becoming the conquerer he forces together those who have the will and strength to do what he couldn't?

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Personally, I thought that the capacity he needed was both his extreme intellect and extreme compassion, the accompanying curse being that they never happen at the same time. That would  be a really vicious curse, much worse than seeing upside down--possibly worse than not remembering your dead wife, although that is still likely to turn out to be more important than it seems.

 

I'm not a fan of this theory, because it undermines the boon. If that was the case and he couldn't make both sides of him work together, then he would not have the capacity to save the world. But the Nightwatcher always gives you what you ask for, so there shouldn't be any twist like the one you suggest.

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@natc Yeah actually that is a better comparison. TLR was actively trying to stop Ruin like Taravangian is actively trying to stop Odium, both are just doing negative things in the name of the greater good, where as Annakin completely gave in and switched sides (until the end).

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I'm not a fan of this theory, because it undermines the boon. If that was the case and he couldn't make both sides of him work together, then he would not have the capacity to save the world. But the Nightwatcher always gives you what you ask for, so there shouldn't be any twist like the one you suggest.

Last I checked she only gives you what she thinks you deserve to get.

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I feel it's necessary at this point to point out that on Mr. T's smartest days he's not allowed to write laws or make major decisions until his dumber self has been allowed to approve them, BUT THIS NEVER HAPPENED WITH THE DIAGRAM.

This makes me inclined to agree with those saying that his dumb states will be the answer. Maybe his compassionate self simply needs to go through and decide which parts are Honourable and which are wrong. After all, we are talking about Honour's planet, and Dalinar has repeatedly stated that the Alethi were once Honourable people, and even though they were "primitive" they always survived.

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I'm not a fan of this theory, because it undermines the boon. If that was the case and he couldn't make both sides of him work together, then he would not have the capacity to save the world. But the Nightwatcher always gives you what you ask for, so there shouldn't be any twist like the one you suggest.

 

Didn't Av say that she gives what she thinks the supplicant deserves, not necessarily what they ask for?

 

Also, it might not be necessary to have both attributes at once in order to use them together, simply more convenient.

 

He could, for example, make a heart-guided revision to the Diagram in his compassionate, empathetic state that fixes a flaw his intellect couldn't see. Rules established during his high intellect states have, however, stopped him from making any important decisions while stupid.

 

From this angle, the split doesn't really prevent the boon from working, only makes it take longer. The prohibitions that keep him from doing things while compassionate are his own storming fault, not Nightwatcher's. They could even work in his favor, preventing his compassionate self from burning the Diagram in horror until it was too far underway to stop, allowing human feeling to enter the picture only after it becomes useful.

 

Honestly, I like some of the other ideas more than my own, particularly Pathfinder's. I just think that continuing to debate the idea is a good way to find its strengths and weaknesses--information that can be used to form more accurate theories later.

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Put another way, she cursed him with the intelligence to make a plan to save everyone, and the CAPACITY to see why doing so would be wrong.

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