redsoxu571

Hi! I just joined, and thought that my take (as someone who has not been involved with any theory discussion and such) might be useful. To review, here is what the books alone seemed to indicate: -Everyone seemed to know that the Radiants collectively abandoned their oaths, and because nobody knew why they were largely hated for it -Our "new" Radiants had the fact that oaths were broken and their spren "killed" as a result confirmed, but the reason why was hidden or withheld -Eventually, the reason behind their decision was revealed. They found out where humans had come from and such, and in their horror (and out of fear that they could cause a similar calamity) they abandoned their oaths -It was presumed that knew what their actions would do to their spren (reasonable), and it was further presumed that their spren would not have gone along with this (less justified, but a rational presumption nonetheless) -The fact that "dead" spren were not as one would expect clouded the circumstances. At first, we readers (and the new Radiants) would figure that dead meant dead, as happens to humans and other beings. Then we found out about deadeyes, still terrible but not quite the same. Then we were given ever-growing hints that "dead" was not even irreversible. Each discovery could have given more reason to question how much the Radiant spren had been unwilling victims or not, but as best as I can tell there was still not a bit of direct evidence pointing to spren having been partners of the decision of the old Radiants. Any thinking that this was possible/probable would, I think, have come from theories, not from deduction -The trial makes it quite clear that, to at least a good portion of spren, it was firmly assumed to the point of fact that the Radiant spren had been victims. Maya's revelation was, unless I'm missing something, the first direct/tangible evidence of the spren having been partners in what happened...and, of course, her evidence essentially is sufficient and absolute proof, swinging the truth all in one Regarding the thinking of LabRat above, to my mind (and probably what the reader was intended to think) the most likely way the Recreance went down was that the Radiants discovered the truth, were horrified by what happened, and immediately (perhaps already in a large group, assembled to have the revelation shared or even the place where the revelation happened) elected to turn away from their oaths and bonds. It was suggested that it all went down rather suddenly; it could have been sudden but orderly, as if planned, or sudden and disorganized, but collective. But, of course, just because it is in human nature to be horrified and then to suddenly act on that emotion doesn't mean that's actually how things went down...and now we know that there was more to it than that. Personally, I wonder whether at least part of the reason the Radiant spren were partners in the Recreance is because they knew what life would be like if they avoided being "killed" and broke their bonds instead, never to make new ones. If the example of Syl would have applied to all, their Radiants may have asked them to break their bonds first (and they perhaps equally agreed that the bonds should not continue) but they preferred "death" to losing themselves.