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Hi. I’m new here, I think Shallan is the best, and I’m ready to defend that opinion. Bring it on

I don't know if anyone has posted something to this effect before, but I think there's a concrete explanation for Shallan's dissociative identity disorder. I might just be dense for posting something that seems obvious to everyone, but here goes. I think the real reason for Shallan's mental problems is because of what happened to Testament. Up to finding out about the Cryptic, we're led to believe that Shallan's mental issues stem from the trauma she experienced when she killed her mother. To be fair, this likely contributed to the problem, but I don't think it's the root cause. I think that when a radiant breaks the mind of their spren, the spren isn't the only one to be damaged by the process. This leads me to wonder what happened to the ancient radiants of the recreance. I've always assumed that the ancient radiants spread stories about a betrayal to make people think they'd been tricked in order to make them hate the radiants so no one would pursue surge binding powers again. But maybe there's more to it. If the minds of the ancient radiants were broken similarly to Shallan, then maybe not all the tales of radiant's being traitors are false.

My Shallan Theory Timeline with Explanations: (Real Shallan – as yet unseen but mentoned) Formless = chronologically first Shallan with no Spren - No Spren chose her - Her parents loved her Someone or some force convinced Shallan she needed a Spren - Mystery so far that we will find out from Formless - Maybe connection to Nale and the Skybreakers? She creates Forgotten Shallan (Think how we don’t know much about Shallan before she kills her mom – and then how different her family thinks she acts afterwards) Forgotten Shallan can now make bonds because of her new identity. Forgotten Shallan says 1st Ideal off Page = Bonds Testament Forgotten Shallan says Second Ideal (1st Truth) off page = Sword for Lightweavers and limited abilities in Soulcasting and Lightweaving Forgotten Shallan breaks the oath with Testament the night she kills her mom. Now Book Shallan is created and has memory problems. Book Shallan can now make bonds again because of her new identity. Because Book Shallan can’t recall Testament or her past oaths, she bonds Pattern by saying the 1st Ideal off page. Book Shallan: “I’m Terrified” - Second Ideal (1st Truth) to Pattern, giving her Blade and limited Soulcasting and Lightweaving abilities. Book Shallan breaks her oaths to Pattern not by just lying to Jasnah, but also by then coming completely clean to her afterwards and showing remorse for an honorable lie? Book Shallan now becomes the version of herself that will invent and develop Veil. This new personality says the First Ideal again off page, fixing the oaths with Testament who pretends to be Pattern (good lies!) and Shallan accepts it because of her denial and mental condition. Veil Shallan can pretend she is new and rebond Testament. Veil Shallan says: “I killed my father” the first Truth which brings Testament back through her 2nd Ideal and gives her Blade again which she uses to open the Gates and kill Tyn and use in the Chasms. Veil Shallan says second Truth: “I killed my mother” to rebonded Testament to reach her 3rd Ideal at the end of Words of Radiance. Veil Shallan does something that breaks her bond to Testament in the time between the end of WoR and the creation of Radiant. (Coming clean to Adolin?) Once Oathbringer begins, Radiant Shallan has said her 1st, 2nd and 3rd Ideals off page, allowing her the abilites with Blade and Surgebindng that she gets from rebonding Pattern again. This also accounts for her having Shardplate people think she has at the end of Oathbringer in the battle. With no new personalities and no new oath breaking, Shallan, Veil and Radiant, now all somewhat content with life and abilities…begin to remember Formless because they fear losing everything. So chronologically, Radiant Shallan was the last new personality and Testament was the last of her two Cryptics to ‘take the bullet’ for her so to speak. This means that Testament would be a deadeye in Shadesmar when they see it. And then when Radiant Shallan with Pattern says the last line: “ "I killed her," Shallan whispered. "I killed my spren. My wonderful, beautiful, kindly spren. I broke my oaths, and I killed her." She is really saying TWO Truths which puts her Rebond with Pattern up to the 5th Ideal by the end of WoR…one ahead of Kaladin. - Two Truths? Maybe…but which ones? - “I killed my Spren” if you can consider a deadeye a Spren. - “I killed her” could be someone we don’t know about yet - “I broke my oaths” seems like it could be its own, shameful Truth. NOTE: To really buy into this theory, you need to accept that BS is going to do something narratively funky with Shallan because of her conditions. This means a lot of things are happening off page…something he started to foreshadow in WoR with the locked box and all that. Let me know what you think. There might be a Veil/Radiant/Book Shallan typo here or there.

At the end of WoK I-2, Wikim calls his brother and tells him that they (the two brothers, I guess) have a big problem. I have read the four main books, and the two novellas, too. I have searched at arcanum, forum and coppermind, and other sites as well. But I haven't the slightest of what storms he wants.

This is a idea I came up with before Rhythm of War came out. Originally I collected a bunch of information to connect the Ghostbloods to Hemalurgy but then the Thaidakar reveal made all that irrelevant. Theory: The Davar family were practicing Hemalurgist. Shallan's Mother was spiked before her death and Shallan possibly has spikes that she is not aware of due to her repressed memories. This theory provides an explanation to several of the loose threads we have with the Ghostbloods. The Ghostbloods are led by a man named Thaidakar who goes by the title Lord of Scars, there is strong evidence to suggest that this man is actually Kelsier the Survivor. Their goal as explained to Shallan is to traffic Investiture and they are currently trying to get easy access on and off Roshar. Two major things we don't know about the Ghostbloods is why were they involved with the Davar family and why are they trying to kill Jasnah Kohlin. Why were the Ghostbloods involved with the Davar Family? The GB need an easy way on and off of Roshar so they can traffic Stormlight. They are well aware of Hemalurgy due to their connections to Scardrial. I believe that they were attempting to use Duralamin spikes to create a psuedo-Nahal bond. This would explain why they have spent so much effort trying to kill Jasnah, as an Elsecaller she has access to the surge of Transportation which would be very valuable to their cause. I theorize that A Duralmin spike made from a Lightweaver was given to Shallan Davar and this is where the Radiant persona and bond with Testament originated. Evidence from Rhythm of War - Chapter 93 In this excerpt Brandon uses the metaphor of being stabbed through the heart with a spike TWICE to describe the pain Shallan feels at remembering her childhood. Additionally Shallan remembers her mother lying on the ground with "a length of metal in her chest" not a Shardblade in her chest. Shardblades don't cut through human flesh and they vanish when not being held. I'm not saying that Shallan didn't kill her mother with the Testament blade but what I am saying is that the metal that she is describing doesn't fit what we know of Shardblades but it does fit what we know about hemalurgic spikes. This also explains why Shallan believed her Mother's Soul is locked in the safe. If hemalurgy was done on her it would make sense that she would have had some understanding of what was being done to her and when she killed her mother she would have been under the impression that the Testament blade had absorbed her mother's soul. Thoughts?

So Brandon has outright stated that we will be seeing an new Dustbringer in Rhythm of War. I have seen surprisingly little speculation about who this will be, so I will lay out my theory. My theory is that the next Dustbringer to be introduced in the series will be Balat Davar. I will start with a few extra-narrative reasons that I believe this: Firstly, Brandon likes writing Radiants with tragic backstories and Balat comes with a pre-packaged one that can be seen through Shallan's flashbacks. Secondly, Balat has been given a surprising about of screentime including his own pov interlude, it would seem a little odd for this much time to be spent on him if he was just going to be Shallan's kinda pathetic older brother. Finally, from a timeline prospective for all of the first 3 books Balat has either been far away or in the past, RoW will be the first time when Balat is in the place where modern plot is happening and it just so happens thats when we get our Dustbringer. As for in-world reasons that Balat could become a Radiant. One is that it has been confirmed that while radiance is not hereditary being related to Radiants can bring someone to the attention of the spren. This is supported by, Tien being a proto-lightweaver, the astonishing number of Kholin Radiants, and the fact that the Davar family has already had at least 2 members start the process of bonding spren. This familial connection suggests that we should take the idea of more Davar Radiants seriously. As for why I think Balat would specifically be a Dustbringer. During Shallan's brief conversation with Pattern about Malata, he talks about how the Ashspren and their Radiants are very destructive and enjoy breaking things and tearing things open because they want to know what is inside. Balat has demonstrated similar interests (though admittedly even more destructive ones) by his interests in tearing apart animals, setting fires, and watching axehound fights. Additionally, the primary and secondary divine attributes of the Dustbringers are brave and obedient. This fits thematically with Balat's history and personality. Balat spends most of Shallan's flashbacks in a strange position as the only one of the Davar children actively resisting their father while at the same time (at his own repeated admission) not being brave enough to truly stop protect his siblings. I would love to hear any reactions or other possible theories. Note: I am not saying that Balat would have to be a successful Dustbringer or that he would necessarily be on the same side as his sister, just that I think he will be the primary Dustbringer character for the first half of the series.

I just finished the three Stormlight books, and with my brain like a sieve I find all the little details filtering away, and I feel like some important tidbits are just gone from my brain and there are just too many thousands of pages for them to hide in. So, if any of you can refresh my memory, I would be grateful. 1. How did the soulcaster break? When I first heard it was broken in WoK and the damage was described, I assumed it was a shadeblade that did the damage and that Shallan did it when she killed her father. This turned out not to be the case. Did we ever find out what cut the chains, and who had it when it happened? 2. If Lin was working with the Ghostbloods, what the heck were the Ghostbloods trying ti achieve with the help of such an unlikable guy? 3. Who was Helaran working with? Same group as Gavilar? 4. If the Shard Bearer that Kaladin killed actually was Helaren (it was definitely Helaran's sword, and Amaram said the guy was Veden), where did he get the black horse and Shard Plate? 5. There were hundreds if not thousands of people who saw the Shard Bearer on the field, though not the battle where he was killed. Why did Amaram wait six months to publically lay claim to the Shards?

I have a theory that may might need some scrutiny. The Soulcaster Shallan has in The Way of Kings was cut, and it stopped working. What if the soul casting fabrials are just prisons that hold a Spren capable of soul casting? Maybe I am overthinking, but it seems to me that all Soul Casters would need to contain some form of intelligence that could exchange Stormlight in Shadesmar to effect an object's change into one of the ten essences. Shallan is an intelligent human that could not convince a stick that it wanted to be fire, so we know that the objects can be willful, if not stubborn. Either there exists some trick to force a soulcasting, or an intelligence must present an argument to convince the object to change. If this is true, a Lightweaver's Cryptic could potentially be bound into a soulcaster for others to use, without needing to have a bond. Soulcaster Fabrials are a delicate pattern of chains and gemstones. I imagine them as a web of delicate lines with gemstones interspersed. What if they function as a web and hold a spren in between the cognitive and physical realm? Shardblades are the remnants of a broken bond and a formerly bound spren in some form of agony, which is why those sensitive to a bond can't touch blades without hearing the screams. It does not seem unlikely that Soulcasters are similarly remains of Spren, but in a more active capacity. If this is true, then cutting the soul caster might free an imprisoned spren. We are told that Shallan did not attempt to summon Pattern as a blade after the death of her mother, due primarily to that trauma. She Imagines that the blade is imprisoned in the safe in her father's study. But this does not explain fully why the Cryptic was never visible to her until the events in The Way of Kings. (Assuming that the pattern she is looking at on the ceiling of her quarters before she first heard the "What are you?" question was actually the Cryptic.) Why did Pattern seemingly not appear to a young Shallan after the death of her mother as she was growing up? It's possible she just wished him to leave her alone, but then why dld he come back later? Could there be a procedure that would have allowed her father to bind Pattern and create a Soulcaster fabrial? If the Ghostbloods knew of an ancient secret like this, and found that the Davar daughter had a bonded spren, possibly because her mother talked about her child's supernatural nature while looking for a "cure", it does not seem impossible that they might offer Brightlord Davar the method, and use of the resulting fabrial, in exchange for his allegiance. Perhaps a young Shallan would rationalize an event like removing her bonded spren as her father taking her blade, and putting it away in a safe. It always seemed incongruous to me that Lin Davar, portrayed as an ambitious man who would do almost anything to get a stronger position, did not attempt to gain anything from his daughter having a shard blade. I realize that the Radiants were looked at with scorn, and that it is possible he did not want his House tainted by their memory, but would he have not looked into how the shard blades of the past were separated from their owners originally? It would have solved multiple problems at once. Would questions along these lines eventually lead him to the Ghostbloods? If he somehow took advantage of his daughter after finding out she was bonding a Cryptic, and manipulated events so that he could get a soul caster made from the Spren, that would seem to me to be more in keeping with his character. Pattern lost his memories at the time of Brightness Davar's death, possibly because his bond with Shallan was weakened by her wanting nothing to do with him, and, at the same time, Shallan went mute and became antisocial, presumably due to guilt. I propose that Brightlord Davar somehow took Shallan's spren after the death of his wife, and used knowledge gained from the Ghostbloods to imprison Pattern and create a fabrial for exploitation. I also think that the forced breaking of the bond was what damaged Shallan's young mind and fractured Pattern's memories. Are there any holes in this theory that I am overlooking?

Ask me anything! Questions will be answered!Curiosities will be satisfied! Swords will be used for stabbing things! Metals will be burned! Cookies wil bee.....I don't know, thrown away? And you all get lots of root beer

After a few weeks of working on this, here's my fan piece following the events in Shallan Davar's life Starting with the lullaby and ending... well. Just listen to it: So, I've uploaded it on YouTube. You can read a little more about it in the description there, but I'll put something here that I didn't put there: a timeline of the events happening at certain parts of the song. And yeah, it'll have to be in spoilers. Note: Major spoilers... Only read this if you've read both the current Stormlight Archive books. Though I did this in the video description, I'd also like to thank the two artists whose work I used in the video, Grant M Hansen and Johanna Ruprecht. They have websites here and here respectively. Anyway, hope you enjoy. It turned out much differently than I imagined, but I think it still captures what I was trying to convey in most ways.

So as my first post I want to discuss the possibility that the still living Davars have a claim on Jah Keved from their mothers family side. Evidences are: - Valam was the highprince of house Davar ( "Valam. He still lives?" Her own highprince.; Shallan p. 367) Valam ended up has King of Jah Keved before dying and giving the kingdom to Taravangian (p. 915) - Valam's bastard is likelly the "bastard" that visits the Davars to recruit a lighteyes from this family to start a inquiry against Shallan's father about her mother's death.( I would like an e-reader to prove this point pls, didn't find the scene again) The question is: Why bother with her death if she wouldn't be family? One might argue, if the claim is strong enough to actually make use of it, but as Taravangian's claim comes from a femal three generations ago House Davar's claim is even stronger than Taravangian's one. If this theory proves true, it opens a lot of future politic shemes. Edit: On second thought, if Taravangian dies, who elso would have a claim on Jah Keved and the power/allies to push it? I dont think that Taravangians heirs will play a significant role in this matter Discuss...

Ok, so this idea started out as a discussion with Moogle about calling the theory that Shallan's brother, Nan Helaran, was the shardbearer which Kaladin killed in the Amaram battle. Moogle is very convinced that this theory is accurate. Of course that is fine. My intent is not to disprove that theory, but rather to construct an alternative scenario which fits the evidence we have thus far. This all started out as just tossing an idea out there and it gradually became a compelling chain of plausible events in its own right. So, to start, I will present the evidence Moogle presented to establish the shardbearer theory (bear with me, this will be a long post): Shallan's father was a member of the Ghostbloods. Even her father's advisor - the steward who was also a member of the Ghostbloods -- didn't know more than Helaran. That implies he was in heavy with his father, which probably means he was in the Ghostbloods. Quote -Kaladin scene with the Shardbearer attacking Amaram, which happened one year ago, the time when Shallan's brother was missing for a short while then declared dead. Quote Shallan is Veden. Ergo, her brother would be Veden. The Shardbearer who attacked Amaram was Veden and unknown. Shallan's family is rural, and thus their appearances would not be readily recognized. Again, it's not certain, but you basically have to propose Brandon is attempting to trick us with red herrings here. If that doesn't convince you, I don't think anything will short of a direct book confirmation. So, this evidence truly does fit the prevailing theory quite nicely (hence it being the prevailing theory). So, in the words of Clue, "That's how it could have happened". But, what about this: Luesh, a member of a secret organization known as the Ghostbloods was employed as steward to the head of House Davar, a Veden noble house. The Ghostbloods, who have a specific and active agenda, are seeking to increase their power and political influence. As a means of achieving this goal, the Ghostbloods seek to put a sympathizer in place as a high prince of Vedenar. Luesh informs the Ghostbloods that House Davar is has traveled far down the road to dire financial straits and therefore provides the Ghostbloods with an opening. The Ghostbloods come to an agreement with house Davar to provide him with financial backing with the goal of House Davar claiming a vulnerable Veden highprincedom in return for certain political influence and favors. The Ghostbloods cannot simply provide House Davar with direct financial backing, this would draw too much attention as well as raise uncomfortable questions regarding the source of this sudden wealth. It is decided that the Ghostbloods will provide House Davar with a soulcasting fabrial to produce valuable mineral deposits on Davar lands that House Davar will then be able to exploit an monetize on the open market. That way, there is an obvious, verifiable, and 'legitimate' source for the new Davar wealth. However, the Ghostbloods get something else in the bargain as well. The use of soulcasters in this fashion is forbidden and thus the Ghostbloods have additional leverage over House Davar. Time passes and the head of House Davar brings his son and heir Nan Helaran in on his plans. However, either immediately or over time Nan Helaran rejects these plans and becomes a liability to the Ghostbloods. He must be silenced. He suddenly and inexplicably 'disappears' and is never heard from again. About a year later, the head of house Davar is dead. The new heir, Nan Balat, is brought up to speed by the steward Luesh on what his father was up to. Nan Balat shares this info with his siblings and the family craps a collective brick when it is discovered that the extraordinarily valuable soulcaster is no longer working. Attempts are made to repair it to no avail. A desperate and dangerous plan to save the family is decided upon with Luesh, the Ghostblood family steward, having divided loyalties between the Ghostbloods and the Davar children, complicit in this plan. During the course of this plan, the Ghostbloods, knowing that the Davar patriarch is dead, send enforcer agents to Nan Balat to demand that the soulcaster is returned to the organization. After all, such a threat is more effective if made by someone unknown and more threatening than good old Luesh whom the children have known for so many years. Later, the Ghostbloods learn of Luesh's duplicity and take actions to address his betrayal which result in Luesh's death. So, that is the scenario. In conjunction with this scenario neither Helaran nor his father need be actual members of the Ghostbloods. Conservation of characters and the fact that the shardbearer Kaladin killed was Veden are the best evidences for the prevailing theory over another alternative. But inter-tangling the character's side stories too much begins to make things hokey in my view. It gets to the point where it is discovered that Han Solo is actually the son of Amidala's secret lover who secretly hoped that his son would one day marry Amidala's unborn daughter. Besides, this is a 10 volume epic. There is a lot of room for additional significant characters (including a Veden shardbearer who is a Ghostblood). It has been posited that if the shardbearer was not Helaran, than why would the Ghostbloods risk sending a Veden shardbearer into an Alethi border conflict. To this I have two responses: 1) Sending a mounted shardbearer into an Alethi border conflict (which will be fought largely by second tier soldiers and no other shardbearers) would not likely be considered a particularly big risk. Add to that, the way Kaladin killed him was extraordinary and would never have been considered a significant possibility. Especially since the shardbearer did not enter the fray until Amaram's forces were routed. 2) This is kind of a straw man argument, the fact is whether or not the shardbearer was Helaran, the shardbearer was in fact Veden. Helaran or not, the Ghostbloods sent a Veden shardbearer. Again, my purpose is not to contest that the shardbearer was Shallan's brother, but rather to propose a reasonable alternative relying upon the same evidence. I actually have no opinion on this theory at all except that I don't think the evidence is particular strong (compelling, yes) to support any idea currently set forth to the extent that alternative theories are particularly unlikely.