Why is Hinston Ladrian dead?

[+Oltux72]

OK, I am afraid I do not get it. Under the assumption that the whole accident was fake, I wonder what was Edwarn's reason for killing Hinston? Given the amount of trouble Waxillium has caused the Set, why not leave Hinston alive?

[MasterGhandalf]

IIRC, it's explicitly mentioned in Alloy that Hinston's death wasn't planned and he was supposed to take over the house for his father and run it on his behalf - he died unexpectedly, but Edwarn's plans to fake his own death were already too far advanced at that point to stop, so Wax becoming heir and coming back to take over House Ladrian then became something Edwarn just had to deal with. Hinston's article on the Coppermind is backing me up.

[Frustration]

Yeah Hinston's death was accidental.

[+robardin]

On 7/10/2022 at 3:15 PM, Frustration said:

Yeah Hinston's death was accidental.

I still harbor doubts about Hinston's "death".

The "carriage accident" was staged, as a way to fake the deaths of Edwarn and Telsin. How would the only other occupant, Edwarn's wife, not also "die" in a convincing enough staging? Logically, either she did genuinely die (and Edwarn and Telsin knowingly arranged and allowed it to happen); or, she was in on the staged accident as much as they were.

Now that we've found out what really happened with Telsin - that in fact, she recruited Edwarn into the Set, not the other way around - doesn't it seem far more likely that they were all in on it? Everybody in the carriage that supposedly went over the cliff edge?

And while it's certainly possible they were using Hinston's death "by disease" as a "convenient excuse" for a family trip via carriage "to escape the grief" of being reminded of their son's passing by staying at home, once you think that Edwarn, his wife, AND Telsin, AND as we know Tillaume (the House Ladrian butler) were all in the Set by that point, ... it's not hard to think that Hinston was, as well. In fact, it'd be odd if he hadn't been.

After all, Hinston was born when Wax was eighteen, who is around 40 years old at the time of the Era 2 stories. So Hinston would be in his early 20s. Not a child. Old enough to participate and act on plans the Set might have, to be a full agent.

Now, what Edwarn said to Wax in the train car in the epilogue to AoL is this:

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"You shouldn't have had your butler try to kill me," Waxillium said. "He was too long in the family employ, and he was too ready to kill me, to have been hired by the Vanishers on such short notice. It meant he was working for someone else, and had been for some time. The simplest answer was that he was still working for the person he'd served for years."

"Ah. Of course, you weren't suppose to know he caused the explosion."

"I wasn't supposed to survive it, you mean."

Lord Ladrian shrugged.

"Why?" Waxillium asked, leaning in. "Why bring me back, if only to have me killed? Why not arrange for someone else to take the house title?"

"Hinston was going to take it," Lord Ladrian said, buttering a roll. "His disease was... unfortunate. Plans were already in motion. I didn't have time to search out other options. ..."

And the way Edwarn describes his own son's "death" as "unfortunate" in the context of disrupting or altering "plans already in motion" seems really, really cold, even for him.

What was this "disease" anyway? Seems like nobody knew the details, or have never given it; the only other mention of it was in Chapter 10 of AoL, when Marasi asks Wax how he came to become the house Lord:

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"Lord Waxillium?" she said.

"Yes?"

"How did your uncle die?"

"Carriage accident," he said, looking thoughtful. "He, his wife, and my sister were riding in the Outer Estates. This was mere weeks after my cousin - the heir - had succumbed to disease. The trip was supposed to help ease their grief."

He then mentions not having seen his family in fifteen years, and this summary of events were given to him by letters... Letters written by Tillaume.

And, what "plans" were "already in motion" that Edwarn referred to that would affect "searching out other options" for the house title?

First of all, if Edwarn and Telsin were fully "into" the Set and he had been funneling the House funds to it over years, why wouldn't they just cut bait and let the House die off? Like, if they'd succeeded in killing Wax via Tillaume's explosion, who would have been the house Lord then? If the answer is "nobody", and they were just fine with that... Why would the "plans already in motion" Edwarn referred to be about who would hold title to House Ladrian? It was Wax's investigations into their actual plans that they were trying to stop.

Second, The Set are Cosmere-aware, at least the ranking members are; they fully know that Trell is an off-world god, one with world-spanning interests. Edwarn's last plea to the "Faceless Immortal" who blows the two of them up was cut off at "But you need us! To rule, to manage civilization on --", surely meaning to say, "on this planet"? Cut off by the being responding with a reference to "removing life on this sphere" as the new plan.

I think Hinston's "disease" is something magical, possibly off-world, or at least something that has removed him (for now) from Scadrial. Perhaps he was sent somewhere off-world where the Investiture makes it difficult to leave? I can't believe he's bonded a spren on Roshar, but something similar? (Maybe even a literal "disease" like the unpublished concept of magic on ruined Ashyn?)

Edited August 8, 2022 by robardin

[Firesong]

On 8/8/2022 at 2:28 PM, robardin said:

I still harbor doubts about Hinston's "death".

The "carriage accident" was staged, as a way to fake the deaths of Edwarn and Telsin. How would the only other occupant, Edwarn's wife, not also "die" in a convincing enough staging? Logically, either she did genuinely die (and Edwarn and Telsin knowingly arranged and allowed it to happen); or, she was in on the staged accident as much as they were.

 

We have a WoP that she is indeed dead. They plan to make it more clear in the Leatherbound and later editions.

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somethingnuclear

So I don’t know if this is ever addressed but what happened to Wax’s uncle Edwarn’s wife?

I mean she was with Edwarn and Telsin in the faked carriage accident. The carriage ride was supposedly them trying to go see a particular vista but they couldn’t hike because of Edwarn’s wife’s inability to hike, at which point the carriage had an accident and everyone was reported as dead. As we later find out, this was faked and we see Edwarn and Tesin survived.

They never mention what happened to Edwarn’s wife, however. Did she actually die in the carriage accident? If so, was that planned and Edwarn basically murdered his wife? If not, Will we see her show up as part of the Set?

Peter Ahlstrom

Yeah, she is dead. We may have clarified this a little in the Alloy of Law leatherbound, but I can’t remember for sure. The subject definitely came up.

I personally felt it was implied through the mention of Edwarn and Telsin being alive, but nothing on Edwarn's wife. 

Edited November 3, 2022 by Firesong

[+robardin]

10 hours ago, Firesong said:

We have a WoP that she is indeed dead. They plan to make it more clear in the Leatherbound and later editions.

I personally felt it was implied through the mention of Edwarn and Telsin being alive, but nothing on Edwarn's wife. 

OK, so Hinston (Edwarn's son) did indeed die of an unexpected sickness - but what about Edwarn's unnamed wife?

That WoB actually makes things MORE confusing to me about her; I wonder what the LB text addition or correction would be.

Three people in a carriage which has some kind of fatal accident - one not described, but for it to be a cover for faking someone's death, it'd have to be pre-planned and not something of opportunity.

With three people inside a carriage, having two "survive" such a planned accident and not the third is should be either intentional or incompetence? And whatever could be said of Edwarn and Telsin, not to mention the Set themselves (which pre-existed for them to join), when it comes to subtle and fatal plots, they are not incompetent.

And so, one would naturally assume that Edwarn's wife should be exactly as dead as Telsin proved to be (i.e., that Edwarn hadn't coldly killed two more members of his own family, to set the path for Wax to return into his sphere of influence in Elendel).

One way it could play out is that Edwarn and Telsin tried to stage it so that his wife would come out alive but still in the dark about the Set both before and after (while arranging their own disappearances), and instead she innocently ran back to the carriage that had stalled on a railroad track to fetch a treasured memento of Hinston, and then died in the crash. Like in one of those 1950s Teen Tragedy songs, LOL.

[Firesong]

Or they needed to vanish in secret and didn't exactly trust her to remain silent, I don't really put it past those two. I don't see much to be confused about, they just let her die in the "accident". At least, it makes sense to me. 

[+robardin]

5 hours ago, Firesong said:

Or they needed to vanish in secret and didn't exactly trust her to remain silent, I don't really put it past those two. I don't see much to be confused about, they just let her die in the "accident". At least, it makes sense to me. 

Yeah, that's the only reasonable conclusion. Either they botched having her survive the staged accident when they did, or it was part of the plan all along. I'm of the second opinion.

I now see in re-reading Peter's answer to the question that he is NOT saying that her death was an accident, only confirming that she died in the (so-called) accident.

[Crucible of Shards]

For how Edwarn’s son died, I think it’s possible that Harmony has a less inhibited kandra such as MeLaan assassinate him in some fashion in order to get Wax into the position Harmony needed him in. It’s been made clear that Sazed was very much involved in preparing Wax for his role, going so far as to use agents to directly manipulate him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he also made Hinston’s death look like it was caused by a disease.

Edited November 4, 2022 by Crucible of Shards