Szeth and Honor

[dionysus]

In this post when I say Honor/Honorable/etc with a capital letter I am implying alignment with the Honor shard's intent. When I use honor/honorable/etc I mean the nebulous definition of that term in the English language. I do not think these are exactly equivalents, and thus the difference.

Szeth is a favorite character of these boards, and I have seen it proposed that ultimately Szeth is a Honorable character. He is just in a system that has a perverted version of honor.

I have an alternate proposal. Despite Szeth's conscience, Szeth is merely religious. More importantly, Szeth's religion, at least the little we know of it, is on the average disHonorable (and dishonorable.) I use the qualification "on the average" and "at least the little we know of it" because Brandon does not write black and white cultures, characters, etc. Everything is nuanced, for example TLR. First I am going to try to prove my proposal, and then I am going to speculate on what insight this brings us.

My proposal proceeds from the following premises:

1) The Way of Kings and KR Oaths (that we know so far) capture what Honor's intent is. Most important is journey before destination. The end's never justify the means according to Honor. Then comes protect the weak (KR oath), leaders are to serve the people (The Way of Kings), don't get drunk and party during war, and all the unrevealed stuff.

2) Bindings and oaths are the tools Honor uses, but they are not in and of themselves the intent of Honor. What I mean by this is a person can enter into an oath or be bound to an idea/character that is against Honor's intent as defined in 1. Taking an oath to wake up a 6AM does not bring one closer to Honor, taking an oath to protect the weak does.

Now the argument:

Shin religion and culture is disHonorable from what little we know of it. The main evidence is the treatment of Szeth and the lack of morality required of Szeth as part of his punishment. We don't know what Szeth did, so I am not going to try to say what Szeth deserved. My point is that the fact that the punishment of Truthless even exists is disHonorable. It makes a slave of Szeth. It rules out any possibility of redemption. Most importantly though it states that for Szeth to retain even a shred of honor he must act according to the whims of others no matter what they ask him to do. On top of that it gives him the most destructive weapon available on Roshar to be used without moral compass. Not only does it punish Szeth, there is a high liklihood that Szeth's punishment will lead to suffering and death to innocent victims. This seems like a clear violation of the two main Honorable principles revealed so far, end's not justifying means and protecting the weak. The outcome of Szeth's punishment is like the modern day equivalent of holding a lottery and the prize is a nuclear bomb and letting anyone be elible for a ticket!

Szeth has an honorable conscience, but is not Honorable. Assassination. Check. Wanton slaughter of innocents. Check. Remaining in slavery by choice. Check. It is Szeth's devotion to his religion, specifically his fear of becoming nothing upon death, that keeps him going. What makes it sad is that Szeth and his religion use the language of honor to justify dishonor.

Szeth's surgebinding does not imply a close connectioin to Honor. Brandon confirmed that Szeth's power was different from Kaladin in some way, and we know that one Shard's magic system can be hijacked from Mistborn.

Now the implications, some of these have almost no evidence:

1) Kind of obvious, but Szeth's redemption to Honor can only come by rejecting his Truthless state, and probably the foundations of his religion. This would probably be very tramatic and lead to a broken mental state for a period of time.

2) The Shin, from what we know at this moment, were probably not a culture strongly tied to the shard Honor. Key word is strongly tied. I believe everything on Roshar has some tie to the shard's currently present on Roshar.

3) Magic wise, I think it is likely at the end of the series that Szeth ends up with power set different from Kaladin and windrunning.

4) Whoever had power of Szeth and made him Truthless, is going to be one of the bad guys of the series. I can't get over the fact that on top of everything they do to Szeth, they also give him a shardblade. That isn't a punishment for Szeth, that is a way to sow chaos on the innocent.

[FlashWrogan]

I like your thoughts, though I'm not sure I can completely buy into it yet. I had two thoughts

How could Szeth have hijacked Honor's system? We don't have the info needed to come up with a good hypothesis, but this seems key to buying into this theory. As far as we know so far, gaining access to Windrunning at the very least is bound up in acting with some kind of honor/Honor. I just can't visualize how this could be done.

I've always thought that we have seen a kind of decay in the magic system since the days of the Knights Radiant. We know the shardplate and shardblades have changed, it stands to reason that the way Surgebinding can be accessed may have changed/evolved/decayed. I don't think it is too much of a stretch to say that Szeth could access Honor's magic when he is being very honorable but very disHonorable.