The KR Tried to Prevent New Surgebinders

[Swimmingly]

My theory is based on these things:

• Darkness has to have a reason for killing Surgebinders. He is affiliated with the remnants of the Skybreakers.
• The KR did not simply kill themselves - presumably, that would sever the Nahel bond and release the spren. If it didn't, then spren would not Surgebind, as death would become not just a possibility but a certainty.
• The Shards are dead spren. Dead spren cannot make new Surgebinders. Ergo, making Shardblades would prevent Surgebinders.

So, I theorize that the KR created Shardblades with the express purpose of killing spren and preventing new Surgebinders from forming. The spren may have even recognized this, and allowed it, even though it would kill them.

 

Furthermore, I theorize that Syl was the spren of a Radiant who took a different route - she/he committed suicide, releasing Syl, instead of making her into a Shardblade. This is based on her subtle changes of appearance when looking at herself, and her hints that she was the bondspren of a different Surgebinder at some point.

[Aminar]

Quite possibly. Maybe they realized the enemy would keep fighting as long as they kept surgebinding. But I doubt the Spren were complicit. They seem pretty angry at humanity... Even the ones that lived(Stormfather)

[ranstang94]

You may be right about the shards being dead spren, I have been thinking the same thing. 

One smallish distinction, I think that when a KR gets to a point in their oaths the spren become shards, plate and blade, as a natural progression of the bond. Plate makes sense as the spren would want to protect their bond mate. As for the blade, if they were fighting Odium spren that would make sense to...  The light fading from the plate and blades in Dalinar's vision of the day of recreance would have been the spren dying. 

[Luke.spence]

On the point of live spren versus dead spren, if they could change to any weapon, why are all the known shardblades in the shape of a sword? Was that just the most common weapon? You'd think at least one KR would have broken their oath with their spen in a different shape.

[banestar]

Is it crazy just to think that shardblades aren't forged by the KR for any nefarious purpose?

 

It seems to me that a Knight Radiant used the Nahel bond to bond a spren -- and that spren became the Knight's Radiantblade (let's call it that for now). After the Recreance, the Knights Radiant abandoned their oaths, following the lead of the Heralds. Many of the Windrunners, etc. broke their oaths when they threw down their Radiantblades, and in doing, they "killed" their spren much like how Kaladin "killed" Syl.

 

The dead spren didn't disappear, but the Radiantblades became the flawed shardblades that exist today.

 

I just find it tough to imagine that one of the secret societies would go through the trouble of creating shardblades in the hopes that they would prevent the use of surgebinding. It seems like too long of a walk.

[Swimmingly]

I'm saying that the REASON the recreance happened was to prevent Surgebinding and thus a new desolation. The KR were doing what Nalan/Darkness is doing today - trying to shut down Surgebinding, for whatever reason.

[krill]

To me that doesn't work. The heralds were there before the knights to combat the desolations. So I would assume that the were the only surgebinders at that time. That would indicate to me that surgebinding and desolations are not related.

[Seerow]

I have a theory:

 

The Radiants made a treaty with the Parshendi, giving up their Surgebindings in exchange for the Parshendi destroying knowledge of the Voidforms.

 

Where it fits: 

-We've had a much longer period of time between Desolations than usual. (seems to be normally measured in centuries, but I seem to remember the prologue being 5000 years in the past. That's a pretty big gap)

-The Parshendi are particularly offended when they discover Kaladin, saying they need to seek out stronger forms because the humans have surgebinders now.

-Darkness is actively hunting down all surgebinders and killing them, with the claim he is trying to stop a desolation from happening.

-See: Various secret societies all based around the idea of bringing back either the Radiants or the Voidbringers. The two are clearly connected in some way, yet in the past that didn't seem to be the case. In Dalinar's visions there were Radiants even before the true desolation came.

 

 

Issues:

-Why did the spren sense an oncoming desolation and start coming back, if them coming back is the trigger of the desolation?

--This could be explained as the war against the Parshendi pushing the Parshendi to desperation and seeking out the stronger forms regardless of whether there are surgebinders or not. Kaladin's existence was merely a catalyst to push it a bit faster.

 

-Why was Gavilar murdered? I expect this will be a major mystery for another book or two, but believe the answer to this question will be the key to everything. He said something to the Parshendi that made them decide killing him and going to war was worth it. What they didn't expect was the Alethi's tenacity and their eventual brush with extinction.

-Related to the above: Gavilar was apparently receiving the same visions then that Dalinar is now. If those visions come to prepare for the desolation, what triggered him receiving the visions? Whatever he saw is what pushed the Parshendi to kill him, and them killing him caused the rest. What was the trigger for the visions? Was it a self-fulfilling prophecy? Did something else change in the world? Had the Parshendi gone into hibernation/hiding, and merely interacting with them put Gavilar in the position to start getting visions? This and the above point are the hardest to answer.

[Walker]

On the point of live spren versus dead spren, if they could change to any weapon, why are all the known shardblades in the shape of a sword? Was that just the most common weapon? You'd think at least one KR would have broken their oath with their spen in a different shape.

 

It may just be that the sword was the primary martial weapon for the pre-Recreance KR.  Since the Recreance, humans have advanced significantly in their fighting tactics and styles.  In the midnight essence vision, the KR are completely unfamiliar with Dalinar's fighting stance, even though it is (now) a codified form.  So the varied weapons may be a new thing, as we have knights that were not trained according to the old fighting styles.