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Allriandre's age and/or attitude don't make sense to me.


BrainFreeze

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I'm reading Shadows of Self and just read the university scene with Wayne and Allriandre. Allriandre's attitude doesn't make sense to me. She is described as "just shy of 20" and from the first fragment of the book we know that Wayne was already with Wax 17 years ago. That means that he killed A's father when A was two years old (or even younger). It's very rare for an adult to remember anything from that age, so A probably doesn't even remember her father. Thus her "no forgiveness" attitude baffles me. I would understand such a thing from her mother, who still remembers her husband and grieves for him. I would understand that if A herself was at least five at the moment her father's death, but events as presented don't make sense to me.

I thought at first that it may be a learned attitude - as in, she was taught to hate Wayne by her family, but Wayne himself describes it as "emptiness" and not hatred.

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11 minutes ago, Invocation said:

Arguably, that would lead to Allriandre hating Wayne more, since she wouldn't have any memories of her father beyond what she's been told and the few evanotypes around.

But having no memories of her father she also would not have any emotional attachment to him. So any resentment for the killing itself would be impersonal. What would be personal is blame for the absence of her father - she observed other children who had fathers, envied them and knew that she could also have something like that if not for Wayne. But that feeling of resentment is much less potent than hatred for someone who killed your loved one.

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1 minute ago, BrainFreeze said:

But having no memories of her father she also would not have any emotional attachment to him. So any resentment for the killing itself would be impersonal. What would be personal is blame for the absence of her father - she observed other children who had fathers, envied them and knew that she could also have something like that if not for Wayne. But that feeling of resentment is much less potent than hatred for someone who killed your loved one.

I wouldn't say it's less potent, just different. Having no father but your mother and any family you have dealing with the fallout and glorifying your father puts him on a pedestal and you begin to blame the one who took him away for not allowing you to be able to experience his love and having him around and all the cool things the others say about him. When confronted with the man who killed him, then, you'd go pretty icy, especially if that person is doing good in life. "How dare life let him continue like this" you'd think. "He should be in jail" you'd think. You would still be angry from a multitude of sources and having to contain yourself like would be expected (from what we've been shown) at that stage in Scadrial would leave you with an emptiness that is also a manifestation of the anger.

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There's a difference between someone dying when someone is too young to properly remember them and someone getting killed. If her father died of a heart attack or cancer, it wasn't anyone's fault. But when he was killed and the man who did it is practically stalking you, I think some anger/coldness is merited. 

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6 hours ago, Harrycrapper said:

There's a difference between someone dying when someone is too young to properly remember them and someone getting killed. If her father died of a heart attack or cancer, it wasn't anyone's fault. But when he was killed and the man who did it is practically stalking you, I think some anger/coldness is merited. 

Stalking? Wasn't it Allriandre's mother who came up with that nonsense that Wayne should give money to her daughter and not herself?

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7 hours ago, BrainFreeze said:

Stalking? Wasn't it Allriandre's mother who came up with that nonsense that Wayne should give money to her daughter and not herself?

Well, Wayne first came up with giving them money and then, yes, the mother told him to give a portion of it to Allriandre. We don't know if Allriandre knows that her mother wants him to give it to her, though, and could just see it as further torment.

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yep, it is possible that allriandre would have forgiven wayne long ago, if he wouldn't come every month to remind her :P

on a more serious note, it's actually likely that she would be better able to let go without wayne coming every month. anyway, she does know that she grew up fatherless because her dad was shot by a guy who got away with it, mostly. Now, I agree that she could have reacted in diffferent ways. i just don't find her attitude irrealistic

 

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1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

yep, it is possible that allriandre would have forgiven wayne long ago, if he wouldn't come every month to remind her :P

on a more serious note, it's actually likely that she would be better able to let go without wayne coming every month. anyway, she does know that she grew up fatherless because her dad was shot by a guy who got away with it, mostly. Now, I agree that she could have reacted in diffferent ways. i just don't find her attitude irrealistic

 

 

Well, maybe Wayne is too unreliable as a narrator here (although he is usually good at understanding people), but "emptiness that he hopes would someday be filled with something, even with hatred" (I paraphrased, but he basically said this about her eyes) is usually what I would expect as a description of someone devastated/still strongly grieving, whose grief doesn't even leave space for hatred. And that grief is what baffles me. I would understand hatred/resentment of Wayne who "got away with it".

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9 minutes ago, BrainFreeze said:

And that grief is what baffles me. I would understand hatred/resentment of Wayne who "got away with it".

Like King of Nowhere said, that's probably because every time Wayne shows up or gets in the broadsheets, she gets affronted with the knowledge that this guy killed her father and now is pretty much everywhere. If Wayne laid low for a couple of years, not seeing her or getting into shenanigans, she'd probably pass the grieving stage she's at now, but it's hard to do that under her circumstances.

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Also worth noting; we don’t know what her home life is/was like.

 Maybe that one bad event led to others that were then traced to her father’s murder. They lost their primary bread winner. Maybe her mother had a second relationship with a not so nice man. It’s very possible that every bad thing that happened after was blamed on Wayne.

And then he forces his presence on her every month. And she needs his support to move on with her life. It would be incredible if she didn’t hate and resent him. I think most people would.

Wayne being portrayed as a hero just makes it worse. The fact that he is one? It’s the cruelest thing he could ever have done to her.

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  • 3 months later...

Wayne murdered her father when she was 2 years old. He does not deny his guilt.

He was caught for this crime and sentenced to hang by a Roughs lawman, Jon Deadfinger.

Lord Waxillium Ladrian intervened on his behalf, for reasons unknown. Was it because he was a rare and powerful Twinborn, like himself?

How would you feel about this turn of events?

Yes, he's been paying a weregild - half his earnings - to her family each month. It may have been a condition of his commuted sentence, a self-imposed one, or both.

That's the very definition of blood money. It can earn Wayne's re-entrance into free society. It doesn't mean it buys forgiveness.

Imagine her remembering not her father at age 2-1/2, but remembering deeply missing her father at age 3-1/2, with the evanotype image the only image to hold onto.

Would money buy your forgiveness? Or simply acceptance of the bare minimum of justice?

Wax and Wayne have since become legendary heroes of the Roughs. Even more so following Wax's return to Elendel, where she is attending University, after their vanquishing of the equally legendary Miles Hundredlives and foiling the Vanishers.

And even Allriandre's friends at University speak of him in excited tones. "They say he rides with the Dawnshot!"

It must feel like the world is ready to accept it as a good trade, her father's life for Wayne hooking up with Wax. Just look at what an awesome pair they make, and what they've done! And look, he's not some unfeeling monster, he makes payment, even coming in person! What was your father, anyway? An anonymous bookkeeper in a distant Roughs town? You wouldn't be studying at Elendel University except for Wayne's money, you know!

I can easily see why she feels the need to force him to look at her father's picture. Because that's all she ever had of a man she only remembers missing.

To make him say, "I killed a better man than me."  Because to her, he did. No matter what the rest of the world says.

And to tell him he will never be forgiven. Because he won't be, not by her.

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On 6/6/2019 at 3:03 PM, SwordNimiForPresident said:

Beware, a foul necromancer is on the lose.

If you'll note the rules, thread necromancy isn't really that big a deal so long as the discussion is relevant. :)

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